Some fertility and AI forecasts
The 2024 forecast is particularly pessimistic about China’s fertility prospects. Both projections produce very substantial global aging, a major global capital glut producing very low long-run real capital returns. The latest forecast entails 10% lower global GDP in 2100 and far higher payroll tax rates to fund old-age benefits. Most important, it entails a major change in the course of economic hegemony with China’s 2100 global GDP share falling from 25.6% to 14.9% and the US share rising from 11.2% to 14.4%. Our results are sensitive. Should the US eliminate all future immigration, its 14.4% global 2100 GDP share would drop to 9.2%. And were global fertility to follow the UN’s low variant, 2100 world output would be one third, not one tenth lower. The level and division of global output is also highly sensitive to the speed at which AI expands frontier technologies. Accelerated AU/AI – 4x faster-than-recent growth in capital’s share through 2050 – or Transformative AU/AI – 10x faster capital-share growth – reinforce demographic forces, ensuring long-run US economic hegemony. Indeed, Transformative AI combined with 2024 demographics implies US and Chinese 2100 global GDP shares of 25.3% and 16.9%, respectively.
That is from a new NBER working paper by
Tuesday assorted links
Morocco facts of the day, Morocco is not hopeless
For decades, South Africa was the great success story of African industrialization. Last year, Morocco took the lead, emerging as the African Development Bank’s top-ranked industrial economy in Africa. In the Bank’s analysis, published in the latest edition of its industrialization index, Morocco’s growth has been “driven by sustained industrial upgrading, export diversification, and strong industrial policy.” Since the mid-2000s, it has leveraged its location and dominant phosphate reserves to get free trade agreements with the US, the EU, and fifty other countries: the Kingdom would like Morocco to be to France what Eastern Europe is to Germany, or what Mexico is to the US: an export-base “workbench.”
Having positioned itself to profit from the shift to clean energy supply, Morocco is nimbly pivoting its auto manufacturing sector to build EVs, working with incumbents like Renault and Stellantis, and is host to Africa’s first battery gigafactory. That single 70 gigawatt-hour battery factory in Casablanca is expected to supply a third of Europe’s current market. Last year, the government approved construction for a new green hydrogen industrial park, aiming to produce ammonia, steel, and industrial fuel worth a total of $32.5 billion. It has also been strategic in focusing its industrial strategy on aerospace manufacturing, with Airbus becoming a strategic partner, along with investments from Boeing, Thales, and Safran. Its aerospace exports more than tripled in the decade to 2024, to reach almost $3 billion.
Here is the full piece by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay.
How economics is changing
As a proportion of the literature, research about econometric theory, monetary policy and corporate governance has slumped. Meanwhile, papers on development, crime and gender are on the up. This could perhaps be because of changing intellectual interests, or maybe demand-side pressures, such as policymaker priorities and external funding…
Research from Prashant Garg, a postdoctoral researcher at Bocconi University, and Thiemo Fetzer, economics professor at Warwick University, finds causal claims in economics have jumped. In 1990, 7.7 per cent of claims made in the literature were causal. In 2023, that hit 32.6 per cent. Additionally, papers with more causal claims are more likely to receive citations and wind up in top five journals, the research suggests.
Here is more from Harvey Nriapia at the FT.
Monday assorted links
1. Where do the great American comedians hail from?
2. General thoughts on biosafety.
3. “Violet Hensley Dies at 109; Ozarks Fiddler Made Opry Debut at 99” (NYT). She also handcrafted 73 fiddles, appeared on The Beverly Hillbillies, and considered bluegrass too modern for her. She had nine children as well.
4. Which campaiging politicians are using AI the most, and other issues?
6. Tommy John, RIP (NYT).
7. China is hoping to influence the AIs through data supply (NYT).
What should I ask Roman Mars?
Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him. Most of all he is obsessed with design, here is Wikipedia:
Roman Mars is an American radio producer. He is the host and producer of 99% Invisible, a KALW radio show and podcast, and a founder of the podcast collective Radiotopia, which he describes as efforts “to broaden the radio landscape [and] make shows that aren’t bound by conventions” of public radio in the United States. In 2020, he co-authored the New York Times best seller The 99% Invisible City with Kurt Kohlstedt…Mars, with Elizabeth Joh, also hosts the podcast What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law.
His TED talk on city flags is a good introduction to his thought.
So what should I ask him?
Somalia facts of the day
The fruits of better security are plain to see. “Business is booming,” says Gamal Hassan, the commerce minister. New buildings are going up at a frenetic pace. The district around the airport, in particular, has grown much denser (see satellite images). Dahab Tower, a 26-floor confection of luxury flats, a mall, a gym and a mosque, is due to open this year. It sits close to the spot where, in 1993, the bodies of two American soldiers were dragged through the streets after militiamen shot down a Black Hawk helicopter. Nearby is Beydan Coffee, a thriving pan-African chain founded by a Somali who returned from Sweden in the 2010s.
What explains the lull in attacks is less obvious. The government boasts that, in the words of a former intelligence officer, it has “completely closed the doors” on al-Shabab. Mr Mahmood of the ICG credits “prosaic” measures such as the spread of CCTV
cameras, and an electronic database that police equipped with iPads use to identify civilian cars at checkpoints. Plainclothes intelligence officers have been deployed in large numbers.
Here is much more from The Economist. I will repeat my recent point that many dangerous places in the world are about to become much, much safer.
What I’ve been reading
1. Gerald Martin, Mario Vargas Llosa: A Life. A good book if you wish to read about his strange sex life, starting early in his years. But if you are more interested in the history of ideas, Peruvian politics, or the development of the Latin American novel it is far less compelling. So for me a disappointment.
