Violence and Excess Mortality in Iraq

Yes, yes, I know – shouldn’t all mortality be excess? No – this refers to the mortality rates that the invasion/occupation hath wrought, above and beyond the ‘ordinary’ rates of mortality in Iraq. The New England Journal of Medicine is sporting two papers on the subject: Violence-Related Mortality in Iraq from 2002 to 2006, by the Iraq Family Health Survey Study Group; and Estimating Excess Mortality in Post-Invasion Iraq, by Browstein, Catherine A. and John S.

Mortality in Iraq by cause, from the Iraq Family Health Survey Study Group (click for larger version):

It’s Iraq: it’s not suprising to see mortality escalate – but, honestly, Road Accidents and Unintentional? Surely that’s a bit much.

Excess mortality (per 100,000 population), same:

The Iraq Family Health Study Group are fairly open about their measurement issues (recall bias is always a problem in household surveys, with or without holistically-debilitating armed conflicts). The Brownstein and Brownstein paper is survey methodological, and says much the same:

There is no set formula for accurately tallying deaths from humanitarian crises. When a population becomes destabilized, estimation of mortality is likely to be severely challenged. In the case of a sudden traumatic event, such as a natural disaster affecting an otherwise stable population, health and human service agencies, though compromised, may well be able to facilitate an accurate assessment of deaths through the use of prospective registries of vital events.

In the event of a military invasion and ongoing war, however, the likelihood of obtaining good demographic data plummets. A death registry is unlikely to be developed or maintained, and as conditions deteriorate, it may become increasingly unlikely that bodies can be counted at all. In Iraq, there is also a strong cultural imperative that bodies be put to rest quickly, which may affect the ability to arrive at accurate estimates.

Although sentinel populations are commonly monitored to rapidly estimate mortality in developing countries when a registry is not available, the impossibility of finding reliably representative populations in countries engaged in armed conflict and the absence of an accurate population count make it difficult to extrapolate from the rates at sentinel sites to produce reliable national estimates.

They – and the IFHS – discuss the clear variation in mortality estimates between this article, the numbers from the Iraq Body Count people and the widely-publicised results from the paper Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey (Burnham G, Lafta R, Doocy S, Roberts L. Lancet 2006;368:1421-1428). Wikipedia too has an excellent page concerning the Lancet mortality studies.

Ultimately the problem won’t go away – this section, from the Brownstein’s paper, is brilliant:

Under the current conditions in Iraq, it is difficult to envision a study that would not have substantial limitations. The circumstances that are required to produce high-quality public health statistics contrast starkly with those under which the IFHS study group worked. Indeed, it must be mentioned that one of the authors of the survey was shot and killed on his way to work

It’s certainly worth having more studies. More information is always going to help stabilise estimates in the face of such uncertainty as this.

Evaluating public expenditure: measuring outcomes

Depending upon where you’re from, you will have more or less familiarity with the issue of cycle-ways in urban environments (being from Sydney and now living in NY – and not being a motorist – I am fairly familiar with it).

New York, for example, has made significant moves towards cycle-friendly transit lanes (this is 2nd Avenue, way downtown, via Streetsblog:

Sydney, of late, is beginning to get ‘with it’. Economic evaluation comes in when you look at this sort of thing and ask, “was that worth it?” Think about New York City, for example. The nominal cost of this stuff is a few cans of paint; the full cost is something else: diminished space for cars means slower traffic; slower traffic means higher costs. Is the Excess Burden placed on the city worth it? For Sydney:

Money wasted on cyclists: NRMA

Taxpayers are pouring millions of dollars into lining motorways with cycleways that are barely used – and are building a new bicycle lane the NRMA says will effectively cost $300,000 for every cyclist that uses it.

Despite pleas from Sydney’s Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, for bicycles to reclaim the streets, the motoring organisation says residents are sticking to four wheels.

In a submission to the Roads and Traffic Authority it accuses the Government of wasting millions on cyclists at the expense of motorists, who are forced to battle worsening congestion as lanes are removed from busy roads.

