Let’s consider a series of statements, without considering whether any of them are right or wrong:
People should be treated with respect, regardless of their ethnicity.
All ethnic groups have the same average IQ after controlling for cultural biases in IQ tests.
Women should be treated with respect and accepted in traditionally male-dominated workplaces.
There are no biological differences between men and women that affect their interests or abilities.
Homosexuals and homosexual relationships should be given the same respect and acceptance as heterosexuals and heterosexual relationships.
Children brought up by same-sex parents do as well or better than children brought up by opposite-sex parents.
People of all religions should be treated with respect.
Muslims are no more likely to commit violence than are people of other religions.
Wealthy people and societies should help the poor.
Poverty is entirely caused by unfortunate circumstances and unfair institutions and not the choices of the poor themselves.
At this point, you have probably noticed the pattern. Odd-numbered statements are moral claims. They are all about how one should behave. They reflect liberal values. If you agree with claims 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 then congratulations! You are a decent human being who is capable of living in a liberal society. Continue reading Can the Truth be Repugnant? Should it be?→
Bloomberg reports that ABC Children’s Hospital has fired an employee who wrote an internal memo blasting the hospital’s diversity policies, creating a firestorm across the medical community.
She said: “The distribution of preferences and abilities of women and men differ in part due to biological causes, and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of men in pediatrics and psychiatry.”
Jane Damore, the pediatrician who wrote the note, confirmed her dismissal in an email, saying that she had been fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” She said she’s “currently exploring all possible legal remedies.”
The imbroglio at ABC is the latest in a long string of incidents concerning gender bias and diversity in medicine. Sacred Mercy’s Chief of Obstetrics Tracy Kalanick lost her job in June amid scandals over anti-male discrimination. Evan Pao’s gender-discrimination lawsuit against Trinity Hospital in 2015 also brought the issue to light, and more men are speaking up to say they’ve been sidelined in the female-dominated industry, especially in gynecological and pediatric roles.
Earlier on Monday, ABC’s chief physician Siya Pichai sent a note to employees that said portions of the memo “violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.” But she didn’t say if the company was taking action against the employee. An ABC representative, asked about the dismissal, referred to Pichai’s memo.
Damore’s 10-page memorandum accused ABC of silencing conservative political opinions and argued that biological differences play a role in the shortage of men in pediatric positions. It circulated widely inside the hospital and became public over the weekend, causing a furor that amplified the pressure on ABC to take a more definitive stand.
After the controversy swelled, Daniel Brown, ABC’s new vice president for diversity, integrity, and governance, sent a statement to staff condemning Damore’s views and reaffirmed the company’s stance on diversity. In internal discussion boards, multiple employees said they supported firing the author, and some said they would not choose to work with her, according to postings viewed by Bloomberg News.
“We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a hospital,” Brown said in the statement. “We’ll continue to stand for that and be committed to it for the long haul.”
The memo and surrounding debate come as ABC fends off a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Labor alleging the hospital systemically discriminates against men. ABC has denied the charges, arguing that it doesn’t have a gender gap in pay, but has declined to share full salary information with the government. According to the company’s most recent demographic report, 69 percent of its workforce and 80 percent of its pediatricians are female.
Following the memo’s publication, multiple doctors shared an article from a senior pediatrician who recently left the hospital, Yovela Zunger. In the blog post, Zunger said that based on the context of the memo, she determined that she would “not in good conscience” assign any employees to work with its author. “You have just created a textbook hostile workplace environment,” she wrote. She also said in an email, “Could you imagine having to work with someone who had just publicly questioned your basic competency to do your job?”
Still, some right-wing websites had already lionized the memo’s author, and firing her could be seen as confirming some of the claims in the memo itself – that the hospital’s culture makes no room for dissenting political opinions. That outcome could galvanize any backlash against ABC’s efforts to make its workforce more diverse.
The subject of ABC’s ideological bent came up at the most recent shareholder meeting, in June. A shareholder asked executives whether conservatives would feel welcome at the hospital. Executives disagreed with the idea that anyone wouldn’t.
“The hospital was founded under the principles of freedom of expression, diversity, inclusiveness and science-based medicine,” ABC Chairman Erin Schmidt said at the time. “You’ll also find that all of the other hospitals in our industry agree with us.”
Noel recently released a working paper titled “The Effects of Land Redistribution: Evidence from the French Revolution.” It is co-authored with Theresa Finley and Raphael Franck. The paper examines the consequences of the land auctions held by the Revolutionary government in France. The abstract reads as follows:
This study exploits the confiscation and auctioning off of Church property that occurred during the French Revolution to assess the role played by transaction costs in delaying the reallocation of property rights in the aftermath of fundamental institutional reform. French districts with a greater proportion of land redistributed during the Revolution experienced higher levels of agricultural productivity in 1841 and 1852 as well as more investment in irrigation and more efficient land use. We trace these increases in productivity to an increase in land inequality associated with the Revolutionary auction process. We also show how the benefits associated with the head-start given to districts with more Church land initially, and thus greater land redistribution by auction during the Revolution, dissipated over the course of the nineteenth century as other districts gradually overcame the transaction costs associated with reallocating the property rights associated with the feudal system.
My guest for this episode is Ekaterina Jardim of the University of Washington. Ekaterina is one of the authors of the new minimum wage study that has been making headlines recently, “Minimum Wage Increases, Wages, and Low-Wage Employment: Evidence from Seattle.” One reason this study is so interesting is that it was funded by the City of Seattle, which is something that governments aren’t obligated or expected to do when they enact major policy changes like these minimum wage hikes.
My guest today is Kevin Erdmann, he blogs about economics and finance at Idiosyncratic Whisk.
Kevin has written a ton about housing, as evidenced by the titles of his blog posts. A recent one is labeled Housing: Part 239. This series is part of a larger book project that Kevin is publically drafting on his blog.
We discuss the housing bubble of the 2000s and the post-2008 housing market. I took my first undergraduate economics class in 2008, just as the financial crisis was beginning, so there’s never been a time in my economics career when people weren’t talking about this. And yet, I still have so much to learn!
Kevin makes an interesting distinction between “open-access cities” and “closed-access cities.” Closed-access cities are places like San Francisco, New York, and San Jose that have restricted their housing supplies. Open-access cities are places like Houston and Phoenix with more elastic housing supplies. We talk about these factors and how they relate to the housing boom and bust, liquidity, and central bank policy.
The book looks at the financial situations of ordinary American families. It is centered around a detailed survey of 235 households where they recorded what they earned and what they spent at an extremely granular level. Continue reading The Financial Diaries with Jonathan Morduch→
In this episode, I have three guests on the show with me: Kewei Hou of Ohio State University, Chen Xue of the University of Cincinnati, and Lu Zhang of Ohio State University.
As stated in the paper, “state capacity describes the ability of a state to collect taxes, enforce law and order, and provide public goods.” That said, state capacity does not mean big government. A state may have the power to impose rules across its territory, but it doesn’t have to use that power in a tyrannical way. Another way of saying that is to say that having a high state capacity is compatible with Adam Smith’s desire for “peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.” Continue reading State Capacity and the Rise of the Modern Nation State with Mark Koyama→
