Bookmarks (2419)

I am not giving away anything by telling you the basic premise of this film is that a Yiddish-speaking NYC Ellis Island arrival is time-traveled 100 years into the future to the current day, where he meets up with his great-grandson, and the two start hanging out together. At first it seems silly and slight, […] The post *An American Pickle* appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column.  The evidence in favor of at least partial herd immunity continues to pile up, but still don’t get too cheery.  One worry is that herd immunity might prove only temporary: First, many herd immunity hypotheses invoke the idea of “superspreaders” — that a relatively small number […] The post Why herd immunity is worth less than you might think appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

By Donald J. Harris, here is the abstract: Focused on the emerging conditions of industrial capitalism in Britain in their own time, the classical economists were able to provide an account of the broad forces that influence economic growth and of the mechanisms underlying the growth process. Accumulation and productive investment of a part of […] The post The classical theory of economic growth, by Donald J. Harris appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

There have been few insights into what the Queen’s favourite film is but one might assume that it would be a black and white classic from her youth or perhaps Black Beauty. According to Brian Blessed, however, one of her favourite films is Flash Gordon, the 1980 high camp space opera in which the actor […] The post The film culture that is royal Britain appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. Pre-dating communism, East German women have been more likely to give birth outside of a steady partnership. 2. Kris Gulati is now running a Progress Studies blog. 3. Piping Australian solar energy to southeast Asia? 4. Youyang Gu on Louisiana Covid, and other matters. 5. Where and how did Indian secularism fail? The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

What determines the success of a COVID-19 Test & Trace policy? We use an SEIR agent-based model on a graph, with realistic epidemiological parameters. Simulating variations in certain parameters of Testing & Tracing, we find that important determinants of successful containment are: (i) the time from symptom onset until a patient is self-isolated and tested, […] The post Which time lags matter for testing regimes? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Whereas Australia has pursued a skills-based migration policy, the United States has privileged family-based migration. The key contrast between these migration regimes provides a rare test of how national immigration policy shapes immigrant selection and integration. Does a skills-based immigration regime result in a more select group of Asian immigrants in Australia compared to their counterparts in the United […] The post The U.S. selects better for Asian immigrants than does Australia appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

But let’s start with the UK: The number of people in hospital with Covid-19 has fallen 96% since the peak of the pandemic, official data reveals. Hospital staff are now treating just 700 coronavirus patients a day in England, compared to about 17,000 a day during the middle of April, according to NHS England. Last […] The post Coming soon, to a country near you appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. How safe is it to fly? (Bloomberg) 2. What is the share of the population with preexisting immunity?  Recommended. 3. And excellent David Wallace-Wells piece on the spread of herd immunity ideas and T-cell immunity (as more significant than had been thought) throughout the scientific community.  Also recommended. 4. Obesity and corruption. 5. Male […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Abstract: Can attitudes towards minorities, an important cultural trait, be changed? We show that the presence of African American soldiers in the U.K. during World War II reduced anti-minority prejudice, a result of the positive interactions which took place between soldiers and the local population. The change has been persistent: in locations in which more […] The post The Contemporary Impact of Black G.I.s in Europe in WWII appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Good video with Michael Mina on rapid tests. See especially graph starting at 2:29. Here’s a good picture illustrating the difference between the PCR and Rapid Test. A PCR test will catch the virus at times when that the rapid test will miss but these are when there is too little virus to be transmissible […] The post Rapid Tests appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Those three areas are: 1. The history of the British Isles 2. The history of the Jews, and 3. The history of World War II Each area has attracted remarkable talent, mostly in English I should add, and you can always read yet another great book in these areas, even if you already have consumed […] The post Three areas where you never run out of great books to read appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