2. Sean Mathews, The New Byzantines: The Rise of Greece and Return of the Near East. A consistently interesting look at Greece, the Ottoman roots in the area, the radical changes brought by the early 20th century, and Greece’s relations with Israel, among other topics. The book has the virtue of “trying to explain how things actually are,” sadly not the case for all works.
3. Simon Morrison, The Love & Wars of Lina Prokofiev. More suspense and interest for me than any biography of Prokofiev I have read. I had not known that she grew up in Brooklyn. I am happy to recommend Morrison’s books more generally.
4. Emily Wilson, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys through Ancient Literature. Wilson has become a controversial figure for a variety of not-so-merited reasons, but the simpler truth is this. She is a superior intellectual presence and mind, so you should be reading what she writes, no matter what your stances. My two favorite essays in this volume were the one on Logue’s War Music, and the closing piece on translations of The Odyssey.
5. Munir Hachemi, The Mulai. A somewhat loopy but intriguing science fiction story, broadly in the direction of Ursula LeGuin. I am not sure what to think, but definitely will keep on reading.
Things you cannot buy in America?
3. Exterior roller shutters (Rollladen)
In much of Europe, homes feature heavy shutters integrated into the exterior of the window, enabling total blackout and better insulation. Sleeping in true, complete darkness—not “blackout curtain” darkness, but can’t-see-your-hand darkness—is an experience most Americans will never have. These shutters are nearly impossible to get in the USA because these shutters are built directly into the home during its construction. They are fundamentally incompatible with standard American wood-frame, siding, and drywall construction, meaning there is no domestic supply chain to support them, even if you built a house to fit them.
From Daniel Frank, here is the full piece, noting I am not convinced you cannot get a “grass roof,” among other items mentioned. In any case an interesting list, file under “possibly thwarted markets in everything.” Via Anecdotal.
Sunday assorted links
Another rationale for sticky prices?
…what can be predicted, Dabis said, is that a recent policy change by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority requiring drivers to verbally quote the $2.25 fare to passengers may make their job even riskier.
Eight current Metro employees and two former employees who work at the union representing Metro workers told The Washington Post that they are concerned that announcing the fare is ineffective and may increase the risk that bus operators will be harassed or assaulted. As a result, several drivers said they are disregarding the policy to keep themselves safe.
“It’s very disheartening to think that a company would put their operators in harm’s way by allowing this type of change,” said Dabis, who is among those refusing to quote the fare. “I just want to go home the same way that I came to work: healthy, unharmed. I love this company. I love the customers. But quoting the fare is just too much.”
Fare evasion has plagued Metro for years. In 2024, Metro said about 70 percent of bus riders didn’t pay.
Here is the full story. And for the pointer I thank Rich.
Adolfo Bioy Casares delay
My Amazon shipment is postponed from this fall until April 11, 2028 (!).
Will it ever come?
Of course this is the fantastic, and long, Bioy Cesares book Borges, his memoir of their friendship.
How can the reoptimization both be so distant and so exact in timing?
Saturday assorted links
1. Speculative Chinese claims about Alzheimer’s.
2. Very interesting Anthropic piece on why multi-agentic systems seem to show more herd behavior and collusion than human systems. And a comment from Rune Kvist.
3. Cross-cultural data on masculinity.
4. The Griers on the performance of Modi relative to synthetic controls.
A Conservative Case for Liberal Immigration
That is the title of my latest Free Press piece, here is one excerpt:
Or look at the AI revolution, another area where America is leading the world and also using its AI models to exert soft power. Dario Amodei of Anthropic has an Italian father, neural-network pioneer Geoffrey Hinton is originally from the U.K., and Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, who helped initially fund and found OpenAI, are from South Africa and Germany, respectively. OpenAI co-founder Wojciech Zaremba is from Poland. Musk and Thiel, of course, have other achievements to their credit as well. A significant portion of the employees at the major labs are Chinese. In one survey of published AI researchers, 38 percent received their undergraduate education in China, and 72 percent of those are working in the U.S.
Recommended, do read the whole thing.
That was then, this is now
I very much like the new Michael Khodarkovsky book The Steppe and its Empires: The Russian Empire & its Eurasian Counterparts. Excerpt:
Russia presented the most remarkable contrast to both Eurasian and Western empires. The oower of Moscovite tsars and Russian emperors seemed to be completely unconstrained by moral or ethical boundaries. Whereas religious authorities in Europe, the Islamic world, and Cjhina kept some distance from the state and had a degree of independence from the rulers, in Russia the Orthodox Church was fully behind the autocratic powers of the tsars. Ivan III was the first to adopt the title samoderzhets (a calque of a title of Byzantine emperors, literally “autocrat” in Greek), which he used in the sense of a “sovereign” ruler. It took another half century before his grandson, Ivan IV, began to use the title to signal his exceptional, universal, and unrestrained power.
And:
To begin with, each Eurasian ruler conceived of himself as the sovereign of a universal, not natinoal, empire. Such a ruler was non plus ultra; confident in his superiority over other religious or political bodies, he was destined to rule the world, if not politically, at least rhetorically, an autocrat whose subjects’ servile condition was a natural state.
Seen through the prism of a universal monarchy, the Eurasian imperial vision blurred the separation between metropolis and periphery, between the peoples within and outside the empire’s boundaries, between servitude and slavery. Whether they were elites or commoners, all were considered to be in personal servitude to an emperor and often referred to by a term interchangeable with slave.
Consequently, Eurasian societies did not develop either the notions or the institutions that could enshrine the idea of freedom…
The concept of universal monarchy allowed for little differentiation between internal and external territories.
Recommended.