Last March, Ryan questioned the veracity of an article in the British medical journal the Lancet, which claimed that privatization in post-communist countries was responsible for massive numbers of deaths. He included rebuttals from both The Economist (subscription required) and John Earle: Earle points out that a very basic link in the chain of reasoning of the Lancet authors is missing - namely, mass privatization did not lead to substantial job loss. In fact, the effects on employment were typically neutral or positive Still skeptical? A new paper by Scott Gehlbach and John Earle from the Upjohn Institute of Employment Research takes the axe to the Lancet's data: The new analysis examines three simple checks that were made on the assumptions of the Lancet article: recomputing the measure of mass privatization, assuming a short lag for economic policies to affect mortality, and controlling for country-specific mortality trends. Any one of...