Bookmarks (545)

But a new paper by Ryan Oprea challenges the idea that we even need something like Prospect Theory at all. Oprea hypothesizes that a lot of the seemingly “irrational” experimental behaviors are really just due to the excessive complexity of the task they’re being asked to do. He does an experiment where he takes away all the […] The post Noah Smith presents Ryan Oprea appeared...

1. Brazilian economists are seeking a kind of occupational licensing (Portuguese). 2. Sovereign AI project for Thailand? 3. Is there a law for AI “capacity density”? 4. More on AI and board games. 5. Royal Mint honors Macca with his own coin. 6. Tim Wu.  Or here. 7. o1 for a cancer therapy project. 8. […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

The latest sought-after home amenity? Personal fire hydrants. The logic is that when there’s a major disaster there may not be enough fire engines to protect every house in an area. If homeowners have their own hydrant ready to go—along with hoses, nozzles and adapters—and are trained to use it all, that could help reduce […] The post Markets in everything, personal fire hydrant...

Here is a gloomy account from Vladimir Mirov: Ruble depreciation will contribute to inflation even further, as Russia is continued to be heavily reliant on imports – this is a kind of self-sustaining spiral. I also strongly disagree with those who say that cheaper ruble is “good” for exporters and the budget. Exporters have yet […] The post How is the Russian war economy...

There is a new translation by Joseph Luzzi, and I find it an order of magnitude better than the older treatments.  It somehow communicates the strangeness of this work in a new and unprecedented way.  You can order it here. I also very much enjoyed my read through the letters of Paul Celan and Ingeborg […] The post *Vita Nuova*, und *Herzzeit* appeared first...

Here is the NYT announcement. I hope they consider Noah Smith as the obvious replacement… The post Paul Krugman retires as Times columnist appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to ABC. Noah's driveby style is perfect for Twitter, ... by StendellI'm laughing at all the Trump Poodles and Reactionary ... by Donald PretariNoah would not be a replacement; he would be a...

1. AI video for training embodied agents? 2. “She uses the hashtags “hemmaflickvän” and “hemmafru” (Swedish for stay-at-home girlfriend and housewife) and describes herself as a “soft girl” – an identity that embraces a softer, more feminine way of living rather than focussing on a career.”  Link here. 3. The firm as tax shelter. 4. […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

New paper in Science, A single mutation in bovine influenza H5N1 hemagglutinin switches specificity to human receptors. If that isn’t clear enough, here is the editor’s summary: In 2021, a highly pathogenic influenza H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b virus was detected in North America that is capable of infecting a diversity of avian species, marine mammals, and […] The post You Have Been Warned appeared first...

It was so much fun we ran over and did about ninety minutes instead of the usual hour.  Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is part of the episode summary: Tyler sat down with Stephen to discuss the state of Russian Buddhism today, how shamanism persists in modern Siberia, whether Siberia might ever […] The post My excellent Conversation with Stephen Kotkin...

That is the theme of a new Substack by Pieter Garicano, here is one excerpt: These answers, according to a recent paper by Olivier Coste and Yann Coatanlem, two French investors, miss the point: the reason more capital doesn’t flow towards high-leverage ideas in Europe is because the price of failure is too high. Coste estimates that, […] The post Why are no trillion dollar companies...

1. A corporate comms joke. 2. These South Korean Catholic priests should be bloggers. 3. Zero-based regulation by James Broughel.  And from Alex Adams. 4. RLHF propaganda posters, funny stuff. 5. Scientific breakthroughs of 2024. 6. Weather forecasting breakthroughs with AI. 7. Scott Sumner on Cowen and Tabarrok on money.  The key I think is […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

Bahala says each of his calls at Concentrix is monitored by an artificial intelligence (AI) program that checks his performance. He says his volume of calls has increased under the AI’s watch. At his previous call center job, without an AI program, he answered at most 30 calls per eight-hour shift. Now, he gets through […] The post Before AI replaces you, it will...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one bit: Fortunately, there is new research. We have entered the age where innovative methods of measurement, such as computer vision and deep learning, can reveal how American life has changed. Researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research compiled footage of four urban public […] The post Using AI to analyze changes in...

