Now, a study co-authored by MIT economists sheds new light on these dynamics, examining the role that geography has played in the crisis. The results show how state-level policies inadvertently contributed to the rise of opioid addiction, and how addiction itself is a central driver of the long-term problem. The research analyzes data about people who moved within the U.S., as a way of addressing a leading question about the crisis: How much of the problem is attributable to local factors, and to what extent do people have individual characteristics making them prone to opioid problems' 'We find a very large role for place-based factors, but that doesn't mean there aren't person-based factors as well,' says MIT economist Amy Finkelstein, co-author of a new paper detailing the study's findings. 'As is usual, it's rare to find an extreme answer, either one or the other.' In scrutinizing the role of geography, the scholars developed new insights about the spread of the crisis in relation to the dynamics of addiction. The study concludes that laws restricting pain clinics, or 'pill mills,' where opioids were often prescribed, reduced risky opioid use by 5 percent over the 2006-2019 study period. Due to the path of addiction, enacting those laws near the onset of the crisis, in the 1990s, could have reduced risky use by 30 percent over that same time....
About one in four 11th-graders in Colorado exercised their right to skip the state's official science test each year between 2016 and 2019. More specifically, between 23 percent and 27 percent of 11th-graders did not participate in the science exam during those years. That's what we found in a study published in AERA Open. Our study was based on a geographical analysis of state data that revealed how many students decided to skip the test during the years in question. Opting out of tests is part of a recent national educational movement across the United States. The opt-out movement garnered national attention in 2015 and 2016 after growing dissatisfaction with high-stakes testing, both as a tool to evaluate teacher performance and assess student learning. Many students and parents do not believe in the importance of standardized tests as a measure of academic achievement. Much of the opt-out movement was led by parents who chose to keep their children home from school on the test day. They often acted in coordination with national groups such as United Opt Out. Colorado is a unique case, though, because high school students were actively involved in the opt-out movement and were protesting the use of standardized tests....
Nearly 1 in 5 people in the United States today are Latino, and 'the Latino vote' has attracted significant news coverage as their political voice grows stronger. Yet considering all 62 million Latinos as a group isn't necessarily all that helpful in understanding attitudes or voting patterns, as some scholars and journalists have pointed out. The U.S. Latino population is extremely diverse. As scholars who study immigration in the fields of sociology and religious ethics, we are especially interested in the growing religious diversity and often overlooked geographical diversity among Latino populations. These aspects of Latino identity are just beginning to be recognized more clearly in media reports. Yet they are as informative as gender, race and other characteristics for understanding Latino voters ' and will likely come into play when Americans go to the polls in November. Historically, Latinos in the U.S. have mostly been Catholic, but the numbers have recently changed. In 2020, the Public Religion Research Institute reported that 50% of Latinos say they are Catholic, 14% are evangelical Protestant, 10% non-evangelical Protestant and 19% religiously unaffiliated. Some researchers have estimated that by 2030, fully half of U.S. Latinos will identify as Protestant....
For any business leader, decisions about their companyâs geographic footprint are crucial. Entering a foreign market requires major resources and a strong commitment to succeed. Similarly, deciding to locate a manufacturing plant overseas entails the careful selection of an offshore destination. A multinational footprint also has fundamental implications for the overall structure of a company.
Leaders are exposed to two significant errors of judgment when they misunderstand the geography of competition. First, they escalate commitment to geographic markets they should be retreating from; and second, they miss out on novel opportunities to create value across borders in different areas of the world. By getting their geographic footprint wrong, they make the company less resilient and unfit for future global challenges....
