Assorted links
1. How to guarantee your luggage won't be lost (pack a pistol).
2. Interview with James Heckman on the crisis.
3. A successful auto-appendectomy, in the Antarctic.
Getting drunk as signaling behavior
Here is the abstract, I look forward to reading the paper:
It is argued that drug consumption, most commonly alcohol drinking, can be a technology to give up some control over one’s actions and words. It can be employed by trustworthy players to reveal their type. Similarly alcohol can function as a “social lubricant” and faciliate type revelation in conversations. It is shown that both separating and pooling equilibria can exist; as opposed to the classic results in the literature, a pooling equilibrium is still informative. Drugs which allow a gradual loss of control by appropriate doses and for which moderate consumption is not addictive are particularly suitable because the consumption can be easily observed and reciprocated and is unlikely to occur out of the social context. There is a trade-off between the efficiency gains due to the signaling effect and the loss of productivity associated with intoxication. Long run evolutionary equilibria of the type distribution are considered. If coordination on an exclusive technology is efficient, social norms or laws can raise efficiency by legalizing only one drug.
I thank Brian Dailey for the pointer.
How to help Haiti
…contact the White House and tell them that you support granting Haitians Temporary Protected Status (TPS) immediately.
TPS is a form of temporary humanitarian immigration relief given to nationals of countries that have suffered severe disasters, natural or man-made. (For example, El Salvador got TPS was after the country was hit by a terrible earthquake in 2001, Honduras after Hurricane Mitch in 1999, and Burundi, Liberia, Sudan, and Somalia were designated because of ongoing armed conflicts.)
Once a country has been given TPS, its nationals who are in the United States can apply for work authorization (a very useful thing to have if, say, one needs to send money home to family members in need of medical care or a house that has not been reduced to rubble), can't be deported or put into immigration detention (also quite handy if you're trying to work and send money home), and can apply for travel authorization, which allows them to visit their home country and return to the US, even if they wouldn't otherwise have a visa that would allow them back into the country (incredibly important if you have loved ones who have been badly hurt and need to visit them, or if you need to go home to attend funerals).
Designating Haiti for TPS status would provide an immediate, tremendously valuable benefit to Haitian immigrants in the United States. But, more importantly it would benefit their loved ones who remain in Haiti and are in desperate need of their assistance.
That's Amanda Taub. Chris Blattman agrees. Here is a relevant Michael Clemens talk. Another idea is cancel Haiti's debt.
North Carolina teaching symposium, February 5
It's a symposium for teaching Principles of Economics, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Alex and I are speaking, information and registration can be found here. My talk is on how to teach the financial crisis using basic economic tools and Alex's talk is on "Seeing the Invisible Hand"; there will be other speakers as well. If you are involved with the teaching of Principles, do come, we would like to meet you and also hear your thoughts on what we will present .
Why is Haiti so poor?, part II
Here is a short essay, I thank MR commentator Bobabdil for the pointer.
The health care excise tax compromise
Megan McArdle reports:
And so it looks like they may have reached a deal sooner than otherwise expected: unions get a special two-year exclusion from the tax.
Presumably, the unions plan to go back and get their exclusion extended every few years.
Here is more detail. I suppose that would increase the rate of unionization…and increase union support for Democratic candidates, a win-win, no?
Assorted links
1. More on growth vs. levels, with some polemics thrown in.
2. Relative prices of different liquids.
5. Haiti and debt.
Geopolitical speculations about Haiti
Haiti is about the size of Maryland and a big chunk of the population lives in or near Port-Au-Prince, maybe a third of the total, depending on what you count as a suburb. So the collapse of Port-Au-Prince is a big, big deal for the country as a whole. It's a dominant city for Haiti. Plus Jacmel seems to be leveled. From the reports I have seen, my tentative conclusion is that the country as a whole is currently below the subsistence level and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, the U.N. Mission has collapsed, the government is not working (was it ever?), and hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of people are living in the streets without reliable food or water supplies. The hospitals and schools have collapsed. The airport is shut down. The port is very badly damaged. The Haitian Penitentiary has collapsed and the inmates — tough guys most of them – are running free for the foreseeable future. There is no viable police force or army.
