Month: March 2012

The French election campaign continues

Sarkozy struck a strident new tone in a Sunday rally.

He threatened to pull France out of the Schengen open borders agreement and demanded the European Union adopt measures to fight cheap imports, warning that France might otherwise pass a unilateral “Buy French” law.

“I want a Europe that protects its citizens. I no longer want this savage competition,” he declared to a cheering crowd. “I have lost none of my will to act, my will to make things change, my belief in the genius of France.”

The story is here.

Walking Fast and Slow

In a famous paper psychologist John Bargh and collaborators gave students at NYU a test very similar to that described by Malcolm Gladwell in Blink:

In front of you is a sheet of paper with a list of five-word sets. I want you to make a grammatical four-word sentence as quickly as possible out of each set. It’s called a scrambled-sentence test. Ready?

  1. him was worried she always
  2. are from Florida oranges temperature
  3. ball the throw toss silently
  4. shoes give replace old the
  5. he observes occasionally people watches
  6. be will sweat lonely they
  7. sky the seamless gray is
  8. should not withdraw forgetful we
  9. us bingo sing play let
  10. sunlight makes temperature wrinkle raisins

The students were then sent to do another test in an office down the hall. Unbeknownst to them, walking the hall was the real experiment. Scattered in the sentences above are words like “worried,” “Florida,” “old,” “lonely,” “gray,” “bingo,” and “wrinkle.” Bargh reported that students who had been primed with these words took significantly longer to walk down the hall than those not primed with the “old” words.

In the original study there were only 60 participants and the subjects were timed with a stopwatch. A new paper doubles the sample size and uses more accurate infrared sensors. You will probably not be surprised to learn that the new paper fails to replicate the priming effect. As we know from Why Most Published Research Findings are False (also here), failure to replicate is common, especially when sample sizes are small. I haven’t yet described the real surprise, however.

The authors of the new paper, Doyen et al., then took the experiment meta; they ran the experiment again but this time they told half the people supposedly “running” the experiment that they expected the participants to walk slower and the other half they told that they expected the participants to walk faster. (A confederate provided evidence for this effect.) In the second experiment they again used the infrared sensors but they also asked the nominal experimenters to use a stopwatch as the sensors were said to be new and sometimes unreliable.

In the second experiment Doyen et al. were able to replicate the Bargh results. Namely, when using the stopwatch, the nominal experimenters reported that the group primed to walk slow did walk slow and they reported that the group primed to walk fast did walk fast. The results, however, were not entirely due to subtle experimenter bias because in the slow prime case the infrared sensors also found that the slow-primed group walked slow. The infrared sensors, however, did not report an increase in speed when the nominal experimenters expected an increase in speed.

Thus, the old-slow priming results appear to be due to a subtle mix of experimenter bias and standard priming which is cued or amplified via experimenter signaling. Given what are still relatively small sample sizes (50-60) the last should also be taken provisionally.

Important Addendum: Bargh has written a nasty attack on the new paper, the journal that published the paper, and Ed Yong who blogged the new paper for Discover Magazine. Bargh’s attack is a model of how not to respond to criticism new information. Ed Yong discusses Bargh’s response here. Like Yong, I am dismayed that Bargh quotes the new paper inaccurately. In his attack, Bargh also says things such as the overuse of elderly-related items reduces the effect of the prime. Yet in the methods paper he cites (and wrote) he says more prime stimuli generally results in bigger effects (p.11, effects can vary if the subjects consciously recognize the prime, a factor that the new paper tests). Bargh also entirely glosses over the main point which is that the authors did find priming effects when the experimenter knew and expected the effect to occur. Note that given the subtlety of the effects any experimenter bias appears to be entirely unintentional and Doyen never argue otherwise.

All of postwar development economics in one exchange?

Check out the book Economic Development for Latin America, edited by Howard S. Ellis and Henry C. Wallich, circa 1961 and read Paul Rosenstein-Rodan’s classic essay “Notes on the Theory of the “Big Push””.

In ten pages you get the essence of increasing returns arguments, though do see Paul Krugman’s cautionary notes about this era and its lack of formal modeling.

After those ten pages, there is then Celso Furtado, that underrated and perhaps someday forgotten Brazilian economist, who in five pages tries to take PRR apart.  The big push didn’t work in Bolivia, and in conclusion

“The point is not, therefore, to show that there are indivisibilities in the production function.  The main interest lies in demonstrating how processes can be modified so as to elude the effects of those indivisibilities.”

The reader is then treated to three and a half pages of Ragnar Nurske, who shores up PRR.

There is then transcribed discussion, including remarks from Theodore Schulz (he rejects big push as an analytical tool), Albert Hirschman, Howard Ellis, Henry Wallich, more from Nurske, and Haberler, who wrote:

“…the lumpy factor could often be stretched to accommodate a varying amount of the co-operating factors.   The big push was no substitute for normal piecemeal progress.”

That was a popular point in those days.  Hirschman also…

“doubted that as a general rule overhead facilities would create a demand for their services.  This depended on the kind of entrepreneurship available.  Certainly there was no fixed short-run relation between investment in overhead and other investment, since overhead could be stretched.”

Nurske then fought back.  Whew!

Reading those twenty pages exhausted me, and transported me to another and earlier era.  It was like watching one of those taped 1980s NBA games, as they show them in Taiwan and some other countries, without the timeouts and breaks and besides they weren’t playing much defense anyway.

