Article 74 of the Iranian penal code requires at least four witnesses — four men or three men and two women — for an adulterer to receive a stoning sentence, said Mina Ahadi, coordinator for the International Committee Against Stoning. But there were no witnesses in Ashtiani’s case. Often, said Ahadi, husbands turn wives in to get out of a marriage.

On a pending decision in Iran about whether or not to stone a woman for adultery.

A survey by Mount Sinai School of Medicine researchers has found that 91 percent of physicians  order more patient tests and procedures than needed to protect themselves from lawsuits.

“About $60 billion is spent annually on defensive medicine, and many physicians feel they are vulnerable to malpractice lawsuits even when they practice competently within the standard of care,”co-author Dr. Tara Bishop said in news release. “The study shows that an overwhelming majority of physicians support tort reform to decrease malpractice lawsuits and that unnecessary testing, a contributor to rising health care costs, will not decrease without it.”

Physicians were asked to rate their level of agreement to two statements: “Doctors order more tests and procedures than patients need to protect themselves against malpractice suits” and “Unnecessary use of diagnostic tests will not decrease without protections for physicians against unwarranted malpractice suits.” Response options were on a five-point scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” There were no statistically significant differences between sex, geographic location, specialty category, or type of practice.

Will child labor in developing countries decline if schools are built closer to children? Looking at data from rural Tanzania, Florence Kondylis and Marco Manacorda say no.

We address this question using micro data from rural Tanzania and a regression strategy that attempts to control for non-random location of households around schools as well as classical and nonclassical measurement error in self-reported distance to school. Consistent with a simple model of child labor supply, but contrary to what appears to be a widespread perception, our analysis shows that school proximity leads to a rise in school attendance but no fall in child labor.

My friend Nathan Yang, who posted a guest post last week, sent me a fascinating study asking if Hanukkah is responsive to Christmas.

In the study, Ran Abramitzky, Liran Einav and Oren Rigbi “study the extent to which religious activity responds to the presence and activity of other religions.” Specifically, they study “the extent to which Hanukkah celebration among U.S. Jews is driven by the presence of Christmas.”

We find that: (1) Jews with children at home are more likely to celebrate Hanukkah than Jews without children. (2) The effect of having children on Hanukkah celebrations is higher for reform Jews than for orthodox Jews; and, it is higher for Jews who feel a stronger sense of belonging to Judaism. In contrast, there is no such differential effect of having children on the celebration of other Jewish holidays. (3) Jewish-related expenditures in Hanukkah are higher in counties with lower share of Jews.

They ultimately find that Jews celebrate Hanukkah more when they are among Christians, and this is driven by the presence of children at home. The authors continue:

One underlying mechanism that could lead to this is that Jewish parents in the U.S. celebrate Hanukkah more intensively so their children do not feel left out, and/or because they are concerned that their children will convert or intermarry.

Having lived extensively in both the U.S. and Israel, my observations coincide with this study. In Israel, Hanukkah is by no means the most celebrated or important Jewish holiday. This is not the case in the U.S:

You will notice that Passover and Rosh Hashana (Jewish new year) are “consistently ranked as the most important holidays in both Israel and the U.S., and that other holidays except Hanukkah are secondary and less important.”

The perceived importance of Hanukkah, however, is very different in the two countries. While in Israel it is ranked together with the other secondary holidays, in the U.S. it is viewed as just as important as Passover and Rosh Hashana, and sometimes even more so.

Corcoran and Evans say yes.

Using a panel of U.S. school districts spanning 1970 – 2000, we examine the relationship between income inequality and fiscal support for public education. In contrast with recent theoretical and empirical work suggesting a negative relationship between inequality and public spending, we find results consistent with a median voter model, in which inequality that reduces the median voter’s tax share induces higher local spending on public education. We estimate that 12 to 22 percent of the increase in local school spending over this period is attributable to rising inequality.