One loyal MR reader wrote in the comments:
He'll [Kasparov] be fine. Killing him would be too bad a move in terms of PR.
But that is exactly my worry. Putin has many would-be enemies. What better retaliation than to do something evil and make it look like Putin is possibly [...]
The Wall Street Journal has a front-page article and a debate between Julio Elias and Alvin Roth on alleviating the shortage of transplant organs. This interactive graphic was good at explaining the idea of kidney swaps. Elias and Roth should have discussed no-give, no-take rules and [...]
It takes one to know one, they say. So I asked Tyrone -- my evil (and unhappy) twin -- how he would have debated the proposition that America is failing at the pursuit of happiness, and how he would have taken up the charge of Stevenson and Sachs.
Tyrone [...]
A decade ago, the saiga antelope seemed so secure that conservationists fighting to save the rhino from poaching suggested using saiga horn in traditional Chinese medicines as a substitute for rhino horn.
Research commissioned by WWF at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in the late 1980s found it to be [...]
1. Love, Life, Goethe: Lessons of the Imagination from the Great German Poet, by John Armstrong. The author does not demonstrate overwhelming expertise but this is nonetheless not a bad place to start on the most neglected of all the great writers.
In Discover Your Inner Economist the economist and blogger Tyler Cowen provides quirky and insightful advice for life based on his signature urbane style of economic reasoning. On his blog, MarginalRevolution.com, Cowen offers economic advice in his periodic "Dear Trudie" posts. Presumably Cowen offers good economics. But dare one take [...]
Bookstores where you can go to watch TV, courtesy of Borders.
[...]I just had my flu shot. Please send your checks to my George Mason address.
People who have the flu spread the virus so getting a flu shot not only reduces the probability that I will get the flu it reduces the probability that you will get the flu. In the [...]
Book rage, anyone? As the Canadian dollar hit the $1.10 mark earlier this week, booksellers and publishers began to circulate stories of customers going beyond simply venting their dismay at hapless clerks and turning books into projectiles, sometimes to the point of drawing blood.
If you live in Bangalore or Singapore, you may not know [...]
Diego Gambetta and Steffan Hertog report:
We find that graduates from subjects such as science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements in the Muslim world, though not among the extremist Islamic groups which have emerged in Western countries more recently. We also find that engineers alone are strongly over-represented among graduates in [...]
It was Jeffrey Sachs and Betsey Stevenson against myself and Will Wilkinson on the topic of whether America is failing in the pursuit of happiness. The Economist magazine was the sponsor and it was held in Gotham Hall in New York, which yes could have been out of a [...]
Glen Whitman asks a good question, Why are unions so powerful in the entertainment industry when unions are generally weak and in decline in most other sectors of the economy? (Tyler asked the same question several years ago.)
I have a very different approach to compensation. I think that the key is to change compensation schemes frequently. The reason is that any scheme can be gamed, and the longer you wait to change any given scheme, the more effectively the participants will have gamed it. That is one reason I think that [...]
Joseph Stiglitz writes:
You'll still hear some -- and, loudly, the president himself -- argue that the administration's tax cuts were meant to stimulate the economy, but this was never true. The bang for the buck -- the amount of stimulus per dollar of deficit -- was astonishingly low. Therefore, [...]
Here, by Menzie Chinn.
And here you can read Bob Solow on Greg Clark for $3. Here are Solow's tips for time management, interesting but obviously not written by a member of the email generation.
Here's an update on the forthcoming Malcolm Gladwell book.
[...]...when parents are involved in mate choice, sons are significantly less likely to marry college-educated women and women engaged in the labor force, after controlling for individual and family characteristics. I show that these effects are driven, at least in part, by parental preferences and cannot entirely be attributed to correlation between arranged marriages and [...]
As usual James Surowiecki has an excellent piece. Excerpt:
Fund managers get bonuses at the end of each year, and they keep those performance fees even if the fund eventually goes south. So if a billion-dollar hedge fund rises twenty per cent in its first year and falls twenty per [...]
Greying Japan has a new weapon to scare people into saving for their retirement -- an exploding piggy bank.
The "Savings Bomb," which goes on sale in Japan next week, "explodes" and scatters coins if users fail to save for a long time, toy manufacturer TOMY Co Ltd said [...]
Or is it Europe fact of the day? Switzerland fact of the day?
Beijing is now Europe's largest source of manufactured imports, but the 27-nation bloc, with a population of about 470 million people, exports less to China than it does to Switzerland.
Here is the article.
[...]Building on the thriving carbon offset industry, an innovative British firm, Cheat Neutral, now offers cheat offsetting:
At Cheatneutral, we believe that we should all try to reduce the amount we cheat on our partners, but we also realise that fidelity isn't always possible.
