This seems intuitive to me just looking at the policy differences but many, smart economists among them, have yet to conclude that the more pragmatic democrats and their focus on job and wage growth have superior policies to the Republicans and their fundamentalist market ideology and tax cut fetish (I realize my characterization reveals my bias but its somewhat fair). Trickle up economics just seems like a much more efficient economic model and I think those who don’t see that need to look long and hard at Bartles’s numbers.

This seems intuitive to me just looking at the policy differences but many, smart economists among them, have yet to conclude that the more pragmatic democrats and their focus on job and wage growth have superior policies to the Republicans and their fundamentalist market ideology and tax cut fetish (I realize my characterization reveals my bias but its somewhat fair). Trickle up economics just seems like a much more efficient economic model and I think those who don’t see that need to look long and hard at Bartles’s numbers.

So how does Bartels account for that? Should we attribute the Reagan years to Carter, and the Clinton years to Reagan? (If, that is, one is going to be so simplistic as to attribute given years to a President in the first place.)

So how does Bartels account for that? Should we attribute the Reagan years to Carter, and the Clinton years to Reagan? (If, that is, one is going to be so simplistic as to attribute given years to a President in the first place.)

So I did my own back of the envelope calculations based on the same historical income tables that Manzi used. See them here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pAe3ZDTlAXAPzcIU5sMqbOA

Following are three sets of numbers from the spreadsheet above. The first set has no lag for the presidents but ignores values from the first year in office after a partisan change. Here are the results in terms of Dems outdoing Repubs (D growth – R growth) at the percentiles in questions (20th, 40th, 60th, 80th, and 95th).

2.01% 1.14% 1.07% 0.63% 0.79%

Here are the results with a 1 year lag like Bartles uses which seems to me to be the best:

1.72% 1.20% 0.87% 0.55% -0.18%

And here are the results with a 2 year lag but ignoring the data 2 years after a change, i.e. I don’t count what happened in 2002 as belonging to the Dems. It is simply not counted at all although 2001 belongs to the Dems.

0.94% 0.75% 0.47% 0.12% -0.44%

I’d say Bartles numbers hold up pretty well and Manzi’s calculations are, what’s the economist’s term again, ah yes, crappy.

So I did my own back of the envelope calculations based on the same historical income tables that Manzi used. See them here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pAe3ZDTlAXAPzcIU5sMqbOA

Following are three sets of numbers from the spreadsheet above. The first set has no lag for the presidents but ignores values from the first year in office after a partisan change. Here are the results in terms of Dems outdoing Repubs (D growth – R growth) at the percentiles in questions (20th, 40th, 60th, 80th, and 95th).

2.01% 1.14% 1.07% 0.63% 0.79%

Here are the results with a 1 year lag like Bartles uses which seems to me to be the best:

1.72% 1.20% 0.87% 0.55% -0.18%

And here are the results with a 2 year lag but ignoring the data 2 years after a change, i.e. I don’t count what happened in 2002 as belonging to the Dems. It is simply not counted at all although 2001 belongs to the Dems.

0.94% 0.75% 0.47% 0.12% -0.44%

I’d say Bartles numbers hold up pretty well and Manzi’s calculations are, what’s the economist’s term again, ah yes, crappy.

http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2008/04/larry-bartels-r.html

Are the partisan differences in income growth merely coincidental? It is never possible to rule out coincidence in historical analyses of this sort, but the odds are very much against it. The differences in average growth rates for middle-class and poor families are “statistically significant” by conventional social-scientific standards. (A post at http://www.conservativescientist.com suggests otherwise, reproducing my figure with ludicrously wide “error bars”; but those “error bars” are based on a simple confusion between the standard deviations of income growth reported in one of my unpublished papers and standard errors of the average growth rates, which are quite another thing.) More importantly, the differences appear consistently in the pre-1974 (high growth) and post-1974 (low growth) eras; they persist even when any one or two administrations (or election years, or transition years) are omitted from the tabulations; and they persist even after taking account of a considerable variety of potential confounding factors.

Are the partisan differences in income growth merely coincidental? It is never possible to rule out coincidence in historical analyses of this sort, but the odds are very much against it. The differences in average growth rates for middle-class and poor families are “statistically significant” by conventional social-scientific standards. (A post at http://www.conservativescientist.com suggests otherwise, reproducing my figure with ludicrously wide “error bars”; but those “error bars” are based on a simple confusion between the standard deviations of income growth reported in one of my unpublished papers and standard errors of the average growth rates, which are quite another thing.) More importantly, the differences appear consistently in the pre-1974 (high growth) and post-1974 (low growth) eras; they persist even when any one or two administrations (or election years, or transition years) are omitted from the tabulations; and they persist even after taking account of a considerable variety of potential confounding factors.