Wednesday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. South Korean child subsidy of $740 a month.

2. “Preliminary results from phase one of the study demonstrate that the mobility services substantially increased the share of families who chose to move to higher-opportunities. Fifty-four percent of families who received the mobility services chose to move to high-opportunity areas, compared to 14 percent of families who received standard services in the control group (a 286 percent increase).”  Link here.

3. The Reddit thread (chess, St. Louis).

4. Sheep are the solar industry’s lawn mower of choice (WSJ).

5. On Stable Diffusion.

Do economists need a “Head Start”?

by  Tyler Cowen in

The Biden administration has taken credit for a relative return to normalcy in schools over the last year of the coronavirus pandemic. But in one of the few education programs the federal government directly oversees — Head Start preschools and child care centers for low-income families — mandatory masking rules are still on the books for teachers and children as young as 2-years-old.

That requirement is out of line with current guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released last month, which recommend universal masking only if there is a high community transmission rate. The vast majority of schools and day care centers have made masks optional, even in the most virus-cautious regions on the country…

“Head Start programs have been short-circuited,” said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association, a trade group. “This mandate on masking and vaccines has hurt a lot of programs. It is more of a crisis that is now feeling like a looming catastrophe.”

The NYT subheader reads: “Some of the nation’s poorest pre-K students are the last still under mask mandates, affecting enrollment.”

File under “Sentences to ponder”!

What I’ve been reading

by  Tyler Cowen in

Michael Strachan, The Life and Adventures of Thomas Coryate.  Coryate was an intrepid traveler from 17th century England.  He walked along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, through Persia and Afghanistan, and into the heart of the Moghul empire.  He was the first Englishman to visit India “for the heck of it,” and he walked.  Quite possibly he introduced the table fork to England, and the word “umbrella” to the English language.  Non-complacent from top to bottom, he died at age forty, of dystentery, while underway in Surat.

Johan Fourie, Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom: Lessons from 100,000 Years of Human History.  An unusual narrative take on the broad sweep of economic history, Africa-centered, original, unusual, broken up into different stories.  The author is professor of economics and history at Stellenbosch, here is his home page.

Ronald H. Spector, A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945-1955.  This book is an excellent way to pick up knowledge on a critical period that most Westerners do not know enough about.  Most interesting to me were the sections on how many people thought the Indonesians would gladly return to Dutch colonial rule.  Narrator: They didn’t.

S Encel, Equality and Authority: a Study of Class, Status and Power in Australia.  Might this be the best explanatory book on Australia ever?  Explains the odd mix of egalitarianism, individualism, plus bureaucratic authoritarianism that characterizes the Aussies.  There should of course be many more books like this, books attempting to explain countries to us.  From 1970 but still highly relevant.

W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change.  A very good book outlining status and signaling arguments for explaining how culture works and changes.  My main gripe is that it doesn’t seem at all aware of Simler and Hanson, and Robin Hanson more generally and for that matter my own What Price Fame? (among other writings).  So while I like the content, on the grounds of both scholarships and originality I have to give it a pretty big ding.

Arrived in my pile are:

Kevin Erdmann, Building from the Ground Up: Reclaiming the American Housing Boom, and

Daniel B. Klein and Jason Briggeman, Hume, Smith, Burke, Geijer, Menger, d’Argenson.

Annie Duke, Quit.  A defense of quitting, which is often necessary to reallocate resources properly.

The Kremlin cuts off the gas

by  Tyler Cowen in

Russia’s gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will not resume in full until the “collective west” lifts sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has said.

Here is more from the FT.  This seems to me a turning point of sorts.  Remember the old chess saying: “The threat is stronger than the execution”?  Well, this is the execution!

Europe bears the full burden today, and rather soon in the winter to come.  Over time, however, Europe will adjust and the Russian position and threat value will weaken each period.

It would make sense as a strategy if Russia were about to start negotiating for peace, but that is not my prediction.

It also would make sense if Russia thinks Europe is at the very end of its rope, and now will crack.  That also does not seem correct for me.

Or maybe Russia can’t think of anything else to do, and so they do this rather than nothing.  That would signal the Russian position is weaker than it looks.  Maybe.

In some accounts, the Kremlin has left itself a partial out.  Still, from the point of view of public opinion, very few are aware of this out.  So the Kremlin may have shot its negotiating wad.

Which means…?  How do we model this…?

The continuing rise of artificial intelligence

by  Tyler Cowen in

I am happy to recommend my earlier book Average is Over on these and other developments.