That's why we help you neutralise [...]
He writes in the FT:
...technology is bound to deliver a biofuel that will be competitive with fossil energy at something like current prices. It probably already has. Brazil has been exporting ethanol to the US at an average delivery price of $1.45 for an amount with the energy equivalence of a gallon of [...]
If a mythical Tyler asked you that question "What have you been reading lately that you learned from?" what would be your answer?
Here is more, the distinction is between "reading edifying works, rather than works that challenged me and taught," the key is the latter, so answer the question!
[...]It seems to be advertising revenue, which gives media the incentive to appeal to a broad audience and the means to be independent of particular donors and interest groups:
The source of media revenues is an important determinant of media behavior. News coverage depends on the preferences of those who pay the costs. [...]
One side effect of the rise of popular musicians to media stars, and the displacement of couples dancing by musical performance-watching, was to make music concerts into an alternative gathering place to the arenas dominated by the traditional school elites, the jocks and popular party-goers and stars of the dating [...]
From the Chronicle of Higher Education, including a discussion of Discover Your Inner Economist, Robert Frank, Freakonomics, and Steve Landsburg.
[...]A group of Swiss businessmen will hear first Pascal Lamy on economic globalization and then me on cultural globalization. I must keep in mind the fundamental principles of speaking to the Swiss. Unlike virtually all American audiences, the listeners do not expect to be entertained. Efforts to entertain will insult [...]
Ron Paul has now passed Fred Thompson in the probability of winning the Republican nomination. According to Intrade, Paul has a probability of winning the nomination of 8.8%. (Guiliani (42.0%) and Romney (27.6%) are first and second.)
In closely related news, Paul raised $4.2 million yesterday. V.
Thanks to [...]
Visuwords, courtesy of Eduardo Pegurier. I enjoyed entering "economics," it felt like someone or something was giving birth.
Or more, for some of you.
[...]No, say Jonathan Gruber and David Rodriguez:
We measure uncompensated care as the net amount that physicians lose by lower payments from the uninsured than from the insured. Our best estimate is that physicians provide negative uncompensated care to the uninsured, earning more on uninsured patients than on insured patients with comparable treatments. Even [...]
Finally, I will come to some conclusions you may find surprising -- among them, why the move toward improved corporate governance makes companies less likely to be socially responsible. Why the promise of corporate democracy is illusory. Why the corporate income tax should be abolished. Why companies should not be [...]
1. James Flynn on IQ, at Cato Unbound.
2. My favorite things Swiss; several Swiss asked me to repost this, I can report the list hasn't changed much in the last year. Zurich is wonderful on Mondays.
3. When asked, I will report. My favorite blog post (of mine [...]
...there are 100 gigawatts of "illegal" electric power plants in China, meaning plants not approved by the central government. (The entire nation of France uses 80 gigawatts of power. China uses 650 gigawatts.)
China sentence of the day is also a citation from Arnold Kling:
China's central government has difficulty getting its constituencies [...]
Joel Turnipseed blogging at Kottke asks, why give away books for free? Cory responds:
...we live in a century in which copying is only going to get easier. It's the 21st century, there's not going to be a year in which it's harder to copy than this year; there's not going [...]
That's the new book from Randall Collins. The main argument is that people are not as predisposed to violence as we might think. Collins cites a wide array of evidence, from military behavior in the field to, most intriguingly, video studies of the micro-expressions of violent perpetrators. People [...]
In Zurich almost everything is closed on Sundays, even my hotel restaurant. There is one massive underground shopping mall clustered at the railway station, where for obvious reasons ("travelers") there is a Sunday shopping exemption. I believe this is by far the largest mall in Zurich and of course it [...]
I used to think that short meetings were best. Clearly, I confused the private with the social optimum.
For bonus points compare the picture with Tyler's discussion of meetings. How many items can you spot?
Meetings are not always about the efficient exchange of information, or discovering [...]
David Pogue (via Kottke) asks:
Why doesn't someone start a cellphone company that bills you only for what you use? That model works O.K. for the electricity, gas and water companies -- and people would beat a path to its door.
Of course many companies will charge you by the minute. Overseas, [...]
Welcome to CustomReceipts.com. We print the finest fake ATM receipts available, with your custom information on them.
Tired of being used as a drink-dispenser? Maybe if you were rich you’d have more luck.
Ever wanted people to think you’re rich? Just casually let them see your massive bank balance on one [...]
Matt Yglesias is so, so right about Friday Night Lights, my new favorite TV series (you needn't like football, high school, or Texas; I love only the third). So I am surprised he is not more skeptical about the Law of the Sea Treaty.
