Social Studies: Keep your AI usage to yourself; female role models in politics; suspicious activity at the IRS

Boston Globe

6 days ago

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Role models
A nationally representative sample of 10th-graders were surveyed in 2002. Then this group was surveyed years later about whether they had voted in the 2008 presidential election. Political scientists from Notre Dame recently analyzed this data and determined that women (but not men) in this sample were significantly more likely to have voted in 2008 if there had been a prominent female political candidate in their district or state in 2002. A prominent female candidate was defined as one who had run a competitive race for a congressional or gubernatorial seat held by a male incumbent. This pattern was particularly apparent with women who grew up in households in which there wasn't much political discussion.
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Wolbrecht, C. & Campbell, D., 'Nevertheless, Role Models Persisted: Girls Exposed to Women Politicians More Likely to Vote as Adults,' Political Behavior (forthcoming).
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Founders without borders
A new study from the University of California, Berkeley, used data from resumes on LinkedIn to determine that US startups whose cofounders were a mixture of native-born Americans and immigrants did the best. Compared with startups that had all-native or all-immigrant founding teams, startups with both native-born and immigrant cofounders grew faster, raised more funding, and were more likely to be funded by top-ranked venture capitalists. These startups also had an advantage in being able to recruit high-quality talent from both the native-born and immigrant labor pools.
Jin, Z. et al., 'Native-Immigrant Entrepreneurial Synergies,' National Bureau of Economic Research (May 2025).
It pays to work at the IRS
Accounting researchers analyzed stock-transaction information from financial-disclosure forms filed by senior employees of the Internal Revenue Service and, well, there might need to be an audit. The researchers found that these employees' stock trades were abnormally profitable on average. Their stock purchases were often followed by a subsequent improvement in tax-related situations for the corporations whose stock they bought. And their stock sales were often followed by large tax settlements that were unfavorable for the companies whose stock they unloaded.
Mayberry, M. et al., 'IRS Officials' Stock Holdings and Corporate Tax Outcomes,' University of Florida (May 2025).
Taking on testosterone
The scientific literature has conflicting findings on the effects of testosterone on monetary decisions. Suspecting that some previous studies were not rigorous enough, a team of researchers conducted a double-blind randomized controlled experiment with 1,000 men aged 18-45 who received either intranasal testosterone gel or placebo gel and then completed various tasks assessing their competitiveness, fairness, generosity, and propensity for risk-taking with respect to money. Both before and after the gel was given, there was no significant correlation between the men's testosterone levels and their scores on any of these tests. One caveat: The experiment was conducted in Canada.
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Dreber, A. et al., 'No Evidence of Effects of Testosterone on Economic Preferences: Results From a Large (N=1,000) Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Study,' University of Pennsylvania (April 2025).