My podcast with Brian Chau

by  Tyler Cowen

He titles it:

The Dark Side of Talent, Sorting and Institutions

Plus the IDW, Covid, Polio, The Case for Global Wokeness

Here is the link.  It is rare I am interviewed from “the Right” (and here I don’t mean “the cosmopolitan business Right”), but here you go.  (To be clear, I do think Brian is cosmopolitan, he just is not “the cosmopolitan business Right.”)  Very different questions and directions once we get going.  I try to persuade him to be a bit more positive about mainstream elites — perhaps I fail!

Here is Brian Chau on Twitter, here is his Substack.

If you are an elite, and on the verge of erring, please do think of Brian Chau.  Brian Chau needs you!  You can’t let Brian Chau down like that.  Please.

Public policies as instruction

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:

Minimum-wage hikes also send the wrong message to voters. Yes, there is literature suggesting that such increases destroy far fewer jobs than previously thought, and may have considerable ancillary benefits, such as preventing suicides. Still, a minimum wage is a kind of price control, and most price controls are bad. Voters may not realize the subtle ways in which minimum-wage hikes are different (and better) from most price controls. Instead, they get the message that the path to higher living standards is through government fiat, rather than better productivity.

If you think that far-fetched, consider the initiative passed by the California Senate this week. The bill would create a government panel to set wages and workplace standards for all fast-food workers in the state, and labor-union backers hope the plan will spread nationally. That may or may not happen, but those are precisely the paths that are opened up by minimum-wage advocacy. Many people hear a bigger and more ambitious message than the one the speaker wishes to send.

So what messages, in the broadest terms, should policies convey? I would like to see increased respect for cosmopolitanism, tolerance, science, just laws, dynamic markets, free speech and the importance of ongoing productivity gains. Obviously any person’s list will depend on his or her values, but for me the educational purposes are more than just a secondary factor. When it comes to prioritizing reforms, the focus should be on those that will “give people the right idea,” so to speak.

The mere fact that you are uncertain about such effects does not mean you can or should ignore them.  They are there, whether you like it or not.

Mandated vaccine boosters for the AEA meetings?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Yes, the new AEA regulations will mandate vaccine boosters for attendance at the New Orleans meetings.  Not just two jabs but yes boosters, at least one of them.

Like the N-95 (or stronger) mask mandate, this seems off base and possibly harmful to public health as well.  Here are a few points:

1. The regulations valorize “booster with an older strain,” and count “infection with a recent strain” for nothing.  In fact, the latter is considerably more valuable, most of all to estimate a person’s public safety impact on others.  So the regulations simply target the wrong variable.

1b. People who are boosted might even be less likely to have caught the newer strains (presumably the boosters are at least somewhat useful).  Thus they are potentially more dangerous to others, not less, being on average immunologically more naive.  Ideally you want a batch of attendees who just had Covid two or three months ago.

2. More than three-quarters of Americans have not had a booster to date.  Very likely the percentage of potential AEA attendees with boosters stands at a considerably higher level.  Still, this is a fairly exclusionary policy, and pretty far from what most Americans consider to be an acceptable regulation.

2b. To be clear, I had my booster right away, even though I expected it would make me sick for two days (it did).  I am far from being anti-booster.  I am glad I had my booster, but I also understand full well the distinction between “getting a booster at the time was the right decision,” and “we should mandate booster shots today.”  They are very different!  Don’t just positively mood affiliate with boosters.  Think through the actual policies.

3. Blacks are a relatively undervaccinated group, and probably they are less boosted as well.  The same may or may not be true for black potential AEA attendees, but it is certainly possible.  After all the talk of DEI, and I for one would like to see more inclusion, why are we making inclusion harder?  And for no good medical reason.

3b. How about potential attendees from Africa, Latin America, and other regions where boosters are harder to come by?  What are their rates of being boosted?  Do they all have to fly to America a few days earlier, line up boosters, and hope the ill effects wear off by the time of the meetings?  Why are we doing this to them?

3c. Will the same booster requirements be applied to hotel staff and contractors?  Somehow I think not.  Maybe that is a sign the boosters are not so important for conference well-being after all?

4. Many people are in a position, right now, where they should not boost.  Let’s say you had Covid a few months ago, and are wondering if you should get a booster now or soon.  I looked into this recently, and found the weight of opinion was that you should wait at least six months for your immune system to process the recent infection.  That did not seem to be “settled science,” but rather a series of judgments, admittedly with uncertainty.  So now let’s take those people who were not boosted, had a new strain of Covid recently, and want to go to the AEA meetings.  (The first two of three there cover a lot of people.)  They have to get boosted.  And in expected value terms, boosting is bad for them.  Did this argument even occur to the decision-makers at the AEA?

5. The AEA mentions nothing about religious or other exceptions to the policy.  Maybe there are “under the table” exceptions, but really?  Why not spell out the actual policy here, and if there are no exceptions come right out and tell us.  And explain why so few other institutions have chosen the “no exceptions” path, and why the AEA should be different.  (As a side note, it is not so easy to process exceptions for the subset of the 13,000 possible attendees who want them.  Does the AEA have this capacity?)

