SOCIAL STUDIES
Russian influence at play
Penalty minutes per player per game in the NHL rose through the 1980s but suddenly fell in the 1990s. The shift happened just as the end of the Cold War led to an influx of Russian players. Coincidence? An analysis finds that Russian players got fewer penalty minutes per game while tallying more goals and assists than the typical player, consistent with the less aggressive and more skilled skating-and-possession style that Soviet teams were known for. This approach rubbed off on North American players, who accounted for the bulk of the drop in penalty minutes. Penalty minutes for North American players went down when there were more Russians on their team and the opposing team, even when no Russians were on the ice for a particular game.
Amodio, F. et al., “Work Style Diversity and Diffusion Within and Across Organizations: Evidence From SovietStyle Hockey,” Management Science (forthcoming).
Booking counsel
Public defenders typically meet with jailed clients for the first time at the arraignment hearing, which usually happens within a few days after arrest. The pair may have only a few minutes to meet before the hearing. Those who can afford their own lawyers, however, can meet right after arrest. To address this disparity, the Public Defender Office in Santa Clara County, Calif., conducted a pilot program offering similarly early meetings with clients. Because of availability constraints, only those arrested on certain days were eligible. Using this quasi-random eligibility, a study estimated the causal effect of providing such early representation. It found that clients with early access to an attorney were much more likely to be released and see their cases dismissed.
Lacoe, J. et al., “The Effect of Pre-Arraignment Legal Representation on Criminal Case Outcomes,” National Bureau of Economic Research (May 2023).
Outside bet
Researchers gave people $20 and randomly assigned them to participate in a climate prediction market or a sports/entertainment prediction market for 35 days, with a new bet opportunity posted every day (e.g., “Will the global average carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere exceed 417.6 parts per million between August 5 and August 9, 2022?”). Compared with survey responses at the beginning of the study, responses at the end of the study showed increased levels of concern about climate change, support for remedial action, and climate knowledge among those who participated in the climate prediction market, with the increase in support for remedial action being somewhat larger among conservative participants.
Cerf, M. et al., “Participating in a Climate Prediction Market Increases Concern About Global Warming,” Nature Climate Change (June 2023).
Simple distance
Brown University economists estimated the prehistoric migratory distance from East Africa — the origin of early humans — to the historical settlement locations of hundreds of ethnic groups around the globe. Groups at greater distances had fewer motifs in their folklore. This is consistent with the broad notion that out-of-Africa migration was “largely characterized by a stepwise expansion, where in each step a subgroup of individuals left their ancestral settlement to establish a new colony farther away, carrying only a subset of the traits of their ancestral settlement.” Taking only some of the clan’s traits led to a narrowing of diversity — genetic diversity or, in this case, cultural diversity — as each subgroup broke off and traveled farther from Africa.
Galor, O. et al., “The Impact of the Prehistoric Out of Africa Migration on Cultural Diversity,” National Bureau of Economic Research (May 2023).