The available research on the death penalty cannot be used by policymakers to determine if capital punishment deters, increases, or has no effect on the nation's homicide rate, according to a new report from the National Research Council. A panel of experts, chaired by Visiting Scholar Daniel Nagin, evaluated dozens of studies conducted since 1976, when a four-year moratorium on capital punishment was lifted. The panel found that the research could not determine if the death penalty is less or more effective than alternative punishments, such as a life sentence without parole.

Here's an excerpt from the NRC's press release:

The lack of evidence about the deterrent effect of capital punishment -- whether it is positive, negative, or zero -- should not be construed as favoring one argument over another, the report stresses. "Fundamental flaws in the research we reviewed make it of no use in answering the question of whether the death penalty affects homicide rates," said Daniel S. Nagin, Teresa and H. John Heinz III University Professor of Public Policy and Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, and chair of the committee that wrote the report. "We recognize that this conclusion may be controversial to some, but no one is well-served by unsupportable claims about the effect of the death penalty, regardless of whether the claim is that the death penalty deters homicides, has no effect on homicide rates or actually increases homicides."

The latest issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science features new immigration research from former RSF Visiting Scholars Robert J. Sampson and Jamie Winders. Sampson co-edited the journal issue, which examines immigration and the changing fabric of American cities. In the introduction to the issue, Sampson explains the themes of the collected research:

[We wanted] to bring together a leading set of scholars to present new research on trends in the spatial forms of immigration that are transforming the American landscape—the effects of "the world in a city," as it were. We aimed for a distinctive analytic focus—as a whole the volume is characterized by a comparative approach, an examination of recent immigration trends, disaggregation by ethnicity or immigrant type wherever possible, a focus on core features of the nation's social fabric...and empirical study going beyond the big cities of traditional concern to a host of smaller cities and towns reaching into far-flung pockets of the country.

The journal also includes an article from Jamie Winders, a geography professor at Syracuse University. Entitled "Seeing Immigrants: Institutional Visibility and Immigration Incorporation in New Immigrant Destinations," the article continues the research Winders conducted as a RSF Visiting Scholar in 2010-2011. Here is the abstract:

Since the 1990s, immigrant settlement has expanded beyond gateway cities and transformed the social fabric of a growing number of American cities. In the process, it has raised new questions for urban and migration scholars. This article argues that immigration to new destinations provides an opportunity to sharpen understandings of the relationship between immigration and the urban by exploring it under new conditions. Through a discussion of immigrant settlement in Nashville, Tennessee, it identifies an overlooked precursor to immigrant incorporation—how cities see, or do not see, immigrants within the structure of local government. If immigrants are not institutionally visible to government or nongovernmental organizations, immigrant abilities to make claims to or on the city as urban residents are diminished. Through the combination of trends toward neighborhood-based urban governance and neoliberal streamlining across American cities, immigrants can become institutionally hard to find and, thus, plan for in the city.

Why do so many Americans receive such a big tax refund? Every year, the IRS sends a check of around $3,000 to Americans who paid more taxes than they should. The excess withholding is a puzzle: why do consumers prefer to give the U.S. government an interest-free loan? Wouldn't a quick trip to the payroll administrator be worth the effort if it meant a bigger paycheck? Michael Barr, an editor of the RSF volume Insufficient Funds, spoke to the Wall Street Journal last week about his research on the problem:

"People want to have a ready way to save," says Michael Barr, a University of Michigan law professor and a former Obama and Clinton Treasury official. "For some families, tax time is a good time to do so."

In the mid-2000s, Mr. Barr and colleagues surveyed about 650 low- and moderate-income families in the Detroit area who had filed tax returns in 2003 or 2004. About 82% received refunds—either because they had overpaid or because they qualified for the federal Earned Income Credit, a federal cash bonus to low-wage workers that is paid through the IRS. [...]

In fact, Mr. Barr and co-author Jane Dokko of the Federal Reserve Board, found these folks don't want smaller tax refunds. In the survey, researchers offered them choices: Withhold $100 a month more and get a bigger refund (an option favored by 35%), withhold the same amount and get the same refund (46%) or withhold less and get a smaller refund (only 19%.) This and other survey findings appear in a coming Brookings Institution book, "No Slack: The Financial Lives of Low-Income Americans."

The Wall Street Journal profiled economist Yale psychologist Laurie Santos and her work on the origins of human irrationality. Santos, who co-published a study funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, conducts experiments with Capuchin monkeys in her lab to observe if systemic decision-making errors like loss aversion extend beyond the human species. Her research has produced some surprising results:

In one experiment, they gave each monkey a wallet filled with 12 flat aluminum tokens, monkey money that the animals could trade for food. Right away, the scientists saw the similarities to human behavior. When researchers slashed the price on certain foods, the monkeys sought out the best deal. They also typically spent all their cash at once and didn't bother to save.

Then researchers decided to test a more complex economic theory which shows that people do not judge price in a vacuum. Sitting with the team at the coffee shop, Dr. Santos could see how the concept worked in her own life. Many days, she feels guilty about spending $2.20 on a cup of coffee. But when she looks up at the chalk board listing drink prices, the Nutella Latte goes for $3.85 and the Ginger Snap is $4.15. "My $2 cup doesn't seem as expensive anymore," she said.

Monkeys make similar assessments. In one experiment, a researcher showed a monkey two pieces of apple but handed over one in exchange for a token. A second researcher showed one piece of apple and gave the slice to the monkey for the token. The monkeys strongly preferred to trade with the second researcher. They did not like being offered two apple pieces and then only getting one.

