Today in Neat-o Research

1. Jordan Rappaport, “Moving to Nice Weather,” Regional Science and Urban Economics. U.S. residents have been moving en masse to places with nice weather. Well known is the migration towards places with warm winters, which is often attributed to the introduction of air conditioning. But people have also been moving to places with cooler, less-humid summers, which is the opposite of what is expected from the introduction of air conditioning. Nor can the movement to nice weather be primarily explained by shifting industrial composition or by migration of the elderly. Instead, a large portion of weather-related movement appears to be driven by an increased valuation of nice weather as a consumption amenity, probably due to broad-based rising per capita income.
2. Nathan J. Ashby, “Freedom and International Migration,” Southern Economic Journal. Economic freedom attracts immigrants.
3. Duggan, Hjalmarsson, & Jacob, “The Short Term and Localized Effect of Gun Shows: Evidence from California and Texas,” Review of Economics and Statistics. We examine the effect of more than 3,400 gun shows using data from Gun and Knife Show Calendar and vital statistics data from California and Texas. Considering the one month following each show and a surrounding area ranging from 80 to 2,000 square miles, we find no evidence that gun shows increase either gun homicides or suicides. The similarity of our estimates for California and Texas suggests that the much tighter California gun show regulations do not substantially reduce the number of firearms-related deaths in that state. Using incident-level crime data for Houston, Texas, we also find no evidence of an effect on other crime categories.