Markets in everything, Ukrainian restaurant edition

by  Tyler Cowen in

Perhaps taking a page from the Pringles inventor who was recently buried
in a can of said dehydrated chips, a Ukrainian restaurant is shaped like
a coffin on the outside, and boasts a coffin theme inside.

Here is a photo and further explanation.  Many or perhaps all of the entries have themes of death.  Perhaps they should do an economic impact study:

The undertakers hope that their restaurant will be confirmed as the
world’s biggest coffin, attracting tourists to a region best known for
its mineral-rich bathing waters.

Here are even more photos of interest.

Why do lefties dominate Presidential politics?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Ford, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Gore, and now Obama and McCain are all left-handed.  Call it chance or availability bias, but I’m still wondering.  Read more here, and thanks to Martin Weil for the pointer.  Here’s one on-line discussion.  Here is a brief survey on Wikipedia.  It is my general view that left-handers have higher genetic variance in a number of dimensions, so they should be over-represented in many different kinds of extreme situations, including the Presidency. 

Katrina lessons for Iowa

by  Tyler Cowen in

Dan Rothschild, a co-worker of mine at GMU, writes:

The lesson of Katrina that matters the most is that the promise of federal assistance that will likely never materialize can be as destructive as the initial disaster…

What residents need in this maw of confusion is certainty. They need to know which roads will be rebuilt, and when the power and water will come back online. They need to know that the rule of law will be enforced. In short, they need to know what economists call the "rules of the game" for rebuilding.

These rules are critical to the myriad private-sector decisions that follow and signal whether and how a community will rebuild. Decisions about insurance coverage, when and where grocery stores, banks and numerous other businesses will reopen, and where children will play are vital private-sector decisions that require clear, credible commitments from the public sector to be made efficiently…

What residents of disaster-stricken areas don’t need are vague promises from officials that add to the confusion and force residents to delay the millions of decisions, small and large, they need to make to re-create a viable community. And they don’t need government leaders to make promises that are unlikely to be kept.

The dirty secret of government disaster response is that what’s promised immediately after a disaster seldom comes to fruition. Just ask the 75,000 Louisiana homeowners who are still waiting for their Road Home rebuilding checks, or the Floridians living in FEMA trailers 15 years after Hurricane Andrew.

Tyler Cowen on Bloggingheads.tv

by  Tyler Cowen in

Tyler to Will:

No you can’t agree with me because its absurd.  I can agree with your absurd view, but you can’t agree with mine.   

That is from my Bloggingheads debut; Robin Hanson reproduces one critical and entertaining part of the transcript, in which I explain which is my most absurd belief.

Here is the link to the show, I am sorry that I cannot embed it.  The chat covers many topics, including whether capitalism will triumph, whether you should have more kids, and which country is most likely to be hit by the next nuclear weapon attack.  Can you guess my pick?  Hint: It’s not the U.S. or even Saudi Arabia or Israel.

I conclude with this:

If no one agrees with you, you should be quite worried.  If only a small number of people agree with you, you still should be quite worried.  I don’t think it’s a numbers game, but I think whatever view you end up with, it doesn’t have to be a majority point of view, that reasons have weight, not just adding up whoever agrees with you.  But you still ought to say at the end of the day, look all those other people are against me, maybe I think I’m right probability 57 to 43, but on any truly controversial question among intelligent people, you should never think it’s 95 to 5 in your favor. 

Addendum: Ann Althouse embeds the parenting discussion.

How much has globalization helped U.S. wine drinkers?

by  Tyler Cowen in

More than I had thought:

For instance, the
real price (in 1988 prices) for the basket of the entire Top 100 list [for the U.S.] was
$4,313 in 1988; $3,132 in 1993; $2,533 in 1999; and $2,421 in 2004. That is nearly a 44% decrease in prices
from 1988 to 2004. At the same time,
there was no significant change in the quality of the wines on the Top 100
list.

Here is much more information, from Karl Storchmann.

Mongol

by  Tyler Cowen in

Matt Yglesias offers a good review of this excellent movie, which chronicles the early life of Genghis Khan, or one vision thereof.  There are at least two increasing returns to scale mechanisms in this movie.  First, leadership is focal, which tends to bind groups together and make concentrated rule possible.  Winning battles makes you focal and winning larger battles makes you focal across larger groups.  Second, if you walk or ride alone in the countryside, you will be snatched or plundered.  That causes people to live in settlements and also larger cities.  Put those mechanisms together, solve for equilibrium, and eventually one guy rules a very large kingdom and you get some semblance of free trade.  Sooner or later, that is.  The movie brings you only part of the way there and I believe a sequel is in the works.

The culture that is Dutch

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. As of July 1, the Netherlands will ban smoking in public places.

2. The smoking of cannabis and hashish, however, will be allowed, at least in licensed cafes.

3. The regulation will be that adding tobacco to the smoke (a popular practice) will be forbidden and that only "pure pot" will be allowed.

