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Comparative Advantage - Marginal REVOLUTION
The excellent Don Boudreaux on comparative advantage, one of the deepest and most important ideas in economics. As a new semester begins this is a good reminder that MRU has great videos for learning and teaching economics, all entirely free and open. (Of course, these videos pair delightfully with Modern Principles of Economics).
Friday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. Short video on the importance of audience quality. 2. The excise tax on share repurchases was not effective in boosting investment. 3. On the new MIT AI study. 4. The USA never saw a tourism slump (FT). 5. The EU may proceed with a digital euro after all. 6. Josh Barro, Greg Mankiw, and […]
AI-engaged economics papers are growing rapidly - Marginal REVOLUTION
…share of economics papers that is ABOUT or USES AI increased 10X to 5% in 5 years and growth is basically vertical. Be there or be square! Here is the tweet, here is the underlying paper by Eamon Duede, et.al. Other science are considered as well, I do not need to tell you the results, […]
Profile of Joe Liemandt and Alpha School - Marginal REVOLUTION
The one thing Liemandt will talk about for hours on end is Alpha School: the teacherless, homeworkless, K-12 private school in Austin, Texas, where students have been testing in the top 0.1% nationally by self-directing coursework with AI tutoring apps for two hours a day. Alpha students are incentivized to complete coursework to “mastery-level” (i.e., […]
Cass Sunstein on classical liberalism - Marginal REVOLUTION
Here’s what I want to emphasize. I like Hayek a lot less ambivalently than I once did, and von Mises, who once seemed to me a crude and irascible precursor of Hayek, now seems to me to be (mostly) a shining star (and sometimes fun, not least because of his crudeness and irascibility). The reason […]
AI and the Detection of Gravity Waves - Marginal REVOLUTION
Researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, the giant two-observatory machine to detect gravitational waves, developed an AI to improve the sensitivity of the design: Wired: Initially, the AI’s designs seemed outlandish. “The outputs that the thing was giving us were really not comprehensible by people,” Adhikari said. “They were too complicated, and they looked […]
The decline in reading for pleasure - Marginal REVOLUTION
We measure reading for pleasure and reading with children from 2003 to 2023, using a nationally representative sample from the American Time Use Survey (n = 236,270). We found marked declines in the proportion of individuals reading for pleasure daily in the US, with decreases of 3% per year (prevalence ratio = 0.97, 95% confidence interval […]
Thursday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. GPT-5 discovers some new mathematics. 2. David Wallace-Wells sanity on AI (NYT). 3. Deregulating the FDIC. 4. Study Islam! 5. Hal Varian has retired. 6. The Lisa Cook dispute (FT). 7. In some places a McDonald’s Big Mac meal has been selling for $18.99 (WSJ).
Data on the effects of censorship in early modern England - Marginal REVOLUTION
We use a panel-data framework to study the effects of print censorship on early-modern England’s cultural production. Doing so requires distilling dispersed qualitative information into quantitative data. Integrating the historical record implicit in a large language model (LLM) with facts from secondary sources, we generate an annual index of print censorship. Applying a machine-learning (ML) […]
My Conversation with David Brooks - Marginal REVOLUTION
Held live at the 92nd St. Y, here is the video, audio, and transcript. Here is the episode summary: David Brooks returns to the show with a stark diagnosis of American culture. Having evolved from a Democratic socialist to a neoconservative to what he now calls “the rightward edge of the leftward tendency,” Brooks argues […]
Wednesday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. “Statistical bias along less salient dimensions, such as physical attractiveness, is more likely to go undetected.” 2. The new Austin Vernon solar start-up. 3. Turn your research paper into a music video. 4. European freedom of speech increasingly in danger. Article from The Atlantic is here. 5. Rufo strategy explained?
