Category: Books

Robert Sampson responds to my short book review

by  Tyler Cowen in

Prof. Cowen –  your Marginal Revolution blog earlier today was brought to my attention…A quick note on your selection/transparency comment, which I found of interest.  One of the ways that traditionally conceived “selection”/individual effects are neighborhood effects is when the former are an outcome of the latter.  It is common in the literature in sociology or psychology at least to see controls for the mediating pathways through which neighborhoods (or really, any context) might plausibly work.   For example, we typically see controls for all kinds of family and individual characteristics (including learning), almost all of which are at least potentially influenced by context.  Controlling them can thus have the result of eliminating the neighborhood coefficient, which is usually interpreted as evidence for selection as the governing process.  But in this example selection factors are themselves neighborhood effects, the basis in part for my reversing a common claim.   A number of recent papers independent of my own work have shown a variant of this process (e.g, http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/soc/faculty/pages/docs/elwert/Wodtke%20Harding%20Elwert%202011.pdf).  Although often technical, behind the development of these models is an important substantive point I think.   Part V of the book also delves into residential migration flows and higher-order structures as another kind of mechanism,  including how changing characteristics of neighborhoods influence residential selection.

More generally, I do not view choice/selection and context as an either/or proposition, and as an economist I am guessing you might agree. (Sociologists are typically structural determinists, but that is another story).  At Chicago I was influenced by Heckman and his arguments on modeling selection and the often misleading faith put on experiments as revealing causality).  Although I tried to examine neighborhood selection seriously, the main motivation of the book was to build up the social science of measuring and conceptualizing the neighborhood and spatial dimensions of social life.  Massey’s recent review of my book I think captures the essence of what I was trying to accomplish in terms of contextualizing human behavior and choice/selection — http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6077/35.summary.

The economics of Robert Caro

by  Tyler Cowen in

The two Bobs, Gottlieb and Caro, have an odd editorial relationship, almost as contentious as it is mutually admiring. They still debate, for example, or pretend to, how many words Gott­lieb cut from “The Power Broker.” It was 350,000 — or the equivalent of two or three full-size books — and Caro still regrets nearly every one. “There were things cut out of ‘The Power Broker’ that should not have been cut out,” he said to me sadly one day, showing me his personal copy of the book, dog-eared and broken-backed, filled with underlining and corrections written in between the lines. Caro is a little like Balzac, who kept fussing over his books even after they were published.

Can they not publish a “Director’s Cut” eBook?  The Power Broker, by the way, is in my view one of the best non-fiction books ever, so read it if you don’t already know it.

The article, from the NYT Sunday Magazine, is interesting throughout.  Note I have provided the “Single Page” link, I believe this helps you get through your quota of ten clicks at less expense.

Huffington Post covers *An Economist Gets Lunch*

by  Tyler Cowen in

The interview is here, with Arin Greenwood, here is one excerpt:

For the world as a whole the main thing we need to do is invest more in increasing agricultural productivity. It’s really slowed down since the 1990s. It’s a major problem for at least one billion people. I think it’s much more important than what people like Michael Pollan usually talk about. For the U.S., I think we should have a carbon tax, for environmental reasons.

I think as individuals, people overrate the virtues of local food. Most of the energy consumption in our food system is not caused by transportation. Sometimes local food is more energy efficient. But often it’s not. The strongest case for locavorism is to eat less that’s flown on planes, and not to worry about boats.

And this:

This will sound a little strange coming from me. The two dynamic sectors now are hamburgers and pizza.

And this:

There are any number of places with good decor and great food, they just cost a very high price. Most people don’t want to eat at those places on a regular basis for reasons of money or time, or just the sheer oppression of having to dress up and go to a nice place all the time.

You can order the book on Amazon here.  For Barnes & Noble here.  For Indiebound.org here.

Six Rules for Dining Out

by  Tyler Cowen in

The Atlantic Monthly feature article from An Economist Gets Lunch is now on-line, excerpt:

When you enter a restaurant, you don’t want to see expressions of disgust on the diners’ faces, but you do want to see a certain seriousness of purpose. Pull out a mirror and try eating some really good food. How much are you smiling? Not as much as you might think. A small aside: in many restaurants, it is a propitious omen when the diners are screaming at each other. It’s a sign they are regular customers and feel at home. Many Chinese restaurants are full of screaming Chinese patrons. Don’t ask me if they’re fighting, I have no idea—but it is a sign that I want to be there too.