This is very interesting, and I think a world first: a local government in China has just sold its sky, literally. This is the government of Pingyin County, Jinan, Shandong Province who sold for 924 million yuan (approximately $130 million) a 30-year concession to operate and maintain its low-altitude economic projects to a company called […] The post China markets in everything appeared first...

1. Acemoglu on liberalism. 2. These names are not amongst the nine billion names of God. 3. Russ Roberts podcast with the translator of Life and Fate. 4. The Baby Money Index.  Qatar is number three. 5. Lessons from working in an art gallery, excellent post recommended. 6. Korean martial law and trading opportunities. The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION....

Info finance is Vitalik Buterin’s term for combining things like prediction markets and news. Indeed, a prediction market like Polymarket is “a betting site for the participants and a news site for everyone else.” Here’s an incredible instantiation of the idea from Packy McCormick. As I understand it, betting odds are drawn from Polymarket, context […] The post Info Finance has a Future! appeared...

A unilateral pause won’t be as helpful as Musk and Ramaswamy seem to think. Many businesses, especially big businesses, have to certify their legal compliance to government agencies—most notably via financial reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission, where false certifications can trigger criminal penalties under Sarbanes-Oxley. Few will feel comfortable ignoring rules that are […] The post Nicholas Bagley on DOGE appeared first...

It is now plausible to envision scenarios in which global demand for crude oil falls to essentially zero by the end of this century, driven by improvements in clean energy technologies, adoption of stringent climate policies, or both. This paper asks what such a demand decline, when anticipated, might mean for global oil supply. One […] The post The end of oil? appeared first...

Stanford Review: …Several freshmen I have talked to have bemoaned their mandatory COLLEGE classes that are contract graded, meaning that students will receive an A if their work is turned in on time regardless of quality. One frosh even told me that all of her first quarter classes are contract graded. How does this set students up […] The post Interview with Jonathan Levin, economist and...

1. Are humble scientists trusted more? 2. I thought this was hilarious (you won’t), that just shows how far gone I am. 3. The labor market regulatory culture that is Belgium. 4. FBI markets in everything. 5. Without weight loss drugs, Danish gdp growth would be about zero. 6. Chicago’s state capacity crisis. 7. The […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

Today on the MR Podcast Tyler and I discuss the “New Monetary Economics”. Here’s the opening TABARROK: Today we’re going to be talking about the new monetary economics. Now, perhaps the first thing to say is that it’s not new anymore. The new monetary economics refers to a set of claims and ideas about monetary economics […] The post Marginal Revolution Podcast–The New Monetary Economics!...

Definitive, this is by far the best biography of Mondrian we have or are likely to get.  I am a longstanding Mondrian fan, and have read much about him, but learned new things on virtually every page.  The book is also fun, here is one excerpt: Initially Mondrian did not respond at all [to a […] The post The Nicholas Fox Weber biography of...

Poor Things The Delinquents [Los Delincuentes], from Argentina, tragicomedy The Teacher’s Lounge All of Us Strangers Anselm The Zone of Interest Smoke Sauna Sisterhood You Can Call Me Bill Lynch/Oz Miracle Worker, that is a very old Arthur Penn movie, about Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan.  Interesting throughout, and some parts were stupendously good, especially […] The post Best movies of 2024 appeared first...

The most dismal stockpickers in the cabinet included the minister for health, labour and welfare, the arm of government ultimately responsible for the $1.45tn Government Pension Investment Fund, the world’s largest pool of retirement savings. Here is more from the FT, via the excellent Samir Varma. The post Japan fact of the day appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to EdR. How...

