Category Archives: Uncategorized

Heckuva Job, Donny! Puerto Rico Edition

From New England Journal of Medicine, results of a study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center:


Figure 4. Estimates of Excess Deaths and Reported Causes of Death.
Panel A shows a comparison of estimates of excess deaths from official reports, press (New York Times)8 and academic (Santos–Lozada and Howard)9 reports, and from our survey. Panel B shows deaths according to the month of death and the age at death as reported in our survey, categorized according to the cause of death reported by the household member. Two persons who died of similar causes at the same age are represented by dots that are superimposed in December; thus, the 37 points shown represent 38 deaths after the hurricane.

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Semi-automatic Rifle Use and Mass Shooting Casualties, 1982M08-2018M04


Figure 1: Cumulative mass shooting fatalities from incidents where semi-automatic rifles used (blue), non-fatal injured (light blue), fatalities where other weapons (handguns, semi-automatic handguns, rifles, shotguns) used (red), non-fatal injured (pink), through April 2018. Light green denotes assault weapons ban. Orange denotes 2017M01-2018M04. Source: Mother Jones, accessed 5/18/2018, and author’s calculations.

The above graph does not incorporate the estimated 10 deaths and additional injuries incurred today in Santa Fe, TX.

Cumulative Mass Shooting Casualties since 2009M01, 2017M01

Thankfully, Mr. Trump in conjunction with the Republican controlled Congress have implemented policies to address this issue in manner supported by evidence-based research.


Figure 1: Cumulative fatalities from mass shootings since 2009M01 (blue), since 2017M01 (red), on a log scale. May observation assumes lower bound of 8 fatalities. Source: Mother Jones accessed 5/18, news accounts, author’s calculations.

It took 4-1/2 years from 2009M01 to match the number of fatalities that have been recorded in the 16 months since 2017M01.

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Prognostications on Economic Policy Uncertainty and Economic Activity

From WSJ op-ed via AEI:

The second factor [in the slow recovery] is less obvious, but possibly also of great importance…. Congress and [the] President signaled their intentions to introduce major changes in taxes, government spending and regulations–changes that could radically transform the American economy.

… other government proposals created greater uncertainty and risk for businesses and investors. …

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Liberal Biased Uncertainty Index Elevated

Reader CoRev argues that economic uncertainty indicators such as the Baker, Bloom and Davis based on content analysis of newspaper articles are instances of GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). Here is a plot of another indicator suggesting current elevated uncertainty.


Figure 0: Measure of risk/uncertainty (red). Observation for April is data through 4/23.
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Mass Shooting Casualties since November 2016


Figure 1: Cumulative sum of mass shooting casualties, beginning 2016M11; deaths inflicted by non-Muslims (dark red), wounded inflicted by non-Muslims (pink), deaths inflicted by Muslims (dark blue), wounded inflicted by Muslims (light blue). Source: Mother Jones. Tabulations of religion of perpetrator by author.

Longer perspective displayed in this post.