News
Entertainment
Science & Technology
Life
Culture & Art
Hobbies
News
Entertainment
Science & Technology
Culture & Art
Hobbies
Ryan Bourne on the British growth deterioration - Marginal REVOLUTION
From the London Times (gated), he starts from my earlier MR discussion of the topic: Yet, from a policy perspective, identifying what changed after 2008 is less interesting than what could have been done better. Cowen’s question was ignited by a British entrepreneur telling him that the UK’s planning laws explain much of the enduring […]
Migrants at Sea: Unintended Consequences of Search and Rescue Operations - Marginal REVOLUTION
Many countries are facing and resisting strong migratory pressure, fueling irregular migration. In response to mounting deaths in the Central Mediterranean, European nations intensified rescue operations in 2013. We develop a model of irregular migration to identify the effects of these operations. We find that smugglers responded by sending boats in adverse weather and utilizing […]
What is the problem in Australia? (from my email) - Marginal REVOLUTION
From Khalil Menaf Hegarty, note that an Australian dollar is worth about 65 cents. I also won’t double indent: “There are a series of economy-wide, labour-related problems in Australia that policymakers appear incapable of tackling in a coherent way. First up, this is a very good summary of some key national indicators around Australia’s per capita recession. […]
My Conversation with the excellent Coleman Hughes - Marginal REVOLUTION
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is part of the episode summary: Coleman and Tyler explore the implications of colorblindness, including whether jazz would’ve been created in a color-blind society, how easy it is to disentangle race and culture, whether we should also try to be ‘autism-blind’, and Coleman’s personal experience with lookism […]
Wednesday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. Roots of Progress blog building fellowship. 2. MIE: buy a decommissioned USG supercomputer. 3. Paul Auster, RIP, here is a recent tweet of mine on Auster and writing. 4. A reconstruction of ancient Greek music. 5. Talent reform for Whitehall? 6. What were the Roman dodecahedrons used for? 7. New paper on housing supply […]
Trump and the Fed - Marginal REVOLUTION
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one bit: Trump advisers have been drafting plans to limit significantly the operating autonomy of the Fed. The Trump campaign has disavowed these plans, but the general ideas have been spreading in Republican circles, as evidenced by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 report. Trump himself has called for a weaker […]
Are Hungarian pro-fertility policies failing? - Marginal REVOLUTION
Hungary-like fertility policies flatly don't work. Hungary has dedicated major resources to this – no taxes for 3+ kids, debt forgiveness, major subsidies for homes. It's actually equivalent to ~5% of their GDP. The US military is 3.2%, so big spending. Nothing happened. https://t.co/ICmu43cieu pic.twitter.com/VNWRctggwc — Hunter📈🌈 (@StatisticUrban) April 29, 2024 Or is it too […]
What should I ask Philip Ball? - Marginal REVOLUTION
Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him. Here is Wikipedia: Philip Ball (born 1962) is a British science writer. For over twenty years he has been an editor of the journal Nature, for which he continues to write regularly. He is a regular contributor to Prospect magazine and a columnist for Chemistry World, Nature Materials, and BBC Future. Ball holds a […]
False Necessity is the Mother of Dumb Invention - Marginal REVOLUTION
Recently, I have seen two innovations in retail, AI cashiers and human cashiers but working remotely from another country such as the Philippines and making much lower wages than domestic workers (examples are below). I fear that the AI cashiers will outcompete the Philippine cashiers leading to the worst of all worlds, AIs doing low-productivity […]
Will Japan have a financial crisis anytime soon? - Marginal REVOLUTION
The odds are against this, and most market prices are well-behaved, noting that the yen was hitting 160 to the dollar. More importantly, Japanese stocks have bounced back over the last two years, over the same time period that the yen has been weakening. That is one marker that this is a needed adjustment, rather […]
What I've been reading - Marginal REVOLUTION
Benjamin Nathans, To The Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement. The definitive book on its topic, consisting largely of profiles of dissidents. The title is taken from a longstanding dissident toast, and yet they won eventually, sort of. So your cause isn’t hopeless either. Scott Hodge, Taxocracy: What […]
Tuesday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. Greenpeace vs. Golden Rice. And Michael Magoon essays on Progress Studies. 2. Brutalist churches. 3. Good piece on Derek Parfit. 4. The case for permitting reform is stronger than you think. 5. GPT2 speculation. 6. UK metascience research grant call. 7. Scott Alexander now has a proper response to Robin on health care. And […]
Progress in Argentina? - Marginal REVOLUTION