1. I am usually loathe to turn MR space over to negative attacks on others, but every now and then I feel there is a real contribution to be made.  I have been saying for years that Michael Pettis flat out does not understand international economics, and yet somehow he is treated as an authority […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

The case is straightforward: Google pays firms like Apple billions of dollars to make its search engine the default. (N.B. I would rephrase this as Apple charges Google billions of dollars to make its search engine the default–a phrasing which matters if you want to understand what is really going on. But set that aside […] The post Some Simple Economics of the Google...

After six games the match is tied.  Observers agree that the games have been of low quality and mostly not very interesting.  Both players have been reluctant to exploit potential opportunities.  If you don’t already know, Ding has been suffering from some version of “mental illness” (by his own account), and Gukesh, while extremely talented, […] The post The show so far, Ding vs....

John Ma, Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State from the Early Iron Age to the End of Antiquity.  I didn’t read much of this book, mostly because it is too good for me to understand just how good it is.  Que triste!  It is like those GPT “advanced reasoning” answers that also […] The post What I’ve been reading appeared first...

What to see, what to do, and where to eat?  I thank you all in advance for your suggestions… The post Cochin (Kochi) bleg appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsI have nostalgia of the great coffee I had at the canteen ... by VictorIn reply to commentor. As of August 2024, news reported that ... by SalimVisit Vallarpadathamma (the Basilica), which celebrated its...

Worries about the economy, conflicts abroad and uncertainty over the election pushed readers toward the publication in droves. Bible sales are up 22% in the U.S. through the end of October, compared with the same period last year, according to book tracker Circana BookScan. By contrast, total U.S. print book sales were up less than […] The post Sales of Bibles are booming appeared...

Zeynep Tufekci writing in the NYTimes hits the nail on the head: The H5N1 avian flu, having mutated its way across species, is raging out of control among the nation’s cattle, infecting roughly a third of the dairy herds in California alone. Farmworkers have so far avoided tragedy, as the virus has not yet acquired […] The post A Bird Flu Pandemic Would Be...

I would say that overall I am more suspicious of “assisted dying” policies than are many of my libertarian friends.  I am fine with legalizing suicide, but I get nervous when a state — especially a less than fully competent, fiscally strapped state — enters the picture with so much influence over the proceedings.  In […] The post Assisted dying in the UK appeared...

For reasons you can guess at, debanking has been the topic du jour in my Twitter feed. I will only report the following.  On this last Friday, both Alex and I (coincidentally) each wanted to send money through the U.S. banking system.  For each of us it was a major pain, and for no good […] The post Debankings appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION....

I will be doing a Conversation with him.  So what should I ask? The post What should I ask Scott Sumner? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Ben G. When TV became a writer's medium the ... by So Much For SubtletyThe obvious question is what is left for Tyler to ask if Sumner ... by So Much For Subtlety1. Who...

1. Hypotheses as to why fentanyl deaths are declining (FT).  Interestingly, the decline is spreading from east to west. 2. How to convince a bot to send you 47k. 3. An early warning system to detect geoengineering (NYT). 4. Using LLMs to learn Indian classical music. 5. The new Notre Dame what do you think? […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

Max T. at Maximum Progress shows that between 1992 and 2003 US literacy rates fell dramatically within every single educational category but the aggregate literacy rate didn’t budge.  A great example of Simpson’s Paradox! The easiest way to see how this is possible is just to imagine that no one’s literacy level changes but everyone moves […] The post Literacy Rates and Simpson’s Paradox appeared...

Here is the link, “Prohibits fraudulently taking money by “pretended fortune telling.”” Seen referenced somewhere on Twitter. The post Massachusetts has occupational licensing for fortune tellers appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Tommy. Great suggestion for the eucharist. by stickup boySo are macro forecasters in violation of this or no by JJIn reply to Tommy. “A scam is quite different.” And...

This paper examines how unauthorized immigration affects the fiscal health of local governments in the United States. Using detailed data on unauthorized immigrants’ countries of origin and arrival dates from the Syracuse TRAC database, we isolate immigration flows driven by social, economic, and political conditions in source countries. We predict local immigration patterns using a […] The post Unauthorized Immigration and Local Government Finances...