That is the title of a new research paper by Kenneth S. Brower, focusing on the capabilities of the Israeli military against various potential adversaries.  I do not myself have particular opinions on these questions, but I found this piece interesting throughout.  Here is one excerpt: The simple and unarguable truth is that for decades […] The post “Israel Versus Anyone” appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. Scathing but insightful piece about “the Right,” by Julius Krein. 2. Further results on cross-immunities.  And coverage from the NYT.  And another new paper. 3. Scale of Lebanon blast (photo). 4. Contrafreeloading and cats. 5. How much do the Chinese favor income inequality? 6. Bernard Bailyn obituary (NYT). 7. On the Executive Orders. The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Viking society wasn’t homogeneous. They had dealings with many different cultures and they lived in varied environments, from Danish and Swedish pasture to the sub-Arctic tundra of Norway and Iceland. In the early 11th century the best-travelled woman in the world must have been Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, whose remarkable journeys demonstrate the great distances the Vikings covered. […] The post Claims about Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

We exploit changes in U.S. visa policies for nurses to measure brain drain versus gain. Combining data on all migrant departures and postsecondary institutions in the Philippines, we show that nursing enrollment and graduation increased substantially in response to greater U.S. demand for nurses. The supply of nursing programs expanded to accommodate this increase. Nurse […] The post No brain drain for Filipino nurses appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

I am not convinced by the humidity hypothesis, as I don’t see it having much macro explanatory power globally, but I find the questions very important.  On New York City, I tend to blame all those cramped indoor spaces combined with bad ventilation systems, but that too is an unconfirmed hypothesis.  Anyway, here are the […] The post From the comments, on coronavirus and humidity appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Even exposure to the ill-defined term “fake news” and claims about its prevalence can be harmful. In an experimental study among respondents from Mechanical Turk, Van Duyn, and Collier (2019) find that when people are exposed to tweets containing the term “fake news,” they become less able to discern real from fraudulent news stories. Similarly, […] The post Don’t mention the fake news appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. The polity that is Germany: “Light traps for insects are to be banned outdoors, while searchlights and sky spotlights would be outlawed from dusk to dawn for ten months of the year.’ 2. The new Eisenhower  Memorial, by Frank Gehry, recommended, I am keen to see it. 3. Drive-in symphony concert. 4. Is the […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

But people aren’t getting their tests back quickly enough. Well, that’s just stupidity. The majority of all US tests are completely garbage, wasted. If you don’t care how late the date is and you reimburse at the same level, of course they’re going to take every customer. Because they are making ridiculous money, and it’s […] The post Bill Gates is Angry appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: Then there is the Swedish experiment, which has been the subject of a raging controversy. Here again, most moralizing is premature, even though the Swedes did make some clear mistakes, such as not protecting their nursing homes well enough. Sweden had a […] The post Beware of coronavirus moralizing appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Formal pre-doc programmes have burgeoned, especially in elite universities such as Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago and Yale. Participants clean and analyse data, write papers and do administrative tasks. In exchange they may receive free or subsidised classes, a salary in the region of $50,000, potential co-authorship of the papers they work on, and, […] The post Are pre-docs in economics a good idea? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. MIE: The Clash jigsaw puzzles. 2. Scientists rename human genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates. 3. How NBA play differs inside the bubble. 4. Why are remittances to Mexico up? 5. “A larger dingo ate my baby blame the poison bait.“ The post Friday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Ideas Of India is Shruti Rajagopalan’s new podcast about India. This is going to be an excellent podcast, well worth subscribing to. Shruti’s first guest is Ajay Shah discussing his book with Vijay Kelkar, In Service of the Republic: The Art and Science of Economic Policy. As you may recall, I called In Service, the […] The post Ideas Of India appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

A COVID test that doesn’t come back in a few days is close to useless and PCR tests are taking a long time to process: NYTimes: Most people who are tested for the virus do not receive results within the 24 to 48 hours recommended by public health experts to effectively stall the virus’s spread […] The post Stack-Push-Pop COVID Testing appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

