APRIL 29 2016

Fernando Eguren-Martin, BoE: Friedman was right: flexible exchange rates do help external rebalancing. Do exchange rate regimes matter for the formation of countries’ external imbalances? Economists have thought so for over sixty years, and policymakers have made countless recommendations based on that presumption. But this had not been tested empirically until very recently, so it remained an opinion rather than a fact.  In this post I show that having a flexible exchange rate regime leads to the correction of external imbalances in developing countries, offering some empirical support to a widely held belief. In contrast, this does not seem to be the case for advanced economies.

Yi Che et al., NBER: Does Trade Liberalization with China Influence U.S. Elections? This paper examines the impact of trade liberalization on U.S. Congressional elections. We find that U.S. counties subject to greater competition from China via a change in U.S. trade policy exhibit relative increases in turnout, the share of votes cast for Democrats and the probability that the county is represented by a Democrat. We find that these changes are consistent with Democrats in office during the period examined being more likely than Republicans to support legislation limiting import competition or favoring economic assistance.

Courtney Coile, Kevin S. Milligan, David A. Wise, NBER: Social Security and Retirement Programs Around the World: The Capacity to Work at Older Ages - Introduction and Summary. We explore whether older people are healthy enough to work longer. We use two main methods to estimate the health capacity to work, asking how much older individuals today could work if they worked as much as those with the same mortality rate in the past or as younger individuals in similar health. Both methods suggest there is significant additional health capacity to work at older ages

Maria De Paola, Giorgio Brunello, IZA: Education as a Tool for the Economic Integration of Migrants. We examine the role of education in fostering the economic integration of immigrants. Although immigrants in Europe are – on average – slightly less educated than native individuals, there is a large heterogeneity across countries. We discuss evidence on student performance in international tests showing that children with an immigrant background display worse results than natives. While in some countries, such as Denmark and France, this gap is almost entirely explained by differences in socio-economic background, in others (Finland, Austria, Belgium and Portugal) the factors driving the gap are more complex and have roots also outside socio-economic conditions. We investigate how educational policies in the host count can affect the educational outcomes of immigrants. We focus our attention on pre-school attendance, school tracking, the combination of students and teacher characteristics, and class composition.

Maria Caridad Araujo et al., IZA: Teacher Quality and Learning Outcomes in Kindergarten. We assigned two cohorts of kindergarten students, totaling more than 24,000 children, to teachers within schools with a rule that is as-good-as-random. We collected data on children at the beginning of the school year, and applied 12 tests of math, language and executive function (EF) at the end of the year. All teachers were filmed teaching for a full day, and the videos were coded using a well-known classroom observation tool, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (or CLASS). We find substantial classroom effects: A one-standard deviation increase in classroom quality results in 0.11, 0.11, and 0.07 standard deviation higher test scores in language, math, and EF, respectively. Teacher behaviors, as measured by the CLASS, are associated with higher test scores. Parents recognize better teachers, but do not change their behaviors appreciably to take account of differences in teacher quality.

GAO: Shorter Life Expectancy Reduces Projected Lifetime Benefits for Lower Earners. According to studies GAO reviewed, lower-income men approaching retirement live, on average, 3.6 to 12.7 fewer years than higher-income men. GAO developed hypothetical scenarios to calculate the projected amount of lifetime Social Security retirement benefits received, on average, for men with different income levels born in the same year. In these scenarios, GAO compared projected benefits based on each income groups' shorter or longer life expectancy with projected benefits based on average life expectancy, and found that lower-income groups' shorter-than-average life expectancy reduced their projected lifetime benefits by as much as 11 to 14 percent. Effects on Social Security retirement benefits are particularly important to lower-income groups because Social Security is their primary source of retirement income.

Allison Master et al., Washington Post: Researchers explain how stereotypes keep girls out of computer science classes. Despite valiant efforts to recruit more women, the gender gap in the fields collectively known as STEM — science, technology, engineering, and math — is not getting any better. The gaps in computer science and engineering are the largest of any major STEM discipline. Nationally, less than 20% of bachelor’s degrees in these fields go to women. Women are missing out on great jobs, and society is missing out on the innovations women could be making in new technology. Stereotypes are a powerful force driving girls away from these fields. Even though stereotypes are often inaccurate, children absorb them at an early age and are affected by them.

Tomek de Ponti, Bert Rijk, Martin K. van Ittersum, Agricultural Systems: The crop yield gap between organic and conventional agriculture. We compiled and analyzed a meta-dataset of 362 published organic–conventional comparative crop yields. Our review and meta-analysis of yield data comparing organic and conventional agriculture showed that currently organic yields of individual crops are on average 80% of conventional yields. In our dataset, the organic yield gap significantly differed between crop groups and regions.

Kacey Deamer, Livescience: Time to Change Your Sheets? Bedbugs Have Favorite Colors. Do bedbugs prefer their hiding places to be a certain color? Researchers conducted a series of tests in a lab to see if bedbugs (Cimex lectularius) would favor different-colored harborages, or places where pests seek shelter. The scientists found that bedbugs strongly prefer red and black, and typically avoid colors like green and yellow.