It can’t hurt to ask?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Asking someone how likely they are to take illegal drugs in the future
can actually increase the likelihood that they will indeed take drugs –
a finding with worrying implications for health research.

Patti Williams and
colleagues recruited 167 undergrads and asked some of them about their
intentions to take drugs, and the others about their intentions to
exercise. Two months later, the students were contacted again, and
those who had been asked about drugs reported taking drugs an average
of 2.8 times in the intervening period, compared with an average of 1.1
times among the students previously asked about exercise.

The
effect was even more dramatic when those students who said they hadn’t
taken any drugs at all were omitted from the analysis. Among the
remaining students, those asked about their drug-taking intentions said
they’d used drugs an average of 10.3 times over the past two months,
compared with an average of 4 times among the students previously asked
about their exercise intentions.

This observation, together with further analysis, suggested it wasn’t
that new drug users had been created, but rather that the questioning
had led to increased use among current users who presumably had a
positive attitude towards drugs in the first place.

Here is the full story.

The best paragraph I read yesterday

by  Tyler Cowen in

Apart from the part from War and Peace I read on the plane, here is tops:

Above all, a classical liberal needs to identify, expose, and counter
the marketing strategies and tactics that are used to expand
government. Both political parties play up fears in order to sucker us
into ceding money and power. Just as certain citizens’ groups are known
for exposing the false advertising of corporations, we need to expose
the false advertising of politicians.

That is Arnold Kling, here is the full argument.

Why did the electric car die?

by  Tyler Cowen in

David Friedman cites one critic of the idea:

General Motors lost two billion
dollars on the project, and lost money on every single EV1 produced.
The leases didn’t even cover the costs of servicing them.

The
range of 130 miles is bogus. None of them ever achieved that under
normal driving conditions. Running the air conditioning or heater could
halve that range. Even running the headlights reduced it by 10%.

Minimum
recharge time was two hours using special charging stations that except
for fleet use didn’t exist. The effective recharge time, using the
equipment that could be installed in a lessee’s garage, was eight
hours. …

NiMH
batteries that had lasted up to three years in testing were failing
after six months in service. There was no way to keep them from
overheating without doubling the size of the battery pack. Lead-acid
batteries were superior to NiMH in actual daily use.

Believe it or not, it wasn’t because of an oil company conspiracy.  Here is an article on the importance of range.  Here is a negative review of the new movie on the electric car.

The immigration and wages debate

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is a very good article by Roger Lowenstein, from The New York Times Magazine today.  It takes you behind the scenes of the Card vs. Borjas debate and tries to figure out who might actually be right and why.  Print it out, it is worth reading in full.  I interpret Lowenstein as closer to Card’s position, although he takes care to present both sides of the issue.

The best economics columnist you’ve never heard of?

by  Tyler Cowen in

David Warsh nominates Shane Greenstein for this honor.  Here are Shane’s recent columns on the tech industry.  Try his essay on why inventors are not usually famous.  But I’ve heard of Shane, and once I even interviewed him for a job.  So for me he is not even in the running for the "unheard of" designation.  Other nominations are welcome…

What is Robert Skidelsky doing?

by  Tyler Cowen in

That’s Lord Skidelsky, author of the excellent biographies of Keynes.  His Oswald Mosley biography earned him much enmity in academia.  And now?

Late in life, the historian and peer of the realm has re-connected with
his Russian roots. He has learned the language (he took his A-level at
the age of 64) and keeps a flat in Moscow. "I went there first in the
early 90s to research a book called The World After Communism," he
says. "Now I’ve started to feel more Russian, I go at least half a
dozen times a year." He also travels regularly in the other direction.
He is on the board of one of the most successful mutual funds in
America and is about to become a director of a large employment agency
in Florida. "I’m just modestly restoring the Skidelsky family fortune
after all those years in academia," he says.

Here is the full story, and thanks to www.politicaltheory.info for the pointer.

Greg Mankiw takes on Jacqueline Passey

by  Tyler Cowen in

Jacqueline Passey writes:

…gambling is distributive justice, moving money from stupid people to smart people.

Greg Mankiw writes (do note that Greg is not a pure utilitarian):

The utilitarian in me points out that Jacqueline gets things exactly
backwards: distributive justice demands moving money from smart people
to stupid people.  Smart people have the potential to make a lot of
money and thus have lower marginal utility per dollar, while stupid
people have less money-making potential and higher marginal utility.

This question is tricky.  If gambling leads to little real enjoyment, stupid/poor people are receiving a low marginal utility from these expenditures.  If we discourage gambling (whether by taxation or moralizing), might the would-be gamblers spend the money in yet another wasteful and thus low marginal utility way?  Short of having government manage the entire budget of poor people, through extensive taxes and subsidies, this problem is hard to avoid. 

Alternatively, if stupid people enjoy losing their money through gambling, then it is not wasteful and need not be discouraged.

It is hard to say that both a) marginal expenditures are wasted, and b)
marginal expenditures bring a high marginal utility.  Perhaps once
gambling is removed as a temptation the poor will spend those marginal funds on tofu and vitamins, but I would not count on that.

Readers, how do you score Greg vs. Jacqueline?

Sad facts of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

"80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year."

"58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school."

"…more people probably read Engadget than all of the top 50 science blogs combined."

Bill Simmons (a good link for NBA fans) thinks that Allen Iverson would have been the greatest soccer player ever to try the game.

You’ll find all of those over at the ever-excellent kottke.org.

How American is Globalization?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Extending the analysis to 1999, we see that the percentage of the world’s population who are native speakers of English actually declined from 9.8 to 7.8 percent.  The percentage of native speakers of the world’s leading language, Mandarin, also declined slightly, from 15.6 to 15.2 percent…The language groups that have increased dramatically as a percentage of the world population are Arabic and Bengali, which each accounted for 2.7 percent of the world’s speakers in 1958, but rose to 3.5 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively, in 1992.  Hindi speakers rose from 5.2 to 6.4 percent, and Spanish speakers from 5.0 to 6.1 percent.  English as a first language has fallen from its mid-century position of second place to fourth as the millennium ended.

That is from William H. Marling’s How "American" is Globalization?  This wide-ranging book is the definitive current source on which cultures are gaining and losing in respective cultural areas.  The bottom line of this book?  The world is not becoming Americanized.  Very highly recommended.

Cold stores and high prices: The Culture Code

by  Tyler Cowen in

…I regularly hear Europeans complain that American stores are too cold in the summer.  Again, the conflict lies in the cultural schemes.  Americans like to be cool, even extremely cool.  Research has shown that the coldest stores in America tend to be the most expensive.  Since air conditioning is a necessity, we need extreme air conditioning to convey a sense of luxury.

That is from Clotaire Rapaille’s The Culture Code, a fun romp through national cultures, how the French think about seduction, why the Americans invaded Iraq, why monetary incentives work better in some cultures than others, why autistic children have trouble learning, and what makes foreigners so hard to understand.

OK, he is making all this stuff up.  Publishers Weekly referred to its:

"preposterous generalizations and overstatements, e.g., Japanese men "seem utterly incapable of courtship or wooing a woman.""

It is one of the few non-fiction books I have read this year which will stick with me.  Here is the book’s home page.