I call this one: "Price-discriminating monopolists appeal to the weak-willed" edition. Let's say you want to attract the religiously minded parts of the individual. What might your prices look like?
When Larry Pinczower switches on his cellphone, the seal of a rabbinate council appears. Unable to send text messages, take photographs or connect [...]
Many violent relationships are characterized by a high degree of cyclicality: women who are the victims of domestic violence often leave and return multiple times. To explain this we develop a model of time inconsistent preferences in the context of domestic violence. This time inconsistency generates a demand for commitment. We present supporting evidence that [...]
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday that he was considering a proposal to give some city students free cellphones and to reward high performance with free airtime, but emphasized that he had no intention of lifting the ban on cellphones in the schools.
“It’s something we’ll take a look at,” the mayor said of the [...]
1. Favorite Ray Charles song: "What'd I Say"; it's heresy to admit this, but overall his stuff leaves me cold.
2. Favorite Jasper Johns series: Lately I often call up the "Decoy" prints in my mind. But the "Targets" series is my pick, followed by the American flag and [...]
How would we plan our trips without Wikipedia?
The Berry campus, easily the largest land mass campus in the world, consists of fields, forests, and Lavender Mountain, designated portions of which are open to the public for hiking, cycling, horse back riding, and other outdoor activities. Present throughout the campus is a large population [...]
The subtitle is The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy, and the author is Chris Coyne, a former student of mine and now professor at West Virginia University, also blogger at The Austrian Economists. Excerpt:
What do the data indicate regarding the effectiveness of reconstruction as a means of achieving [...]
Charge 80% per year on a loan in the U.S. and you're called a usurer. Charge 80% on a loan in Latin America or Africa and you can be a poverty-alleviation charity.
That is Dean Karlan and Jonathan Zinman, in today's WSJ, "In Defense of Usury," p.A18. Karlan and Zinman discuss [...]
As the New York Times noted last week, food prices have been on a tear in Russia. With elections approaching, Vladimir Putin decided pricey potatoes and pierogies just wouldn't do. The solution: Soviet-style price controls.
I am a fan of Daniel Gross's Slate writings, but I don't think that claim [...]
Gregor Smith of Queen's University has discovered an amazing new relationship, Japan’s Phillips Curve Looks Like Japan. John Palmer of EclectEcon believes that the result may be systematic as he has discovered that Canada's Phillip's Curve looks like Canada.
Obviously these people are [...]
1. Is Buffalo really hopeless?
2. Which paintings sell for more?, Financial Times Deutschland
3. Books to base your life on, by Ryan Holiday
4. One cheer for asset securitization, me on NPR Marketplace
5. Takes on fall books, on Slate, one segment is yours truly on the [...]
I can report that the sugar high in children begins long before the sugar hits the bloodstream.
[...]The housing sector is down twenty percent and the price of oil is flirting with $90 a barrel, maybe $100 to come. Yet the quarterly growth rate was just reported at 3.9%, led by surges in consumer spending and exports. It is wrong to think we have turned the [...]
A reform proposal from Kevin Hassett: "So let's do something to reform Halloween. The first step would be for Halloween donors to give kids money instead of candy. Kids could then go to the supermarket the next day and binge on the candies they really like. That solution would [...]
Looks and height matter for economic outcomes, so why not teeth?
Healthy teeth are a vital and visible component of general well-being, but there is little systematic evidence to demonstrate any impact on the labor market. In this paper, we examine the effect of oral health on labor market outcomes by [...]
According to FIRE, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:
The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs....
The university’s views are forced on students through a comprehensive [...]
Here, some of the early posts are responses to Krugman and DeLong. Clive has been the FT's Washington columnist since April 2007 and is formerly of The Economist.
[...]
Nada, her book, is even better, a true case of a rediscovered classic, now out in a first-rate English translation.
[...]America has 62 percent of the world's [scientist] stars as residents, primarily because of its research universities which produce them.
Here is the paper, and, addended, here are non-gated versions.
[...]This new Cato book is a good introduction to the empirical literature on vouchers and charter schools. For my taste it places too much weight on standardized tests, but admittedly that is the main way to compare educational results over time or across countries. I believe the lax nature [...]
Robert, a loyal MR reader, asks:
I was recently reading about ARod's decision to leave the Yankees. The article mentioned "superagent Scott Boras." It's widely believed in the sports community that Boras has the ability to increase the salaries beyond what they would get with a regular agent. Considering that there are only 30-odd teams that [...]
