Production Possibilities Frontier and Having it All

A much discussed article on work/life balance written by Anne-Marie Slaughter appear on the Atlantic's website (and I assume also in some paper form called a "magazine"). My quick take is to think of it in a production possibilities frontier (PPF) framework. In a PPF a country chooses a bundle of production of two goods (say guns and butter), making more guns means you give up butter. One can think of the same model as a trade off between work and time at home, working more means giving up time at home. The article really is looking at ways to try to make the trade offs more palatable between working and time at home (better scheduling, telecommuting, and less travel).

Finally, the article discusses how academia is better than government for this balance is some ways. I wonder if it is because generally in academia (at least for professors) work is rarely urgent or scheduled. Either way be revealed preferences, I prefer the academic life.

Easterly and Tire Problems

Bill Easterly has shared his thoughts on Soccket which I discussed yesterday. The best lines from the post which is well worth the read is

"Now I’m not going to do what you expect and get all crotchety at this point and say this is all useless nonsense. " and " So my constructive advice for the Soccket creators is please give us a little more evidence on how well the Soccket works for those poor consumers and a bit less of rich people testifying how excited they are about this story."

I should also add that Soccket e-mailed me back a thoughtful response. When I have a chance I'll provide some more thoughts.

For those of you landing here from Easterly's blog. Thought I would point you to one of my favorite blogs (Duall Services) written by a college friend who runs a service that cleans out foreclosed houses.  The linked recent post talks about how you have to pay to have tires recycled, which explains why so many tires are littered. You should read the blog, because Pete combines great photography with excellent prose.

Expensive Interventions in Development Economics

A week or so ago Bill Easterly tweeted a quip about how Soccket (a soccer ball when kicken become a power socket) was a sign of the wrong way to do development. The video below is well produced and worth a watch at the end you might even want to donate. Who wouldn't want a bunch of kids to play soccer all day and study into the night?



The website for is here. In short you can send one of these balls for $60 to a country of your choice.  My guess is Easterly's problem and mine is that the website doesn't really cite any evidence that it is a good way to spend $60. A while back I cited Bruce Wydick's piece on the best bang for the buck in development. One thing worth noticing is that most of the favored policies are relatively cheap per treated individual (deworming medicine, clean water,  bed nets) even clean stoves run about $15 a piece.  The one exception is child sponsor program actually also seem to have big impact on key development outcomes.

Two thoughts. I doubt giving a soccket could do any harm directly, I think most economists worry about the opportunity cost. It is unclear if those donating soccket's would have donated money to deworming or clean water instead or just would have spent the money on themselves.

Soccket should take this criticism as a challenge to evaluate the impact of giving one to a child. Does it help children study more, are they less likely to be obese (actually a problem in some of the targeted countries), or are there other outcomes that it improves. Maybe they have done this but I couldn't find it on their website.  A similarly criticized program Tom's shoes gave one free pair of shoes to a poor child when you bought a pair of shoes (see here for a review). I think Tom's may have taken the criticism to heart as Bruce Wydick and others appear to be doing a randomized study of Tom's potential impact on the children who receive them.

Finally, one thing worth noting to do a study of the soccket starting small might be the right approach. Here is a run down of the evaluation of one lap top per child which might provide a framework how to proceed.

Why Sports and Sports Economics Matter

A recent article on Forbes.com highlights research I did with my Towson colleague Tom Rhoads on the impact of stadium construction on minor league baseball attendance (download the paper here) in short as the article says we find that over a 10 year period that a new stadium can increase AAA (the top minor league level) attendance by roughly 1.2 million fans over the 10 years and that attendance is still 5-10% higher ten years later.

Rereading the paper (which I'm doing now as I prepare revisions requests for referees at a journal), we seem to back a little away from the idea that the construction doesn't pay off. Although our analysis indicates that it might not increase ticket sales enough at AA or A to offset construction cost, but at the AAA the returns to increased attendance might approach construction cost. Recent work by Nola Agha shows that having minor league teams may actually increase local income. This is counter to one of the main tenants of sports economics is that subsidies to professional teams don't pay off (Coates and Humphreys have a good review article).

So why does sports and sports economics matter I was listening to an interview with Frank Deford on TBTL (my favorite podcast), Deford said something to the effect that sports are important because they are part of the basic human condition. Almost all societies have as he claimed some type of game or sport (like they do religion).  Sports draw our interest in and makes talking about local government subsidies actually interesting (yes even an economist needs motivation to think about these isuees). My guess is that much larger subsidies are given in other context, but receive less attention from researchers.

Sports Economics can be used to show evidence of racial discrimination (Price and Wolfers) and  (Parsons et al.)  and be used to show the best way to set up an incentive structure (Ferral and Smith) and (Fort and Quick). So it has shown to be able to address important topics. So in that sense it matters. 


Most of the time I think of myself as an economist who studies international development who does some sports research on the side. It seems easier to think why increasing schooling or improving nutrition in Nicaragua matter more than how many fans attend a baseball game in a new stadium in Toledo. But one needs to keep motivated, and studying sports is fun and it keeps the authors going. As I see papers in a couple of weeks at the Western Economics meetings which features dozens of papers on sports economics sponsored by the North American Association of Sports Economics, I'll keep in mind why does this matter outside of the world of sports and what can it tell us about the human condition.




 

Poverty Traps and Best Charities

In Monday's post I linked to a post on the World Bank Development Impact Blog discussing the merits of different types of interventions.