The cycling lane on the M2 attracted just 130 cyclists a day. The Iemma Government is building a cycleway alongside choked Epping Road, despite as few as 25 cyclists using that corridor each day.
At $7.6 million for the Epping Road cycleway, the NRMA says that would amount to spending $300,000 per cyclist on a lane that is unlikely to attract many more riders, based on the experiences of the M2 motorway.

But:

A spokesman for the RTA said the cycleway would attract many more cyclists than those now using Epping Road. He said the NRMA’s figure was not a true reflection of how popular the new cycleway would be once completed.

“If you give cyclists a dedicated facility instead of riding in normal traffic, they will use it,” the spokesman said.

Hence the title: how is the outcome being measured, here? It would appear that measuring the number of cyclists utilising the cycleway is already premature (which is common sense: one should wait until public infrastructure is settled and known before measuring use of that infrastructure), but is the argument/suggestion that the number of cyclists on a cycleway is the outcome measure even valid?

This takes us back, immediately, to the timing of the measurement. Squeezing traffic is half the point: we are supposed to be offering motorists a dis-incentive. Expanding road-space to deal with cars is like expanding your belt to deal with obesity – it’s just plain silly. After a while we should return to see (a) how many bikes are on the road, (b) how many cars, and (b.2) how many motorists have swapped their car for cycling, and finally (c) other public transport.

This, too, is where merely measuring bicycles is off the point, because transit is a multivalent measure. If the problem is cars, pollution, etc., the solution has to be everything that isn’t cars. In which case everything that isn’t cars has to be, somehow, the outcome measure.

Other issues, such as crowding out (a negative), incomes generated (a positive), and so forth are also important. Pointing at bikes on a path and a bill to the taxpayer is not, necessarily, evaluation.

The French word for taxation

For those who are not so immersed in public economics, it is safe to say that most people agree Goverment (big G) should be as small and efficient as possible, subject to meeting the needs of its electorate. When it interferes with an otherwise unencumbered market, it should be for specific reasons: information asymmetry, externalities, etc. – poor price signalling, generally.

Along the way, Government should institute, as agent for the economy as a whole (now and future), policies that secure sustainable, stable long-run economic growth (increasing technological change, increasing labour productivity, increasing Efficiency with respect to the use of finite resources, etc.).

All of which serves to make this article in the International Herald Tribune very amusing:

Sarkozy proposes taxing new technology to finance the old

In a move that could profoundly reshape the media landscape in France, President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday proposed banning commercials from public television and making up for some of the lost revenue with a first-of-its-kind tax on the Internet and mobile phones.

A government tax on Internet connections would be virtually without precedent and could be politically controversial, given that public policy experts say that Internet access drives a country’s economic growth and productivity.

…

In France, competition for Internet customers is intense, resulting in prices that are well below those of elsewhere, and an “infinitesimal” tax would presumably not discourage potential subscribers. The French pay an average of 37 percent less than the OECD average, or $36.70 a month as of October, compared to $49.36 for all 30 countries belonging to the group.

The share of residents with fast Internet connections in France is also slightly higher than elsewhere – 22.5 subscribers per 100 inhabitants, compared to 18.8 for the OECD as a whole.

But policy experts mostly advise making the Internet cheaper and not weighing down its growth with extra charges. The U.S. Congress last year extended a federal moratorium on Internet taxes for the next seven years.

While it is far from widespread, there are a few other examples of government levies on new technologies or communications to help older ones. In Europe, many countries tax blank storage media like CDs and devote that money to support music. Turkey and South Korea have also used telecommunications taxes to raise money for other industries.

Sarkozy’s proposal was part of a dense salvo of measures fired off in a New Year’s speech aimed at redirecting the focus from his Hollywood-style love affair with the Italian singer Carla Bruni to his vision for France.

