~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (566)

An excellent piece, here is one excerpt I enjoyed in particular: Cowen reads the John Maynard Keynes of The General Theory “as writing about an economy where uncertainty was much higher than usual, investment was highly unstable, fiscal policy was unable to fill in the gap, there was a risk or even reality of a downward spiral […] The post Robert Whaples reviews *GOAT* appeared first...

1. Terminator metal. 2. An RCT on the economic benefits of vision correction. 3. “Claude 3 Opus is roughly as persuasive as humans.“ 4. Jon Haidt responds to the Nature review.  And Greg Lukianoff with his First Amendment concerns. 5. Interview with Nicholas Tabarrok, who works in the movies. 6. Samo Burja skeptical on nuclear. […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

At the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte’s final battle, more than 10,000 men and as many horses were killed in a single day. Yet today, archaeologists often struggle to find physical evidence of the dead from that bloody time period. Plowing and construction are usually the culprits behind missing historical remains, but they can’t […] The post The $20 bill gets picked up,...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one bit: …let me offer another theory: The anti-lab-grown-meat movement is about conservative cultural insecurity — the fear that, without the force of law, some conservative cultural norms will fade away… Imagine that lab-grown meat proves feasible at a reasonable cost. It might end […] The post Why is there a movement to...

Yes, India is doing well but the picture could be much better: During Modi’s tenure, GFCF [gross fixed capital formation] as a percentage of GDP declined and has remained low until the post-pandemic recovery. In fact the highest level of GFCF as a percentage of GDP during the first nine years of Modi’s leadership is […] The post Modi and investment appeared first on...

1. Skepticism about the beauty premium? 2. “On a cellular level, younger generations seem to be aging faster than their forebears.” (speculative) 3. Interview with Merve Emre. 4. William Stanley Jevons and eclipses (NYT).  And an Amtrak train ride across the country is less carbon-efficient than flying (NYT). 5. The ascent of high school wrestlers. […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

Congratulations!  Here is the AEA announcement and summary of his work. The post Philipp Strack wins the J.B. Clark award appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsTalking of prize winners Peter Higgs has died. by deariemeIn reply to rayward. Ah Bonn, the most rigorous math ... by DaveIn reply to dearieme. The only correct way of spell it is ... by JamalIn reply to...

3 Body Problem (Netflix): Great! A captivating mix of big ideas, a compelling mystery, and spectacular set-pieces like the Cultural Revolution, strange worlds, the ship cutting and more. Of course, there are some weaknesses. 3 Body Problem falters in its portrayal of genius, rendering the British scientists as too normal, overlooking the obsessiveness, ambition, and […] The post What to Watch appeared first on...

1. Roger Lewis, Erotic Vagrancy: Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.  An amazing book, full of life and energy on every page, and yes there are 605 of them.  Imagine if Camille Paglia had stuck with it and produced case studies.  The main problem is simply that most people don’t know or care about […] The post What I’ve been reading appeared first...

-Barbenheimer-Eras Tour-Swift-Kelce-huge football ratings-Sphere-Ohtani/Wemby-a fun Oscars-women’s basketball-heel Rock/Wrestlemania Avengers Endgame Pretty nice run for sports/pop culture. https://t.co/xdH3yH7hic — Conor Sen (@conorsen) April 8, 2024 The post The culture that is U.S.A. appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to jimmy. His hatred of Seth Rollins for betraying ... by Ali ChoudhuryIn reply to mkt42. Oh, I forgot Guadians of the Galaxy 1 and...

1. NYT symposium on smart phones and childhood.  And when do young female suicide rates start rising?  Tweet here.  And “Gen Alpha (my kid’s generation) has already optimized out of it and have figured out how to do the social play they need to in the new medium.” 2. Prize money for prompts. 3. Bridgewater […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

It’s long been argued that the means of production influence social, cultural and psychological processes. Rice farming, for example, requires complex irrigation systems under communal management and intense, coordinated labor. Thus, it has been argued that successful rice farming communities tend to develop people with collectivist orientations, and cultural ways of thinking that emphasize group […] The post Cultivating Minds: The Psychological Consequences of...

