Category: Books
The Addict
The author is Michael Stein and this is possibly the most interesting and engaging book I have read this year. The subtitle is “One Patient, One Doctor, One Year.” The ongoing dialogue between a doctor and his addicted patient defies excerpt but here is one small (non-dialogic) bit:
There is violence inside hospitals, and I am often surprised there isn’t more. In my experience it breaks out most often in the emergency room, the airport terminal of the hospital, the site of comings and goings, of transience, the stopover for travelers, the first landing for the already hurt. There is pain and fear, there is the anger and frustration that comes with bad luck’s arrival, compounded by the delays — for blood work and X-ray results — where it is clear that the staff is taking care of many people, where you aren’t the only one, just the one they are slowest to assist.
This book covers the notion of rational addiction, how and why people kick addiction, whether addicts are different in the first place, self-deception, the motivations of doctors, what doctors really do, how platonic yet romantic bonds develop, and many related issues. It is a memoir rather than formal science and it reads as well as masterful fiction, while being thought-provoking on many levels. Here is one very good review.
The bottom line: I just bought his other non-fiction book.
“Memory”
Gustav Flaubert wrote:
That is from his quite interesting Bouvard and Pecuchet. This unfinished book is a parody of self-education and perhaps of gay marriage as well.
Why are we willing to disparage our memories so much more than we will admit to failings in our other mental processes?
Respecting the elephant
I would not go so far as some who would insist that a Hindu is not the person to ask about Hinduism, as Harvard professor Roman Jakobson notoriously objected to Nabokov's bid for chairmanship of the Russian literature department: "I do respect very much the elephant, but would you give him the chair of zoology?"
That is from Wendy Doniger's new and noteworthy The Hindus: An Alternative History. Here is a favorable Michael Dirda review of the book. Read the Wikipedia section on "Criticism" of Wendy Doniger, some of it from fundamentalist Hindus. Here is a defense of Doniger.
China book fact countercyclical asset of the day
The People’s Press – the biggest publishing
house for China’s orthodox revolutionary books – reports that Marx’s
anti-capitalism opus "Das Kapital" has been selling about 4,000-5,000
copies nationwide a month since last November. That’s a big jump from
before the economic crisis, when the book sold well under 1,000 copies
per month on average.
The "Selected Works by Mao Zedong," a book
owned by almost every Chinese citizen a few decades ago, is also
witnessing a big jump in sales since late last year, according to Mr.
Pan from the People’s Press circulation department.
Here is the full story and I thank Ryan Tetrick for the pointer.
Taiwan fact of the day
Discover Your Inner Economist is about to come out in Taiwan, in Chinese of course.
I thank George Hwang for the pointer.
Economists and Societies
That's by Marion Fourcade and the subtitle is Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain & France, 1890s to 1990s.
I very much liked this book and I might call it one of my favorite history of economic thought books, period. It skips textual exegesis and looks at what the economics profession actually did — in the comparative sense — in the United States, England, and France.
On France, I liked the data on p.6. Circa 1981, only 52 percent of French economists thought that rent control reduced the quantity and quality of the housing stock. Only 49 percent of French economists thought that flexible exchange rates were "effective," compared to 94 percent in the United States and 92 percent in West Germany. Remember Alex's blog posts on this topic, here and here?
The extent of hierarchy in the profession in England shocked even me:
Joan Robinson, for instance, did not become a professor until the ripe age of sixty-two. And such a well-respected economist as Roy Harrod never rose higher than a readership at Nuffield College.
Definitely recommended. Here is the book's home page.
The Genial Gene
That's the new book by Joan Roughgarden and the subtitle is Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness. I'm not sure how true this book is, but if you're looking for a new popular book on evolutionary biology which is engaging, this is the first one in some time.
The book rejects the "Red Queen" hypothesis for why there is sex (e.g., outracing parasites by frequently rolling the genetic dice) and presents a "portfolio diversification" view:
The explanation for why asexual species keep popping up and quickly dying compared with sexual species would seem to be completely explained by thinking of asexual species as genetic versions of get-rich-schemes and of sexual populations as genetic versions of long-term mutual funds, without any need to invoke cost-of-meiosis considerations.
