How learning a musical instrument affects the development of skills

Despite numerous studies on skill development, we know little about the causal effects of music training on cognitive and non-cognitive skills. This study examines how long-term music training during childhood and youth affects the development of cognitive skills, school grades, personality, time use and ambition using representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our findings suggest that adolescents with music training have better cognitive skills and school grades and are more conscientious, open and ambitious. These effects do not differ by socio-economic status. Music improves cognitive and non-cognitive skills more than twice as much as sports, theater or dance. In order to address the non-random selection into music training, we take into account detailed information on parents, which may determine both the decision to pursue music lessons and educational outcomes: socio-economic background, personality, involvement with the child’s school, and taste for the arts. In addition, we control for the predicted probability to give up music before age 17 as well as the adolescent’s secondary school type. We provide evidence that our results are robust to both reverse causality and the existence of partly treated individuals in the control group.

That is from a paper by Adrian Hille & Jürgen Schupp.
From the conclusions

Adolescents who have learned a musical instrument at least between age 8 and 17 score more than one fourth of a standard deviation above other children in a cognitive skills test. This advantage is driven by verbal rather than mathematical skills. . .  They are more than 10 percent less likely to watch TV daily and about 15 percent more likely to aim at completing upper secondary school and attending university. Moreover, adolescents of low or medium socio-economic status with music training are more optimistic about their future chances of success (p. 23). 

Music: Illegal downloading & legal purchases

The goal of this paper is to analyze the behavior of digital music consumers on the Internet. Using clickstream data on a panel of more than 16,000 European consumers, we estimate the effects of illegal downloading and legal streaming on the legal purchases of digital music. Our results suggest that Internet users do not view illegal downloading as a substitute to legal dig- ital music. Although positive and significant, our estimated elasticities are essentially zero: a 10% increase in clicks on illegal downloading websites leads to a 0.2% increase in clicks on legal purchases websites. Online music streaming services are found to have a somewhat larger (but still small) effect on the purchases of digital sound recordings, suggesting complementarities between these two modes of music consumption. According to our results, a 10% increase in clicks on legal streaming websites lead to up to a 0.7% increase in clicks on legal digital pur- chases websites. We find important cross country difference in these effects.

HT: Catalina Granda Carvajal 
Source.  

Djembes (loving Senegal)

In some towns in Senegal, like Mbour, where I am now, the sound of the djembes is omnipresent.

This is my favorite Senegalese album.

3 Research links: (1) migration and manufacturing (2) blogs, tweets, and science (3) digital music

1. The effects of migration on manufacturing (Italy).
2. Tags, Blogs, Tweets: Social Media as Science Tool? “Our studies confirm that most institutions don’t [yet] recognize social media use as part of tenure and promotions activities,” says Gruzd. In contrast, its users— particularly junior faculty members—already note both its direct and indirect benefits.
3. Digital music: Economic perspectives. 

Tinariwen

Rollo Romig writes in a New Yorker article:

Meanwhile, another group of Tuaregs is making its way across Europe. They’re the rock band Tinariwen, and they’re midway through their latest world tour. In February, Tinariwen won the Grammy for Best World Music Album for “Tassili,” which includes contributions from members of TV on the Radio and Wilco. In November, they made an appearance on the Colbert Report. They’re scheduled to play five shows in the U.S. in June. But twenty years ago, they were rebels themselves, and they haven’t ruled out becoming rebels once more. “We are military artists!” Abdallah Ag Alhousseini, one of the group’s guitarists and singers, recently told a journalist from Algérie News. “Today, if we see that our brothers need fighters rather than musicians, we will go to the front, because we are always ready to answer the call of the preservation of our land, our values, and our culture. This is what we do through music, and we will do it again with arms!” Keep reading . . .. 

In this video Tinariwen & Carlos Santanta.

Song of the day: Senegal Fast Food