For more information on this line of inquiry, see Santos' RSF-funded study: "How Basic Are Behavioral Biases? Evidence from Capuchin Monkey Trading Behavior." Here is the abstract:

Economist Jesse Rothstein has published a working paper supported by the Foundation's Great Recession initiative. Entitled "The Labor Market Four Years Into the Crisis: Assessing Structural Explanations," the report seeks to understand why unemployment has remained so high in America since the economic crisis. As he states in the paper, economists offer two possible explanations:

One camp, of which Paul Krugman is perhaps the most prominent member (see also Romer 2011), argues that recent poor outcomes are primarily reflective of a shortfall of aggregate demand. This camp prescribes aggressively stimulative monetary policy – which would have to take unconventional forms, as the federal funds rate has been at or near its zero lower bound since late 2008 – and additional fiscal stimulus to raise effective demand.

A second camp points to “structural” factors as important impediments to labor market recovery. This diagnosis comes in several flavors. Some focus on mismatch between the types of labor supplied by workers and the types demanded by employers. As Narayana Kocherlakota, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, described it in a 2010 speech, “Firms have jobs, but can’t find appropriate workers. The workers want to work, but can’t find appropriate jobs. There are many possible sources of mismatch—geography, skills, demography—and they are probably all at work” (Kocherlakota 2010).

But after reviewing the evidence, Rothstein argues there is little evidence for the structural hypothesis:

In the second installment of our Election 2012 series, economist David Neumark discusses President Obama's proposal to increase funding for community colleges. Read more of his research on education and labor policy in his RSF book Improving School-to-Work Transitions.

One component of President Obama’s efforts to increase educational levels of the workforce is increased support for community colleges. Research points to the potential value of community colleges in helping young people make successful school-to-work transitions, in part by highlighting the links between what community colleges offer and the needs of the labor market, and how community colleges are able to respond to these needs. Community colleges can perform an important function in adult education, which can help meet the challenges of an aging population by enabling older workers to retool and remain productive at work.

A volume I edited based on a conference supported by the Russell Sage Foundation (Neumark, 2007) explored a number of policies and programs to improve the school-to-work transition, at both the high school and college level. The high school-level policies include activities supported under the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 and Career Academies. Career and Technical Education programs span high schools and community colleges. And the post-high school manifestation of school-to-work is community colleges. There is longitudinal evidence that high school programs boosted subsequent employment or the accumulation of skills. And the most compelling evidence of positive impacts comes from an experimental evaluation of the Career Academy model (Kemple, 2008).

COMMUNITY COLLEGES AND EMPLOYMENT

What about community colleges? In support of the President’s efforts, the White House argues that “Community Colleges are particularly important for students who are older, working, or need remedial classes. Community colleges work with businesses, industry and government to create tailored training programs to meet economic needs like nursing, health information technology, advanced manufacturing, and green jobs."

The research record is supportive of this claim on both counts.

As we discussed in this post, the Russell Sage Foundation played an instrumental role in the development of behavioral economics. Readers looking for a quick introduction to the discipline can find a series of articles below from the field's leading scholars. As with our reading list on inequality and mobility, this list is not meant to be exhaustive; users looking for more advanced research should see these reading lists, as well as the Foundation's behavioral economics program page, which lists our current research initiatives.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

"A Short Course in Behavioral Economics." The Edge.org. October 1 2008. Web. March 23 2012.

Camerer, Colin. 1999. "Behavioral economics: Reunifying psychology and economics." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 96 (19): 10575-10577.

Kahneman, Daniel. 2003. "Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics." American Economic Review 93 (5): 1449-1475. (PDF)

Laibson, David and Richard Zeckhauser. 1998. "Amos Tversky and the Ascent of Behavioral Economics." Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 16 (7): 7-47. (PDF)

Lambert, Craig. 2006. "The Marketplace of Perceptions." Harvard Magazine. Online. March 23, 2012.

Mullainathan, Sendhil and Richard Thaler. 2000. "Behavioral Economics." MIT Working Paper 00-27.

Rabin, Matthew. 1998. "Psychology and Economics." Journal of Economic Literature 36 (1): 11-46. (PDF)

Rabin, Matthew. 2002. "A Perspective on Psychology and Economics." U.C. Berkeley Working Paper E02-313.

Thaler, Richard and Cass Sunstein. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

The Foundation's U.S. 2010 Census project has released a new report on home ownership in America between 2001-2011. Here are some of the report's main findings:

More from RSF's U.S. 2010 Project
• A Very Uneven Road: U.S. Labor Markets in the Past 30 Years
• Unauthorized Immigrant Parents: Do Their Migration Histories Limit Their Children's Education?
• Separate and Unequal: The Neighborhood Gap for Blacks, Hispanics and Asians in Metropolitan America
• How Changes in Employment, Earnings and Public Transfers Make the First Two Years of the Great Recession (2007-2009) Different from Previous Recessions and Why It Matters

• Between 2001 and 2011, the overall home ownership rate dropped by one percentage point. However, this small net change masks a general rise in ownership that peaked in 2005 and fell after that. For certain kinds of households – the least-educated, poorest, and non-Hispanic black households – the first half of the decade brought little, if any, growth while the second half of the decade resulted in devastatingly large losses. As a result, the gaps in ownership separating black from white households and households at the top and bottom of the education and income distributions widened considerably in this decade.

• The housing market collapse and ensuing Great Recession during the second half of the last decade also had a disproportionate impact on young adults, who typically begin the transition to home ownership in their late twenties and early thirties. In particular, Generation X (ages 25-34 in 2001) had the misfortune to pass a life-course stage typified by steep inclines in ownership during a period when becoming and remaining a homeowner was fragile. Generation Y (ages 25-34 in 2011), the most recent cohort to launch its housing career, is likely to fare even worse, as it faces numerous obstacles to entering the ownership market. Absent a dramatic shift in the economy and the housing market, the stalled progress of these cohorts threatens to have a permanent impact.