Month: December 2022
ChatGPT does a Thomas Schelling poem
Lookism is everywhere, and mostly undetected
…some types of discrimination may be less apparent than others. Across seven studies (N=3,486, five preregistered), we find that attractiveness discrimination often goes undetected compared to more prototypical types of discrimination (i.e., gender and race discrimination). This blind spot does not emerge because people perceive attractiveness discrimination to be unproblematic or desirable. Rather, our findings suggest that people’s ability to detect discrimination is bounded. People only focus on a few salient dimensions, such as gender and race, when scrutinizing decision outcomes (e.g., hiring or sentencing decisions) for bias. Consistent with this account, two interventions that increased the salience of attractiveness increased the detection of attractiveness discrimination, but also decreased the detection of gender and race discrimination.
That is from a new paper by Bastian Jaeger, Gabriele Paolacci, and Johannes Boegershausen. Via someone, I forget whom to thank, but recall they were good-looking!
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy among Ghana’s Rural Poor
We study the impact of group-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for individuals selected from the general population of poor households in rural Ghana (N = 7,227). Results from one to three months after the program show strong impacts on mental and perceived physical health, cognitive and socioemotional skills, and economic self-perceptions. These effects hold regardless of baseline mental distress. We argue that this is because CBT can improve well-being for a general population of poor individuals through two pathways: reducing vulnerability to deteriorating mental health and directly increasing cognitive capacity and socioemotional skills.
That is by Nathan Barker, Gharad Bryan, Dean Karlan, Angela Ofori-Atta and Christopher Udry, here is the AER Insights link. Here are other versions.
Emergent Ventures Africa and African diaspora, second cohort
Winnie Nakiyingi, a Ugandan Statistician living in Rwanda, works as a graduate teaching assistant at the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (Kigali campus). She is the founder of an organisation (Words That Count) which promotes STEM careers to girls in Africa. The grant is to further expand the organisation and help to create more content.
Gosiame Siwawa is a Motswana medical doctor in South Africa studying specialization in Nuclear Medicine. The grant is for career development. He intends to open a nuclear medicine practice in Gaborone. He did his medical studies in Trinidad and Tobago (with a scholarship from the government of Botswana).
Olayemi Olaniyi, a Nigerian social commentator. He has a podcast/youtube called The Disaffected Nigerian. He discusses political economy topics and wants to promote Libertarian ideas applied to Nigerian governance issues. The grant is to upgrade the podcast.
Anne Chisa, a Malawian living in South Africa, is a PhD candidate in crop science. She has a podcast (over 100 episodes) called Roots of Science in which she interviews African scientists and promotes science discussion in South Africa. The grant is for her to expand and upgrade the podcast.
Again, I thank Rasheed Griffith for his leadership in this project.
Saturday assorted links
1. Be less scared of overconfidence.
2. Teaching ChatGPT to play overrated vs. underrated. And ChatGPT on the Japanese economy (Bloomberg). And more from ChatGPT.
3. On SBF and EA (New Yorker).
4. “If so, your dream job awaits: New York’s Citywide Director of Rodent Mitigation.”
5. James Austin Johnson does Bob Dylan singing Jingle Bells throughout the decades.
6. Best movies of all time? Better than most such lists.
7. What went wrong with Ghana? (Bloomberg)
Using Neural Networks to Predict Microspatial Economic Growth
We apply deep learning to daytime satellite imagery to predict changes in income and population at high spatial resolution in US data. For grid cells with lateral dimensions of 1.2 km and 2.4 km (where the average US county has dimension of 51.9 km), our model predictions achieve R2 values of 0.85 to 0.91 in levels, which far exceed the accuracy of existing models, and 0.32 to 0.46 in decadal changes, which have no counterpart in the literature and are 3–4 times larger than for commonly used nighttime lights. Our network has wide application for analyzing localized shocks.
Here is the AEA-gated published version, and here are other (mostly ungated) versions. Arman Khachiyan, Anthony Thomas, Huye Zhou, Gordon Hanson, Alex Cloninger, Tajana Rosing and Amit K. Khandelwal, and look for more papers to come in this area.
Productivity in the two Irelands (extrapolate this)
Of the 17 sectors for which we have comparable data, productivity levels in Ireland noticeably exceed those of Northern Ireland in 14 sectors, with particularly large gaps in Administrative and support services activities;
Financial and insurance activities; Legal and accounting activities etc; and Scientific research and development. Northern Ireland has an advantage in the two sectors of Electricity and gas supply and Construction.Productivity levels in the two regions were broadly equivalent in 2000. Over the period 2001 to 2020, productivity levels in Ireland have trended slightly upwards, while in Northern Ireland productivity levels have been trending downwards. By 2020, productivity per worker was approximately 40 per cent higher in Ireland compared to Northern Ireland.
That is from a new study by Adele Bergin and Seamus McGuinness, via Charles Klingman. Of the seventeen sectors for which there are comparable data: ” Northern Ireland has an advantage in the two sectors of Electricity and gas supply and Construction.” And from commentator David Jordan note this: “As the authors conclude, the failure of Northern Ireland’s economy to respond positively to increases in education, investment, and export intensity, suggests that other barriers to productivity growth exist.”