What a wonderful title. This new sensation, by French intellectual superstar Pierre Bayard, tells how to liberate our reading habits from the oppression of our most formidable peers (we carry around books to look cool) and more importantly from our own ever-more-demanding selves, which pursue the perfect reading experience [...]
Lee, a loyal MR reader (by RSS, it seems), writes:
I am also protesting these partial posts! They are mildly inconvenient!
Sadly, when part of an MR post is below the fold, only the top part is fed into RSS. The vast majority of our posts are full posts, I use [...]
I used to think so, but not any more:
We assess whether there is a strong causal relationship between congressional districting and polarization. We find very little evidence for such a link. First, we show that congressional polarization is primarily a function of the differences in how Democrats and Republicans represent the same districts [...]
The very interesting Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has a good analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a clever suggestion for moving forward:
“In my view, it is a mistake to look for strategies that build mutual trust because it ain’t going to happen. Neither side has any reason to trust the other, [...]
Over at Mark Thoma's, Bernard Yomtov asks a very good question:
Why should there be mercenaries at all, given the existence of a large and well-trained Army? The mercenaries are former soldiers. Their functions are military and could be carried out by regular soldiers. The only reason I can see for using them [...]
The name is pronounced as it looks. Born in 1903, he was a child prodigy by five, played in Buckingham Palace by eight, and by age thirteen an entire book was devoted to his talents...
[...]What a splendid title they chose for my NYT column on the economics of Blackwater. To start:
...whatever the possible sins of the Blackwater firm, the overall problem is not private contracting in itself; contractors do not set the tone but rather reflect the sins and virtues of their customers, namely their sponsoring governments.
...War [...]
ETHNIC DINING TALK: Tuesday, October 30, Tyler Cowen, author of "Discover Your Inner Economist," discusses "Every Meal Counts: How to Get the Best Food Possible in Washington, D.C." and signs his book. Books will be for sale. Free entry. 6:30 p.m. Cleveland Park Branch Library, 3310 Connecticut Ave. NW. 202-282-3072.
Of course you [...]
Emily Oster tackles this question:
I generate new data on HIV incidence and prevalence in Africa based on inference from mortality rates. I use these data to relate economic activity (specifically, exports) to new HIV infections in Africa and argue there is a significant and large positive relationship between the [...]
1. David Linden, The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God. My standards for popular science books have tightened in the last ten years but this still exceeds them. A good rule of thumb is to read anything that comes from Belknap Press [...]
Pew Research Center reports that find "Democrats pulling even with Republicans among registered voters with annual family incomes in excess of roughly $135,000 per annum."
In case you were wondering. Here is more. In any case Americans don't vote their economic self-interest nearly as much as you might think; Bryan Caplan's [...]
Jason Kottke reports:
Ben Tesch is about to launch a collaborative weather site called cumul.us. It'll aggregate weather information and harness the wisdom of crowds to see if they can make better weather predictions than the experts.
Will this all work? Who knows, but it only took me two months to [...]
Ed Glaeser says no and offers very many reasons why. His conclusion:
The best scenario would be for Buffalo to become a much smaller but more vibrant community—shrinking to greatness, in effect. Far better that outcome than wasting yet more effort and resources on the foolish project of restoring the City of Light’s [...]
Nikos Sp, a loyal MR reader, asks:
...ignoring the effect of becoming an economist on your material welfare, do you believe that the economist's mindset is conducive to a happy life - or does a knowledge of economics lead to a life of misery?
Nikos already has an answer, and yes he defends [...]
1. The Laffer curve, by James Surowiecki
2. What have we learned from market design? -- Alvin Roth tells us, ungated version here
3. Felix Salmon summarizes my talk, on the economics of blogging, an excellent post; further commentary here
"Security Crackdown Cuts Illegal Crossing But Aids Smugglers." That's the headline and the story concerns the border between Mexico and Texas. How might this be true? It is simple:
As tighter security makes crossing the border trickier and more hazardous, the traditional mom-and-pop operations in Mexico that used to ferry [...]
Kevin, a soon-to-be loyal MR reader, asks:
What single intervention would do the most to improve the health of people living on less than $1 a day?
Experts answer here. The first guy asked says give them cash. One woman, whom I believe is a practitioner of living on a dollar [...]
Senator Bernie Sanders, the first self-described socialist ever to be elected to the Senate, has introduced a bill that I might actually sign on to, The Medical Innovation Prize Fund Act of 2007. In essence, the prize fund would pay pharmaceutical companies to release their patent rights to [...]
Here's a mini-review of my brother's movie Weirdsville.
Weirdsville – a dark and devilishly funny comedy about a pair of junkie crooks who can’t seem to catch a break to save their lives. Throw in a couple Satan worshipers, a band of vigilante little people and a pair of curling stone [...]
