Month: May 2016
Japan electric car fact of the day
As of earlier this month, there were more than 2,819 CHAdeMO DC rapid chargers installed across the country, far more than the 1,532 installed in the whole of Europe or 854 found in the U.S.
That massive number of accessible, reliable charging stations combined with lower-power level 2 charging provision — both private and public — now means there are more dedicated charging stations in Japan than there are gas stations.
Far more in fact: over 40,000 says Nissan, versus the 34,000 gas stations currently trading in Japan.
Source here. It is fair to say that some fundamental innovation finally is coming to cars.
The social effects of ethnic diversity, a block-level study from France
Yann Algan, Camille Hémet, and David D. Laitin have a piece from the latest JPE, based on what appears to be very good data:
Relying on diversity measures computed at the apartment block level under conditions of exogenous allocation of public housing in France, this paper identifies the effects of ethnic diversity on social relationships and housing quality. Housing Survey data reveal that diversity induces social anomie. Through the channel of anomie, diversity accounts for the inability of residents to sanction others for vandalism and to act collectively to demand proper building maintenance. However, anomie also lowers opportunities for violent confrontations, which are not related to diversity.
A sentence from the conclusion explains that last bit more clearly: “…fractionalization has no effect on public safety, diversity being associated with social anomie within the housing blocks rather than violent confrontations among neighbors — helped as well by an increase in municipal policing in municipalities of high diversity.”
The paper also offers a useful but brief survey of what we know about ethnic diversity and social capital. Here is an earlier ungated copy (pdf).
Driverless cars and robots are ahead of schedule
Here is the latest:
Google is sufficiently confident about its technology that its staff have discussed launching a fully autonomous taxi service in Mountain View as soon as next year, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking. The service may initially be restricted to Google employees, which might get around any legal and regulatory issues. Google has already run some tests with employees who are trained drivers.
I enjoyed this bit too:
Yet real life brings surprises no-one can anticipate. Last year, a Google car rounded a corner to find a woman in an electric wheelchair chasing a duck with a broom in the middle of the road. “We’d never tested the car against a woman and a duck,” Mr Urmson says, “and it was able to understand this was unusual, slow down, let that thing play out and then get on its way.”
Here is the Tim Bradshaw FT piece, and for the pointer I thank Michael Gibson. And Ted Craig sends me this:
General Motors Co. and Lyft Inc. will begin testing a fleet of self-driving Chevrolet Bolt electric taxis on public roads within a year, a move central to the companies’ joint efforts to challenge Silicon Valley giants in the battle to reshape the auto industry.
And here is Viv, which is supposed to be better than Siri. And here:
A robot is being designed to compete with 12th graders during the college entrance examination in 2017 and get a score qualifying it to enter first-class universities in China, according to Huaxi Metropolis Daily.
The robot will not be connected to the internet. And from the world of photography, here are robot portraits. And yet more from the FT:
US researchers have developed what they say is the world’s first surgical robot that can outperform human surgeons when operating autonomously on soft tissues such as intestines, paving the way for clinical trials.
Airbus is working with French and Japanese researchers to develop humanoid robots able to work alongside humans on its assembly lines and inside aircraft, in what would be a step change in the use of industrial robotics.
That is a lot of robot news for a day and a half.
Thursday assorted links
1. “For nearly 40 years he played host every May to a carriage parade from his house to the annual steeplechase races in Winterthur, the former du Pont estate in Delaware, followed by a celebration and pig roast at Chadds Ford…A bon vivant and a character, Mr. Weymouth was a toff of the old school, with a global network of friends in high places. He rarely turned on a television, in part because he never mastered a remote control, or light switches, for that matter. He preferred candlelight. Computers he regarded as an abomination.” NYT obituary here.
2. “You cannot talk about aggregate productivity growth without talking about both technology and the distribution of workers across sectors. Anecdotes – positive or negative – about individual technologies are not informative about the aggregate level of productivity growth.” Link here.
3. “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” That too, can be automated.
4. Interview with Jessa Crispin. And why is it hard to pick up Singlish?
6. FT Alphaville: “…we tend to think, if anything, endowments at the biggest schools are actually far too small, rather than too large.”
