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We have published over 100 graphics, data visualizations, and interactive features as part of our Research Highlight series to help spread the word about great economics research appearing in our journals. Below is a sampling of staff favorites from the past year.
Present-day borders in Africa split many ethnic homelands
The map of African ethnolinguistic divisions created by American anthropologist George Peter Murdock in 1959, overlaid with a map of present-day national borders. The Murdock map is based on primary sources and is meant to represent the location of ethnic homelands during the period from 1890–1910. The authors identify 28% of Murdock's 843 regions that are significantly partitioned by present-day borders.
Source: adapted from Figure 1 of Michalopoulos & Papaioannou (2016)
Global inequality may be worse than the GDP statistics suggest
2007 GDP per capita (left) and the authors' welfare measure (right) for 140 countries, both relative to the United States. Countries in Europe, especially eastern Europe, come out ahead thanks to high rates of leisure, longer life expectancies, and lower inequality. Oil-rich countries are penalized for low rates of consumption and high levels of inequality, while lower life expectancies hold back welfare in the AIDS-ravaged countries of southern Africa.
Replacing a gas-powered car with an electric model takes a lot of emissions out of the air in the local area over the car's lifetime, and adds some emissions at power plants far away. In some cases, a single electric car can do hundreds of dollars of environmental damage to a distant county over its lifetime by increasing pollutants like NOx, SO2, and particulate matter. Click on each city to see the county-level environmental benefits (and costs) of choosing an electric Ford Focus over a conventional one and driving it for 150k miles.
Note: in some counties, damages and benefits range well above $100.
Source: adapted from supplemental maps in the online appendix to Holland et al. (2016)
Data on construction costs and public financing for over 150 major North American stadiums and arenas, from Shibe Park and Forbes Field (1909) to Levi's Stadium (2014). Circles are shaded more darkly for stadiums that received more public funding. Dollar figures are adjusted for inflation to their modern-day equivalents.