Month: July 2019
Are the Contents of International Treaties Copied and Pasted?
Most accounts of international negotiations suggest that global agreements are individually crafted and distinct, while some emerging scholarship suggests a heavy reliance on models and templates. In this research, we present a comprehensive test of whether new international treaties are heavily copied and pasted from past ones. We specify several reasons to expect widespread copying and pasting, and argue that both the most and least powerful countries should be most likely to do so. Using text analysis to examine several hundred preferential trade agreements (PTAs), we reveal that most PTAs copy a sizable majority of their content word for word from an earlier agreement. At least one hundred PTAs take 80 percent or more of their contents directly from a single, existing treaty—with many copying and pasting 95 percent or more. These numbers climb even higher when we compare important substantive chapters of trade agreements, many of which are copied and pasted verbatim. Such copying and pasting is most prevalent among low-capacity governments that lean heavily on existing templates, and powerful states that desire to spread their preferred rules globally. This widespread replication of existing treaty language reshapes how we think about international cooperation, and it has important implications for literatures on institutional design, policy diffusion, state power, and legal fragmentation.
That is from a new paper by Todd Allee and Manfred Elsig, via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
*Escape from Rome*
The author is Walter Scheidel and the subtitle is The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity. Imagine a whole book on what he calls “the second Great Divergence,” namely that China developed a large, relatively unified hegemonic state early on, while Europe remained (mostly) politically fragmented.
Have you ever wondered why the Roman empire did not, in some manner, re-form in the Western part of Europe? And how did it matter that China had a tradition of having to defend against the steppe while Europe did not? Here is one brief excerpt:
…East Asia was characterized by a unipolar or hegemonic political system for 68 percent of the years between 220 BCE and 1875. This pattern presents a stark contrast to the prevalence of a balanced system in Europe for 98 percent of the years from 1500 to 2000, or indeed at any time after the demise of the mature Roman empire.
And:
Remoteness from the bulk of the Eurasian steppe was a constant, invariant across Europen history. Just as it did not matter if Latin Europe’s states were weak, it also did not matter if a large empire was in place. Unlike Chinese dynasties, the Roman empire did not bring forth a nomadic “shadow empire”: there was no ecological potential for it. The Pontic steppe, where Sarmatian tribes might have coalesced in response to the inducements of Roman wealth, was too detached from the Roman heartlands that lay behind the Carpathians, the Alps, and the Adriatic. To the west of the plains of Eastern Europe, both components of the “steppe effect” were conspicuous by their absence: and so — at least after Rome — was empire-building on a large scale.
If you wish to read a book to ponder the second Great Divergence, this is the one. You can pre-order it here.
Saturday assorted links
1. The culture that is West Palm Beach: “The loop of “Baby Shark” and “Raining Tacos” is a temporary fix to keep homeless people off the patio.”
2. Federal Reserve comic books now on-line.
3. Why are women’s voices deeper today?
4. Alien beauty subverts world of fashion.
5. Could the Apollo moon landing be duplicated today?
6. “We are granting early access to our India local data series: 500k villages, 8000 towns, 4000 constituencies. 25 years of admin data on firms, public goods, consumption, labor, elections, demographics, forest cover, etc.. All hyperlocal.” Link here.
Zoning Out Shade
Is it too hot to walk around the block? Sure, blame global warming, but in many parts of the country there is also a noticeable absence of shade. Why? As Nolan Gray, a city planner in New York, argues one reason is that shade has been zoned out.
…vernacular architecture in the U.S. was often designed around natural climate control. In the humid Southeast, large windows and central corridors encouraged airflow. In the arid Southwest, thick facades and small windows kept cool air inside. In both cases, most houses were packed tightly together to cast shadows over streets, with awnings, balconies, and roof overhangs used to protect indoor spaces from direct sunlight.
These design elements survive and thrive in cities built before air conditioning, like New Orleans, but are conspicuously absent from most modern Sun Belt metros. With houses sitting squat and far back from the street, and most commercial spaces sitting behind a veritable desert of parking, shade in cities like Phoenix and Atlanta is few and far between.
…The irony here is that the cities that most need shade are the least likely to have it…Older, urban cities with mild summers—think Boston—have shade in spades, while our newer Sun Belt cities —think Las Vegas—have virtually no shade at all, resulting in an unhealthy dependence on air conditioning.