7. An actual case of cement shoes (NYT). And Stadt Zug will accept Bitcoin for small sums (in German).
Etymology lesson
trump (v.2)
“fabricate, devise,” 1690s, from trump “deceive, cheat” (1510s), from Middle English trumpen (late 14c.), from Old French tromper “to deceive,” of uncertain origin. Apparently from se tromper de “to mock,” from Old French tromper “to blow a trumpet.” Brachet explains this as “to play the horn, alluding to quacks and mountebanks, who attracted the public by blowing a horn, and then cheated them into buying ….” The Hindley Old French dictionary has baillier la trompe “blow the trumpet” as “act the fool,” and Donkin connects it rather to trombe “waterspout,” on the notion of turning (someone) around. Connection with triumph also has been proposed. Related: Trumped; trumping. Trumped up “false, concocted” first recorded 1728.
Here is more, via DK. Here are related comments from Scott Sumner.
They promised us 140 characters, and all we got was this glittering dress…
Who needs a flying car?
Kurkova donned the first “cognitive” dress to be worn at the Met Gala. Embedded with LED lights, the dress changed colors in real time based on Twitter users’ reactions to the night.
Here is more, via the excellent Samir Varma.
Wednesday assorted links
Growth of income and welfare in the U.S, 1979-2011
This new NBER paper by John Komlos is of real interest, and it documents the “average is over” idea of the dwindling of middle class fortunes:
We estimate growth rates of real incomes in the U.S. by quintiles using the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) post-tax, post-transfer data as basis for the period 1979-2011. We improve upon them by including only the present value of earnings that will accrue in retirement and excluding items included in the CBO income estimates such as “corporate taxes borne by labor” that do not increase either current purchasing power or utility. We estimate a high and a low growth rate using two price indexes, the CPI and the Personal Consumption Expenditure index. The major consistent findings include what in the colloquial is referred to as the “hollowing out” of the middle class. According to these estimates, the income of the middle class 2nd and 3rd quintiles increased at a rate of between 0.1% and 0.7% per annum, i.e., barely distinguishable from zero. Even that meager rate was achieved only through substantial transfer payments. In contrast, the income of the top 1% grew at an astronomical rate of between 3.4% and 3.9% per annum during the 32-year period, reaching an average annual value of $918,000, up from $281,000 in 1979 (in 2011 dollars). Hence, the post-tax, post-transfer income of the 1% relative to the 1st quintile increased from a factor of 21 in 1979 to a factor of 51 in 2011. However, income of no other group increased substantially relative to that of the lowest quintile. Oddly, the income of even those in the 96-99 percentiles increased only from a multiple of 8.1 to a multiple of 11.3. We next estimate growth in welfare assuming diminishing marginal utility of income. A logarithmic utility function yields a growth in welfare for the middle class of roughly 0.01% to 0.07% per annum, which is indistinguishable from zero. With interdependent utility functions only the welfare of the 5th quintile experienced meaningful growth while those of the first four quintiles tend to be either negligible or even negative.
Energy spending as a share of income
That is from TMFHousel, via @pmarca.
EU refugee markets in everything
European countries that refuse to share the burden of high immigration will face a financial charge of about €250,000 per refugee, according to Brussels’ plans to overhaul the bloc’s asylum rules.
The punitive financial pay-off clause is one of the most contentious parts of the European Commission’s proposed revision of the so-called Dublin asylum regulation, due to be revealed on Wednesday…
According to four people familiar with the proposal, this contribution was set at €250,000 per asylum seeker in Monday’s commission draft. But those involved in the talks say it may well be adjusted in deliberations over coming days.
“The size of the contribution may change but the idea is to make it appear like a sanction,” said one official who has seen the proposal. Another diplomat said in any event the price of refusing to host a refugee would be “hundreds of thousands of euros”.
Here is the full FT piece. Elsewhere on the pricing front, there is talk that at some point Uber will move away from surge pricing.