In other words, it's not just a matter of offering extra food aid for two or three years.
Very rapidly, President Obama needs to come to terms with the idea that the country of Haiti, as we knew it, probably does not exist any more.
In what sense does Haiti still have a government? How bad will it have to get before the U.N. or U.S. moves in and simply governs the place? How long will this governance last? What will happen to Haiti as a route for the drug trade, the dominant development in the country's economy over the last fifteen years? What does the new structure of interest groups look like, say five years from now?
Is there any scenario in which the survivors, twenty years from now, are better off, compared to the quake never having taken place?
How to boast without looking bad
…context is everything when it comes to boasting. If Avi's friend raised the topic of the exams, Avi received favourable ratings in terms of his boastfulness and likeability, regardless of whether he was actually asked what grade he got. By contrast, if Avi raised the topic of the exams, but failed to provoke a question, then his likeability suffered and he was seen as more of a boaster. In other words, to pull off a successful boast, you need it to be appropriate to the conversation. If your friend, colleague, or date raises the topic, you can go ahead and pull a relevant boast in safety. Alternatively, if you're forced to turn the conversation onto the required topic then you must succeed in provoking a question from your conversation partner. If there's no question and you raised the topic then any boast you make will leave you looking like a big-head.
There is more here. Have you ever wondered, by the way, why I ask for topic requests so often?
Construction in Haiti
It has even more problems than you think:
Mr. Sinclair said that design and construction were far worse than in other developing countries he had visited. “In Haiti, most if not all of the buildings have major engineering flaws,” he said.
Most houses and other structures are built of poured concrete or block, there being very little lumber available due to mass deforestation, said Alan Dooley, a Nashville architect who designed a medical clinic, built of reinforced concrete, in Petite Rivière de Nippes, a fishing village 50 miles west of Port-au-Prince.
Concrete is very expensive – much of the cement for it comes from the United States, Mr. Dooley said – so some contractors cut corners by adding more sand to the mix. The result is a structurally weaker material that deteriorates rapidly, he said. Steel reinforcing bar is also expensive, he said, so there is a tendency to use less of it with the concrete.
Building codes are limited or nonexistent, so columns and other elements made from concrete are often relatively thin, designed without proper margins of safety. “We would double the design strength, just to give it a factor of safety,” Mr. Dooley said, referring to practices in the United States. “There they’d design it to what it would hold.”
Concrete blocks are often substandard too, said Peter Haas, executive director of Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, a nonprofit organization that is working on several projects in Haiti. Many of them are made in small batches at people’s homes, and the quality can vary. “When you’re buying blocks at the store you really have no idea of where they’re from,” Mr. Haas said. “And all it takes is for the block that was made at home to collapse.”
Why is Haiti so poor?
I'm not interested in talking about Greg Clark or making comparisons to the West; if need be compare it to other black Caribbean nations, such as Jamaica or Barbados. It's much worse and in terms of social indicators it is also worse than many places in Africa. Why? Here a few hypotheses (NB: I don't endorse all of them):
1. Haiti cut its colonial ties too early, rebelling against the French in the early 19th century and achieving complete independence. Guadaloupe and Martinique are still riding the gravy train and French aid is a huge chunk of their gdps.
2. Haiti was a French colony in the first place and French colonies do less well.
3. Sugar cane gave Haiti some early characteristics of "the resource curse," dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries.
4. Haiti was doing OK until the Duvaliers destroyed civil society, thus putting the country on a path toward destruction. It is a more or less random one-time event which wrecked the place.
5. Hegel was correct that the "voodoo religion," with its intransitive power relations among the gods, was prone to producing political intransitivity as well. (Isn't that a startling insight for a guy who didn't travel the broader world much?)
6. For reasons peculiar to the history of the slave trade, Haitian slaves came from many different parts of Africa and thus Haitian internal culture has long had lower levels of cohesion and cooperation. (The former point about the mix is true, but the cultural point is speculation.)