...there's no doubt that Marginal Revolution and Freakonomics are, by far, the most popular economics blogs. If you look at their Google Reader subscriber numbers, Marginal Revolution has 72,378 subscribers, while Freakonomics has a few different feeds with 78,462 subscribers in total.
That's from Felix Salmon, it's actually a lot [...]
When she said yes, he asked the more important question, would she attend a performance of the Black Watch, an international bagpipe and drum group, the next weekend at UT Tyler's Cowen Center.
Here is the full but totally non-interesting story.
On a less incorrect but still odd note, [...]
Joseph Newhouse and the other RAND researchers have responded to Nyman's paper arguing that attrition bias biased their results. The RAND researchers were aware of these issues and in fact designed the experiment to avoid incentives for non-random attrition. Most importantly, the basic RAND findings have now been replicated [...]
George Mason is updating to a new network system. We are told, "MESA was designed specifically for George Mason University."
In other words, MESA has not been thoroughly tested, no other universities have found it worthwhile to adopt the same system and we will be utterly dependent on the designers. [...]
If you believe that an uninformed opinion can be useful for seeing through the chatter, read on...
[...]This is a very common charge. It is true that median wage growth has been slower than usual over the last thirty years. But it's not quite the grim picture it is often made out to be.
For instance: "Including estimated benefits adds 6 percentage points to the growth rate [...]
Tuition and other costs, not including room and board, rose on average to $6,185 at public four-year colleges this year, up 6.6 percent from last year, while tuition at private colleges hit $23,712, an increase of 6.3 percent...In recent years, consumer prices have risen less than 3 percent a year, while net tuition at [...]
Slugfest of the classical liberals. Dan stresses he wrote these comments off the top of his head, which is how most criticism of colleagues should be done.
Perhaps the most interesting discussion is whether Bryan has identified the key biases in voter behavior. Bryan identifies anti-foreigner, make-work, pessimistic, and [...]
1. Monkey wars?
3. A new Amazon feature: who writes short and long sentences?
4. Farewell to Alms MP4: Tyler Cowen, Brad DeLong, and Greg Clark. It was much fun, as Brad and I realized we hadn't seen each other since graduate school. Greg goes first, we [...]
This issue will throw market-oriented economists into conniption fits. On one hand, it sounds like free trade. On the other hand, it sounds like nationalized industry. If we don't want the U.S. government owning a chunk of the S&P 500, why should we embrace Russian government ownership? Do you [...]
What's an old person anyway? Does it depend on how many years are behind you, or how many years you still can expect to live? Here is John Shoven:
The current practice of measuring age as years-since-birth, both in common practice and in the law, rather than alternative measures reflecting a person's stage [...]
Here's a cool idea from a new Hollywood movie producer, a money back guarantee!
Nicholas Tabarrok is putting his money where his mouth is. The producer from Toronto-based Darius Films is certain that audiences will crack up during the screening of his oddball comedy Weirdsville, opening Friday, or he will refund their [...]
You will find it here, it seems to be a monthly compendium of economics on-line. Thanks to Daniel Klein for the pointer.
[...]It will not surprise readers to know that I'd enjoy a good smash of Paul Krugman's book Conscience of a Liberal but historian David Kennedy's negative review in the NYtimes is more trash than smash. First, there is a bizarre attempt to argue that Krugman is not an [...]
In today’s America, there are more World of Warcraft players than farmers.
Hat tip to Paul Krugman.
[...]1. Days on the Family Farm, by Carrie Meyer. An interesting economic study of life on an early twentieth American family farm, based on personal diaries, and an antidote to anyone who thinks that all GMU economics faculty are like the bloggers you know.
Leaders who make history are often provincials: Provincials attempt what sophisticates consider naive. The two current candidates for world leadership [Reagan, Gorbachev] were both country boys, a state park lifeguard and a champion harvester, each an outsider to the inner elites of the government he headed, each in his own [...]
The Nepali Times in Kathmandu recommends Marginal Revolution.
[...]Dani Rodrik asks why, Greg Mankiw gets frustrated at his now-banished comments section, Free Exchange defends non-famous econ bloggers, and Felix Salmon chimes in.
I don't think comparative advantage will keep (inclined) top economists away from blogging:
1. Very good economists can better use blogs to attract an [...]
Attacking conservatism, Greg Anrig writes:
I think it’s fair to equate Heritage with the conservative movement...the whole unitary executive concept about executive power began to be formulated in the Reagan Justice Department. Those guys were pretty much all conservatives, wouldn’t you say, Tyler?
I find the clarity here extraordinary, namely how much Anrig [...]