Monthly inflation in Argentina could fall below 10% in April, a sign that the government’s policies are working, President Javier Milei said Sunday in a phone interview with LN+. “Wages are already starting to beat inflation,” Milei said. “The fight against inflation is yielding results.” Argentina’s monthly inflation slowed more than expected in March, cooling for the third consecutive […]
Public Choice Outreach! - Marginal REVOLUTION
There are just a few spots left for the Public Choice Outreach Conference! This is a great opportunity to hear from excellent speakers including Garett Jones, Peter Boettke, Johanna Mollerstrom and more! The conference is a crash course in public choice. It’s entirely free. Indeed scholarships are available! More details in the poster. Please pass […]
On deficient British growth (from the comments) - Marginal REVOLUTION
UK is a finance economy and EU/world ex-US has had terrible stock market performance since then. Germany survived (not thrived) on manufacturing (also better positioned vis-a-vis Eastern Europe), France on luxuries and maybe a bit on tourism, Nordics on oil, Benelux on ??? (not sure, but they’re smart cookies – probably mini-Germanies). UK ceded manufacturing […]
Monday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. Self-navigating car navigating traffic in India. 2. Do progressive prosecutors lead to higher crime rates? 3. “…we find that consumers form more negative impressions of and are less persuaded by influencers who disable social media comments.” 4. California bill to regulate AI models. 5. “Yann LeCun says in 10 years we won’t have smartphones, […]
Dean Ball on the new California AI bill (from my email) - Marginal REVOLUTION
SB 1047 was written, near as I can tell, to satisfy the concerns of a small group of people who believe widespread diffusion of AI constitutes an existential risk to humanity. It contains references to hypothetical models that autonomously engage in illegal activity causing tens of millions in damage and model weights that “escape” from […]
Updated estimates on immigration and wages - Marginal REVOLUTION
In this article we revive, extend and improve the approach used in a series of influential papers written in the 2000s to estimate how changes in the supply of immigrant workers affected natives’ wages in the US. We begin by extending the analysis to include the more recent years 2000-2022. Additionally, we introduce three important […]
Brexit and trade with the EU (from the comments) - Marginal REVOLUTION
These annecdotes do not reflect the data . From (remain leaning) UK in A Changing Europe https://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/UKICE-Trade-Tracker-Q1-24.pdf UK trade with the EU, as a per cent of total trade in volume terms in Q3 2023, was at its highest levels since Q2 2008. In Q4 2023, it increased further from 53.4% to 53.6%. This does […]
Sunday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. Lazarus Lake update. 2. Robin Hanson responds to Scott Alexander. I do not entirely agree with Robin on this one, but his rebuttal beats back the initial critique, which did not much consider overtreatment or medical error. I might add that studies of Christian Scientists and Amish also dent one’s faith in the very […]
Ross Douthat, telephone! (it's happening) - Marginal REVOLUTION
The Catholic advocacy group Catholic Answers released an AI priest called “Father Justin” earlier this week — but quickly defrocked the chatbot after it repeatedly claimed it was a real member of the clergy. Earlier in the week, Futurism engaged in an exchange with the bot, which really committed to the bit: it claimed it was a […]
Forthcoming growth winners? - Marginal REVOLUTION
I haven’t been following these countries closely, so I don’t have any “takes,” but I will start paying more attention: 1. Philippines: Growth has been averaging about six percent a year since 2012 (Economist link, gated). 2. Egypt: Has been averaging four percent a year growth, and more recently rising. The nation also seems to […]
Saturday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. NYT obituary for Michael Jensen. 2. Brain-like computer with water and salt? 3. More on the economics of non-compete agreements. 4. Chile is on a path to TFR of 1.0, and soon. 5. Women now author a majority of the U.S. books published. 6. Jail sentence for climate activist who targeted Degas sculpture. 7. […]
Culture splat (a few broad spoilers) - Marginal REVOLUTION
Challengers is a good and original movie. Imagine a 2024 rom com, except the behavior and conventions actually are taken from 2024, and with no apologies. The woman says the word “****ing” a lot, and no one treats this as inappropriate or unusual. There is bisexuality and poly. Society is feminized. Of course opinions will […]
Apportioning the causes of the UK growth shortfall - Marginal REVOLUTION
Take the basic non-growth of the UK economy since 2008 (productivity, real wages, per capita gdp) and compare it to their peer countries (which are those?). If you had to assign the causes of that shortfall to various factors, how would you do it? Recently I had lunch with a few well-informed Brits, and they […]
Why I don't think the USG will default - Marginal REVOLUTION
Public debt ratios in Portugal and Greece have declined at an unprecedented pace from their pandemic peak. via @DanielKral1 pic.twitter.com/D6Dux8zJsL — Philipp Heimberger (@heimbergecon) April 27, 2024 Greece of course did break the bank, but note the United States is much richer than those countries.
