Marginal Revolution

You know you are a nerd when...

you look at an amazing vista of mountain peaks, crags, and valleys and you say to yourself "Wow, that looks just like fractal geometry!"

English words with different meanings in Singlish

Here is a list.  My favorite?

• choose - browse - "Choose, choose, choose, but never buy, is it?"

Here is a fuller description of Singlish.  I've had some people speak Singlish for me, and I didn't understand a word of it, nor would I have realized it had any relation to English-as-I-know-it.

Economic podcasts

You knew it was only a matter of time, here they are.  The blog title is www.radioeconomics.com.  This is not my forte -- I can read much faster than I can listen -- but you can hear James Hamilton, John Palmer, Skip Sauer, and I am sure there will be more to come.  Thanks to Ben Muse for the pointer.

Risky business

More evidence for the existence of a rational - if unpleasant - universe. Paul Gertler, Manisha Shah and Stef Bertozzi show in the Journal of Political Economy that Mexican prostitutes sometimes accept a premium (about 25 percent) not to use condoms. This paper uses panel data and is probably a better estimate than some previous ones.

The real punchline, though, is that they've worked out the implied value to these women of a year of healthy life: $15,000 - $50,000, which is (relative to income) extremely close to previous estimates from other dangerous jobs. If you want to increase condom use, education for prostitutes seems to have reached diminishing returns - instead, we need to reach the tougher goals of improving job opportunities for Mexican women, or persuading men that risky sex is not worth paying for.

Incidentally, I've been looking into this story for my next book. It is surprising (perhaps I should not be surprised) to discover how much you can learn from sex-tourism websites. Between the inevitable ponography, some of the advice to tourists is thoughtful and erudite, like a good restaurant review. Just a shame about the subject matter.

This is the last post of my stint on Marginal Revolution. Thanks very much to Tyler and Alex for the opportunity. It's not as easy as they make it look.

Pizarro slept here

Last night I stayed in the Hotel Libertador whose main claim to fame is that it is built on Incan foundations and parts of the building date to the 16th century when it was occupied for a time by Pizarro.  The claim is plausible as he certainly pillaged the temple next door.

The other contender for Cusco´s finest hotel is the more expensive Hotel Monasterio where you can get what I call a "Michael Jackson" room, a sealed room which is flooded with oxygen to help combat altitude sickness.

The Hotel Los Andes where I stayed most of the time was excellent.

How to improve taxi markets

Singapore has solved this problem, with a little assistance from satellite technology.  Imagine Walrasian taxi markets.  The taxi driver receives a satellite message on his little thingie, specifying where the customer wishes to be picked up and where he wishes to go.  The cabbie, if interested, then enters a bid for how much he will charge.  The customer is matched with the cabbie who enters the lowest bid.  Amazing, no?  And if it is raining, you have the ability to pay more to actually get a taxi.

This is for real (i.e., I saw it twice), but alas I cannot find anything through Google.  It is called CanBid, at least on the little machine thingies in the cabs.  I've opened up comments in case you know more than I do.

They also price the roads, I might add, using electronic sensors.  Privacy is no issue, since you don't have any privacy here anyway.

You should consider this place for your next vacation.  I came for work, but I have been consistently charmed and delighted.

Is the new NBA age limit a good idea?

Here are the data.  The conclusions?

...college education does not appear to diminish the probability of a player getting in trouble with the law. In fact, some of the most notorious NBA players are those with college degrees, while many others have three years of a college education...actually, the data suggests that premiere high school seniors might be better off skipping college altogether, perhaps in order to avoid the disturbing external influences that afflict many college basketball programs...

No matter the interpretation, it doesn’t appear that the recent decision by the NBA and NBPA to raise the age of NBA draft eligibility from 18 to 19 (or one year out of high school) will improve the overall law-abidingness of NBA players. If anything, actually, this data suggests that it might have the opposite effect.

Second, players appear more likely to get in trouble with the law towards the middle and end of their careers than at the start. This could be interpreted in a number of ways. For instance, it might suggest that the “pressures of being an NBA player” are more manageable at the start of one’s career, perhaps because the player is less autonomous and more reliant on the team. This interpretation is bolstered by the financial stake of NBA teams in facilitating the transition of their players from life as an amateur to life as a pro. Second, and related to the preceding interpretation, new NBA players are often surrounded by veterans in their late 20s and 30s who can monitor them and serve as de facto “big brothers.” The presence of these veteran players is obviously something distinct from the college experience, where the “veterans” are often just 20 or 21-years old, and are thus not likely to be as well-equipped in steering their 18 and 19-year teammates away from nefarious influences. Alternatively, the data may suggest that as the player accumulates wealth and notoriety, he is more likely to succumb to these “pressures.”

Thanks to Todd Zywicki for the pointer.  Here is my earlier post on age limits in sports.

Heard on the train

The kidnappers in Colombia are so advanced they check your credit report and other information to compute the optimal ransom.  Tyler wrote earlier on the economics of Mexican kidnapping.

Thanks to Christina for the tip.

Machu Picchu

Words fail.  Pictures fail.  Some things you just have to experience.

That is my main message (and when a blogger says words fail that means something!).  Conditional on certain failure I will try to say more next week when I have collected my thoughts.

Red tape and house prices

Steven Landsburg's latest Slate column is based on work by Ed Glaeser and Joe Gyourko.

Instead of the traditional formula "housing price equals land price + construction costs + reasonable profit," we seem to be seeing something more like "housing price equals land price + constructions costs plus reasonable profit + mystery component." And, most interestingly, the mystery component varies a lot from city to city.

The mystery component turns out to be zoning rules, and proxied quite well by the length of time it takes to get a permit. In September, the World Bank's Doing Business project will be publishing data on the cost of building inspections in 150 countries; it already has data on the cost of firing workers, starting a business, going through the courts, and more.