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"Coelho, Philip R. P"
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The evolution of human cooperation
We argue that cooperation is instinctual. Human cooperation conferred advantages to individuals in the ancestral environment in which evolution occurred. Explanations of the evolution of cooperation for any species (human, pre-human, and non-human) have to be consistent with the biological, physiological, and environmental constraints that existed in the ancestral environment during which evolutionary selection occurred. Our explanation is consistent with: (1) the anatomical evolution of humanity; (2) the paleontological and chronological evidence; and (3) modern biology.
Journal Article
Inframarginal values and demand: Contra Dwight Lee
Happiness studies show that there has been no discernable rise in happiness in the United States between 1959 and 2004, yet the same period saw per capita income nearly triple. Dwight Lee modifies the theory of consumer demand to resolve this apparent conflict. Using the concepts of consumer surplus and rising incomes causing demand shifts, Lee posits that the law of downward sloping demand only fleetingly applies. He hypothesizes that the values of all units consumed become the same as the value of the last unit soon after the change in income. This makes the demand curve horizontal for all units consumed, and that makes the existence of consumer surplus ephemeral. There are difficulties with this; some are: (1) His formulation gives rise to predictions that are at odds with commonly observed market phenomena; (2) The attempted resolution is quixotic because the theory of demand and consumer surplus holds time, place, and circumstances constant, while happiness surveys do not and, indeed, cannot hold things constant over decades; and (3) because standard economic theory is timeless it is inapplicable to many phenomena that occur over extended periods.
Journal Article
The Returns to College Education — An Analysis with College-Level Data
We use between-group estimations to examine returns to college education with data from over 500 schools utilizing variables representing characteristics for individuals, institutions, and states. The results indicate that college majors, per capita income of the state where the school is located, and intuitional characteristics such as acceptance rates and faculty salaries are significant and important determinants of post-graduation incomes. In addition, we find private school graduates earn modestly higher salaries than those of public schools. Given the substantial extra costs of private schools, this implies that some benefits of private schooling are not captured in post-graduation incomes.
Journal Article
Lotta Lemmata: A Sour Harvest
We quantify the increasing use of complex mathematics and show that the increase is unique to economics in the social sciences. Donald F. Gordon hypothesized that mathematics in economics would most likely be useful in manipulating long chains of relationships, precisely in the instances where the theory was least likely to be valid. Time bedevils long chains of economic reasoning, because the ceteris paribus assumption requires the stability of all links. We find that the rate of hypothesis testing in articles citing mathematically complex articles is less than 2 percent and summarize a variety of tests and other evidence that supports Gordon's hypothesis. A major factor in the rise in mathematical complexity may be the decline in comments, replies, and rejoinders debating earlier publications; the decline has been rapid, as editors have become increasingly \"hostile\" toward perspectives other than the ones they have previously published. We conclude by emphasizing that (1) prominent journals in economics are devoting more space to mathematically complex articles despite their inconsequential operational harvest; (2) the \"appropriate\" balance between mathematical complexity and operationalism, as well as the relative merits of \"stylized facts\" versus observational reality, should be considered in editorial decision making; and, finally, (3) the academic debate that addresses empirical replication and verification, the appropriateness of model formulation, and the crucial matters of history and circumstance, which are the measures of all research in the social sciences, is vital.
Journal Article
An Investigation of Editorial Favoritism in the \AER\
This paper contributes to a substantial literature assessing the credibility of academic research. We examine the hypothesis that selection procedures of journals favor submissions that cite journal insiders. Our tests use data from the American Economic Review (AER) and the number of citations to AER publications that appear in non-AER journals. We find that citations to AER-insiders in articles in the AER were statistically insignificant; however, increased frequency of citations in non-AER journals were positively (albeit statistically insignificant) related to references to AER insiders. The sign is precisely opposite of what one would expect if submissions were judged on criteria other than intellectual merit. The evidence is robust across specifications. Given our metric, sample, and procedures, we do not find any significant support for the hypothesis of editorial favoritism.
Journal Article
Parasites, Pathogens, and Progress
In Parasites, Pathogens, and Progress, Robert McGuire and Philip Coelho integrate biological and economic perspectives into an explanation of the historical development of humanity and the economy, paying particular attention to the American experience, its history and development. In their path-breaking examination of the impact of population growth and parasitic diseases, they contend that interpretations of history that minimize or ignore the physical environment are incomplete or wrong.The authors emphasize the paradoxical impact of population growth and density on progress. An increased population leads to increased market size, specialization, productivity, and living standards. Simultaneously, increased population density can provide an ecological niche for pathogens and parasites that prey upon humanity, increasing morbidity and mortality. The tension between diseases and progress continues, with progress dominant since the late 1800s.Integral to their story are the differential effects of diseases on different ethnic (racial) groups. McGuire and Coelho show that the Europeanization of the Americas, for example, was caused by Old World diseases unwittingly brought to the New World, not by superior technology and weaponry. The decimation of Native Americans by pathogens vastly exceeded that caused by war and human predation.The authors combine biological and economic analyses to explain the concentration of African slaves in the American South. African labor was more profitable in the South because Africans' evolutionary heritage enabled them to resist the diseases that became established there; conversely, Africans' ancestral heritage made them susceptible to northern \"cold-weather\" diseases. European disease resistance and susceptibilities were the opposite regionally. Differential regional disease ecologies thus led to a heritage of racial slavery and racism.
eBook
Diets Versus Diseases: The Anthropometrics of Slave Children
What were the living standards of American slaves? According to Robert W. Fogel and Stanley Engerman in their monumental study, Time on the Cross, the material standard of living of slaves compared favorably with that of other nineteenth-century agricultural laborers. More recently, utilizing anthropometric data that allow them to construct ageheight profiles for slaves, economic historians have cast doubts upon this view as it applies to particular age cohorts. They question the validity of the earlier assessment of living standards as it applies to slave newborns, infants, and children.
Journal Article
African and European Bound Labor in the British New World: The Biological Consequences of Economic Choices
This article offers an explanation for the regional differences in the use of African and European bound labor in colonial America. The migrations of Africans and Europeans to the Americas set in motion an evolutionary process that caused regional changes in the disease ecology of the New World. Biological and epidemiological differences among populations explain the different regional labor supply choices. This article emphasizes the interactions between changing populations and disease environments. Diseases are intermediaries through which populations interact by causing illness and death. Not all populations are equally afflicted by specific diseases. Therein lies the story.
Journal Article