China’s long-term bond yields have fallen below Japan’s for the first time, as investors bet that the world’s second-biggest economy will become bogged down by the deflation that has long afflicted its neighbour. A rally in 30-year Chinese government bonds has pushed their yield down from 4 per cent in late 2020 to 2.21 per […] The post China (Japan) fact of the day...

1. Norway Shrugged (note also that Magnus is moving to Spain). 2. Megan McArdle podcast on food and other matters, with Razib Khan. 3. A funny kind of futarchy (this is in jest and is not true): “Mr. Putin just declared a new Red Line. If the Russian Ruble falls to 115.00 is considered escalation […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

That is the subtitle of a new paper by Karol J. Borowiecki, Yichu Wang, and Marc T. Law.  Here is the abstract: How do financial constraints affect individual innovation and creativity? Understanding this relationship is essential, especially when innovation and creativity rely on the capacity to take risks. To investigate this, we focus on Western […] The post Does Money Affect Creativity in the...

Overall it has been a very good listening year for me.  I spent a good bit of time relearning the Shostakovich String Quartets in various recordings, most of all the Fitzwilliam String Quartet.  I made more of a concerted attempt to learn the musics of Carl Nielsen and Kalevi Aho and Kurt Weill.  Here are […] The post Classical music listening for the year...

Here is the link. The post Germany chart of the day appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Joe Bern. The chart you linked displays change ... by TrinityIn reply to Prof. Emeritus. “In the third quarter of this ... by DismalistIn reply to Buck_Mulligan. That's interesting if true. The ... by KalebergIn reply to Anon. So you are angry American fracking...

1. The Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi has a Cinnabon on its ground floor. 2. “The UK police detained 3.3k+ people for ‘online trolling’ in one year, and they’re *doubling down* on this policy.” 3. More minimum wage debates. 4. Can architecture reveal the spread of purdah? 5. Drones to map and follow buses? 6. […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

It’s been a while so time to re-up my 2004 post on thanksgiving and the lessons of political economy. Here it is with no indent: It’s one of the ironies of American history that when the Pilgrims first arrived at Plymouth rock they promptly set about creating a communist society.  Of course, they were soon […] The post Thanksgiving and the Lessons of Political...

That is the new book by Marty Makary.  Since Makary has been nominated to head the FDA, I am surprised this work is not receiving more attention. In the book, Makary is sympathetic to HRT, skeptical about a lot of antibiotic use (microbiome issues), says it is fine to ingest the cholesterol in eggs, and […] The post *Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It...

1. George Gissing on LLMs. 2. The decline of Shanghai as a financial center (FT). 3. “Liberal” as a political adjective in English, and its history. 4. Aphantasia and mental modeling, and how multimodal AI will win. 5. Classical liberalism and classical music. 6. Princeton students interview Jason Furman. 7. Back of the envelope tariff […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

It’s been said that the radical left often ends up duplicating the policies of the radical right, just under different names and justifications, e.g. separate but equal, scientific thinking is “white” thinking and so forth. Here’s another example from Salim Furth: the re-creation of redlining. Redlining was the practice of making it more difficult to […] The post Environmental “Justice” Recreates Redlining appeared first...

Trump has announced the appointment, so it is worth thinking through a few matters.  While much of the chatter is about the Great Barrington Declaration, I would note that Bhattacharya has a history of focusing on the costs of obesity.  So perhaps we can expect more research funding for better weight loss drugs, in addition […] The post Jay Bhattacharya at the NIH appeared...

Via the excellent Bryan Caplan. The post Who Americans spend their time with, by age appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsSad plot… all that time spent with co-workers. by Stephen LindsayThought there would be more sole proprietorships than ... by Sheriff JohnIn reply to Lord Action. Ugh, yes. Building as many social ... by kwaziiIn reply to Scott Mauldin. Definitely an improvement to...