Do women lie to their husbands?

In Zambia, at least, the answer is yes, when the topic is contraception.

When women are given access to contraception alone (without their husbands), they are 25% more likely to use it:

...these effects were concentrateed, as predicted by theory, among women who wanted to postpone childbearing and also resported having a  husband who desired more additional children than they did.  ... 

However, two years after the treatment:

...we do find that these individuals experienced a significant reduction in happiness, health and ease of mind...

What happens when we make patients pay more?

The answer comes from Japan, where the elderly become eligible for significantly lower cost sharing when they turn 70 (co-payment rates go down by 60-80%, and there are no deductibles in Japan).  Here is what happens:

1.  They consume more (for inpatient admissions and  office visits the elasticity=-0.2); but

2.  Their health status does not change; and

3.  They pay less out-of-pocket (smaller co-payments more than offsets the bigger consumption).

BOTTOM LINE:  Bigger co-payments can reduce utilization without adversely affecting health.

OK, here is the science, where are the politicians?

Moving parking spots to higher valued uses, but NOT in SF

Auctions create wealth by identifying the highest valued use for an asset, and setting a price for it.  However, this wealth creating activity is against the law in SF:

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — San Francisco is putting the brakes on a mobile app that allows drivers to auction off their choice public parking spotsto the highest bidder. 

City Attorney Dennis Herrera Monday issued a cease-and-desist demand to Rome, Italy-based startup Monkey Parking and CEO Paolo Dobrowolny. 

Herrera also sent a request to the legal department of Apple Inc. to immediately remove the mobile application from its App Store because Herrera said it violates Apple’s own guidelines on legal requirements for apps.

Aside squashing the wealth-creating ability of the app, the City Attorney is also increasing congestion and pollution, by lengthening the amount of time that drives have to search for spots.

How will rise in US interest rates affect exchange rates?

The gap between the return on US Federal government debt, called "Treasuries" (yielding 2.61%), and those of riskier European government debt, has fallen dramatically.
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Now the Financial Times reports that this is attracting foreign investors to the US:

“In Europe, the risk is that the euro will depreciate,” says Scott Minerd, global chief investment officer at Guggenheim Partners. “That makes buying US Treasury bonds and other US assets attractive because the local currency could depreciate and interest rates are significantly higher in the US than in Europe.”

These investors sell Euro's to Buy dollars (to invest in US reasuries) which can be modeled as an increase in demand for dollars, which increases the "price of a dollar", or alternatively as an increase in the supply of Euros which reduces the price of a Euro. Either way, this should cause the dollar to appreciate relative to the Euro.

Under-funded muni pensions exposed by new accounting rules

We have blogged extensively about the way that mayors, including Nashville's, promise big pensions to city unions, and then hide the cost of the promises with accounting "gimmicks."  For example, a high discount rate, like Nashville's 7.5%, reduces the present value of future pension promises, and reduces the amount that a city has to save for the future.

Now, the GASB (govt. acct. stds. bd.) is proposing rules that will give taxpayers visibility into what mayors are doing by forcing mayors to add promises to the balance sheets of a city and use lower, more realistic, discount rates.  The net effect seems small

According to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, a group of 150 public-employee pensions that were 72%-funded in 2013, meaning their assets were 72% of their obligations, would have been only 65%-funded under the revamped rules.

But for cities and states with particularly egregious accounting, the effect is likely to be much bigger.

In a related development, young people seem to be noticing that they will be stuck with the bills run up by irresponsible politicians.  Here is an advertisement aimed at Louisiana's Federal Senator:

Can Your Online Social Network Help You get a Loan?

Lenddo has a new (old?) twist on making small unsecured loans. When you apply, you must provide your online social networking site information. They scour this information to help determine your creditworthiness. You are deemed more creditworthy if your friends are more creditworthy. Moreover, they notify your friends about how well (or poorly) you have paid back the loan. These aspects help to solve the adverse selection and moral hazard issues endemic with these sorts of loans. Of course, the cost is giving up some privacy. You may want to take down those drunken hookup photos and you may want to "unfriend" that ex-con brother-in-law.

The new part is that this uses online information to get a better picture of how trustworthy you are based on the people with whom you associate. The old part is that this was a key feature of a small town banker 100-150 years ago. For the most part, this has been replaced by credit scores and employment history. Actually, most people in the town would judge your character based on who "your people" were. This could be abused if, say, folks did not like the color of your people's skin but it was also highly informative. As a consequence, it meant that once you were in a good circle, you would not want to give up those connections. Townsfolk were understandably wary of the stranger who came to town. Why did he leave his people?

Are investors ignoring risk?

Volatility (measured by VIX) is at an all time low, the stock market at an all time high.  VIX measures the volatility implicit in the futures contracts that investor's buy.  It can be thought of as the price of insurance against a stock market plunge.  Right now, investors are not willing to pay much for insurance because they think the probability of a plunge is small.

What could go wrong?

To see the answer to this, look at early 2007, when volatility dropped to about the same level.