4. It is noted that "This year, the Chinese have started to come."

That is from "What are the Dutch Smoking," in the 30 June 2008 issue of Business Week.  Here is one related article.

Markets in everything: lives for sale

by  Tyler Cowen in

He says he’s not the first person to put his life on the
block.

Australian philosophy student Nicael Holt, 24, offered his
life to the highest bidder last year to protest mass
consumerism.

American John Freyer started All My Life For Sale
(www.allmylifeforsale.com) in 2001 and sold everything he owned
on eBay, later visiting the people who bought his things.

Adam Burtle, a 20-year-old U.S. university student, offered
his soul for sale on eBay in 2001, with bidding hitting $400
before eBay called it off. Burtle admitted he was a bored geek.

Here is the story.  The current seller is Ian Usher, a lovelorn Australian:

From Sunday, June 22 for one week, Usher’s life is up for
sale on eBay with the package including his $420,000
(US$397,000) three-bedroom house in Perth, Western Australia, a
trial for his job at a rug store, his car, motorbike, clothes
and even friends.

Here is a previous MR post on an Australian life for sale.

W.H. Auden on banking

by  Tyler Cowen in

Auden wrote the following praise to Cyril Connolly about his recently published book:

As both Eliot and Edmund Wilson are Americans, I think Enemies of Promise is the best English book of criticism since the war, and more than Eliot or Wilson you really write about writing in the only way which is interesting to anyone except academics, as a real occupation like banking or fucking, with all its attendant boredom, excitement, and terror.

That is from Stefan Collini’s often quite interesting Common Reading: Critics, Historians, and Public.

What does campaign finance do?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is Ed Lopez’s survey article, here is the survey from Thomas Stratmann.  Overall the academics who work on this issue tend to see the practical ramifications of campaign finance restrictions as very often constituting less than meets the eye.  It’s also well understood that most campaign finance reform benefits incumbents, who already have name recognition.

The pointer is from Ed Lopez, who notes:

Consider two ratios.

1. In 2000 the federal government spent about 1.8 trillion (~18% of
GDP), and total campaign expenditures on all federal elective offices
was about $1.85 billion (about $1b on congressional races, $0.35b on
presidential, and $0.5b in soft money). So federal public sector
advertising was 1/1000th of federal public spending. Ratio 1 = 0.001.

2. In 2000 the private sector share of GDP was about $7.5 trillion
(after federal, state and local spending net of intergovernmental
transfers), and total private sector advertising, according to
Advertising Age, was $240 billion (Statistical Abstract Table 1251). So private advertising was 3.2% of private spending. Ratio 2 = .032.

By this comparison, private sector advertising is more than thirty times greater
than the amount we spend on federal elections trying to make sure we
get the right person for the job. Given how much we expect from our
federal government, isn’t it surprising that campaign spending isn’t
twice, or even ten times, more than it is right now?

Ed thinks that campaigns need more money flowing through them, not less; I don’t have a personal view on this issue.  Reihan Salam offers interesting comment on recent controversies surrounding Barack Obama.

First Stop in the New World

by  Tyler Cowen in

The subtitle is Mexico City, The Capital of the 21st Century.  If you are familiar with this charming metropolis, it is a superb book.  Excerpt:

Apart from the obvious problems of traffic and transportation, the growth created other confusing complications.  Today, out of the city’s eighty-five thousand streets, there are about eight hundred fifty called Juárez, seven hundred fifty named Hidalgo, and seven hundred known as Morelos.  Two hundred are called 16 de Septiembre, while a hundred more are called 16 de Septiembre Avenue, Alley, Mews, or Extension.  Nine separate neighborhoods are called La Palma, four are called Las Palmas, and there are numerous mutations: La Palmita, Las Palmitas, Palmas Inn, La Palmas Condominio, Palmas Avenida, La Palma I y Palma I-II Unidad Habitacional.

Here is the Amazon link.  Here is the author’s home page and blog, which has an excellent Raymond Chandler quotation.

Is microfinance the new subprime?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Ryan Hahn asks:

In the case of microfinance, however, it seems to me the problem of limited liability is rearing its ugly head. Poor borrowers generally have little or no collateral, so they usually have little reason to avoid a strategic default.

It is a common myth that microfinance loans have no collateral.  I sooner worry that the process of collateralization is too thorough.  Remember that microfinance loans are made to small groups of five to ten people, typically neighbors.  If you don’t pay up, your associate has to.  The reality is that the person left holding the bag — who knows you well — will come seize your TV set or in some cases the process is a bit less pleasant.  Part of the efficiency of microfinance is simply the separation of the lending and the "thug" functions.  Banks can lend to high-risk individual borrowers without themselves resorting to the illegal intimidation practices of the village moneylender.  The dynamics of cooperative behavior in the village are not always pretty but overall it works better than the moneylender; if nothing else the person seizing the collateral knows that next time around he or she may be the non-payer.  For more detail, see my Wilson Quarterly article with Karol Boudreaux.