Why did this happen? A big reason is the way we started planning cities in the twentieth century. Beginning in the 1910s, planners declared a war on shade as a means of responding to slum conditions and high-rises. As described by researcher Sonia Hirt, early land-use planners were inspired by the vision of the detached single-family house on a large lot—a development pattern that’s fine for cloudy Massachusetts, but spells trouble for sunny Florida. Assuming no shade as the ideal, the framers of modern zoning set out to design a system of regulations that make many naturally cooling design elements practically illegal.
…In most suburbs, for example, houses are legally prevented from sitting close to the lot line by setbacks, which prevent any shade from being cast on sidewalks or neighboring homes.
Strict rules surrounding building heights and density cap most suburban buildings at a standard height of 35 feet, well below what could potentially cast a cooling shadow. And shadows from high-rises are treated as an unambiguous evil in planning hearings, even in otherwise dense urban environments like San Francisco.
The criminalization of shade goes beyond land-use regulations; it extends to the way we design public spaces. Despite more and more cities encouraging street trees as a valuable source of shade, many state transportation offices continue to ban them, privileging ease of maintenance over outdoor comfort.
Trees in particular would not only create more shade but also reduce air pollution.
Why zero temporal discounting *within* a life is less plausible than across generations
For an individual there is both cardinal Benthamite utilitarianism (“utils”) and preference utilitarianism. The two sometimes conflict (would you take a pill that gave you joy when you saw suffering?), and a plausible consequentialist theory attaches some weight to both.
Most of the arguments for zero discounting of utility apply to the cardinal measure. Don’t put off going to the dentist just because you don’t like pain — when the pain finally arrives, it will be no less real.
But now shift your attention to the preference utilitarianism. Let’s say a person had a strong preference that “the Knicks win an NBA title in 2022,” deciding that it isn’t nearly good enough for the Knicks to win that title in 2030. That is a kind of positive time preference. Arguably it is ungrounded and irrational, but that isn’t quite grounds for dismissing it. Preference utilitarianism simply counts the preference and whether it is satisfied. You might as well argue it is irrational to care about the Knicks in the first place, never mind 2022 vs. 2030. And indeed it is, just like so many other of our preferences do not really admit of defense or justification in external terms.
And thus, through the medium of preference satisfaction utilitarianism, we cannot altogether dismiss positive time preference for the individual.
When considering trade-offs of utilities across the generations, there are Benthamite comparisons but there is no meaningful preference utilitarianism, since there are different persons at stake. That leaves us with one fewer argument for positive time preference in the intergenerational case.
From the comments, what if big business hated your family?
Inventor CEOs
One in five U.S. high-technology firms are led by CEOs with hands-on innovation experience as inventors. Firms led by “Inventor CEOs” are associated with higher quality innovation, especially when the CEO is a high-impact inventor. During an Inventor CEO’s tenure, firms file a greater number of patents and more valuable patents in technology classes where the CEO’s hands-on experience lies. Utilizing plausibly exogenous CEO turnovers to address the matching of CEOs to firms suggests these effects are causal. The results can be explained by an Inventor CEO’s superior ability to evaluate, select, and execute innovative investment projects related to their own hands-on experience.
That is from Emdad Islam & Jason Zein, forthcoming in the Journal of Financial Economics, via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Friday assorted links
2. The most played song on UK radio? Snow Patrol, “Chasing Cars.”
3. The culture that is American disability.
4. Why is Roman cement so durable?
Which of these claims is false?
The Democratic-controlled House just voted to abolish the “Cadillac tax” on employer-supplied health plans.
The Independent Payments Advisory Board no longer exists, having been abolished with support from both parties.
In the public option for Democratic-controlled Washington State, reimbursement rates were set at up to 160 percent of Medicare levels.
Single-payer health care will save America a great amount of money.
Should Alaska cut state university funding by 41 percent?
That is what they have done, in order to boost the Permanent Fund Dividend payments to the citizenry. Here is the closing segment from my Bloomberg column:
I see Alaska’s decision as reflecting two broader trends in the U.S. First, a lot of small educational institutions are closing, consolidating or drastically cutting back, most of all in out-of-the-way places. Second, regions are diverging, both economically and culturally. More and more educated people are moving to the major cities.
You may have mixed or negative feelings about these two developments. Taken together, however, they could lead to a bunch of state schools on the chopping block. I suppose it’s fine to complain about this outcome, but far better would be to address the underlying trends.
There are things government could do if it were bold enough. How about a series of state-specific visas to foreigners, designed to encourage them to settle in Alaska and other underpopulated states? Alaska’s population could well rise to more than a million, and then the benefits of a good state university system would be more obvious, including for cultural assimilation. In fact, how about a plan to boost the population of Alaska to two or three million people? What would it take to get there?