My local public library has reopened!  From the library and from elsewhere, I have been enjoying: 1. Orlando Figes, The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture.  The three lives are Turgenev, his mistress Pauline Viardot, and the husband of his mistress, Louis Viardot, a noted financier and activist.  Consistently interesting, even […] The post What I’ve been reading appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

The government is determined all the same, in keeping with the prime minister’s desire to “build, build, build”, to loosen our restrictive planning system. His proposed reforms will curb the ability of local politicians to slow down plans that have received initial approval. The requirements for developers to include cheaper housing on their sites will […] The post The YIMBYs win one, in the UK appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. Bradykinin, and icatibant, danazol, stanozolol, ecallantide, berinert, cinryze and haegarda.  Here is the actual link.  Are those usable Scrabble words? 2. New and direct evidence for T-cell immunity as a factor behind heterogeneity. 3. Emily Hamilton on the Singapore housing model. 4. Pakistan is doing much better now against Covid (WSJ). 5. Clementine Jacoby of Recidivez, Emergent Ventures winner. The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

On August 2, bio-statistician Steven Salzberg argued that We Should Consider Starting Covid-19 Vaccinations Now. But, under immense pushback, including an article by another bio-statistician Natalie Dean writing in the NYTimes, he changed his mind and reversed course. I was frustrated by both sides of the debate since neither “biostatistician” presented any numbers to justify […] The post Is Early Vaccination a Good Idea? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is part of the closing bit: Where does all this leave U.S. China policy? As a rule of thumb: If it is of clear and limited scope and can be conducted technocratically, and can avoid both excess media coverage and political polarization — and, crucially, […] The post What did the China hawks get right and wrong about China? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Despite the lack of effective treatments or preventive strategies, the dementia epidemic is on the wane in the United States and Europe, scientists reported on Monday. The risk for a person to develop dementia over a lifetime is now 13 percent lower than it was in 2010. Incidence rates at every age have steadily declined over […] The post The Flynn Effect is stronger than you think appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. The rise, fall, and rise of the status pineapple. 2. Jennifer Doleac with Rob Wiblin podcast on crime and police reform. 3. Is there less “prolific cronyism” in economics? 4. U.S. Covid death count starting to turn down again, let us hope this trend continues. 5. Short immune system explainer (Atlantic). 6. The current […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

“We must accept the new reality: The virus is widespread on Oahu,” said Anderson, noting that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for contact tracers to pinpoint the source of infection as the virus grows more and more prevalent. Hawaii now has seen 2,448 positive cases of coronavirus since state health officials started reporting testing results in […] The post The Hawaii bastion has fallen appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Modern Principles was designed to work online and has more resources for teaching online than any other textbook. Online teaching, however, is not just about COVID. As Tyler points out in this short video, it’s also about recognizing that students learn in different ways and we need to reach them using a variety of media. The post Textbook Talk: Teaching Online appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

That is the new book by Danny Dorling and Annika Koljonen, and I opened randomly to a page and saw a chart for Total Fertility Rate in Finland, 1900-2018.  The numbers keep on falling off a table, without even the promise of an asymptote toward the end of the series: Both supporters and critics of […] The post *Finntopia: What We Can Learn From the World’s Happiest Country* appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Most major questions in ethics are unsettled, though of course I have my own views, as do many other people.  I take that unsettledness as a fairly fundamental truth, I have been studying these matters for decades, and I even have several published articles in the top-ranked journal Ethics. Now, if you take a whole […] The post Some doubts about medical ethics, and maybe that Russian vaccine is underrated appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

