Category: Books

*The Occupy Handbook*

by  Tyler Cowen in

I have an essay in that book co-authored with Veronique de Rugy.  Other contributors include Paul Krugman, Robin Wells, Michael Lewis, David Graeber, Peter Diamond, Emmanuel Saez, Ariel Dorfman, Barbara Ehrenreich, Jeff Sachs, and Nouriel Roubini, among others.

Our essay is an…outlier…in the volume.  Here is one bit:

Wall Street has contributed to some very real problems, but the core issues for poor Americans are often health care, education, and the cost of renting an apartment of buying a house.  The best way to improve living standards and increase options for future success is to move toward greater competition and accountability in each of those areas, areas that usually have little to do with the financial sector per se.

Our goal is to propose an alternative vision for what OWS should focus on.  You can buy the book here.

The Boston Globe on Cowen on food

by  Tyler Cowen in

Cowen’s book offers more than ethnic-dining tips, however; it situates them in a broad historical context. Many of today’s mainstream foodies, Cowen argues, have the history of American food all backwards. They assume that American food is so terrible and unhealthy because of agribusiness: We eat terribly, the thinking goes, because our food is frozen, packaged, and trucked over vast distances before we eat it. Cowen has an entirely different explanation for the mediocrity of American food. As he sees it, American food was ruined by a series of entirely contingent historical events — Prohibition, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the rise of TV — which effectively ruined the restaurant industry. Those events were especially damaging, he argues, because immigration was so severely restricted during much of the 20th century. Immigrants were the people who can do the most interesting things with the cheap food on offer in the United States; without them, American food became boring and bland.

Now that immigration is on the rise again, America is a food paradise: the extended food supply chain created by American agribusiness means that food is plentiful and cheap, while our vibrant immigrant communities take that cheap food and make it awesome in a million different ways. (Barbecue is an example of a home-grown food culture which acts, in many respects, like an immigrant one.) The essence of American food, Cowen argues, is that it’s inexpensive, innovative, and various. To eat well in America, you have to embrace its unique history, and start from the fact that “the United States is a country where the human beings are extremely creative but the tomatoes are not extraordinarily fresh.” If you’re obsessed with the farmer’s market, you’ve got American food wrong; instead, think of America as a hotbed of “food innovation,” where the best food is getting made at strip malls and in food trucks. It’s an alternate vision of food in America.

That is Josh Rothman, there is more here.  Here is a Q&A with me on food, and what is always in my cupboard: “Goya beans, cumin seed, dried ancho chilies.”

*Odd Couple*

by  Tyler Cowen in

The author is Michael Huberman and the subtitle is International Trade and Labor Standards in History.  Here is the blurb from Leandro Prados de La Escosura:

In this path-breaking volume, Michael Huberman persuasively argues that the past informs the present.  Huberman shows that a historical perspective does not sustain the impossibility trilemma, the popular claim that democracy, national sovereignty and globalization are inherently incompatible.  Globalization and the emergence of the welfare state — which is at the roots of the modern democratic state — went hand-in-hand, increasing well-being and declining inequality over the long-run.

*Land of Promise*

by  Tyler Cowen in

The author is Michael Lind and the subtitle is An Economic History of the United States.  I am just beginning to browse my copy, here is one bit:

In 1947, twice as many Americans worked in industrial-research centers as in 1940.  Among the breakthroughs that resulted from wartime research, in addition to nuclear energy, were jet engines, radar, computers, synthetic rubber, and a range of new drugs: penicillin, synthetic quinine, and sulfa drugs.

A massive government R&D and production effort was devoted to penicillin.  in 1928, Alexander Fleming had discovered that penicillin could kill bacteria.  During World War II, the US government coordinated efforts by universities, the Department of Agriculture, and nearly two dozen pharmaceutical companies to devise technologies for the mass production of the drug.

*Bad Religion*

by  Tyler Cowen in

The author is Ross Douthat and the subtitle is How We Became a Nation of Heretics.  It is a very good and very serious book arguing that America needs better religious thinking and practice, excerpt:

The entire media-entertainment complex, meanwhile, was almost shamelessly pro-Catholic.  If a stranger to American life had only the movies, television, and popular journalism from which to draw inferences, he probably would have concluded  that midcentury America was a Catholic-majority country — its military populated by the sturdy Irishmen of The Fighting 69th (1948) and The Fighting Sullivans (1944); its children educated and its orphans rescued by the heroic priests and nuns celebrated in Boys Town (1938), The Bells of Saint Mary’s (1945), and Fighting Father Dunne (1948); its civic life dominated by urban potentates like Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York and Denis Dougherty of Philadelphia; its everyday life infused with Catholic kitsch, from the 1950s hit single “Our Lady of Fatima” to the “win one for the Gipper” cult of Notre Dame football.

My main question is what could have become of most organized religion in an era of newly found television penetration — a competing source of ideas about right and wrong — and the birth control pill and sexual liberation of women?  Not to mention gay rights.  The recent evolution of American religion may not be optimal, but it is endogenous to some fairly fundamental forces.  Non-religious thinking seems to offer especially high returns to successful people these days, and while American religion certainly has survived that impact (unlike in the UK?), what is left will seem quite alienating to much of the intelligentsia, Ross included.

For most mainstream religions, for most urban and suburban intellectuals circa 2012, it is hard to live a religiously observant life during the ages of say 17-25.  American religion is left with late convert intellectuals and proponents of various enthusiasms, all filtered through the lens of America’s rural-tinged mass culture.  Where is the indigenous and recent highbrow Christian culture of the United States?

Ross’s close comes off as voluntarist (“That quest begins with a single step…”), but in an economic model which change might nudge the United States back toward a more intellectual Christianity?  Your suggestions are welcome.

The Matt Yglesias take on restaurant decline

by  Tyler Cowen in

Matt writes:

Imagine some diners are, by temperament, venturesome while others are regulars. Over the long term, the best business strategy is to appeal to regulars since they offer a stable client base. But when a restaurant is new, it by definition lacks regulars and needs to appeal to venturesome diners both to get an initial wave of customers and also to attract “buzz” and get the temperamental regulars in the door. Over time, a successful restaurant will attempt to switch and become more a place for regulars, which means that venturesome diners will come to like it less. At the same time, alienating venturesome foodies is very low cost because being venturesome they would perceive their own growing familiarity with the food as declining quality one way or the other.

This is not at all far from my basic theory, though Matt seems to imply it is.  In An Economist Gets Lunch I stress how the cycle of “ceasing to appeal to the informed diners” has very much accelerated with the internet.  Good reviews arrive rapidly, perhaps too rapidly.  If there is a new place you quite like — especially if it is trendy — go many times now, because it will decline in quality more rapidly than such places used to.  Once the place is established, it can get by more on momentum and on its value as a focal venue for socializing.  You can take the presence of a lot of beautiful women as one sign that a place has crossed into this territory.

Don’t think of the model as “what happens to a restaurant when there is an exogenous increase in the beauty of its women” (recall Scott Sumner — “don’t reason from a beautiful women [price] change!” ).  Think of the model as “what does lots of beautiful women predict about the place of a restaurant in its product life cycle?”

Restaurants with beautiful women are still better than average, relative to the population of restaurants as a whole, for obvious reasons related to wealth and demographics.  They’re just not likely to be the very best of the good restaurants, especially for the price.

Arguably it is a different case when a restaurant has beautiful women, but most mainstream male patrons would regard those women as “ineligible,” or “unapproachable,” perhaps for reason of a different religion or ethnicity.  At those restaurants you can enjoy both great food for the price and beautiful women, though perhaps your enjoyment of the latter will remain at some distance.

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.