Interesting Articles

Two very interesting articles:

• Virginia Postrel's latest NY Times piece, on the economic consequences of the 1960s race riots. She discusses two economics articles (The Labor Market Effects of the 1960's Riots, and The Economic Aftermath of the 1960's Riots: Evidence from Property Values) that compare cities with race riots to those without. Where race riots occurred, black income and housing values dropped by anywhere from 9 to 20 percent compared to elsewhere.
  
  
• This New Yorker article on the fact that doctors aren't all equal:

  It used to be assumed that differences among hospitals or doctors in a particular specialty were generally insignificant. If you plotted a graph showing the results of all the centers treating cystic fibrosis—or any other disease, for that matter—people expected that the curve would look something like a shark fin, with most places clustered around the very best outcomes. But the evidence has begun to indicate otherwise. What you tend to find is a bell curve: a handful of teams with disturbingly poor outcomes for their patients, a handful with remarkably good results, and a great undistinguished middle.

Stuart Buck