Month: April 2014

How Political Science Makes Politics Make Us Less Stupid

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This post by Ezra Klein discusses this study, entitled “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government,” by Dan M. Kahan, Erica Cantrell Dawson, Ellen Peters, and Paul Slovic.  The gist of the post and the study is that people are less mathematically sophisticated when considering statistical evidence regarding a political issue. The study presented people with “data” from a (fake) experiment about the effect of a hand cream … Read more

Shining A Little More Light On Transparency

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Thinking more about transparency (which I just wrote about), it occurred to me that I neglected two pieces (of many) that are relevant for the point about transparency of decision-making in bodies like the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in which expertise plays an important role in justifying the body’s authority. David Stasavage and Ellen … Read more

Why Separate When You Can…Lustrate!?!

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Today’s post by Maria Popova and Vincent Post, “What is lustration and is it a good idea for Ukraine to adopt it?” made me think about the difference between what I will call policy and discretionary purges. It is not easy for a nation to fix itself after a period of authoritarian rule.  There are many … Read more

How Transparency Could Harm You, Me, and the FOMC

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Sarah Binder, as usual, provides excellent insights into a difficult political problem in this post discussing the potential political and economic pitfalls of imposing greater transparency on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which essentially directs the Federal Reserve’s active participation in the economy, thereby having the most direct control over short-term interest rates and, accordingly, day-to-day … Read more

Mind The Gap: The Wages of Aggregation, Evaluation, and Conflict

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For whatever reason, I’m on a “data is complicated kick.” So, this story is one of many today discussing the gender gap in wages in ‘Merica. In a nutshell, President Obama pointed out “that women make, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar that a man earns.”  Critics (most notably the American Enterprise Institute) … Read more

It’s Better To Fight When You Can Win, Or At Least Look Like You Did

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In this post, Larry Bartels provocatively claims that Rich People Rule! In a nutshell, Bartels argues (correctly) that more and more political scientists are producing multiple and smart independent analyses of the determinants of public policy, one of which, by Kalla and Broockman, I have already opined on (“Donation Discrimination Denotes Deliverance of Democracy“). Bartel’s motivation … Read more

My Ignorance Provokes Me: I know Where Ukraine is and I Still Want to Fight

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It’s been too long since I prattled into cyberspace.  This Monkey Cage post by Kyle Dropp  Joshua D. Kertzer & Thomas Zeitzoff caught my contrarian attention.  In a nutshell, it says that those who are less informed about the location of Ukraine are more likely to support US military intervention.  This is an intriguing and policy-relevant finding … Read more