Year: 2016
Beware your TV (hi, future!)
Samsung is warning customers about discussing personal information in front of their smart television set.
The warning applies to TV viewers who control their Samsung Smart TV using its voice activation feature.
When the feature is active, such TV sets “listen” to what is said and may share what they hear with Samsung or third parties, it said.
Saturday assorted links
Geography and Economic Growth
A 3-minute introduction to the effect of geography on economic growth drawing on some of Jeff Sach’s classic works. Includes some surprising facts about continents and coastlines!
This video is from our Principles of Macroeconomics course. We cover the multiple ways in which geography can influence growth in more depth in two sections of our Development Economics course.
Russia fact of the day
Russian mammoth ivory exports have been increasing steadily, averaging approximately 17 tonnes per year for 1991-2000 and averaging 60 tonnes per year for 2001-2013.
It is estimated that the mammoth ivory beneath the tundra has the potential to cover several hundred years’ worth of current elephant ivory sales.
Clemens and Pritchett on the new economic case for migration restriction
I haven’t read through this paper (pdf) yet, but it seems quite important and here is the abstract:
For decades, migration economics has stressed the effects of migration restrictions on income distribution in the host country. Recently the literature has taken a new direction by estimating the costs of migration restrictions to global economic efficiency. In contrast, a new strand of research posits that migration restrictions could be not only desirably redistributive, but in fact globally efficient. This is the new economic case for migration restrictions. The case rests on the possibility that without tight restrictions on migration, migrants from poor countries could transmit low productivity (“A” or Total Factor Productivity) to rich countries – offsetting efficiency gains from the spatial reallocation of labor from low to high-productivity places. We provide a novel assessment, proposing a simple model of dynamically efficient migration under productivity transmission and calibrating it with new macro and micro data. In this model, the case for efficiency-enhancing migration barriers rests on three parameters: transmission, the degree to which origin-country total factor productivity is embodied in migrants; assimilation, the degree to which migrants’ productivity determinants become like ‘natives’ over time in the host country; and congestion, the degree to which transmission and assimilation change at higher migrant stocks. On current evidence about the magnitudes of these parameters, dynamically efficient policy would not imply open borders but would imply relaxations on current restrictions. That is, the new efficiency case for some migration restrictions is empirically a case against the stringency of current restrictions.
If I am reading this correctly, the authors are considering moving away from their previous open borders position, simply to a “more immigration (within limits) would be better” position, much like the one I hold.
For the pointer I thank G.
Addendum: On Twitter, Michael says: “Thank you. View didn’t change: Trillion $ bills is comparative statics, need not imply ∞ adjustment speed. This paper dynamic.”
Almost a lost decade
The 19-country eurozone, the core of Europe’s economy, grew at an annual rate of 1.1 percent in the last quarter of 2015. But total economic output remained just slightly lower than when the global economic crisis began, in 2008.
Here is Jack Ewing from the NYT. Here is the blog, run by Thomas Cooley among others, European Economic Snapshot. And from the FT:
Gross domestic product in Italy — the eurozone’s third-largest economy — rose by just 0.1 per cent in the fourth quarter, missing economists’ expectations of a 0.3 per cent increase and raising concerns that the tepid return to growth that begun in 2015 after three years of recession is already fading.
“Italy is struggling to emerge from the great recession and despite some encouraging signs in the first part of 2015, growth lost momentum in the second half,” says Lorenzo Codogno, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.
That is why I do not understand the common view that the eurozone crisis is over. Greece, by the way, has returned to a state of recession.
*Rich People Poor Countries*
That is the new and excellent book by Caroline Freund; the subtitle is The Rise of Emerging-market Tycoons and Their Mega Firms. It looks at the rise of billionaires in emerging markets, offers a new data base on how they earned their wealth, and takes a generally “pro-billionaire” stance, at least relative to many other sources.
Here is a tape of yesterday’s session on the book. The author summarizes, I give my comments a smidgen after 35:00, and then there is more. Here is also a new and related working paper by Freund and Sarah Oliver.
Friday assorted links
1. Clinton welfare reform was not such a big deal, one way or the other. And what it is like to be obsessed with mood affiliation.
2. Greg Ip on the popularity of big economics books.
3. “Neuromancer is a commissioned work.”
4. MIE: the woman who makes prosthetic pinkies for former Yakuza members. “Usually one of Fukushima’s fingers costs 180,000 yen ($1490), but she provides ex-yakuza in difficult financial situations with a discount.” She has made hundreds of such fingers, recommended.
5. How small is the world really?, how networked are you anyway?, and why it matters.
“If you could recommend only one book for me to read…”
That is a question from a very smart person, over thirty years of age, who claims not to have read very much (I don’t know how much).
So which book should I recommend?
Conditional on the person knowing me, the idea of simply introducing economics is not going to win, even if that would be the correct recommendation for many others. And “Collected Works” are not allowed.
How about a broadly philosophical novel, such as Don Quixote or Homer’s Odyssey or In Search of Lost Time? Moby-Dick? A play of Shakespeare? A current favorite, such as Ferrante or Knausgaard?
How about a perfectly constructed travel book, touting the virtues of a new and magical place? But most travel books I find dull, unsatisfying, and too scattered with wasteful, overly subjective sentences about sunsets and train trips.
A didactic, moralizing book, perhaps on charity or Effective Altruism?