And:

If you’re asking Google, put a “smart” word into your search query. Best restaurants Washington will yield too much information, and will serve up a lot of bad restaurants, too. That’s a lowest-common-denominator search query. Google something more specific instead, like best Indian restaurants Washington, even if you don’t want Indian food. You’ll get to more reliable, more finely grained, and better-informed sources about food, and you can then peruse those sources for their non-Indian recommendations. Google Washington best cauliflower dish, even if you don’t want cauliflower. Get away from Google-for-the-masses.

Here is a good video bit of me exploring a new Vietnamese restaurant in Eden Center.

You can pre-order the book on Amazon here.  For Barnes & Noble here.  For Indiebound.org here.

Publication day for *An Economist Gets Lunch*

by  Tyler Cowen in

Adam Ozimek writes:

Cowen’s history of how American food came to be so mediocre is a strong counterargument to those who look to blame the phenomenon on commercialization, capitalism, and excess of choice. In contrast to the usual narrative, Cowen tells us how bad laws have played an important role in shaping our food ecosystem for the worse over time. This includes prohibition’s negative and long lasting impact on restaurants, and the government aggressively limiting one of our greatest sources of culinary innovation: immigration. This is not to lay the blame entirely on the government. Television and a culture that panders to the desires of children have also incentivized poor culinary trends.

The book contains many other other important arguments against popular food ideas, including defenses of technology and agriculture commercialization against critiques of locavores, slow foodies, and environmentalists. For example, if you live in an area where it takes a lot of energy and resources to grow food — like the desert — the most environmentally friendly way may be to grow it somewhere else and ship it. An apple grown locally may be refrigerated for months, which consumes a lot of energy, whereas it may be both fresher and better for the environment to grow it elsewhere and ship it in from afar by boat. He also defends genetically modified crops as the likely cures to the biggest food problem we have today, which is not obesity but malnutrition.

But Cowen is not an apologist, and he doesn’t argue that we can just deregulate our way to a better food system. In fact he has many words of support for policies and values often supported by progressives.

…If there is one overarching lesson it is that looking at food through the framework of supply and demand can help you both understand our food system better, and also help you be a smarter consumer and get more out of every meal.

You can pre-order the book on Amazon here.  For Barnes & Noble here.  For Indiebound.org here.

What I’ve been reading

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. Barb Stuckey, Taste: What You’re Missing: The Passionate Eater’s Guide to Why Good Food Tastes Good.  A very good and interesting look at how and why food tastes as it does, from a professional food developer.

2.Robert J. Sampson, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect.  I’m still grappling with this book, which I find difficult to parse.  It’s a very detailed empirical study of the strength of neighborhood effects, with reference to Chicago.  I thought I would give the book its own post, but it is difficult to excerpt.  I don’t quite understand how he distinguishes neighborhood effects from selection effects, though I have read his discussion that selection effects are themselves neighborhood effects, ultimately.  I feel there is a good deal of interesting social science in here, but the book should be far more transparent.  William Julius Wilson called it “…one of the most comprehensive and sophisticated empirical studies ever conducted by a social scientist.”  Here is a Harvard story on the book.  For sure some of you should pick this one up, but I am myself still torn.

3. Lifeboat: A Novel, by Charlotte Rogan.  A genuinely gripping story of a bunch of people in a sinking lifeboat, facing the usual philosophical dilemmas.  Maybe that doesn’t sound thrilling, but I pressed on eagerly and read it to the end.

4. Free Market Fairness, by John Tomasi.  Here is Matt on the book: “Without being by any means a libertarian, I do think that people of a left-wing orientation sometimes give short shrift to the non-pecuniary aspects of economic freedom. Whether or not you buy that barber licensing rules are a big deal economically, the specter of the government throwing a person in jail for participating in an exchange of haircuts for money between consenting adults should bother liberally inclined people for basically the same reasons that all random state interference in the conduct of private life is bothersome.”

5. India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy, by Ramachandra Guha.  Both informationally dense and conceptual, in a good way.

Dual coverage from The New York Times

by  Tyler Cowen in

Damon Darlin liked my new book, An Economist Gets Lunch:

It’s a sports bar, which seems like an unlikely choice, but not to Professor Cowen’s way of thinking. He chose it precisely because it was an unlikely choice. An American sports bar might mean Buffalo wings and cheeseburgers, but an Ethiopian sports bar? “They are making no attempt to appeal to non-Ethiopians,” he said.

…As for the food at Eyo’s Sports Bar, it persuaded me on his thesis that immigrants rejuvenated the American palate and it was best to leave the finicky children, or teenagers, at home.

Dwight Garner did not like it:

Reading Mr. Cowen is like pushing a shopping cart through Whole Foods with Rush Limbaugh. The patter is nonstop and bracing. Mr. Cowen delivers observations that, should Alice Waters ever be detained in Gitmo, her captors will play over loudspeakers to break her spirit.

