Gregory Clark

The very fine British economist @GregoryClarkUCD found that Norman Conquest surnames are still overrepresented at elite British universities 950 years after Hastings. The result holds at Columbia! Battle Abbey Roll surnames like Mortimer, Percy, Neville and Darcy have an admit rate of 12.7%, vs 7.2% for White applicants overall. Higher test scores too—though the sample's pretty small.

In "Coal and the Industrial Revolution, 1700-1869" economists Gregory Clark and David jacks calculated that even without coal the early industrial revolution in England could have been powered on waterwheels wood and wind power.

When you measure it well, both the Nordic countries and England have fairly low rates of social mobility. Moreover, the transition to modernity hasn't changed social mobility, and the Nordics have only modestly higher mobility than England.

The Myth of Nordic Mobility: Social Mobility Rates in Modern Denmark and Sweden HT: ⁦@MargRev⁩ link.springer.com/article/10.105…

I think this is supposed to be the state of the art for measuring human capital: nature.com/articles/s4158… They find a correlation between human capital and growth, but the econometrics is like something from the cross-country growth regressions literature in the 1980s. When I put a regional dummy in, the correlation disappeared. Effectively, they just found that East Asia grew rapidly and had high human capital. I suppose that power becomes an issue, though, when you control for region.

New paper by Gregory Clark argues that social mobility is much lower in the Nordic countries than often believed. After correcting for measurement error, intergenerational persistence is strong – only slightly lower than in England.

🔔In case you missed it, @GregoryClarkUCD recently published another thought-provoking article: "The Myth of Nordic Mobility: Social Mobility Rates in Modern Denmark and Sweden" along with @martinhorlyk! 👉Read it here: link.springer.com/article/10.105…

Check out this interesting new article titled: "The Returns to Education: A Meta-Study" by @GregoryClarkUCD & @CAANielsen 🎓 👉Read it here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ky…

Gregory Clark and Bryan Caplan (the latter in separate work) are challenging the claim that human capital has huge returns. They find returns closer to 0%-3%. This is something I have disagreements with (for reasons of interpretation, causal mechanisms etc.) but I have not seen this "big question" get the attention it deserves by economists. This is a topic that should be debated thoroughly rather than simply waived away. Link here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ky…

Nobel laureate Joel Mokyr’s research explained in 4 quick points

Economics:

Two years on, there's now a peer-reviewed paper in Annals of Science responding in detail to Jenny Bulstrode's still-unretracted claims about Henry Cort and Jamaican metallurgists, showing even more egregious problems with them than originally found. #abstract" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

Heritability of achievement tests at age 10-14 in Norway's entire population A tour de force in register data studies (link below)

If we do 25% tomorrow USA will be either the country with the second highest tariff rate in the world after North Korea - or else the highest (N. Korea isn't reported in the World Bank, so who knows?) Going into autarky mode now.

I’m happy to announce that my JMP🚨🚨Teacher-directed change: The case of the English Scientific Revolution” is now out as a working paper. Finalising the draft has been a lot of work. So, very happy to share this! For lots of history, new micro-data&natural experiments, read on

🚨📢 Gregory Clark in the media! 🚨📢 New research challenges the "marrying up" myth! 💍👰 HEDG professor Gregory Clark is featured in The Times. 👉 Read the article here: thetimes.com/uk/arts/articl… #EconHist

Today's Sunday Times @GregoryClarkUCD

Two new things featuring Gregory Clark, probably the most significant and interesting economic historian today. A lecture on YouTube and a conversation with Tyler Cowen.

I still support President Zelenskyy and the brave people of Ukraine! 💙💛 Raise your hand 🖐️and Repost if you do too!

My excellent and much-awaited Conversation with Gregory Clark: conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/grego…