Some Links, 9/10/2025

Heckman vs. Chetty; Dueling Conferences; Matt Taibbi on Bari Weiss; David M. Shribman reviews Jane Leavy on baseball

James J. Heckman and Sadegh Eshaghnia write,

Messrs. Chetty and Hendren …assumed that, after conditioning on parental income rank, there was no correlation between parents’ education and motivation and when in their children’s lives they moved.

…The methods used in this literature falsely link the disparity of outcomes across locations to the causal effect of neighborhoods. In reality, the difference is due to the parents who self-sort into neighborhoods. Those who move to better neighborhoods early on tend to be more affluent, more educated and more likely to have intact families. They move to better neighborhoods with people similar to themselves, just as later movers, who are less affluent and less educated, move to less affluent neighborhoods. These findings, established by our team at the Center for the Economics of Human Development at the University of Chicago, provide a different explanation for the factors and policies that improve later-life outcomes.

Heckman received a Nobel Prize 25 years ago. Raj Chetty is likely to be awarded a Nobel, perhaps as soon as next month.

I am not a fan of Chetty. His study claiming to show that moving to a good neighborhood has dramatic effects on life outcomes reminded me of his study claiming to show that having a good kindergarten teacher has dramatic effects on life outcomes. This work becomes prominent because of social desirability bias—many people want to believe that these sorts of interventions work. But social desirability bias is a reason to discount a study.

Any particular study should be evaluated in light of other studies. For example, how likely is it that a kindergarten teacher has a significant effect on someone’s earnings twenty years later in the labor force when there are many studies showing that the effects of educational intervention in an early grade tend to fade out a few grades later?

I missed both National Conservatism 2025 and Abundance 2025.

Halina Bennet reports on the Natcons.

The clearest through line of the conference was an unapologetic push toward pronatalism, framing family formation as both a policy priority and a national imperative. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, delivered the keynote, arguing that family is “the foundation of America’s next 250 years,” and urging policymakers to judge every bill by a single metric: does this strengthen the nuclear family?

Josh Barro has coverage of the Abundance folks.

because abundance, the policy project, aims to alleviate scarcities that matter to conservatives and liberals — like our insufficient production of housing and energy — it presents a great opportunity for conservatives and liberals to work together.

So Abundance 2025 was a broad church. It was produced by a coalition of policy organizations associated with the center-left (like the Niskanen Center, Inclusive Abundance, YIMBY Action and Employ America) and also the center-right (like the Foundation for American Innovation, the R Street Institute, the American Conservation Coalition and the Institute for Progress). And there was a lot of talk about bipartisan approaches to serve the shared goal of making American life more abundant.

I look forward to an abundance of white papers and manifestos.¹

As of this writing, we are still waiting to see if the rumored Bari Weiss sale to CBS is going to happen. Meanwhile, Matt Taibbi’s take is superb. I won’t even excerpt it. Just read it.

David M. Shribman writes,

In 1965 Sandy Koufax threw a perfect game, finished the regular season with a 2.04 earned-run average and sat out the opening of the World Series because he wouldn’t pitch on Yom Kippur; Roberto Clemente led the majors with a .329 batting average and Willie Mays slugged 52 home runs.

I was eleven years old.² And you tend to look back at things when you were 11 and say they were better than they are now.

Shribman is reviewing Make Me Commissioner, by Jane Leavy. She wants to make changes to major league baseball. He writes,

many of those preaching change are traditionalists, not radicals. Yes, they have some forward-leaning ideas. But mostly they love what the game was, not what it is.

…Change the ball, now propelled at deadly speed, so it “lessens the chances of the batter getting killed.” Return the regular season to prior importance by granting division-winning teams with the best records the right to advance to the next round after winning only two games out of five in early playoff series.

Long-time readers know that I agree about the ball. When I was ten or eleven years old, it did not bounce as high. Even in the 1980s, hitters who did not use steroids might not hit any home runs.

Over the years, pitchers have grown taller and their hands are bigger. So a slightly larger ball is needed, to cut down on strikeouts. With less resiliency, the baseball would stay inside the park, taking us back to the days before 3-outcome (strikeout, walk, or home run) baseball.

As for the postseason, I would get rid of any reward for finishing second. Divide the teams into four leagues. If you added two teams, that would make four 8-team leagues. You could go back to the 154-game regular season. Then a 7-game semifinal bracket, followed by the World Series. Done.

1. Somehow, “manifesti” seems like a more fun way to denote the plural.

2. Actually, 1964 was a better year as far as I am concerned. The Cardinals acquired an outfielder from the Cubs who was stuck hitting around .250 and had him hit .348 the rest of the season, on his way to a Hall of Fame career. Also getting on the Hall of Fame track was Bob Gibson.

Beginning on Aug. 24, Gibson started 10 games, pitched 87 2/3rds of a possible 90 innings and posted a 1.65 earned-run average.

Game action of St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson - BL-6256-88 (Fred Roe/National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

On the final day of the regular season, with his team locked in a tight contest with the last-place New York Mets, Cardinals manager Johnny Keane brought Gibson on in relief. Pitching on two days rest, Gibson muscled out four innings of two-run ball and led the Redbirds to an 11-5 victory and the NL pennant.

As for the World Series,

Gibson had lost Game 2 of the series but came back in Game 5 to earn a gutsy 10-inning victory. Now, with the title on the line, Keane went to his ace once again on two days’ rest.

He pitched a complete game and won again. Altogether, from October 2 through October 15, Gibson pitched 39 innings.