A 9-year Justice Department study shows 44% of released prisoners are rearrested within 1 year; 83% within 9 years. 77% of drug offenders are rearrested for non-drug related crimes including 34% for violent crime. On average, released prisoners are rearrested 5 times. ... Read More
Krugman’s Misleading Scandinavian Comparison
Paul Krugman wrote a misleading post comparing U.S. wages and productivity growth to Scandinavia without admitting that Scandinavia’s test scores are much higher than America’s. Comparing Scandinavia to Scandinavian-Americans instead of to Americans more broadly is a simple way to factor out the benefit of higher Scandinavian test scores. (If anything, Scandinavians with lower socioeconomic status immigrated to America.) On average, Scandinavian-Americans earn ... Read More
One Reason GDP Growth Accelerated Under Trump
One reason why real (peak-to-peak) GDP growth has accelerated from 1.5% per year during the Obama Administration to 3.3% per year under the Trump Administration. ... Read More
Graph of the Week: An indication of the migration of talent to large cities…
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New Study Finds Mortgage-Backed Bonds Issued Pre-Crisis Were Properly Rated
A new study published by the NBER examines the losses suffered by AAA-rated mortgage securities issued in the lead up to the financial crisis. The study finds: “Total cumulated losses [on AAA-rated securities] up to 2013 are under six percent. … The subprime AAA-rated RMBS did particularly well. … [The] returns on AAA RMBS strike us as rather reasonable, and unlikely to have thrown the financial system into the abyss. … Together, these facts call into question the ... Read More