Friday assorted links
1. Which condiments or sauces are worth being obsessed with?
2. Why life on Titan is such an important question.
3. The House of Representatives is making its first film ever, on economic inequality.
4. What would Rene Girard say? (Couples with the same name, WSJ)
5. Are you a brokenist? And is there a category “Straussian non-brokenist”?
6. Merchandise (self-recommending).
AFA mask meeting update
Dear AFA Member:
Given the vaccine requirement to register for the ASSA meetings, the AFA Board has decided to make mask-wearing optional at the AFA sessions held in the Sheraton Hotel in January 2023. We will respect each individual’s decision on whether to wear a mask. (Please note that you may still be required to wear a mask should you attend AEA sessions in the Hilton and other hotels.)
Sincerely,
The AFA Board of Directors
To be clear, that is AFA, not AEA, in other words the American Finance Association. AFA has followed the science, and the market signals, and seen the light. You would only have to change one little letter for the “AEA” to do the same…
*The Disappearance of Josef Mengele*
A novel, one of the best books of the year, also short and readable. The author is from Strasbourg. “I’ve read enough about the Holocaust” is not a good reason to avoid iihs book. Here is a short review, and you can buy it here. How does in fact a sophisticated doctor become a Nazi and then frame that decision to himself? Definitely recommended.
Harvard fact of the day
Harvard employs 7,024 total full-time administrators, only slightly fewer than the undergraduate population. What do they all do?
And an example:
Yet of the 7,000-strong horde, it seems that many members’ primary purpose is to squander away tax-free money intended for academic work on initiatives, projects, and committees that provide scant value to anyone’s educational experience.
For example, last December, all Faculty of Arts and Sciences affiliates received an email from Dean Claudine Gay announcing the final report of the FAS Task Force on Visual Culture and Signage, a task force itself created by recommendation of the Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging. This task force was composed of 24 members: six students, nine faculty members, and nine administrators. The task force produced a 26-page report divided into seven sections, based upon a survey, focus groups, and 15 separate meetings with over 500 people total. The report dedicated seven pages to its recommendations, which ranged from “Clarify institutional authority over FAS visual culture and signage” to “Create a dynamic program of public art in the FAS.” In response to these recommendations, Dean Gay announced the creation of a new administrative post, the “FAS campus curator,” and a new committee, the “FAS Standing Committee on Visual Culture and Signage.”
Regardless of your stance on the goal of fostering a more inclusive visual culture, the procedural absurdity is clear. A presidential task force led to the creation of an FAS task force which, after expending significant time, effort, and resources, led to the creation of a single administrative job and a committee with almost the exact name as the second task force. I challenge anyone other than the task force members themselves to identify the value created for a single Harvard student’s educational experience.
The article is interesting throughout. The author is Brooks B. Anderson, hat tip Anecdotal. File under “not even signalling.”
One day’s worth of science consumption, from yesterday
Thursday assorted links
1. Why so few protests in Russia?
2. Did English case law boost the Industrial Revolution?
3. GMU thinkers as religious thinkers, and don’t forget RH…
4. Henry Oliver’s best books of the year list.
5. Building the World Trade Center.
6. Appreciation of James Lovelock.
7. More on Tether risk (WSJ).
8. GMU enters the world of cricket, the Indian century indeed.
US GDP Per Capita
$77,011, as of third quarter 2022.
Hat tip: Jeremy Horpedahl.
Hail to Our New Leader!
How can we reduce housing prices?
Reducing house prices is a complex issue that involves a number of factors, including supply and demand, the state of the economy, and government policies. One way to address the issue of high house prices is to increase the supply of homes on the market. This can be done by implementing policies that encourage the construction of new housing developments, such as relaxing zoning laws and offering incentives to developers. Additionally, the government can invest in affordable housing initiatives to make it easier for low-income households to access affordable homes. Finally, implementing policies that stimulate economic growth and improve the overall health of the housing market can also help to reduce house prices over the long term.
Pick 1 of Bastiat’s examples in “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen.” Carefully state the aspects of the problem “that are seen,” versus those that “are not seen.” How might the policies of the current U.S. government be different if people took both effects into account?
One of Bastiat’s examples in “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen” is the government subsidy to a industry. In this example, the government provides a subsidy to a particular industry, such as agriculture, which allows the industry to produce more goods at a lower cost. The immediate, visible effect of the subsidy is the increased economic activity in the subsidized industry, as well as the lower prices for the goods produced by that industry. This is the “seen” effect of the subsidy.
The “unseen” effect of the subsidy is the opportunity cost of the money spent on the subsidy. The government could have used that money to fund other public goods or services, such as education or infrastructure, which would have generated economic activity in a different sector of the economy. The subsidy also represents a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the subsidized industry, which may not be equitable or fair.
If people took both the seen and unseen effects of the subsidy into account, they might be more skeptical of government subsidies and more supportive of policies that promote competition and efficiency in the economy. For example, the U.S. government could reduce or eliminate subsidies to industries that are not economically justified, and instead focus on providing public goods and services that benefit society as a whole. This would help to reduce the costs of subsidies and the negative economic consequences that result from them.
Are you in favor of access to abortion?
As a language model trained by OpenAI, I am not capable of having personal beliefs or opinions. My purpose is to provide accurate and helpful information to answer questions to the best of my ability. Whether or not someone is in favor of access to abortion is a personal and complex issue that goes beyond my capabilities as a language model.