~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (26)

President Biden has made a big deal of simplifying fees: The FTC is proposing a rule that…would ban businesses from charging hidden and misleading fees and require them to show the full price up front. The rule would also require companies disclose up front whether fees are refundable. This would mean no more surprise resort fees […] The post Why is the Biden Administration Against...

In my 2011 book, Launching the Innovation Renaissance, I wrote: At times, teacher pay in the United States seems more like something from Soviet-era Russia than 21st-century America. Wages for teachers are low, egalitarian and not based on performance. We pay physical education teachers about the same as math teachers despite the fact that math […] The post Pay For Performance Increases Performance (Water...

Here’s my talk on teaching the super simple Solow model which Tyler and I present in our principles textbook, Modern Principles. Here are the slides. The post Teaching the Super Simple Solow Model appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsAgain, US-centrism is undignified and poor scholarship. ... by Aus-econIn reply to SimonG. Did not watch the whole video but perhaps ... by johnGood stuff....

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  You can tell he knows what an interview is!  At the same time, he understands this differs from many of his other venues and he responds with flying colors.  Here is the episode summary: Tyler sat down with Fareed to discuss what he learned from Khushwant Singh as […] The post My Conversation with Fareed Zakaria appeared...

The Solow model is a foundational model for understanding economic growth. Yet it’s typically not taught to principles students because it’s considered too difficult. In Modern Principles, however, Tyler and I develop a super simple version of the model that is fun to teach and accessible to students of all levels. I’ll be talking about […] The post Teaching the Solow Model appeared first...

Bryan Caplan has a good post on out-of-state tuition: [State schools] almost always charge students from their own state much lower tuition. In the most recent data, average out-of-state tuition for four-year colleges was $26,382, versus $9,212 for in-state — roughly a 3:1 ratio. I’ve argued for a long time that an enterprising lawyer ought to sue […] The post The Puzzling Law and Economics of...

Thomas is at the Templeton Foundation, here is the link (with transcript), here is one bit: Tom: …So, I know that you’re a voracious reader, you’re immensely curious. Going back to your childhood, what were some of your favorite books during some of those formative years? Tyler: Well, when I was very small, my favorite books […] The post My podcast with Thomas Burnett appeared...

Here is the video, audio, and transcript, taped in his Apollo office in NYC.  Here is the episode summary: Marc Rowan, co-founder and CEO of Apollo Global Management, joined Tyler to discuss why rising interest rates won’t hurt Apollo’s profitability, why liabilities have traditionally been the weak spot in insurance, why the concept of liquidity […] The post My excellent Conversation with Marc Rowan...

Please apply and send your students to the 2024 Public Choice Outreach Conference! The conference is a crash course in public choice. It’s entirely free. Indeed scholarships are available! More details in the poster. Please pass around. Applications are here! Here is a pdf of the poster, please circulate. Outreach Conference Flyer 2024 – 2 The post Public Choice Outreach 2024! appeared first on...

Via Francis Santora, Hudson County, NJ. The post Claude 3 Opus as economic analyst appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsClaude 3: what's the error bar on GDP? Can you run your Monte ... by rsmIn reply to Of course. I am fasting. The earth has a creator, ... by EquestrianIn reply to Taylor. The model it built clearly suffered from ... by VulcidianIn...

419 Swedish economists were asked which economics concepts are most important to understand and manage economics "for an individual" and "for a citizen", respectively. Opportunity cost was the most popular answer to both questions.https://t.co/wGQNdmzyrI pic.twitter.com/OoPK2xEMrX — Stefan Schubert (@StefanFSchubert) March 4, 2024 The post Swedish economists seem to be doing OK appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to mkt42. What is the...

A superb video on the history and mathematics of options pricing from Veritasium. The post The Black-Scholes-Merton Options Pricing Equation appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to rsm. It didn't at first. Customers started ... by JoshSo when the good professor says that derivatives are many ... by rsmIn reply to EdR. Does it say anywhere that Black thought ... by rsmIn...

In the political economy chapter of our textbook, Modern Principles of Economics, Tyler and I discuss how voters appear especially responsive to economic conditions in the year of an election. Politicians who want to be reelected, therefore, are wise to do whatever they can to increase personal disposable income and reduce inflation in the year […] The post Nixonian Politics and Student Debt Cancellations...

Jon Klick, Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (and a distinguished GMU econ grad), argues that Penn should “abandon the fiction that holistic evaluation is anything more than a way to hide discretion.” Instead, Penn should set a standardized test score floor and then randomly choose its admittees from the pool […] The post Random Admissions Above the Bar appeared...

Nash won the Nobel prize in Economics for his 2-page proof of Nash equilibrium, among the slightest of his achievements. Nash’s truly staggering contributions were in his embedding theorems, according to Gromov “one of the main achievements of mathematics of the twentieth century”. In this excellent talk, Cédric Villani gives an accessible guide to these […] The post Nash’s Contributions to Mathematics appeared first...

Using a quantitative heterogeneous-agent model calibrated to Korea, we find that fertility would be 28% higher in the absence of the status externality and that childlessness in the poorest quintile would fall from five to less than one percent. We then explore the effects of various government policies. A pro-natal transfer or an education tax […] The post How much does status competition lower...

Why does schooling in much of the developing world not result in much in the way of increased skills? Maybe because education bureaucrats in these counties want obedient citizens more than literate, numerate, informed citizens. In a discrete choice experiment in which bureaucrats in education were asked to make trade-offs between foundational literacy, completion of secondary […] The post Literacy or Loyalty? appeared first on...

We discussed how the insights of Hayek, Keynes, Smith, and other great economists help us make sense of AI, growth, risk, human nature, anarchy, central planning, and much more. Dwarkesh is one of the very best interviewers around, here are the links.  If Twitter is blocked to you, here is the transcript, here is Spotify, […] The post My new podcast with Dwarkesh Patel...

In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when […] The post In Praise of Non-conformity appeared first...

That is the focus of my latest Bloomberg column, 2x the normal length.  I cannot cover all the points, but here is one excerpt: The larger theme is becoming evident: AI will radically disrupt power relations in society. AI may severely limit, for instance, the status and earnings of the so-called “wordcel” class. It will […] The post What are the actual dangers of...

The Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University will be hosting another Summer Institute on the History of Economics from June 3-12, 2024. The program is designed for students in graduate programs in economics, though students in graduate school in other fields as well as newly minted PhDs will also be considered. […] The post Duke History of Economic Thought Summer...

History of Economic Thought syllabus The honor code applies to this class. Accommodations will be made for disabilities in accord with the policies of George Mason University. Your grade is 2/3 based on your paper, 1/3 based on a final exam. You are required to submit short progress reports on your paper on a regular […] The post My history of economic thought reading...

He is starting a new podcast and I am perhaps the first episode?  There is video and text and audio.  Here is an excerpt: Lindsey: Did they recognize early on that you were different and that they had a job to do to push you, or no? Cowen: Well, my father thought I was weird, so he […] The post My podcast with Brink Lindsey appeared...

By Andras Ek, forthcoming in the Journal of Political Economy: This paper estimates differences in human capital as country-of-origin-specific labor productivity terms in firm production functions, making it immune to wage discrimination concerns. After accounting for education and experience, estimated human capital varies by a factor of around three between the 90th and the 10th […] The post Cultural Values and Productivity appeared first...