First I should have read the full article it was talking about, but too many clicks made me stop. Here is the article

In short the article talks about which types of charities would likely be the most effective based on economic study evidence. The blog provides results of a survey of [excellent!] development economists  on which intervention are the best. I think my issue with the rankings is that the top five (clean water, deworming, bed nets, child sponsorship, and clean stoves) are problems most likely to be found in the very poorest those living on less than $1 a day. Microfinance, animal donation, fair trade coffee, and libraries are more likely to be targeted at those living on $1-$2. I agree with survey results and would provide similar rankings. However, I don't want to ignore the possibility that helping those making $1-$2 could be more effective in the long run. Development economist sometimes think of poverty as a trap. If you are really poor you cannot invest in your health, education, and nutrition so you become poorer. If you get a little help (say clean water, free bed net) you may be slightly less poor but still living on close to a $1 a day. Those slightly richer might be able to see permanent change from a small donation (see this post on the development impact blog). Of course the impacts of getting 10 cents extra income are greater for the poor.

As the author of the 2nd impact blog post David McKenzie noted in response to my comment on the first post I linked, there is a need for long term evaluations. So I guess the next step is to find a project that looks for long term impacts. I have a couple in mind that I'm working on and hopefully they can shed light on interventions.

Vote Early and Often for Grinnell: Social Networks and Searchers

The people who brought you cupzza's are now asking for your help. The Social Entrepreneurs of Grinnell from my undergrad Grinnell College are in a contest sponsored by the White House. You can vote for them here. Why should you vote for them? First as I mentioned they helped create cuppzza's the combination pizza and cupcake, which was later picked up by Marginal Revolution.  More importantly they provide loans both in the developing countries and in their own backyard. I like the idea of providing start up funds for students to learn a business (see this Scott Adams article). If the Grinnell Social Entrepreneurs win they would get to go the White House and promote their organization on MTV.

More generally I thought this would be a good time to discuss these types of contest where the winner is determined by who can get the most people to vote for them online. If we assume voting is a proxy for the social capital generated by these organizations then the method for choosing the best proposal seems good. However, larger schools might be at an advantage since those schools have a larger network to draw on. Although per capita Grinnell has a very powerful network. By posting the vote info on Grinnell Plans (Grinnell's own social network), the Social Entreprenuers shot up from 5th to 2nd. You can vote for them here and I hope you will. I'm using my social capital with you (if I have any) to urge you to vote. Of course this type of thing is low cost to me and now we have all increased the knowledge.of this event with no cost to those organizing the event. That really is the beauty of these contest is they externalize the cost of promotion

However this post on the World Bank development blog post warns us of getting too wrapped up in the media surrounding the best ways to give the poor. Granted one of the things that the post suggests is the microfinance is overrated. This has been a recent theme of some works showing that microfinance has little short term impacts. I think the verdict is still out with only two or three studies.  However, I think having students learn about things work by directly involving them in projects and working locally is an excellent mission.

So again you can vote for them here

Evaluating Bar Rescue or Corporate Pirates in Silver Spring

Just blocks from my house a reality show called Bar Rescue has commandeered the Piratz Tavern, a local bar with a pirate theme. I had only been to the Piratz Tavern once in my 4 year in Silver Spring and that was on a lark after with an entire wedding party still dressed in formal attire. Piratz Tavern didn't seem to be doing well based on what I heard from friends, yelp reviews give it 2.5 starzzz,  and I never paid it much attention. Of course until Bar Rescue came and took over the bar. I'm not the only one interested as my favorite local bloggers Thayer Ave and Silver Spring Singular  also are covering the story. The Piratz theme has been sacked and the new name appears to be Corporate Bar and Grill, see the local blog stories for pictures.

I will start this post by saying that I have now only watched one episode of Bar Rescue and spent less than an hours research on it but I thought I would report my findings. It's a blog post about a reality show that rescues bars so take everything with a grain of salt and a slice of lime.

The goal of this study was to see how successful the show Bar Rescue is at turning a failing bar into a beloved bar.

The theory. By injecting a large amount of money into a bar. Providing some buzz and  some improvement in technique that bars could be rescued.

Sample Selection Bias. Ideally the bars would have been randomly selected from a pool of similar bars and we could compare to a control group. That didn't happen the though the goal is to entertain not evaluate the Bar Rescuers. One problem with a show called bar rescue is that any bar featured would likely be in need of rescuing therefore we would expect some bars to fails. However,  it could also be that the show picks bars in placed likely to succeed so we might not be able to compare the selected bar to those not being rescued. Since I'm not trying to publish this study in an academic journal I'm not going to worry about it but will acknowledge the problem.

Data Sources: So far Bar Rescue has had 10 episodes featuring 10 bars. I used the name of the bars in google searches to find the following information. If the bar was still open and it's current Yelp Reviews. I used Yelp since it seems to be the largest source of these types of reviews and Yelp reviews do show economic impacts.

Results:  Of the 10 bars featured last season 7 are still open. I determined this by checking yelp and checking bar webpage or facecbook pages for updates in the last month. It appears the bars featured in episodes 102, 104, and 105 (see data source) are now closed.  Of the 7 still open bars 6 have 3 or 3.5 stars on Yelp and none of those 6 has consistently great recent reviews after the show. The seventh bar The Bone in Framingham, MA  has four stars on Yelp and some pretty good recent ratings.

Conclusions: The best case scenario is The Bone a four star Yelp bar. For comparison Silver Spring has two four star yelp bars (Jackie's Side Bar and Quarry House), which are also my two favorite local bars (not that my ratings matter). I'm doubtful, we will get the best case scenario.  Since The Bone tweaked the concept they had while the change from Piratz Tavern to Corporate Bar seems bigger change. In short I think if Corporate Bar and Grill survives we are likely to see a 3 to 3.5 star bar, which does serve it's purpose McGinty's is a 3 star Yelp bar and it serves its purpose and a fine pint too. So good luck to owners!