For many people music may be more powerful than the written word, so perhaps the recent Jan Swafford biography of Beethoven, or John Eliot Gardiner’s book on Bach, or any number of good books on Mozart. A critical guidebook to some of the best movies available? Almost everyone can glean new ideas for their Netflix queue, even if they already have seen lots of films.
I don’t know of a biography which is inspirational for everyone or even most people, and I figure an intelligent person older than thirty already has been exposed to the world’s major religions.
How about a book which is a compendium for a hobby, such as a bird watcher’s guide, a Sotheby’s auction catalog, or a Fuchsia Dunlop cookbook?
I keep finding myself drawn to recommend a book which leads the advice recipient away from books, rather than toward them. Is that a strength or weakness of the book medium?
Negative interest rates are looking worse
And eurozone banks down 41% since ECB introduced negative interest rates, notes
@johnauthers
That is from @RobinWigg. The Japanese market has not responded positively either.
Of course negative interest rates, while intended as a form of stimulus, or currency depreciation, are also a tax on financial intermediation. Negative interest rates, even if you agree with them in principle, are also a sign that more straightforward measures are politically impossible.
Here is Landon Thomas Jr. on negative rates in Sweden (NYT): “…many investors saw the rate cut as smacking of desperation and the latest sign that global central bankers are moving toward a round of competitive devaluations — also known as currency wars — as a way to stimulate their economies.”
Miles Kimball has written much in favor of negative rates, Izabella Kaminska against, if you wish to survey further opinions. Here is Matt Rognlie.
I don’t see negative rates as the main problem today, but it’s getting harder to see them as a potential remedy. They’re a sign that economies are trying to solve their core problems on the cheap.
Addendum: Here is Neil Irwin at NYT.
Toward a savanna theory of happiness?
We propose the savanna theory of happiness, which suggests that it is not only the current consequences of a given situation but also its ancestral consequences that affect individuals’ life satisfaction and explains why such influences of ancestral consequences might interact with intelligence. We choose two varied factors that characterize basic differences between ancestral and modern life – population density and frequency of socialization with friends – as empirical test cases. As predicted by the theory, population density is negatively, and frequency of socialization with friends is positively, associated with life satisfaction. More importantly, the main associations of life satisfaction with population density and socialization with friends significantly interact with intelligence, and, in the latter case, the main association is reversed among the extremely intelligent. More intelligent individuals experience lower life satisfaction with more frequent socialization with friends. This study highlights the utility of incorporating evolutionary perspectives in the study of subjective well-being.
That is from Li and Kanazawa, via Neuroskeptic, file under speculative.
Can Finnish education be copied?
The access to teacher training is highly competitive; there are ten applicants for every training place to become a primary schoolteacher. It does not seem to dawn upon those in Britain and the United States who want to implement the Finnish system that it would mean firing something like three-quarters of the current teachers.
That is from new and interesting Education Unchained: What It Takes to Restore Schools and Learning, by Erik Lidström, mostly from a Hayekian perspective. The author claims, by the way, that the Finnish model has been declining since it has been made more student-centered and less teacher-centered.
Thursday assorted links
1. Princeton Bitcoin textbook is freely available.
2. What became of Michael Jackson’s chimpanzee, Bubbles? And speaking of the 1980s, Pee Wee’s Big Comeback (NYT).
3. “The black-white income gap was cut by about a third between 1992 and 2000…” Link here.
4. Someone is building a fence.
5. A short introduction to gravitational waves.
6. Harvard faculty support Clinton over Sanders, overwhelmingly.
Claims about Woolly Mammoths
In a working paper released in December 2015, the economists Naima Farah and John R. Boyce find that the discovery and exchange of mammoth tusks is having a serious effect on the market for living elephant tusks. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, they write, tusks from dead mammoths, found in the frozen Siberian tundra, have risen to account for as much as 20 percent of all ivory production. Crunching the numbers, they conclude, “Mammoth ivory trade may be saving elephants from extinction.” In the long run, however, it may be too optimistic to believe that such a laissez faire solution can forestall wild elephant extinction.
Most of the article, by Greg Rosalsky, deals with how researchers are using data (!) to determine whether woolly mammoths did indeed fall prey to the tragedy of the commons.
*The American Slave Coast*
I very much liked this lengthy but highly readable book by Ned and Constance Sublette, subtitled A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry, and that subtitle does indeed reflect the emphasis. Here are a few of the things I learned from it:
1. Barbados took in more African slaves than did the entire United States; Alex had a related post on the size of American importation.
2. President James Polk speculated in slaves, based on inside information he obtained from being President and shaping policy toward slaves and slave importation.
3. In the South there were slave “breeding farms,” where the number of women and children far outnumbered the number of men.
4. The price of a slave peaked in his or her late teens. There was another price spike upwards at about age eight, when child mortality declined.
5. Much of the University of Virginia was built by slaves; is anyone calling for those buildings to be torn down?
6. Quite possibly the sugar plantations model, including for slave deployment, stems from São Tomé, starting in the late 15th century.
7. George Mason wanted to cut off the African slave trade into Virginia, although the authors suggest many people supported this view because they wished to increase the value of the stock of slaves already in the state. I could not tell whether this was Mason’s motive or not.
8. The Anglo-American settlers of Louisiana were primarily from Kentucky.
9. In the time of slavery, the South was generally considered to be less anti-Semitic toward Jews than the North.
Recommended, here is the Amazon link. And here is Jason Kottke on the book. And here is a good Malcolm Harris review.