Tuesday assorted links
1. The rest of the world is starting to see Los Angeles as a walkable city (NYT).
2. Robert Samuelson on Brexit. A crude set of arguments, but he is basically right.
3. Alcoholic markets in everything, Indian edition.
5. Economic incentives, and monetary incentives, really do work. In fact more than researchers think.
The inequality that matters is doing quite well
Analysts who have concluded that inequality in life expectancy is increasing have generally focused on life expectancy at age 40 to 50. However, we show that among infants, children, and young adults, mortality has been falling more quickly in poorer areas with the result that inequality in mortality has fallen substantially over time. This is an important result given the growing literature showing that good health in childhood predicts better health in adulthood and suggests that today’s children are likely to face considerably less inequality in mortality as they age than current adults.
We also show that there have been stunning declines in mortality rates for African-Americans between 1990 and 2010, especially for black men.
Russia facts of the day isn’t falling apart as much as you might think
This is often forgotten:
One traditional way of measuring nations’ power relative to each other is to compare their gross domestic product. By this measure, Russia gained economically on all of its competitors as well as on the world as a whole in 1999-2015.
And this:
The GINC measures national power as the geometric mean of the following ratios:
- TPR = total population of country ratio;
- UPR = urban population of country ratio;
- ISR = steel production of country ratio;
- ECR = primary energy consumption ratio;
- MER = military expenditure ratio;
- MPR = military personnel ratio.
The GINC shows Russia’s power rising by 6.53 per cent in 1999-2014, while the power of the US, UK, France, Germany and Italy declined 13.14 per cent, 24.42 per cent, 24.23 per cent, 29.92 per cent and 27.29 per cent respectively in 2014 compared with 1999.
Are tithing requirements like a tax?
JR, a loyal MR reader, writes to me:
Your loyal readers, such as myself, know of your love for mormons. This made me curious whether you think the tithing requirement in mormonism have have the same incentive effects as a tax.
On one view, people will only bother giving if they are actually pleased about being able to contribute to church so the tithing is a form of consumption, not a tax.
On another view the tithing is a price you pay to maintain social status in your group. You may be able to cheat a little, but not too much on the requirement before the church notices that you are not paying a sum that corresponds to your apparent income. In that case one would expect it to act more like a tax.
Finally one can speculate that even if one has internalized the requirement to pay the tithe, and really, truly believes it, it might still act as a tax. One might feel it like a duty to pay, but feel any guilt over not maximizing ones income in order to pay more.
What is your take? There are many religions with tithing requirements including Islam so it ought to be of general economic interest to figure out its effects.
I would model tithing as similar to paying a tax, except that a) the act of payment itself yields utility, and b) there may be a kink at the level of the suggested tithe. For instance you know that if you pay ten percent, you are respected within the church community. Paying eleven percent does not get you proportionately more respect, however. In such a model, tax incidence theory changes. It would matter which side of the market a tax is levied upon, to give one concrete example. You don’t just care about “how much the church gets,” you also care about “how much you give to the church,” and with the kink you’ll try to stay at ten percent whether the supply side or demand side of a donation is taxed. Thus if there is a tax on the demand side you will give more, but not if your contribution is taxed on the side of the church.
This kind of tithing motives also weakens the crowding out of donations if the government subsidizes the church, for instance. You’ll stick at ten percent even if the church coffers are overflowing from the subsidy. Or tax subsidies to giving may not push many people over ten percent, because ten percent suffices to earn most of the respect on tap.
Is Craig Wright Satoshi?
Having been named as Mr Nakamoto once, unconvincingly, Mr Wright has a steep hill to climb to convince the world that he is indeed bitcoin’s founder. Evaluating his claim involves the application of a multi-step paternity test. First comes the factual evidence: can Mr Wright prove that he is in possession of cryptographic keys that only Mr Nakamoto should have? Second, does he have convincing explanations for the holes in the story which came to light when he was first outed in December? Third, does he possess the technical knowledge which would have enabled him to develop a system as complex and clever as bitcoin? And fourth, to what extent does he fit the image that people have of Mr Nakamoto; in particular, what do those software developers who have collaborated online with the founder of bitcoin think of Mr Wright’s claim?
Here is a very good Economist article, I say p = 0.415. There is some legitimate evidence and some serious endorsers, but the whole thing still doesn’t smell right to me. You?
Update from my iPad: uh-oh, http://www.economist.com/news/briefings/21698066-onus-on-craig-wright-provide-better-evidence-satoshi-nakamoto?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/craigwrightsclaimsunderfire