These observations include: “There’s nothing especially virtuous about the local farmer”; “buying green products seems to encourage individuals to be less moral”; and — a contender for Orwellian sentence of the year — “technology and business are a big part of what makes the world gentle and fun.”

I think it’s Orwellian that he thinks this is Orwellian.  On the two errors he claims to have found in the book, he is wrong in both cases.  Brad DeLong adds appropriate comment on the first.  My estimate for the Google search number claims was correct and multiply checked when I did it, and these days it comes in at around the high 400,000s, nothing near his 115,000 figure.

You can pre-order the book on Amazon here.  For Barnes & Noble here.  For Indiebound.org here.  It is due out tomorrow.

In my pile

by  Tyler Cowen in

Jonathan Schlefer, The Assumptions Economists Make.

Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent, by Edward Luce.   Here is his recent essay, related to the book.

Carl H. Nightingale, Segregation: A Global History of Divided Cities.

Ruchir Sharma, Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles.

Chris Mooney, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science — and Reality.

Non-Google digital library in the works, connected with Robert Darnton.

The WSJ reviews *An Economist Gets Lunch*

by  Tyler Cowen in

From Graeme Wood, the review is here.  It has the excellent title “From Invisible Hand to Mouth.”  Excerpt:

For authenticity, he awards points to Pakistani restaurants that feature pictures of Mecca, since they’re more likely to cater to Pakistani clientele. (“The more aggressively religious the décor, the better it will be for the food.”) Find restaurants where diners are “screaming at each other” or “pursuing blood feuds,” he says—indications that people feel comfortable there and return frequently with their familiars.

I liked this line:

These labor-intensive operations, Mr. Cowen writes, show “just how uneconomical true barbecue art can be”—which suggests that if you want to eat like an economist, you should find a chef who doesn’t cook like one.

Note, however, that if you have talent but do not wish to scale it up very far, running an excellent local barbecue restaurant still may be a good use of your time.  The last two lines are sincere flattery:

Mr. Cowen says to beware of scenic views, bevies of beautiful women, and well-stocked bars. “You want to see that the people eating there mean business,” Mr. Cowen writes. Food is a business he knows intimately, although his preference for delicious meals in windowless rooms with ugly women, pictures of the Kaaba, and active blood-feuds will not be a taste shared by all.

You can pre-order the book on Amazon here.  For Barnes & Noble here.  For Indiebound.org here.  It is due out April 12.

What (and how) Whit Stillman reads

by  Tyler Cowen in

You have a lot of freedom in reading a book. I’m unable, for some reason, to read books from beginning to end. I have to go to what interests me most in the book. And if I like that, I start going backwards and forwards. And it starts to become a really complicated endeavor of just reading the parts of the books once and not sort of overlapping. I don’t know why I have to sort of re-edit the books myself. I don’t know why I can’t read a prologue and read a first chapter. I mean, if I really love a book I’ll get to them too. For some reason, I usually find them deadly dull, the prologues.

And this:

And my favorite reading of all is the unabridged Boswell’s Life of [Samuel] Johnson. It’s my favorite thing because it’s interesting and has no import or forward narrative momentum. So you’re interested and edified but it doesn’t keep you up at night.

Here is more.

*Early Retirement Extreme*

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the title of an erratic but interesting book by Jacob Lund Fisker, and the subtitle is A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence.  Think of it as a study in “least cost living,” his web site is here.

Here is his post on a middle class lifestyle on 7k a year, health insurance included, sans young children, don’t skip the section on the lentils.  How does it compare to how people lived fifty years ago?  To how I lived thirty-two years ago as an undergraduate?

“Not buy very much” seems to be his main strategy.

I transplant these scenarios to a foreign setting.  Let’s say you had 10k a year, net, to live in either India or Mexico.  How high would your standard of living be?  What kind of health insurance could you buy?  How would your level of happiness compare to working at a job you don’t like for 80k a year for twenty more years?

When it comes to modern society, I sometimes wonder, what is the true secession point with decent utility?  What kinds of options are your savings giving you?  Is there any chance you will take those options?

For the pointer I thank CR.

*Darwin’s Devices*

by  Tyler Cowen in

The author is John Long and the subtitle is What Evolving Robots Can Teach Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology.  Excerpt:

4. Evolve predatory robots.  If you or the enemy employ Pell’s Principle, you’ll need to be prepared to capture or destroy swarms.  For starters, you’ll need to let your evolving predators have the capacity and capability of filter feeders like baleen whales.  Consider behavioral adaptation first in your predators because the shorter generation tie of the prey will limit opportunities for hardware evolution in the predators.

File under: Whole new class of worries.