The Great Recession was a deep downturn with long-lasting effects on credit, employment, and output. While narratives about its causes abound, the persistence of gross domestic product below precrisis trends remains puzzling. We propose a simple persistence mechanism that can be quantified and combined with existing models. Our key premise is that agents do not […] The post Do beliefs cause the great stagnation to persist? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. “Agriculture, generally believed to have formed the basis of the Judaean economy, could not alone have financed Hezekiah’s expenditure at the close of the 8th and the beginning of the 7th century BCE.” 2. Is R doomed to converge to roughly one? 3. Supply chain resilience. 4. Rent prices in major U.S. cities are […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Tyler and I talk about the pandemic economics in our textbook, Modern Principles of Economics. And don’t forget, Modern Principles has more materials for teaching online than any other textbook! Feel free to email us for more info or if we can assist in onboarding. The post Textbook Talk: Modern Principles and Pandemics appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Using de- identified, aggregated meeting and email meta-data from 3,143,270 users, we find, compared to pre- pandemic levels, increases in the number of meetings per person (+12.9 percent) and the number of attendees per meeting (+13.5 percent), but decreases in the average length of meetings (-20.1 percent). Collectively, the net effect is that people spent […] The post How the workday is changing post-lockdown appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

That is for June, Kentucky is at 4.3 percent but West Virginia at 10.4?  Here are the underlying BLS data.  Here is some description of Kentucky in June.  Note that Kentucky cases are now rising rapidly.  Here is the case pattern for Idaho.  The three states with the highest unemployment rates — New York, New […] The post Why do some states have such low unemployment rates? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. “Sociable weavers work together to construct large nests in southern Africa, often in acacia trees. The nests can weigh as much as 1 ton and house up to 200 birds in individual chambers. Their cooperative behaviors also include chick rearing and defense against snakes and falcons.”  Link here. 2. Why so much regional inequality […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

We construct network measures of nursing home connectedness and estimate that nursing homes have, on average, connections with 15 other facilities. Controlling for demographic and other factors, a home’s staff-network connections and its centrality within the greater network strongly predict COVID-19 cases. Traditional federal regulatory metrics of nursing home quality are unimportant in predicting outbreaks, […] The post Nursing home networks and Covid-19 appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

And the results ain’t always pretty: The number of high-risk drinkers nearly doubled in lockdown and was worst in groups of higher social class, a government report shows. Here is the (gated) Telegraph article.  Part of the mechanism of course may be that the “groups of higher social class” have not experienced the most severe […] The post The Great Psychometric test continues (U.K. fact of the day) appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

That is the new and excellent book by Richard Van Emden, and it covers how the British bureaucracy handled the reporting and identification of soldier corpses during and after the First World War.  Here is the author’s summary: Here is the story of the army’s hunt for legions of missing men.  How were they sought?  […] The post *Missing: The Need for Closure after the Great War* appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. New results on income inequality and the equity premium.  The premium should fall with the rise of the super-wealthy, because those people care less about a given level of risk. 2. Those new service sector jobs. 3. Fox in Berlin assembles impressive shoe collection. 4. “More than 50 years ago, the Serum Institute began […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

We show that increased job demands due to takeover threats and industry crises have significant adverse consequences for managers’ long-term health. Using hand-collected data on the dates of birth and death for more than 1,600 CEOs of large, publicly listed U.S. firms, we estimate that CEOs’ lifespan increases by around two years when insulated from […] The post CEO stress, aging, and death appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

In Why Are the Police in Charge of Road Safety? I argued for unbundling the police: Don’t use a hammer if you don’t need to pound a nail…the police have no expertise in dealing with the mentally ill or with the homeless–jobs like that should be farmed out to other agencies. Notice that we have […] The post Unbundling the Police in Kentucky appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: The Slave-Free Business Certification Act of 2020, introduced last week by Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, sounds unobjectionable, maybe even worthy. As the U.S. engages in a worthwhile and necessary reassessment of the role of slavery in its history, the bill would force […] The post How not to fight modern-day slavery appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

As I said in my post Frequent, Fast, and Cheap is Better than Sensitive we shouldn’t be comparing virus tests head-to-head, as if all tests serve the same purpose. Instead, we should recognize that tests have comparative advantages and a cheap, fast, frequent testing regime can be better in some respects than a slow, infrequent […] The post Infected versus Infectious appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.