This week in research #109

Here's what caught my eye in research over the past week (a busy one, after a few quiet weeks):

• Wang et al. find that a 10 % increase in housing prices is associated with an average 3.85 % rise in the probability of smoking, an increase of 0.73 cigarettes smoked per day, and a 3.9 % increase in the likelihood of frequent drinking in China
• Agnew, Roger, and Roger find that cognitive reflection, fluid intelligence, and approximate numeracy, account for nearly half of the variance in financial literacy scores and help explain the observed gender gap
• Joëts and Mignon (open access) study a sample of 25,480 retracted research articles over the period 1923 to 2023, and find that articles retracted for serious misconduct, such as data fabrication, take longer to be retracted, and subscription-based journals are more effective than open access journals in implementing timely retractions
• Adams and Xu (open access) find that women’s representation in both STEM and Non-STEM fields is higher in more gender-equal countries and countries with greater academic freedom, and women’s representation is higher in fields with more inclusive cultures
• Chugunova et al. (open access) survey German researchers, and find that researchers are widely using AI tools, for primary and creative tasks, but that there is a persistent gender gap in AI use
• Ham, Wright, and Ye (open access) produce updated rankings of economics journals and document the spectacular rise of the new society journals in economics, then show that soliciting top authors connected to the editors explains their performance, rather than editor reputations, editor experience, citations from parent journals, or the number of articles published
• Aubry et al. (open access) conduct a meta-analysis of 88 studies published between 1985 and 2023, and find that a 1% rise in the immigrant labour force reduces native wages by a statistically and economically insignificant 0.033% on average
• Brade, Himmler, and Jäckle find that providing students with ongoing relative feedback on accumulated course credits increases the likelihood of graduating within one year of the officially scheduled study duration by 3.7 percentage points (an 8 percent increase)
• Galván and Tenenbaum (with ungated earlier version here) find that parenthood imposes a significant penalty on scientific productivity of mothers but not on that of fathers in Uruguay, with mothers’ productivity declining on average by 17 percent following childbirth
• Nye et al. find that there is a robust positive relationship between education and free market views in most developed and developing countries
• Bruns et al. (open access) find that female-authored articles in economics take 9 percent longer to accept in journals, but that this gender gap narrows as female representation in an area of research deepens