The economics world has numerous individuals doing fascinating analysis, and as a lot as we strive at Planet Cash, there’s a number of stuff that we do not find yourself overlaying. So periodically, we prefer to perform a little roundup of attention-grabbing analysis we have come throughout and share it with you within the Planet Cash e-newsletter.
Welcome to Planet Cash Paperpalooza. OK, no. Planet Cash Researchstock. Hmmm. Paperchella? Fantastic, we nonetheless do not have a great title for this recurring e-newsletter sequence. Please ship recommendations: planetmoney@npr.org. And enjoyable concepts for a emblem 
Anyhow, right now within the Planet Cash e-newsletter: 5 current papers that we discovered attention-grabbing and value sharing.
A protracted financial historical past of firewood in America
Why we appreciated this paper: a deep, historic dive into one thing we hardly ever take into consideration — firewood.
Consider it or not, this one is buzzy and making the rounds. A current working paper, “Firewood within the American Economic system: 1700 to 2010,” actually received our curiosity burning. We simply needed to huddle round it and indulge in its insights.
Carnegie Mellon College economist Nicholas Muller explains how central firewood was within the American financial system. Firewood was humanity’s foremost vitality supply for hundreds of years.
But, regardless of that, students have lengthy lacked stable statistics about firewood costs over the lengthy sweep of historical past. Muller explains that one massive motive for that is that many People chopped down wooden themselves. They typically did not purchase it out there, so historic costs have been exhausting to return by.
However as cities grew, many People may now not chop down wooden themselves. And so market transactions for firewood started to happen. Newspapers started publishing firewood costs of their categorised sections. On this examine, Muller finds greater than 6,000 value quotes from historic sources and constructs a value index for firewood going all the best way again to 1700.
This paper gives a bundle — ahem — of attention-grabbing information, together with:
+ Round 1860, firewood accounted for round 85% of vitality consumption in america.
+ Within the 1830s, the U.S. began to see large-scale coal manufacturing. Nonetheless, coal remained comparatively costly in contrast with firewood, so it took some time for coal to dominate the U.S. vitality market.
+ In the course of the early- to mid-Nineteenth century, the worth of firewood outpaced total inflation. Firewood stored getting increasingly more costly. In the meantime, coal received cheaper and cheaper. “The change in relative costs of those fuels seems to have performed a elementary position within the transition from wooden to coal,” Muller writes.
+ After 1870, demand for firewood started declining, and coal turned the most popular vitality supply within the nation. By 1900, coal accounted for 71% of vitality use in america. After World Battle I, Muller writes, coal’s dominance started being eroded away by oil and pure fuel.
This firewood paper reminded us of a basic paper from Yale College economist William Nordhaus, who calculated how the price of lighting modified over a thousand years. Try this Planet Cash episode about it.
Political spending within the wake of faculty shootings
Why we appreciated this paper: a sobering take a look at curiosity group political spending within the wake of tragedies.
One other new examine is … darker. It is titled “Monetary Firepower: Faculty Shootings and the Strategic Contributions of Professional-Gun PACs.” The economists Eric Baldwin, Takuma Iwasaki and John Donohue take a look at what occurs to political spending within the wake of faculty shootings.
Between 2000 and 2024, the economists write, there have been greater than 500 college shootings within the U.S. that resulted in at the least one fatality. “But moderately than resulting in important coverage change, these tragedies hardly ever end in greater than empty guarantees,” the economists write. They level to 1 important motive for this.
The economists discover that pro-gun political motion committees “improve contributions by 30.2% to [congressional] candidates in districts with deadly college shootings.”
This spending seems to be strategic. The economists discover that pro-gun PACs improve spending solely actually in congressional districts that see deadly college shootings, not nonfatal college shootings or different mass shootings. The PACs’ spending ramps up as elections strategy and is usually concentrated in congressional districts the place elections are aggressive.
NIMBYism spreads to the Sunbelt?
Why we appreciated this paper: It makes America’s worsening housing affordability disaster make extra sense.
The analysis of economists Ed Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko has lengthy shined a highlight on the issue of housing provide in america. We’re not constructing sufficient housing, and it has been inflicting a housing affordability disaster.
For a very long time, this lack of recent housing gave the impression to be primarily an issue in coastal cities. In 2005, Glaeser and Gyourko revealed a examine that divided America’s housing market into three massive areas: high-cost, high-demand coastal markets that didn’t construct a number of new housing and noticed explosive progress in housing prices (like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Boston); low-demand, declining industrial cities (like Detroit and Cleveland); and roaring Sunbelt markets that constructed a number of new housing (like Miami, Atlanta, Dallas and Phoenix). The constructing of recent housing in these Sunbelt areas helped reasonable value hikes whilst demand grew.