Again, this is simply a poorly thought out policy, whether for N-95 masks or for boosters.  I hope the AEA will discard it as soon as possible.  Or how about a simple, open poll of membership, simple yes or not on the current proposal?

Insurance markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

Xcel confirmed to Contact Denver7 that 22,000 customers who had signed up for the Colorado AC Rewards program were locked out of their smart thermostats for hours on Tuesday.

“It’s a voluntary program. Let’s remember that this is something that customers choose to be a part of based on the incentives,” said Emmett Romine, vice president of customer solutions and innovation at Xcel.

Customers receive a $100 credit for enrolling in the program and $25 annually, but Romine said customers also agree to give up some control to save energy and money and make the system more reliable.

Basically their AC was shut off and some of the homes had temperatures as high as 88 Fahrenheit.  Sounds like an OK arrangement to me!  Here is the full story, via Tom Hynes.

How to discover Indian classical music

by  Tyler Cowen in

Versions of that request were repeated a few times, along with a request for a YouTube or Spotify list.  Given the visual element, I would say that YouTube >> Spotify.  But mostly you are looking to hear world class performers in live concert, there is no substitute for that, most of all for the percussion, but also for the overall sense of energy.

I first heard Indian classical music by stumbling upon the Ravi Shankar section of the Concert for Bangladesh album, at a young age (thirteen or so?).  It seemed obvious to me this was better than “Within You, Without You,” but it was a long time before I really would get back to it.  Shankar never ended up clicking with me, but definitely he was the introduction.

As a young teen I also loved the Byrds song “Eight Miles High,” with its opening riff taken from John Coltrane’s “India.”  Not exactly Indian classical music, but a clue there was much more to discover, and again I took this very seriously.  The raga bits on the Byrds 5D album intrigued me more than the lugubrious Harrison tunes.

I recall my high friend friend (and composer) Eric Lyon insisting to me that Carnatic classic music was better than American jazz improvisation.  I didn’t follow him at the time, but I always took Eric’s opinions very seriously, and so I filed this away mentally for later reexamination.

I also recall Thomas Schelling telling me that his son decided to become a professional Indian classical musician (in fact he ended up as more of a poet and translator).  I had the vague sense this was something quite admirable to do.  So the data points were piling up.

Years passed, and I spent most of my time listening to traditional Western classical music, and with fantastic aesthetic returns.

Still, I grew restless to learn more, and kept on returning to musics I did not understand very well.  My best and most common entry point was simply to listen to a lot of other musics that are (were?) somewhat atypical to Western ears, whether it be atonal music, guitar drone music, or Arabic microtonal tunes.  Nonetheless progress was slow.

In the 1990s, I started going to lots of world music concerts in the DC area, often at University of Maryland or GWU.  These years were a kind of golden age for world music (a terrible term, btw) in the U.S., as post 9/11 visa restrictions were not yet around.

Twice I heard L. Subramaniam play Indian classical violin.  Wow!  My head was spinning, and from there on out I was determined to hear as many Indian classical concerts as possible.  Maybe his melodic lines are not the very deepest, but he was a remarkably exciting performer.  A whole new world was opened up to me.  I also heard Shakti, with Zakir Hussein and John McLaughlin, play at GWU.  That was fusion yes, but it owed more to Indian classical traditions than anything else.  To this day it remains one of the three or four best concerts I’ve ever seen.

The Ali Akbar Khan Signature Series CDs made increasing sense to me, and I grew to love them and many others.  I did go back to Shankar, but decided he was, all along, far from the top of the heap.  Maybe a great marketer, though.

S. Balachandar on the veena was another early discovery, via Fanfare.

Later in the 1990s I read Frederick Turner write that Indian classical music was one of humanity’s greatest spiritual and aesthetic achievements, and around the same time I chatted a bit with Turner too.  I had never quite heard anyone claim that before, but instinctively I realized I very much agreed with him.  I decided that I believed that too.

Shikha Dalmia helped me out with some recommendations as well, and she was the first one to mention to me the Indian classical music festival in what is now called Chennai.  For many years I wanted to go.

Then followed more years of listening.  On my first India trips, I carried back a large number of $2 CDs, high variance but many of them excellent, such as Kishori Amonkar.  I bought as much as I could plausibly carry back home.

About eight years ago, I took daughter Yana to the Chennai Indian classical music festival held every December.  We saw a number of incredible performers, most notably the great U. Srinivas (mandolin!), before his demise.  I can recommend this experience to you all, and I plan on going again.

So what is the lesson of all this?  My path was so inefficient and roundabout!  You can avoid all of that, just read this blog post and be there…voila!

But that doesn’t quite work either.