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Everything Economics at the University of Toronto
“The University of Toronto’s Department of Economics has the best economics teaching-track program in the world.” That’s not a self-congratulatory statement. The praise comes from Avi J. Cohen, University Professor Emeritus of York University, past 3M Teaching Fellowship recipient, a member of the American Economic Association Committee on Economic Education (AEA-CEE) and, currently, Adjunct Professor of Economics here at the University of Toronto. [Read more…]
Imagine combining the characters of a billionaire tech founder, academics from some of the most prestigious research institutions in the world, and a cast of three thousand residents of the United States living below the poverty line. It’s not the pitch for cinematic a summer blockbuster, but a summary of the season’s hottest methodical and meticulous research study. It has captured media attention across the political spectrum.
Eva Vivalt, Assistant Professor of the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto, was one of the lead researchers in a Research Practice Partnership (RPP) that spent years investigating the outcomes of unconditional cash transfers to people living in poverty.
1000 people with average annual household incomes of $29,000 living in Illinois and Texas received transfers of $1000 per month for three years. A control group of 2000 people from the same locations and income levels received $50 each per month. Described as the “Sam Altman-backed basic income study,” in the popular press since the study results came out at the end of July, $24 million of the almost $40 million in cash transfers was funded by the Altman-founded OpenAI through OpenResearch. The project was driven by Altman’s often-stated belief that some form of basic income may be necessary as AI replaces people in jobs. [Read more…]
There are not 3.75 trillion reasons to love the Ultra-Millionaire Tax. In fact, any proposed “tax the rich scheme” would have minor impact on tax revenues or inequality. This conclusion comes from a new paper describing research conducted by Joseph Steinberg, a Professor of Economics with the University of Toronto, and his co-author Shahar Rotberg.
The research was inspired by an economic analysis of a popular taxation plan first put forward by Senator Elizabeth Warren’s during the Democratic Convention of 2016.
“The Ultra-Millionaire Tax taxes the wealth of the richest Americans. It applies only to households with a net worth of $50 million or more—roughly the wealthiest 75,000 households, or the top 0.1%,” Warren’s website explains. “Households would pay an annual 2% tax on every dollar of net worth above $50 million and a 6% tax on every dollar of net worth above $1 billion. Because wealth is so concentrated, this small tax on roughly 75,000 households will bring in $3.75 trillion in revenue over a ten-year period.” [Read more…]
Satellite monitoring technology is helping to protect Brazil’s Amazonian rainforest. Sensitive ecosystems in other developing economies could also benefit from adopting the country’s deforestation reduction model, according to a study conducted by two University of Toronto researchers and their co-authors. The model combines satellite monitoring with a targeted location-based policy that includes prompt inspections of newly cleared forest areas and quick enforcement measures, including fines. Analysis of the data found that the model reduced deforestation by 43% and cut emissions by almost 50 million tons of carbon. [Read more…]
Is being a woman a financial liability in the scientific community? An analysis of more than 70 million scientific articles conducted by a University of Toronto researcher suggests that it is. Female scientists are 29 to 30% less likely than their male counterparts to see their discoveries commercialized.
That double-digit gender gap is widest between those described by male-dominated research teams and the discoveries reported by teams with female last authors, a senior authorship position normally filled by the head of the laboratory.
Results of the analysis appear in Cassatts in the Attic, the title of Marlène Koffi’s new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) this June. It references the role of Mary Cassatts in the history of art compared to that of her friend and colleague in impressionism, Jean-August Renoir. It’s a title that instantly suggests how Koffi, an Assistant Professor with the Department of Economics, and her co-author Matthew Marx, are researching the role of gender in a contemporary look at unappreciated genius and overlooked masterpiece.
The persistence of the gender gap cannot be easily explained. For example, it has long been observed that male researchers use more self-promotional language than female researchers do in their published papers. The tendency to self-promote however, does not explain why male discoveries are more likely to be commercialized.
“Using self-promotional words matters, but they do not hold the influence you might think,” Koffi explained in a recent interview, “When women start using more boastful language, compared to how men use self-promotional words, we don’t see a reduction in the gender gap.”
The gender gap also has nothing to do with the quality of the discoveries.
When Koffi and Marx looked at twin papers – papers published during roughly the same time on the same topic – they found no difference in citation rates between those with male versus female last authors.
The data provides other indications that the quality of science from female-led labs is of the same quality as science from male-led labs. When female-led teams of scientists become entrepreneurs and create startups to commercialize their discoveries, there is no gender gap.
“We established that the gap does not exist for entrepreneurial self-commercialization via new ventures,” Koffi explained. “The gap comes with commercialization that requires contact with established firms, but we don’t have enough data about how they make their decisions to know why the gap persists.”
Koffi and Marx believe it unlikely that there are no losses to society and the economy resulting from the failure to commercialize so many scientific discoveries. The problem is there is just no data to ascertain just how scientific team members, companies, and society are losing as a result. Quantifying that demands evaluation and examination from both political and corporate interests.
“Firms should probably pay greater attention to scientific discoveries in a general sense,” Koffi said, “but when we think of women as scientists or as businesspeople, it is common to think of them as people who need support when creating programs. Governments need to ask: what the problem really is and does the program address it? And, when we think about diversity and representation more broadly, we need to look at what the mechanisms are in place on the firms’ sides that are preventing them from engaging in commercialization with women and other scientists from diverse groups. Is it the legal department? Is it R&D? Is it reluctance from the management team?”
Go to the Department of Economics website.