Scholarly Comments on Academic Economics

Volume 16, Number 1, March 2019

In this issue (.pdf):

Are a Few Huge Outcomes Distorting Financial Misconduct Research? Emre Kuvvet confronts the extreme-values problem in firm penalties and other SEC enforcement outcomes against financial misconduct, and how outliers might affect research in finance, as well as policy judgment, focusing on an article in Journal of Accounting Research. Andrew Call, Nathan Sharp, and Jaron Wilde respond.

Both terrorist and public mass shooter? In 2016 Adam Lankford published a news-busting article purporting to show that during a 47-year period the United States represented 31% of worldwide public mass shooters, and claiming that the outsized U.S. percentage is a result of gun prevalence. John Lott and Carlisle Moody criticize Lankford’s terminology and methods. Lankford replies to Lott and Moody. Once the terminological disputes are clarified, the issue that emerges is: Why does the United States have an outsized number of lone-wolf mass shooters? Lott and Moody offer explanations different than Lankford’s.

Another round on right-to-carry and violent crime: Carlisle Moody and Thomas Marvell have another go at John Donohue, treating the weighting of fixed effects by population and synthetic controls. Donohue, Abhay Aneja, and Kyle Weber say Moody and Marvell are off-target.

Tennis and loss aversion: Michał Krawczyk challenges a set of authors who read loss aversion in tennis data. Nejat Anbarci, Peren Arin, and Christina Zenker return serve.

Why Did Milton Friedman Win the Nobel Prize? James Forder and Hugo Monnery appreciate Friedman’s underappreciated early work on the complexity of stabilization policy.

Edmund Burke, liberal:

EJW Audio:

James Forder on Milton Friedman’s Early Work on Stabilization Policy

Leo Krasnozhon on Liberalism in Ukraine

John Cairns on the 1758 Pamphlet about Hair-Cutting in Edinburgh

Call for papers

Who should get the Nobel prize in economics, and why?

EJW fosters open exchange. We welcome proposals and submissions of diverse viewpoints. EJW also welcomes ‘journal watch’ submissions beyond Econ.

Read the March 2019 issue in full (.pdf)

Table of contents (.pdf) with links to articles