Cleaning Out My Closet

Here's a roundup of some recent research:

Double Your Major, Double Your Return?

From Alison DelRossi of St. Lawrence and Joni Hersch of Vanderbilt:

"Overall, double majoring increases earnings by 2.3 percent relative to having a single major among college graduates without graduate degrees. Most of the gains from having a double major come from choosing fields across two different major categories. Graduates who combine an arts, humanities or social science major with a major in business, engineering, science or math have returns 7 to 50 percent higher than graduates with a single major in arts, humanities or social science. But such double major combinations have returns no higher than single majors in business, engineering, science or math. Majors combining business and science or math have returns more than 50 percent greater than the returns to having a single major in these fields."

In case you're confused, here's the pay hierarchy:
Arts, Social Science, Humanities (ASH)
Science, Business, Engineering, Math (SBEM)

Single major in ASH < double major in ASH and SBEM = singe major in SBEM < double major in SBEM

Federal, State, and Local Governments: Do Any of Them Promote Growth?

"Increases in federal, state and local government employments are all negatively associated with economic growth."

Finding a negative correlation between economic growth and the number of government workers employed in each U.S. county, Matthew J. Higgins of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Andrew T. Young of the University of Mississippi, and Daniel Levy of Emory argue that government activities should be reduced in the name of a more robust economy.

But there is a hole in their findings: The researchers point out their results could be driven by the redistributive aspects of government employment. They don't have the data to show if government employment helped ensure some measure of equality in income and, in turn, opportunity.

The Economic Benefits of Believing in One God

"I find empirical evidence that the birth and adoption of monotheistic religions aided early development both in the West and the Near East until the advent of the Industrial Revolution."

By Murat Iyigun of the University of Colorado, via Borjas. Read the comments section for an academic throwdown.