*Native Nations* - Marginal REVOLUTION
The authro is Kathleen Duval, and the subtitle is A Millennium in North America. This is an excellent book. Here is one excerpt, strung together by me from three separate pages: By 1400, the cities of Cahokia, Moundville, and the Huhugam were abandoned. People continued to live nearby and, in many cases, continued to use […]
Hassan Sayed, banned from Princeton? - Marginal REVOLUTION
Hassan Sayed, a fifth year PhD candidate in economics, it seems was banned from Princeton. Ostensibly for partaking in illegal demonstrations. I am not saying whether this is justified or not, as I do not know the circumstances. I can assure you I am fine with “being tough on students,” and I am far from […]
Friday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. Nandan Nilekani’s vision for the “Finternet” is to enable individuals to transfer any financial asset, in any amount, at any time, to anyone, anywhere in the world—cheaply, securely, and near-instantaneously. Andy Mukherjee summarizes it here. 2. Claims about Chinese LLMs. And LLMs and UK regulatory issues. 3. Stripe will start accepting global payments in […]
Post correction and retraction - Marginal REVOLUTION
Apologies! I took down my post based on this tweet, which upon further reflection struck me as premature. Does anyone have actual word from the would-be co-author as to what happened? Note that sometimes individuals don’t want to be co-authors on particular papers, especially if they are working in the private sector or for multilateral […]
What should I ask Paul Bloom? - Marginal REVOLUTION
Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him. Here is Wikipedia: Paul Bloom…is a Canadian American psychologist. He is the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of psychology and cognitive science at Yale University and Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. His research explores how children and adults understand the physical and social world, with special focus on language, […]
The work culture that is German, something about France too - Marginal REVOLUTION
In Germany, robots must obey the sabbath pic.twitter.com/vphLpXAA0e — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 25, 2024 As for Canada, “Justice Minister defends house arrest power for people feared to commit a hate crime in future.“
The Prisoner's Dilemma of Non-Competes - Marginal REVOLUTION
I agree with Tyler, that the FTC ban on non-competes is overly broad and not tailored to fields where the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. Additionally, the FTC’s authority to enact this rule, rather than Congress, is questionable. Nevertheless, I don’t think banning non-competes is without merit. The reason is not the standard Twitter-econ view that […]
Trade reform and economic growth - Marginal REVOLUTION
From the excellent Doug Irwin: Do trade reforms that significantly reduce import barriers lead to faster economic growth? In the twenty-five years since Rodríguez and Rodrik’s (2000) critical survey of empirical work on this question, new research has tried to overcome the various methodological problems that have plagued previous attempts to provide a convincing answer. […]
Thursday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. Works in Progress will be running an “Invisible College” in Cambridge, UK. 2. How much was Britain already industrializing in the 17th century? 3. Something, something, blah blah blah, but probably interesting? Research article is here. 4. “We find that once the sales of foreign exporters are taken into account, U.S. market concentration in […]
Imagine recording and storing everything you read - Marginal REVOLUTION
Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses just got a massive Multimodal upgrade – Meta AI with Vision It doesn't just take speech input, it can now answer questions about what you are seeing. Here are 8 features that is now possible 1. Ask about what you are seeing pic.twitter.com/IJQ3WuZMAJ — Min Choi (@minchoi) April 24, 2024
The Norwegian ban on smart phones in middle schools - Marginal REVOLUTION
Here is a new paper by Sara Abrahamsson. Perhaps there is Norwegian exceptionalism at work, but the results reflect my expectations reasonably closely. The basic setting is that smart phones were banned in middle school, but at varying (and exogenous) rates around the country. Here are some of the core findings, noting that reading the […]
Why do I prefer current airport procedures? - Marginal REVOLUTION
Michael Stack writes me: “Hi Tyler – you wrote about preferring current airport procedures to pre-9/11 procedures. Do you plan to elaborate on this? I have a hard time understanding why you’d feel that way. Here is the list I produced – these are guesses as to why you might feel the way you do: […]
Wednesday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. U.S. vs. Taiwanese work culture. 2. Albert Wensemius and the rise of Singapore. 3. Unusual questions answered by Megan McArdle. 4. Why Panama dollarized. 5. New open access book on prices and games by Michael Richter and Ariel Rubinstein. 6. Canada now limiting immigration. 7. “In the fiscal year 2023, more than half of […]