The Garbage Cafe - Marginal REVOLUTION
Every day, hungry people arrive at this cafe in Ambikapur, a city in the state of Chhattisgarh in central India, in the hope of getting a hot meal. But they don’t pay for their food with money – instead, they hand over bundles of plastic such as old carrier bags, food wrappers and water bottles. […]
Bad news, Mises vindicated! - Marginal REVOLUTION
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is looking into the federal government taking equity stakes in computer chip manufacturers that receive CHIPS Act funding to build factories in the country, two sources said. Expanding on a plan to receive an equity stake in Intel (INTC.O), in exchange for cash grants, a White House official and a person familiar with […]
Why is choral music harder to appreciate? - Marginal REVOLUTION
It has struck me that most recommenders and lovers of choral music and themselves singers (or conductors) of choral music. It helps a great deal to be right there. So it occurred to me there are a few reasons why choral music is harder to appreciate than say either symphonies or chamber music: 1. Mixtures […]
*Capitalism: A Global History*, by Sven Beckert - Marginal REVOLUTION
This 1103 pp. book reflects a great deal of learning, and it is often interesting to read. It is well-written. So virtually everyone can absorb interesting things from it. In that sense I am happy to recommend it. The book has two major problems however. First, is “capitalism” the right way of centering a book […]
China Versus the US in the Competition for Global Talent - Marginal REVOLUTION
In my posts The Sputnik vs. DeepSeek Moment and The Answers, I contrasted America’s reaction to Sputnik—expanded funding for education in math, science, and foreign languages; creation of agencies like ARPA; higher federal R&D spending; recruitment of foreign talent; and reduced tariff barriers—with the more recent U.S. response to China’s rise as an economic and […]
The AI polity that is Albania? - Marginal REVOLUTION
While the rest of Europe bickers over the safety and scope of artificial intelligence, Albania is tapping it to accelerate its EU accession. It’s even mulling an AI-run ministry. Prime Minister Edi Rama mentioned AI last month as a tool to stamp out corruption and increase transparency, saying the technology could soon become the most […]
Tuesday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. The recent (prewar) history of the Ukraine economy. 2. Robin Hanson on glints. 3. New Yorker profile of Rebecca Kuang. 4. Resignation markets in everything. 5. A critique of prediction markets. 6. PEPFAR estimates. 7. Visiting Bihar. 8. Life with stage four cancer is not what it used to be.
How is fertility behavior in Africa different? - Marginal REVOLUTION
Sub-Saharan Africa’s fertility decline has lagged behind that of other regions. Using large-scale, individual-level data, I provide new evidence on how fertility in sub-Saharan Africa compares with that in East Asia, South Asia, and Latin America by examining differences in fertility outcomes by grade level across regions. Unlike prior research that compared aggregate fertility and […]
Twin studies data and the link between social media and well-being - Marginal REVOLUTION
This recently published paper by Selim Sametoğlu, Dirk H. M. Pelt, and Meike Bartels, is based on a clever idea, namely to look at twin studies to see if heavy social media users have innate tendenciees toward lower social well-being. Overall the results are not encouraging for seeing a strong causal connection here: Meta-analyses report […]
Monday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. Arlington travel notes, by Henry Oliver. 2. Class and air conditioning in Germany. 3. Nate Silver Department of Yup. 4. The importance of adaptive prompt behavior. 5. Weapons is an excellent movie (trailer at the link). There are (very) modest signs of Hollywood movies undergoing a quality revival of sorts. 6. The Argument, a […]
Polycentric Status Contests - Marginal REVOLUTION
As societies become richer, and basic needs are satisfied, zero-sum positional contests gain more prominence, while the regular positivesum benefits of markets subside in the background. As long argued by Hirsch, Frank and others, the institutions for managing resource scarcity and spurring economic growth, i.e. the institutions of capitalism, may not be particularly well-suited for […]
What do intelligence analysts do? - Marginal REVOLUTION
The people who are really good understand sourcing and how important it is for critical thinking. The education should be focused on helping people recognize and refute bullshit. Step one is the critical thinking necessary to say, “This makes no sense,” or “This is just fluff.” The people who are professionally trained to be really […]
Sunday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. Australia’s great stagnation. 2. Ezra Klein interviews Natasha Sarin (NYT). She is not only an excellent economist, but she avoids exaggeration, an increasingly rare trait in public discourse. 3. “Researchers at Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and Optosurgical trained SRT-H, a dual-transformer controller that let an off-the-shelf da Vinci robot clip and cut pig gallbladders without […]
Scott Sumner is still the greatest movie critic in the world - Marginal REVOLUTION
