1. Communications: Marc Bellemare has a new post on how to communicate research titled "The Goal of Scientific Communication Is Not to Impress But to Be Understood." To which I say, the goal of human beings is not to be understood but to impress (hence the faiV). But assuming that you aren't as Calvinist as I am, I've been collecting a few things over the last few weeks that broadly fit the theme of better communicating research and ideas. Here's an experiment on disaster relief communications testing negative and positive imagery for their effect on donations and on donors sense of that change was possible. Unfortunately, there are few conclusions to draw; these are hard experiments to run. Here's a piece from ODI on 9 things you are doing, but shouldn't in research communications. I'm guilty of at least five (with mitigating circumstances, e.g. the funders told me I had to).
But let's get specific. Here's something you should definitely not do: produce a set of guidelines for behavior that have no input from the most important people in the equation. You should also not try to write jargony, provocative headlines without really understanding the context, for instance, saying that "40% of Older Americans Will Experience Downward Mobility." Given that the standard models of retirement planning assume that everyone retiring will have a lower income (hello there Lifecycle theory!), and most people aren't close to saving enough for retirement according to those standard models, I'm willing to bet a lot of money that the figure will be a lot higher than 40%. Don't try to find some way to contextualize a massive ritual sacrifice of children. And finally, definitely don't be one of these Manhattanites caught on video expressing revealed preferences for segregation and inequality, but do be like the principal at the end of the video clip and communicate your disgust in no uncertain terms.
2. Global Convergence: But not in a good way. I often think about the divergence in outcomes (or put another way, growing income and wealth inequality, falling mobility) for Americans as a convergence: for the bottom ~40% of the income distribution, the American economy looks a lot more like the economy in, say South Africa or Brazil, than the economy experience by the upper half of the distribution. That clip above is one example of how far out of reach the tools for mobility can be. Justin Fox has a story about fee-based governance in the United States--government agencies funding themselves through fines and fees. Justin makes the connection to the Gilded Age in the US, but it's a mechanism that will be very familiar to people in developing and middle-income countries. For a ray of hope on that front, you can check out Tishuara Jones, Treasurer of St. Louis, who is fighting back against fines and fees as revenue in her city.
3. Household Finance: This week I guest-taught a class at Haverford on US microfinance. In the post-discussion I learned that students prefer off-campus jobs, because Haverford pays student workers only once-a-month, and those who need the paycheck from a job during the semester, need it more frequently. That makes sense. But people on low-incomes also often prefer infrequent payments, so as to get larger lump-sums. Dairy farmers in Kenya do according to this new work from Casaburi and Macchiavello. To the convergence point earlier, this isn't a difference between the US and developing countries. The demand for income spikes among people in the US can be seen in the low take-up rates for monthly EITC payments, and the high take-up of "overwithholding." It's also evident in the fintech Even's pivot away from consumption smoothing. The bottom line is we still have a long way to go to understand optimal income volatility and we should have weak priors about the interest in and benefits of say, on-demand income or a "rainy day EITC."
4. The Ridiculous: Perhaps a new category for the faiV. Presented without further comment: "Soon Blockchain Will Let Armies of Free Agents Run Companies" and the "leading expert" on student loans was just a front for a student loan consolidation company. . Oops.
5. US Poverty and Inequality: When William Julius Wilson writes, it's probably a good idea to read. And here's the best review of The Financial Diaries (and of The Unbanking of America) that I've seen.
A very cool video (snippet) of the week, visualizing data on the learning gap. Via Lee Crawfurd, Quartz, and from Luis Crouch.
