Money velocity. Wow. I can’t believe I just learned about this, and I suspect that political scientists and political economists are–once again–way off in their data choices. Several of my own past projects would benefit from redoing the analysis with money velocity rather than GNP, etc.
Tag Archives: social science
Inequality in the United States and Its Implications
The United Nations released its 2008 State of the World’s Cities report, which in past years has been an excellent source about demographic shifts around the world. Unfortunately, the United Nations decides to charge people a ridiculous amount ($44) for the report rather than making it available at an affordable (or even free) rate.
Based on an FT article on the World’s Cities report, the United States was ranked disturbingly high in the degree of inequality in its cities, most notably New York, Washington DC, and Miami. It is all interesting, so go read it.
Also of note is that there is a significant amount of research on inequality and its role in fomenting revolution. And while I do not want to take the rather selfish, short-sighted, and disturbing position of the UN Human Settlements Program executive director (“Inequality is not good for the economy”), I do think inequality is a make-or-break situation for the United States in the near and middle term. Perhaps the crown jester in all this are multi-millionaire politicians boasting about who is a better defender of the middle class (with the cherry on top being no one ever mentions the lower class).
Now where’s my cake?
Presentation On Follow-up Research On Second-Order Election Model Posted
I have posted the PowerPoint file Nils Ringe and I presented in New Orleans at the 2007 Southern Political Science Association conference. The presentation–titled Refining and Redefining the Second-Order Election Model: Protest or Pure Preference Voting in Central and Eastern Europe–may be difficult to follow, especially if you are not familiar with the second-order election model (SOEM) or our earlier research.
As you can read on my Projects page, this research is a follow-up effort to our earlier work that finds the SOEM does not hold well in eastern and central Europe. Unfortunately, we are having a data and small-n problem, which is leading us to have little to report. The project is on hold at least until later this year.