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Category Archives: Economy

Historical Settlement Data Compilation for the United States

Harvard Dataverse: “The Historical Settlement Data Compilation for the United States (HISDAC-US) contains historical gridded settlement layers derived from property records compiled in the Zillow Transaction and Assessment Dataset (ZTRAX). HISDAC-US describes the built environment of most of the conterminous United States back to 1810 at fine temporal (5 years) and spatial (250 m) granularity using different settlement measures. These measures currently include the number of built-up property records (BUPR), built-up property locations (BUPL), and the built-up intensity (BUI), i.e., the sum of gross indoor area of all built-up properties in a grid cell in a given year. We also extracted for each grid cell the first built-up year (FBUY), which is the earliest construction year on record. For larger analytical units, such as counties, we derived the built-up area (BUA), or the number of grid cells overlapping with one or more built-up properties in a given year. HISDAC-US can be used as a new means of understanding the speed, spread, and nature of urbanization in the United States from 1810 to 2015.”

AI in Banking and Finance, March 17, 2024

Via LLRX – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, industry white papers, academic papers and speeches on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions.… Continue Reading

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, March 16, 2024

Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, March 16, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the… Continue Reading

Libraries struggle to afford the demand for e-books and seek new state laws in fight with publishers

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — “Whenever bestselling author Robin Cook releases a new medical thriller, the head of the public library in West Haven knows demand for digital copies will be high. So will the price. Like many libraries, West Haven has been grappling with the soaring costs of e-books and audiobooks. The digital titles often… Continue Reading

What impact does exposure to workplace technologies have on workers’ quality of life?

“This briefing outlines new work that has been done for the Pissarides Review to improve our understanding of the effect that exposure to new workplace technologies is having on workers’ quality of life. Based on a survey of nearly 5000 UK workers, it has, for the first time, been done with reference to the most… Continue Reading

OpenAI’s GPT Is a Recruiter’s Dream Tool. Tests Show There’s Racial Bias

Bloomberg [unpaywalled] – “Recruiters are eager to use generative AI, but a Bloomberg experiment found bias against job candidates based on their names alone, Companies tend to hire the most at the start of the year, mainly because of hiring budgets that have been set and go into effect in the first quarter. “Everybody came… Continue Reading

Do firms mitigate climate impact on employment? Evidence from US heat shocks

Acharya, Viral V. and Acharya, Viral V. and Bhardwaj, Abhishek and Tomunen, Tuomas, Do firms mitigate climate impact on employment? Evidence from US heat shocks (August 15, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4660007 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4660007 “How do firms mitigate the impact of rising temperatures on employment? Using establishment-level data, we show that firms operating in multiple… Continue Reading

Everything you need to know to prepare for the EU’s AI Act

sifted: “EU lawmakers finally came to an agreement on the AI Act at the end of 2023 — a piece of legislation that had been in the works for years to regulate artificial intelligence and prevent misuses of the technology. Now the text is going through a series of votes before it becomes EU law… Continue Reading

How much money has each country spent, each year, on its military?

Data is Plural: “Different datasets have different answers, cover different timeframes, and use different methodologies. Miriam Barnum et al.’s Global Military Spending Dataset attempts to bring them together. By uniting “76 variables from 9 dataset collection projects,” the authors write, “we provide the most comprehensive and complete set of published datasets on military spending ever… Continue Reading

Amicus Lobbying: Friends of the Court or Friends of the Industry?

Bunting, William and Stein, Tomer, Amicus Lobbying: Friends of the Court or Friends of the Industry? (January 29, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4708986 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4708986  – “This Article reveals that lobbying has a vast and outsized impact on the development of judge-made business law. Lobby groups have taken control of the amicus curiae filing process… Continue Reading

Wyden’s Gets FTC To Protect Data Of 1.6 B People Tracked By Now-Bankrupt Data Broker

TechDirt: “There are two major reasons that the U.S. doesn’t pass an internet-era privacy law or regulate data brokers despite a parade of dangerous scandals. One, lobbied by a vast web of interconnected industries with unlimited budgets, Congress is too corrupt to do its job. Two, the U.S. government is disincentivized to do anything because it exploits… Continue Reading

State of the Union

USA Facts: In Numbers – A nonpartisan, data-driven snapshot of the state of our union​. “Article II of the US Constitution mandates that the president periodically inform Congress about the “state of the union,” including budget reports and legislative proposals. It is also a chance for the president to review their achievements, with not just… Continue Reading