That’s my biggest worry in all this: that that the diminution of the University of Alaska amounts to a kind of giving up. Alaska is supposed to be the American frontier, a place for taking chances. It is a sign of defeatism if the state has now decided that its main task should be mailing out dividends to its residents. The animating spirit should be one of science and exploration, as might be enabled by a well-functioning university system.
The University of Alaska in Fairbanks is rated among the world’s top science institutions for studying the Arctic, a region that might well grow considerably in importance, in part due to climate change. A well-developed and well-educated Alaska is a kind of option on future Arctic development and also on geopolitical influence. If new frontiers are opening up, then Alaska — and America — should want to be ready for them.
We really do need dynamism to keep our institutions going. Allison Schraeger put it well on Twitter: “a preview of our UBI future.”
Rhino bond markets in everything
Conservationists have started marketing a five-year rhino bond, which bankers say will be the world’s first financial instrument dedicated to protecting a species.
Investors in the $50m bond will be paid back their capital and a coupon if African black rhino populations in five sites across Kenya and South Africa increase over five years. The yield will vary depending on changes in the rhino population, which has fallen rapidly since the 1970s.
The bond is likely to have different categories of investment, with some investors taking a “first loss” position. If rhino numbers drop, those investors will lose their money depending on the scale of the decline and the terms of their investment, while investors in other categories will be repaid.
That is from John Aglionby at the FT.
Thursday assorted links
1. They think these are the 25 most important contemporary artworks (NYT). Someone is in trouble, and I do not think it is me. I will endorse Kara Walker, however.
3. Full video of the new Peter Thiel talk. And Eric Weinstein and Peter Thiel podcast.
4. Is the restaurant revolution over?
5. Interview with Enrico Moretti.
6. Where do self-driving vehicles stand now? (NYT)
Bryan Caplan on Spain
He spent a bunch of weeks there, there are many good observations, here is one of them:
17. Big question: Why is Spain so much richer now than almost any country in Spanish America? Before you answer with great confidence, ponder this: According to Angus Maddison’s data on per-capita GDP in 1950, Spain was poorer than Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, and roughly equal to Colombia, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Panama. This is 11 years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and Spain of course stayed out of World War II.
And this:
The worst grocery store I saw in Spain offered higher quality, more variety, and lower prices than the best grocery store I saw in Denmark, Sweden, or Norway.
Do read the whole thing.
*The Body: A Guide for Occupants*
That is the title of the new Bill Bryson book, and it delivers in all the ways you would expect a Bryson book to do. Here is one sample paragraph:
Before penicillin, the closest thing to a wonder drug that existed was Salvarsan, developed by the German immunologist Paul Ehrlich in 1910, but Salvarsan was effective against only a few things, principally syphilis, and had a lot of drawbacks. For a start, it was made from arsenic, so was toxic, and treatment consisted in injecting roughly a pint of solution into the patient’s arm once a week for fifty weeks or more. If it wasn’t administered exactly right, fluid could seep into muscle, causing painful and sometimes serious side effects, including the need for amputation. Doctors who could administer it safely became celebrated. Ironically, one of the most highly regarded was Alexander Fleming.
By the way:
…the average grave is visited for only about fifteen years…
You can pre-order the book here, I would be interested to read more about Bryson’s work, writing, and research habits.
EU markets in everything?
I had never heard about this before:
The controversial practice of picking corporate sponsors for the European Union‘s rotating presidency is to continue, despite an outcry from MEPs.
EU countries have been raising eyebrows by doing deals with increasingly controversial multinational corporations during their stints overseeing debates at the EU council.
Romania’s presidency in the first half of 2019 was sponsored by Coca-Cola, with the US drinks giant’s logo plastered over banners and signs at meetings. One council summit in Bucharest featured Coca-Cola branded bean bag chairs, and a fridge of free drinks plastered with statistics about the company’s contribution to the economy.
Other sponsors of the council presidency have included car manufacturers, software companies, and other firms with vested interests in influencing EU policy.
But hopes that the incoming Finnish presidency, which took the helm this summer, might end the practice, were dashed after it picked German car manufacturer BMW as a sponsor – despite the firm being hit with a fine over its cars’ diesel emissions earlier this year.
Here is the full story, via Jon Stone.
Suppose Big Business did hate your family, what would that look like?
That is from Sure.