In the 1990s, drug manufacturers began marketing their products directly to consumers. Since then, prescription drug advertising has become a multibillion dollar industry, and some have worried that it might be getting between patients and what their doctors think is in their best interest. But in a paper in the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, author Bradley T. Shapiro found that advertising antidepressants on television led to significant improvements in indicators of depression. He says that the gains from decreasing workplace absenteeism far outweigh the costs associated with higher antidepressant sales. Shapiro recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the challenges of estimating the impact of advertising on consumers and how direct-to-consumer advertising of antidepressants can improve mental health.

Publicly available statistics on career earnings show that an economics degree pays far more on the job market than degrees in other social sciences. But it’s not clear that those higher salaries reveal the true returns to studying the dismal science.  In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, authors Zachary Bleemer and Aashish Mehta identify the causal effects of choosing one major over another by analyzing the outcomes of a policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, that prevented students with low grades in introductory economics courses from declaring an economics major. They found that studying economics boosted annual early-career wages by $22,000 compared to students' second-choice majors—a return roughly as large as enrolling in college in the first place. Bleemer says that returns to a major can vary significantly from student to student and college to college. But the results highlight the importance of carefully evaluating information about career earnings when choosing a field of study. He recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the earnings premium of an economics degree and the downsides of major restriction policies at universities.

Black Lives Matter protests have put a spotlight on police abuses since 2014, but it has been challenging for  researchers to assess the impact of race from the available data.  In a paper in the American Economic Review, authors Mark Hoekstra and CarlyWill Sloan found that White officers use force more frequently than Black officers, especially in Black neighborhoods.  Sloan says that their work is a step toward showing that some police departments may have systemic race problems rather than just a few high-profile, one-off incidents. She recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the challenges of studying officer–civilian interactions and the lessons her work might have for US police departments.

The COVID-19 pandemic has already significantly widened wealth and income disparities around the world.  Poorer populations suffered higher rates of infection, and workers in low paying jobs were the most impacted by widespread shutdowns. But not all pandemics have had the same effect. In a paper in the Journal of Economic Literature, author Guido Alfani looks at the history of pandemics stretching back to the medieval Black Death to examine how factors like mortality rates and the response by wealthy elites affected gaps between the rich and poor. Alfani says that the lessons from previous pandemics like cholera in the 19th century offer hope for how public policy responses can actually have a meaningful impact on reducing inequality over the long run. Alfani spoke with Chris Fleisher about how the history of global pandemics can help inform responses to COVID-19 and efforts to address the root causes of poverty. Music in the audio by Podington Bear.

The past weighs on every country, and nowhere is that more true than in Africa. The continent’s legacy of slavery, colonialism, and division has stood in the way of Africa’s struggle for stability and economic progress. But in a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, authors Nathan Canen and Leonard Wantchekon argue that economists must primarily consider the impact of modern-day policy choices to fully understand long-term growth in Africa. They say that political distortions—situations where special interest groups are able to direct economic development toward their own ends rather than toward improving general welfare—play an underappreciated role in Africa’s development. Approaching the continent’s economic growth through that lens may lead to more insights about how to create institutions that give average citizens a leg up on special interest groups. Canen and Wantchekon recently spoke with Tyler Smith about how state capture is holding back economic progress in Africa and what to do about it.

In the first half of the twentieth century, four million African Americans left the Jim Crow South to create new lives for themselves. They moved to cities like Detroit, Baltimore, and Chicago in what came to be known as “the Great Migration.” And indeed, they did improve their economic standing, with some families doubling their earnings. But opportunities to move up the ladder would dwindle for the generations that followed. In a paper in the American Economic Review, Ellora Derenoncourt shows that the way northern cities responded to the migration dampened the earnings potential for African Americans living in those locations today.  She says the findings offer insights into how some policies that encourage families to move to opportunity, such as voucher programs, ignore more fundamental questions about the elements that make neighborhoods thrive. Derenoncourt spoke with Chris Fleisher about her research, the mechanisms that reduced earnings potential for Black residents in some northern cities, and the implications for programs aimed at moving low-income and minority families to opportunity.

The United States has dramatically increased its funding for public schools over the last four decades. Real per-pupil expenditures have nearly doubled since 1980.  In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, author Jason Baron found that when school budgets increased in Wisconsin, how that money got allocated made a big difference into student outcomes. Baron says that additional spending on operations, such as teacher salaries and support services, positively affected test scores, dropout rates, and postsecondary enrollment. But extra capital expenditures on new buildings and renovations had little impact. He spoke with Tyler Smith about why different types of school funding matter and how school budgets may continue to evolve.

Nine in ten Republicans say increasing border security is important, and immigration remains a salient issue with voters entering the 2022 midterm elections. But it’s not just general opposition to immigrants that registers with voters. The skills immigrants bring shape how US voters view them. In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, authors Anna Maria Mayda, Giovanni Peri, and Walter Steingress investigate how Republican vote share changed with an influx of differently skilled workers. They say that Republicans lost votes in places where the immigrants were highly skilled, for example, in fields like health care or IT, while gaining vote share where there was an influx of low-skilled foreign workers. Additionally, they find that if overall immigration—including all skill levels—had been cut in half in certain states between 1990 and 2016, it would have swung the 2016 election for Democrats. Mayda spoke with Chris Fleisher recently about how immigrant skill level shapes public perceptions, the extent to which this affected Republican support, and the implications for how immigration is talked about by policymakers and covered in the media.

Only four times in US presidential history has the candidate with fewer popular votes won the election. Two of those occurred recently in 2000 and 2016, leading to calls to reform the system. Far from being a fluke, this peculiar outcome of the US Electoral College has a high probability in close races, according to a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. Authors Michael Geruso, Dean Spears, and Ishaana Talesara say that regardless of changes in demographics and institutions, the odds of so-called inverted elections in close races has been about the same over the last 200 years. Geruso says that while Republicans benefit today from the chance of an inverted election, it hasn’t always been that way.  He recently spoke with Tyler Smith about why the Electoral College causes inversions and what he thinks about moving to a national popular vote.  

This is a rebroadcast of a conversation that Chris Fleisher had with University of Georgia professor Emily Lawler back in 2019 about her research on vaccine mandates for adolescents.