Berghs betraktelser

Ur Stankov, P. "The Political Economy of Populism: An Empirical Investigation". COMPARATIVE ECONOMIC STUDIES 60, nr 2 (juni 2018): 230–53.

Bono i U2 har blivit äldre - och klokare. Ur en intervju i NY-times:

Systemic change is required, but I get one eyebrow up when people want systemic change but don’t want to bother to turn up for the town-hall meeting. I’ve met a few of them. You know, I smuggled some tapes out of the Genoa G8 meeting, where the anti-globalization protesters were

getting the shite kicked out of them. The 2001 Group of 8 meeting in Genoa was marred by violence between anti-globalization protesters and the Italian police.

They were smashed up and came to me and asked me to smuggle out some tapes. I did, and when I got the tapes back to the people, I sat down and said: "Look, what are you doing here? What are we going to do?" And they were like: "We’re anarchists, dude. We’re not into that shit." I said: "Is it just that this stuff’s too boring for you? Can we find a model?" You still have to vote and get organized.

I ended up as an activist in a very different place from where I started. I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I now know that’s not true. There’s a funny moment when you realize that as an activist: The off-ramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce, it’s entrepreneurial capitalism. I spend a lot of time in countries all over Africa, and they’re like, Eh, we wouldn’t mind a little more globalization actually.

Är intervjuad i anrika tidningen Lundagård, som har en samtalsserie med politiskt engagerade forskare (vilket jag tycker är en utmärkt idé, och ett fenomen värt att diskutera).

Ur intervjun:

I samtalet framträder Andreas Bergh som en person med professionella och etiska principer. Han engagerar sig gärna offentligt, men avvisar och kritiserar sådant som han uppfattar som fördummande. Sådant som följer ur snabba medielogiker eller opinionsbildning utan intellektuell grund. I synnerhet kritiserar han forskare som själva dras ner i träsket.

– Det finns en tendens att också akademiker dras ner i debattnivå och fångas av en twitterdebattslogik.

• Anne Kaun, professor i medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap, Södertörns högskola
• Niklas Selberg, docent i juridik, Lunds universitet
• Joakim Wernberg, lektor i Teknik och samhälle vid Lunds universitet och forskningsledare vid Entreprenörskapsforum
• Andreas Bergh, docent i nationalekonomi och temaledare på Inspa vid Lunds universitet

Nytt wp om effekten av hyresreglering. Ur abstract:

We use the price effects caused by the passage of rent control in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2021, to study the transfer of wealth across income groups. First, we find that rent control caused property values to fall by 6-7%, for an aggregate loss of $1.6 billion. A calibrated model of house prices under rent control attributes a third of these losses to indirect, negative externalities. Second, leveraging administrative parcel-level data, we find that the tenants who gained the most from rent control had higher incomes and were more likely to be white, while the owners who lost the most had lower incomes and were more likely to be minorities

Mekanismen som undersöks är alltså att hyresregleringen omfördelar från fastighetsägare till hyresgäster - men det är hyresgäster med hög hyra som får mest. Ur pappret:

In contrast to the stated goals of the rent control law, we find that the largest transfer of wealth occurred in the low disparity subsample (8.52%) in which renters are relatively wealthier, while the smallest transfer occurred in the high disparity subsample (0.89%), in which renters are relatively poorer. This pattern persists in cross-sectional regressions. Wealth transfers are positively related to renters’ income and negatively related to owner’s income.

En vän skickade mig ett utdrag ur Ezra Kleins intervju med Ted Chiang

Tesen som antyds torde vara testbar: Hitta en fråga (ur World Values Survey eller liknande) som fångar inställning till ny teknik och undersök om den faktiskt är mindre i universella välfärdststater, eller länder med högre sociala utgifter.

Fler uppsatstips finns här.