Year: 2013

Reinhart and Rogoff provide a detailed response in WSJ, acknowledging the Excel mistake but downplaying the other criticisms. Justin Fox identifies a deeper problem with macroeconomics in general:

This is watching the sausage of macroeconomics being made. It’s not appetizing. Seemingly small choices in how to handle the data deliver dramatically different results. And it’s not hard to see why: The Reinhart-Rogoff data set, according to Herndon-Ash-Pollin’s analysis, contained just 110 “country-years” of debt/GDP over 90%, and 63 of those come from just three countries: Belgium, Greece, and the UK.

This is a problem inherent to macroeconomics. It’s not like an experiment that one can run multiple times, or observations that can be compared across millions of individuals or even hundreds of corporations. In the words attributed to economist Paul Samuelson, “We have but one sample of history.” And it’s just not a very big sample.

Free Exchange weighs in:

The latest dust-up does nothing to answer the question of causation. Slower GDP growth could be the cause of a rising debt load rather than the result. Ms Reinhart and Mr Rogoff acknowledge in their academic work that this conundrum “has not been fully resolved”, but have sometimes been less careful in media articles. This is perhaps their biggest mistake. The relationship between debt and growth is a politically charged issue. It is in these areas that economists must keep the most rigorous standards.

On that point, Yglesias unpacks Arindrajit Dube’s analysis, which argues that low growth causes debt more than debt causes low growth. Previous Dish on the R&R paper here and here.

Alyssa Rosenberg and Travis Waldron discuss 42, the new film about Jackie Robinson. Both were disappointed by the movie, but Alyssa praises the film for spotlighting “the economics of bringing Jackie Robinson to the major leagues”:

Rickey (Harrison Ford, overacting so dramatically I’m amazed he isn’t sponsored by the ham council) tells his assistant Harold at the beginning of the movie. “Dollars aren’t black and white. They’re green.”

When a gas station attendant refuses Robinson access to the toilet when his Negro League team is on the Deep South, Robinson blackmails him into desegregating it by suggesting the team can buy its gas elsewhere. “Jack, is this about politics?” a white reporter asks him at his first spring training. “It’s about getting paid,” Jackie (Chadwick Boseman, who might have had a star turn with a better script) tells him. “I’m in the baseball business,” Rickey tells Robinson at a later point. “With you and the other black players I hope to bring up next year, I can build a team that can win the World Series. And a World Series means money.”

Dodgers manager Leo Durocher (a fantastic Christopher Meloni) lectures his players, some of whom oppose the idea of playing with Robinson, “I’ll play an elephant if it’ll help us win…We’re playing for money, here. Winning is the only thing that matters.” Durocher himself is suspended from baseball when the Catholic Youth Organization threatens to boycott the league over his affair with a married actress. Even the racist manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, Ben Chapman (a very strong Alan Tudyk) recognizes the economic imperatives, taunting Robinson at the plate “You’re here to get the nigger dollars for Rickey at the gate.”

That economic imperative story is interesting, and it’s important—and it’s a critical reminder that the decision to desegregate baseball wasn’t simply done out of the goodness of Branch Rickey’s heart.

The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in Salinas v. Texas this week, in which Genovevo Salinas’ refusal to answer a question during interrogation was used as evidence of his guilt during trial. Dominic Perella explains the ramifications:

The jury convicted Salinas, and the question now is whether the prosecution went too far. The answer turns on what the Fifth Amendment means. That amendment–the basis for the famous Miranda warnings–says that “[n]o person… shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” But what does it mean to be “compelled”? … [P]rosecutors can’t tell the jury that it suggests guilt when a defendant decides not to testify at trial. That would be “compelling” the defendant to give evidence against himself, the court has explained, because the defendant is being punished for remaining silent.

That is the basis for Salinas’ appeal. This case is no different from silence at trial, his lawyers say, because Salinas was punished for exercising his right not to incriminate himself, and that kind of punishment compels defendants to talk. And, his lawyers have pointed out in court filings, a ruling against Salinas could change police practices nationwide. If what the police did in Salinas’ case is constitutional, they wrote, then police in all investigations “will have an incentive” to convince suspects to talk by telling them “that any silence could be used against them at trial.”

Lyle Denniston tries to read the tea leaves:

If the sentiment that seems to run high in a Supreme Court hearing dictated how a case would come out, the Justices might well be on their way to declaring that the Constitution forbids prosecutors from telling juries that a suspect’s silence when talking to police in any criminal investigation means he is guilty.  The argument Wednesday in Salinas v. Texas (12-246) showed the appeal of treating silence in response to police questions as too ambiguous to be allowed as proof of guilt.

But some hesitancy set in here and there, because several of the Justices were puzzled about how to write a new Fifth Amendment opinion that actually would work to protect the right against self-incrimination when a suspect meets with police, without being arrested or further detained and before “Miranda warnings” are required or given.

Robin Hagan Cain worries that upholding Salinas’ conviction will make interrogations more difficult:

If a majority finds a suspect’s pre-arrest silence can be offered against him, wouldn’t the ruling ultimately backfire on law enforcement officers? Wouldn’t people hauled before the police refuse to answer all questions, rather than refusing to answer only certain questions? Granted, there would be more convictions initially as news of the ruling trickled through the Interwebs, but suspects would start to catch on after a few seasons of Law & Order perps parroting “Am I under arrest? Am I free to go?”

A new study finds that “residents of states with the highest rates of gun ownership and political conservatism are at greater risk of suicide than those in states with less gun ownership and less politically conservative leanings”:

[University of California, Riverside sociology professor Augustine J. Kposowa] said that although policies aimed at seriously regulating firearm ownership would reduce individual suicides, such policies are likely to fail not because they do not work, but because many Americans remain opposed to meaningful gun control, arguing that they have a constitutional right to bear arms. “Even modest efforts to reform gun laws are typically met with vehement opposition. There are also millions of Americans who continue to believe that keeping a gun at home protects them against intruders, even though research shows that when a gun is used in the home, it is often against household members in the commission of homicides or suicides,” Kposowa said.

Previous Dish on suicide and gun control here.