Overall it raised my estimation of those economists.

Syrian arbitrage markets in everything

…insurgent commanders say most of their weapons come from the very army they’re fighting, either seized or purchased in a thriving illicit trade. Intermediaries such as a merchant known as Abu Hussein arrange arms deals between the two sides.

Abu Hussein described how the rebels will shoot a few times at a government checkpoint, giving soldiers the cover to fire off their weapons. If the troops expend 200 bullets, Abu Hussein said, they may tell their superiors that 400 bullets were fired. The remaining 200 bullets will be sold to the rebels, typically for 150 Syrian pounds (about $2.50) per bullet.

The full story is here, and I thank Daniel Lippman for the pointer.

Microsoft Help

From my computer:

Why can’t I get Help from this program?

The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn’t included in this version of Windows. However, you can download a program that will allow you to view Help created in the Windows Help format.

For more information, go to the Microsoft Help and Support website.

Is it any wonder that some people hate Microsoft?

My favorite things New Mexico

If I haven’t done one of these in a while, it is because the processes which rule my life keep sending me back to the same states.  Here is a new one, since my last visit predates blogging at MR:

1. Entrepreneur: Jeff Bezos, for $75 a year you can step into a new universe.  This will go down as one of the most significant innovations of our time.  Furthermore, Microsoft was founded in New Mexico and spent its first four years there.

2. Painter: Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Georgia O’Keefe are all strong contenders, though they do not hail from the state but rather moved there to work.

3. Museum: Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe.  You can take this place as a stand-in for all the superb New Mexico visual arts of old, such as the santos and retablos.

4. Music: James Tenney, most of all his Postal Pieces.

5. Movie, set in: It is hard to think of anything other than Them!, though I suspect there are better candidates.  Contact is a good movie.

What else?  Cormac McCarthy I have never warmed to, and anyway he moved there later in life.  Don’t they have a bunch of astronauts?  Is there any popular music from this state not including John Denver?  You’ll get a separate report on the food.

The bottom line: It’s a state I’m fond of, and it has contributions in surprising areas.

Markets in Everything: US Public Schools

Reuters: Across the United States, public high schools in struggling small towns are putting their empty classroom seats up for sale.

In Sharpsville, Pennsylvania, and Lake Placid, New York, in Lavaca, Arkansas, and Millinocket, Maine, administrators are aggressively recruiting international students.

They’re wooing well-off families in China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia and dozens of other countries, seeking teenagers who speak decent English, have a sense of adventure – and are willing to pay as much as $30,000 for a year in an American public school.

The end goal for foreign students: Admission to a U.S. college.

So far the numbers are small. US high schools do outperform those in many other countries but the quality is modest relative to other developed countries and it’s hard for me to see this as a boom market. Nevertheless, I think I will warn my teenager that an exchange program with South Korea is an option.

Hat tip: Daniel Lippman.

Charles Murray on the role of economic forces

This has been debated by Brooks, Krugman, and around the blogosphere, so let us hear from the man himself:

“OK, let’s try this,” he said. “If you get a rising economy, for example, if Barack Obama could say we are going to bring on seven years of incredibly low unemployment, then he would argue that this would do a lot of good to the working class, wouldn’t he?” I agree. “But we already had that in the 1990s, and yet the dropout from the labour force continued to go up, people on social disability went up. Divorce went up. We have no evidence that a robust economy has much to do with these problems at all.”

I point out that many employers complain of a shortage of skills – a large chunk of America’s workforce is not as well equipped as it used to be relative to the rest of the world. If you don’t have the skills to make a living, how can you feel pride in your situation? “Well, that’s a different problem,” says Murray, looking suddenly uninterested. “If you are arguing that 22-year-old men are saying to their girlfriends, ‘I just need a job and then I’ll behave responsibly …’ Well, that’s just bullshit. If you ask women in working class communities, they will say, ‘Why should I marry these losers? It’s like taking another child into the household.’ ”

That is from his FT interview, I am not sure if it is gated for you.  The closing paragraph is this:

I feel mildly guilty at having spoiled Murray’s jovial mood but he quickly bounces back. The bill arrives. I disguise my shock at its size. As we get up to leave, Murray says: “Here is an interesting commentary: I was willing to talk to the Financial Times under the influence of alcohol but I’m not willing to play poker under the influence. What does that say?” Don’t worry, I reply, you won’t lose your shirt. Murray laughs. As we are shaking hands, he adds, “I really enjoyed that. We must do it again some time.” Then he strides off in what looks to me like a straight line.

Christian card counters

Until last year, he and his high school friend from Bible camp, Ben Crawford, ran a group of more than 30 religious card counters. Based in Seattle, the rotating cast of players says it won $3.2 million over five years — all while regularly attending church, leading youth groups and studying theology.

But first Jones and his group had to wrestle with the apparent moral paradox: Should Christians be counting cards?

“My father-in-law flipped out about it,” Jones said. “I remember Ben and I discussing everything. Are we being dishonest to the casinos? Is money an evil thing?”

Group members believed what they were doing was consistent with their faith because they felt they were taking money away from an evil enterprise. Further, they did not believe that counting cards was inherently a bad thing; rather, it was merely using math skills in a game of chance. They treated their winnings as income from a job and used it for all manner of expenses.

The article is here, hat tip goes to Mo Costandi.