On this new examine, Glaeser and Gyourko discover that one thing massive has modified within the Sunbelt during the last couple of many years: They’ve begun to look much more like coastal areas of their lack of building of recent housing. The consequence: an explosion of dwelling costs.
“From 2000-2024, Miami, Tampa and Phoenix ranked 1st, fifth, and ninth, in value progress throughout the twenty areas that make up the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20 Metropolis Composite House Worth NSA Index,” the economists write. “Every of those areas skilled extra value progress than the New York Metropolis space, whose costs nonetheless elevated by a wholesome 70 %. Between 1975 and 1999, no sunbelt metropolis (outdoors of California) was among the many high twelve of the identical 20 markets.”
Why have Sunbelt areas begun to look extra like coastal areas lately, with a decrease charge of recent housing building and an explosion of dwelling costs? The economists hypothesize that, mainly, NIMBYism has unfold there. They counsel that “wealthier or higher educated residents” have moved in and altered the regulatory setting, making it tougher to construct housing.
The economists discover that, if the speed of recent housing building between 2000 and 2020 regarded prefer it did between 1980 and 2000, “America would have 15 million extra housing items.”
“The important thing driver seems to be that the depth of housing manufacturing has dropped considerably over time, particularly in lots of increasing sunbelt markets that have been as soon as housing manufacturing superstars,” the economists write. “Extra typically, there’s a marked convergence within the tempo of housing unit manufacturing throughout markets all through the nation: Miami has change into much more like Los Angeles.”
Apparently, coastal areas have begun to reckon with the regulatory boundaries to constructing new housing. Final week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom took actions to roll again environmental rules which have held again improvement in California.
The financial results of Native American casinos
Why we appreciated this paper: It supplies an attention-grabbing perspective on Native American casinos.
Native American communities have lengthy struggled economically. Within the late Eighties and early Nineteen Nineties, tribal leaders started to embrace an business to assist raise them up: casinos.
A brand new working paper from economists Randall Akee, Maggie R. Jones and Emilia Simeonova categorizes tribal gaming as a type of “place-based coverage,” a program aimed toward economically creating an impoverished group versus immediately serving to people.
On that entrance, tribal gaming appears to have been remarkably profitable. It is now an business that rakes in additional than $40 billion a yr. And the economists discover that it’s a actual engine of alternatives for Native People. They discover “considerably increased employment of American Indians within the Lodging, Meals Companies, Arts and Leisure Industries in contrast with non-casino reservation ZIP codes in the identical state. Additional, we discover a rise in wages for AIAN employees in these identical industries, suggesting each an enlargement of employment and higher compensation on this sector for American Indians.” Casinos additionally herald cash that tribes use in numerous methods to assist their communities, together with money transfers to tribe members, infrastructure, schooling and enterprise funding.
Longer kindergarten college days increase moms’ work hours
Why we appreciated this paper: It supplies extra proof on a solution to shut the gender pay hole.
Over the past decade, there was a number of financial analysis suggesting that the gender pay hole between ladies and men is pushed by the truth that ladies, on common, proceed to bear a lot of the burden of household caregiving. Claudia Goldin, who received the 2023 Nobel Memorial Prize in Financial Sciences, has accomplished a number of vital analysis on this space. And one in every of her coverage proposals to shut the gender pay hole is fairly easy: lengthen college hours. That, she hypothesizes, will unencumber extra time for ladies to pursue their careers and earn cash.
A brand new examine by economists Chloe Gibbs, Jocelyn S. Wikle and Riley Wilson gives extra proof supporting this concept. The working paper is titled “A Matter of Time? Measuring Results of Public Education Expansions on Households.”
The economists take a look at the consequences of a outstanding change in early childhood schooling: the dramatic enlargement of kindergarten from half day to full day over the previous few many years. Since 1992, the share of American kindergartners in full-day education has virtually doubled, from 43% to 83%.
The economists do a bunch of spectacular statistical work to have a look at the informal impact of this modification on household work hours. Apparently, they discover that this modification hardly affected fathers, on common. They discover that males with children in half-day kindergarten “really spend extra time at work than fathers of full-day kindergarten college students.”
Nonetheless, the economists discovered a giant change for moms: “Our findings counsel that expansions in full-day kindergarten can clarify roughly 2 proportion factors, or 24 %, of the 8.5 percentage-point improve in employment amongst moms of 5- and 6-year-olds between 1992 and 2022.”
P.S. If you happen to come throughout attention-grabbing economics papers and need us to incorporate them in future newsletters like this one, ship away! E-mail us at planetmoney@npr.org.