In the 45-minute speech, Sarkozy declared the death of the 35-hour week, suggested that large companies may have to double or triple the part of their profit they are obliged to share with employees and vowed to replace gross domestic product with a more holistic indicator of economic welfare that he has commissioned from two Nobel laureates in economics, Amarthya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz. He also said that he would put a state bank in charge of defending French industry against sovereign wealth funds and other financial predators.

They had it at the title, really. Taxing new technologies – that are popular – in order to bolster old technologies – that are not – is not a great way to go about things. It’s a good way to raise money: demand for internet access is going to be fairly inelastic, at least for the people using it. Getting that ratio reversed would make a lot more sense, though, and a tax won’t contribute at all to Middle France’s willingness to embark on new technology.

The tax on blank media is also a poor comparison: blank CDs are almost guaranteed to be used to copy protected music/film. The internet? Not so much. I don’t like that sort of equivalency (and I’m welcome to start my own newspaper, I know).

The two things that are most interesting, yet received the least attention in the article, are this apparent “GDP plus” measure of well-being and welfare, which will be very interesting to observe, as well as the plan to set up a defense against predatory behaviour by Sovereign Wealth Funds. The latter is a little paranoid, I think, but then France is fairly high on the list of xenophobic economies.

HowTo: the Quantity Theory of Inflation. Or, China’s idiosyncratic monetary policy at work again.

The Velocity of Money is how many times the same money must circulate to purchase everything. We don’t have a dollar for every dollar’s worth of Good or Service, out there. You spend a dollar, then the store-owner spends the dollar, then the second store-owner spends it.

Hence the Velocity of Money: , where M is the money supply and PQ is Price x Quantity, or GDP.

The Quantity Theory of Inflation, following this, runs thus:

1. If M = PQ the price level is stable (no inflation)
2. If M > PQ the price level is increasing (inflation)
3. If M < PQ the price level is decreasing (deflation)

For the Quantity Theory of Inflation, Velocity is assumed to be constant and stable: since it drops out of the equation. Assuming that Prices are an increasing function of the Money Supply, we have inflation: too much money. Hence, during a boom period, too much money results in inflation. The Wikipedia link offers some of the criticism of the theory (such as its assumption that the Money Supply is exogenous – not at all the case these days, when we have credit-based, rather than properly Fiat, Money).

And that’s inflation. This is why our central banks bump around the Money Supply: their prime directive (sorry – too Robotics-ish?) is price stability. China’s approach? Go straight for the prices.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao responded Wednesday to growing public anxiety about inflation by announcing that China would freeze energy prices in the near term, even as international crude oil futures have topped $100 a barrel.

The move to hold down prices came as inflation hit an 11-year high in China. A recent nationwide public opinion survey found that “rising prices of consumer goods” ranked as the top public concern, followed by income inequality and corruption.

The freezes, announced on the government’s main Web site, followed a meeting of the State Council, led by Wen on Wednesday, to revise policies on price controls. Prices of oil products, natural gas and electricity will be frozen in the near term. Rates for public water bills also will be frozen, as will the cost of public transportation tickets.

This is becoming a fashion for the Party: they froze prices last year (calling into question just how near-term this measure is going to be). Fortunately China is no Iran: they can probably keep it up for a good long while, although the distortion this will have in their markets will be significant (demand for gasoline a big one).

Distortions are clearly not that big a concern for the Party: they’re openly working to dampen their bulk of iron ore demand, during negotiations over the benchmark price. And by ‘dampen’, I mean their macroeconomy (such as it is dampenable at all).

China is pushing the same outcome, though – these pressures (on the prices of oil and food) are exogenous. China can have inflating prices, or shortages. They seem to be going with the latter. The question for us is which serves our needs (that long march of freedom and democracy, remember?) best? I’m not a fan of this approach – it’s more destabilising than mere inflation and, what is worse, the distortions extend outwards into foreign investment, real or potential. Slowing that down only slows down China’s movement towards market-based systems, political (non-corrupt) devolution, etc.