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I’ve now seen a few episodes, and I have a few comments on the chess: 1. No player, including Magnus Carlsen, can become that good that quickly, without a lot of learning and losing along the way. 2. They show the players moving too fast, though for dramatic reasons this is easy enough to understand. […] The post *Queen’s Gambit* (no real spoilers in...

My colleague Bryan Caplan has some comments on the topic, here is also Robin Hanson here and here.  I think both are trying to fit the Covid battle too much into a framework of equating marginal benefit and marginal cost.  While that MB = MC condition is true tautologically for my views as well, I […] The post The non-linearity of Covid-19 response appeared...

After many years of decline in violent behavior among adolescents in several Western countries, recent official statistics indicate a possible trend change. So far, knowledge on how this change is related to co-occurring changes in leisure time activities is limited. Using two cross-sectional surveys from Oslo, Norway, this study found substantial increases in the prevalence […] The post The changing culture that is Norway?...

Here is his home page.  He has been at Stanford Business School since 1964, and born in Geneva, Nebraska.  Here is his personal website.  Here is his Wikipedia page.  He has a doctorate in business administration from Harvard, but actually no economics Ph.D. (bravo!)  Here is the Nobel designation. Most of all Wilson is an […] The post Robert B. Wilson, Nobel Laureate appeared...

Or is chess a sport? First Magnus Carlsen “privatizes” chess competition, naming the major tournament after himself, setting all of the rules, and becoming the residual claimant on the income stream. He reshapes the entire format into a seven set, four months-long series of shorter tournaments, consisting of multiple games per day, 15 minutes per […] The post The greatest gaming performance ever? appeared...

The clock has hit midnight in Las Vegas! Here’s the crowd waiting to get into @theDlasvegas in #DTLV. 🎰 pic.twitter.com/sp6gNwsVPz — FOX5 Las Vegas (@FOX5Vegas) June 4, 2020 What might be some alternate (if possibly slightly unfair) titles?  How about “A Swede by Any Other Name” or “America > Sweden”? “Refuting Friedman-Savage, convexity all over” […] The post Solve for the equilibrium appeared first...

I just finished watching one of Chess24.com’s Magnus Carlsen-affiliated rapid on-line chess tournaments, when today (a day later?) I see that another tournament has started.  And with Magnus himself playing, as well as other world-class players.  Note that Magnus both plays in these tournaments as the #1 attraction, and he owns an equity share in […] The post The new economics of chess appeared...

My last Bloomberg column was co-authored with Garry Kasparov, here is one excerpt: Another positive sign for UBI is that most Americans seem keen to return to their workplaces. One fear has been that UBI would lead to a couch-potato culture, with people choosing to stay at home even when they’re finally able to leave. […] The post Is the coronavirus making UBI look...

For $20, fans of German soccer club Borussia can have a cut-out of themselves placed in the stands at BORUSSIA-PARK. According to the club, over 12,000 cut-outs have been ordered and 4,500 have already been put in place. Here is the tweet and photo. And some sports bettors are betting on simulated sporting events.  (Again, […] The post Coronavirus sports markets in everything, multiple...

Put aside the people with small (and not so small) children at home, and observe whether the pandemic has boosted or destroyed their productivity.  That is one measure for how they handle stress, and whether you might wish to trust them with a start-up or some other major project requiring quick adaptation and performance under […] The post The world is running a disturbing...

Outsiders and critics often think of YouTube and computer gaming as entertaining and quite superficial modes of cultural consumption.  I have increasingly moved away from that point of view, and to pursue the argument I will note that lately my favorite YouTube video is Magnus Carlsen doing 100 chess endgames in 30 minutes.  That is […] The post Toward a simple theory of YouTube...

Why didn’t ancient Rome have Dungeons and Dragons? I am talking, of course, about the game. Anton Howes presents the general problem: A theme I keep coming back to is that a lot of inventions could have been invented centuries, if not millennia, before they actually were. My favourite example is John Kay’s flying shuttle, […] The post Why Didn’t Ancient Rome have Dungeons...

Americans are worse at The Price Is Right than they used to be. On the game show, which has been running since 1972, four contestants are asked to guess the price of consumer products, like washing machines, microwaves, or jumbo packs of paper towels. The person who gets closest to the actual price, without going over, gets […] The post Why are people getting worse at...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: Maybe Trump’s threat to attack cultural sites was not meant literally, but rather as a brash reminder that his retaliatory actions will not be constrained by world opinion, international law or the views of American elites. If so, such a signal, to be effective, […] The post How to retaliate against foreign adversaries...

The betting markets have stayed in the 48-55 range for Brexit by year’s end, even after the suspension announcement.  That to me does not sound like “hard Brexit hell or high water.” I would sooner think that Boris Johnson wishes to see through a relabeled version of the Teresa May deal, perhaps with an extra […] The post Boris Johnson’s suspension of Parliament appeared...

After a few years of only so-so (but still world #1) results, Magnus has I believe won five tournaments in a row this year and he is leading in the sixth, currently running in Croatia. He recently stated that he has learned some new chess ideas from AlphaZero, but more importantly he has shown up […] The post The new and improved Magnus Carlsen...