Jon Hartley is one I know, here is the abstract: This study pushes our understanding of research reliability by reproducing and replicating claims from 110 papers in leading economic and political science journals. The analysis involves computational reproducibility checks and robustness assessments. It reveals several patterns. First, we uncover a high rate of fully computationally […] The post 350+ coauthors study reproducibility in economics...

We often hear today that Wokeism and Political Correctness are gradually receding.  Contrary to this opinion, I think that this phenomenon is gradually being “normalized,” widely accepted even by those who intimately doubt it, and practiced by the majority of academic and state institutions.  This is why it deserves more than ever our criticism — […] The post Can you guess who wrote this...

Collaborations in economics across genders increased (12.5% increase of women coauthors per 100 men-authored papers) after #MeToo . But senior researchers reduced their new collaborations with junior women by 33% per 100 senior-authored papers. https://t.co/zIxDF2Hukx pic.twitter.com/2YplnMTFoy — Florian Ederer (@florianederer) April 7, 2024 The post Economists do it with models? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         Comments“And 2004-2020 is a long time horizon during...

1. Can the Left be happy? (Ross D. in the NYT) 2. Explosive growth from AI automation?  (This paper is economically literature, and uses some simple models) 3. James C. Scott, “Academic Diary of an Iconoclast” (academic gate). 4. Some more serious evidence that rising population density predicts lower fertility uh-oh. 5. Liberia fact of […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on...

Konstantin emails me a question: Hey Tyler! You said you tried coffee just once, at a coffee ceremony in an Ethiopian village, as coffee probably originates in Ethiopia. What else would you try (or do) only due to its provenance? What else have you tried or done only due to its provenance? I used to always try […] The post When does provenance justify a consumption...

One MR reader, Luca Piron, writes to me:  I found myself puzzled by a thought you expressed during your interview with Professor Haidt. In particular, from my understanding you suggested that in the near future AI will be able to sum up the content a user may want to see into a digest, so that they can […] The post A simple model of AI and...

1. Zvi annotates the CWT with Jon Haidt. 2. How is bird flu spreading in cows? 3. Not sure I believe in these kinds of correlations, but here are some results suggesting that automation leads to less religion. 4. Claims about GPTs.  Complicated but interesting. 5. Ezra Klein and Nilay Patel on AI and the […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

Zimbabwe has introduced a new gold-backed currency called ZiG – the name stands for “Zimbabwe Gold”. It is the latest attempt to stabilise an economy that has lurched from crisis to crisis for the past 25 years. Unveiling the new notes, central bank governor John Mushayavanhu said the ZiG would be structured, and set at […] The post Zimbabwe launches new gold-backed currency appeared...

NYTimes: Treasury officials say that they fear that elevated Chinese production targets are causing its firms to produce far more electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels than global markets can absorb, driving prices lower and disrupting production around the world. They fear that these spillovers will hurt businesses that are planning investments in the United […] The post Your Subsidies are Undercutting My Subsidies!...

I will be having a Conversation with him, and please note this is the conversation I want to have, not the one you want me to have.  So what should I ask?  Note that Joe has a new book coming out The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society.  That said, I also would […] The post What should I ask Joe Stiglitz?...

The mayor of an Italian island is attempting to solve an animal overpopulation problem with an unusual offer: free goats for anyone who can catch them. Riccardo Gullo, the mayor of Alicudi, in Sicily’s Aeolian archipelago, introduced an “adopt-a-goat” program when the small island’s wild goat population grew to six times the human population of […] The post Lockean homesteading for goats, bonus added...

Yes, I will be doing another Conversation with him.  Here is the first one, in Norway with a live audience.  I am very much enjoying his new book Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist.  Slavoj is one of the very few CWT guests (can you guess the others?) who can handle pretty much any […] The post What should I ask Slavoj Žižek?...