recent research

This week's picks via Kevin Lewis:

• Not that we should hand out sub-prime mortgages or anything - but home ownership has the benefit of increasing civic participation. (Kim Manturuk)
• Freedom of Information laws are designed to improve governance - but they may do the reverse, at the same time as increasing perceptions of corruption. (Samia Taveres)
• Wikipedia: politically balanced on the whole, though individual pages remain biased. (Shane Greenstein)
• Netizens may harp about privacy - but consumers don't seem to care one lick (Alastair Beresford), although if you're running an online marketing study you're better off asking for less personal info (Avi Goldfarb).
• A paper arguing that more informed citizens would make different decisions. (Jason Ross Arnold)
• An economist models representative and direct democracy - and shows why they wouldn't make similar decisions. (Katherine Baldiga)
• How sharing information via markets can help us pick better candidates. (Boris Maciejovski)