7. Haiti has higher than average levels of polygamy (but is this cause or effect?)
8. In the early to mid twentieth century, Haiti was poorly situated to attract Chinese and other immigrants, unlike say Jamaica or Trinidad. It is interesting that many of the wealthiest families in Haiti are Lebanese, such as the Naders.
Overall I don't find this set of possible factors very satisfactory. Is it asking too much to wish for an economics profession that is obsessed with such a question?
If you are looking for some cross-sectional variation to ponder, consider the fate of Haitians in Suriname (they make up a big chunk of the population there), Haiti vs. Santiago, Cuba, pre-Castro of course, or why early Haitian migrants to Montreal have done better than later migrants to Miami and Brooklyn.
Assorted links
2. One attempt to estimate an "imaginary Europe," along with other Europe-U.S. comparisons.
3. Papers about the U.S. are more likely to be published.
4. Charles Rowley on macroeconomics: a personal anecdote which reflects his approach to economics.
5. Why we sit through movie previews.
6. Via Chris F. Masse, why hasn't scientific publishing already been revolutionized?
The AP critique of the stimulus
There is apparently a new study, from the AP, suggesting that the transportation spending of the stimulus has not succeeded in creating jobs. The study now seems to have "legs," as here is lengthy NYT coverage. Through some email forwarded to me, I have the impression (my apologies if I am wrong) that they are not circulating copies of the study for perusal. Instead, the study has been reviewed by some economists, who seem to approve of it. No one else is allowed to judge. Does anyone have a copy of the original study? Will the AP send me a copy? The NYT piece — which seems to be written by the AP by the way — does not link to the study. The AP won't link to their own study, or so at least it seems.
Loyal MR readers will know that I have been critical of most of the stimulus program. Still, phantom studies should not be receiving serious media attention. It's time for the AP to put up or shut up.
Comments are open, as is my email, I would like to see a copy of the study.
Addendum: from Matt Apuzzo, at the AP:
"Matthew/Tyler:
If either of you would like to chat about the AP's analysis, I'm happy
to provide you the sources of our data and walk you through the
statistical tests we conducted. Nothing we did is a secret, but there's
no actual "study" to provide you, like there is in academia. The
professors reviewed some spreadsheets and statistical tests, talked
methodology, made suggestions on other tests to run, and overall made
sure we weren't reading things incorrectly. All of this feedback
ultimately contributed to our final conclusion, but there's no executive
summary.
Give a call, I'm happy to help.
-Matt"
What do you all think?
Luck and disasters
Just two days ago I was trying to convince a group of my colleagues to come to Haiti with me for a three-day weekend outing. Had we gone, we would have stayed in what is now the epicenter of the earthquake. The hotel I had in mind…I believe it does not exist any more but has fallen down the hills into oblivion. It is difficult for me to fathom what must be going on there and how it will continue to play out. In addition to thousands of lives, much of the Haitian cultural heritage has been destroyed. Here is an image of Simbi, god of healing.
Here is one reputable place to donate. Here is another.
If only we had the will do this
If Democrats want to avoid this headache, they could follow the recommendation of my American Prospect colleague Paul Starr. Instead of fining those who go without insurance, Starr has proposed that "For five years they would become ineligible for federal subsidies for health insurance and, if they did buy coverage, no insurer would have to cover a pre-existing condition of theirs." They would not be fined for avoiding the new system, but neither could they benefit from or exploit it. This period of ineligibility, Starr adds, "deters opportunistic switches in and out of the public funds, and it helps to prevent the private insurers from cherry-picking healthy people and driving up insurance costs in the public sector."
Of course you can generalize that idea just a bit further.
I hadn't known the Senate version of the bill has a fine of only $95 for the first year; somehow I had thought it was $200 or so. (As Jeff Ely indicated, who said there's no public option?) How, politically, will the fine be amended? Will the Democrats call for change, the Republicans will cynically oppse it, and what? What if the Republicans run at least one house of Congress? Will they be willing to improve the operation of the program? Why should anyone sign up?