Here is the intro: Over time, I’ve noticed that an unusual number of important films came out in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In this post, I’ll argue that the period from 1958 to 1963 is the artistic peak of filmmaking. So what is the evidence for this claim? I certainly won’t argue that […]
Dylan Matthews interviews Anne Krueger - Marginal REVOLUTION
MATTHEWS: What was the debate about import substitution like at this point, in the late 1950s/early 1960s? KRUEGER: The whole profession believed in import substitution. Almost without question. Even Gottfried Haberler, in his lectures in 1959, said that, of course, infant industry substitution by the developing countries was acceptable. Go back and look at the […]
Saturday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. Ten year old Indian girl beats grandmaster in chess. 2. Low birthrates today forecast low house price appreciation in the future. 3. Dubov on working with Magnus (subtitles in English). 4. One hypothesis about the best news in America right now. 5. TFR in Heilongjiang, Manchuria is about 0.52. 6. No, conscientiousness has not […]
Data center facts of the day - Marginal REVOLUTION
JLL estimates $170bn of assets will require construction lending or permanent financing this year. Between now and 2029, however, global spending on data centres will hit almost $3tn, according to Morgan Stanley analysts. Of that, just $1.4tn is forecast to come from capital expenditure by Big Tech groups, leaving a mammoth $1.5tn of financing required […]
Model this? - Marginal REVOLUTION
The gap between US companies’ borrowing costs and US Treasury yields has shrunk to its smallest since 1998, after a red-hot rally in global credit markets that investors warn is underplaying threats to the world economy. The cost of borrowing for investment-grade companies in US and Eurozone credit markets is 0.75 and 0.76 percentage points […]
The Danger from Japan - Marginal REVOLUTION
Answer: America won. Every generation launches a new competitor to America and the people who don’t like capitalism and America’s individualist, free market economy trumpet that now the American way is being left in the dust. In the progressive era it was the Germans (how did that work out?), then it was the Russians (remember […]
Optimal Tariffs with Geopolitical Alignment - Marginal REVOLUTION
Here is a new NBER working paper: As geopolitical tensions intensify, great powers often turn to trade policy to influence international alignment. We examine the optimal design of tariffs in a world where large countries care not only about economic welfare but also about the political allegiance of smaller states. We consider both a unipolar […]
Friday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION
1. Dean Ball podcast on AI. 2. Sokolov plays Rameau. 3. Using drones to study sperm whales (NYT). 4. Some pointers for whether something is AI-written. 5. MIE: New app lets people buy tickets for strangers wedding. “Generally, there could be five to 10 paid strangers at one of the ceremonies, costing an average of […]
Jeff Asher on manipulating crime data - Marginal REVOLUTION
Jeff Asher: Within a city, within a district, there are times, either by mistake or by intention, that an agency will manipulate a certain type of crime. There are times where things will get underreported. There will be mistakes. There are times where things will get over reported and there will be mistakes. But because […]
A median voter theory of right-wing populism - Marginal REVOLUTION
From a recent paper: Populists are often defined as those who claim that they fill “political representation gaps” -differences between the policymaking by established parties and the “popular will.” Research has largely neglected to what extent this claim is correct. I study descriptively whether representation gaps exist and their relationship with populism. To this end, I analyze […]
Bird trivia - Marginal REVOLUTION
Potvin’s team dissected and examined the bodies of nearly 500 birds belonging to five common Australian species: the Australian magpie, laughing kookaburra, crested pigeon, rainbow lorikeet, and the scaly breasted lorikeet(…)In addition to identifying the birds’ reproductive organs, researchers also tested their DNA to reveal their genetic sex. The team was surprised to find sex-reversed […]
What should I ask David Commins? - Marginal REVOLUTION
Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him. David recently published Saudi Arabia: A Modern History, a very good and useful book. He has numerous other books on Wahhabism, the history of the Gulf region, and also Syria. Currently he teaches at Dickinson College. So what should I ask him?
Chicago facts of the day - Marginal REVOLUTION
The University of Chicago has now borrowed $6.3 billion, more than 70 percent of the value of its endowment. The cost of servicing its debt is now 85 percent of the value of all undergraduate tuition. (This is not normal. No peer institution has a debt-to-asset ratio greater than 26 percent. Perhaps that is one […]
Tabarrok on Flight Delays - Marginal REVOLUTION
Tyler already linked to Max’s excellent post on flight delays but Fortune gives you the backstory: On one sweltering summer afternoon in June, thunderstorms rolled over Boston Logan International Airport. It was the kind of brief, predictable summer squall that East Coasters have learned to ignore, but within hours, the airport completely shut down. Every […]