In other words, sex brings a genetic diversity which protects against rapidly changing environmental conditions and thus favors parental genes.
The author also argues against signaling theories of the peacock's tail and against sexual selection more generally (especially on that latter topic I was not convinced but the discussion of sexual dimorphism and why it doesn't always hold is nonetheless interesting). She presents "social selection" as an alternative and if you turn to pp.237-8 you will see an excellent page-and-a-half summary of what the book is about. Male promiscuity, for instance, is viewed as a genetic "tactic of last resort."
Recommended, but with caution. It is a must for anyone who reads about evolutionary biology and by the end of the book I was less skeptical than when I started it.
What I’ve been Reading
1. Gail Hareven, The Confessions of Noa Weber. This newly translated Israeli novel was a great deal of fun, without being too light. Recommended.
2. 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, by Tom Moon. It's mostly popular music but a mix of everything. I was amazed how much this guy's taste, including on particular classical recordings, matched my own. This is a more serious book than the packaging indicates.
3. Miles, Ornette, Cecil, by Howard Mandel. I never considered putting this one down. It appeals to readers who are already fans but it is also a good start for expanding your horizons beyond "traditional" jazz.
4. Jason Scott Smith, Building New Deal Liberalism, The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956. A very good book arguing the case for New Deal public works projects, primarily on grounds of growth (not stimulus). I also enjoyed Robert D. Leighninger's Long-Range Public Investment: The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal.
5. Keith Thomas, The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfillment in Early Modern England. His Religion and the Decline of Magic is one of my favorite history books ever (he tells us that, in equilibrium, a certain number of people should pretend to be witches, to get what they want). The new one is impeccably researched and written, but I don't see so much original material there. I can honestly call it a good book but for me it was a disappointment.
Tom Foster on the Kindle
Tom, a loyal MR reader, writes to me:
I've been following your Kindle posts for a while now and something that struck me is the signalling effects of reading a book versus a reading using a Kindle – yes I read Robin Hanson's blog too!
Reading with a Kindle, the signal is relatively constant and, at the moment, is something like "I'm an early technology adopter and I like to read". As the Kindle gets more commonplace the efficacy of this signal will, I think, diminish. Compare this with the signalling effects of reading a traditional book, where you signal to people not only that you like to read, but crucially what you are reading.
I wonder if Kindle advocates are underestimating how important it is for people to show those around them not just that they like to read, but also what they like to read?
What Steven Johnson likes about the Kindle
He wrote a list of pluses and minuses, but this one stuck out at me:
When he was on John Stewart, Jeff Bezos mentioned that the Kindle was
great for one-handed reading, which got a salacious chuckle from the
audience (and Stewart), but I think it's best for no-handed
reading: i.e., when you're reading while eating a meal, one of life's
great pleasures. It's almost impossible to read a paperback while
eating, and you really have to snap the spine of a hardcover to get it
to lie flat, but the Kindle just sits there on the table helpfully
while you cut up your teriyaki.
The final referee report
Pirates and economics may not be sexy subjects for a book, but
economists tend to see things and do things a bit differently. So it
made sense for Peter Leeson, an economist at George Mason University,
to propose to his girlfriend in the preface of his forthcoming book, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. He presented the finished book (and a ring) to her on Friday–and she said yes.
Leeson’s publisher, Princeton University Press, made arrangements
for the author to receive the first copy of the book’s printing.
Everyone at the press kept the proposal a secret and even went to the
trouble of extracting that section of the book–which read, “Ania, I
love you; will you marry me?”–from the advance galleys that were mailed
out to the press.
“The book, of course, very much reflects my personality, thinking
and passions,” said Leeson. “But it also reflects many of the things I
love about Ania, such has her incredible brain, her creativity, and her
phenomenal support of everything I do, all which I relied on to write
the book, and all of which, consequently, became critical ingredients
to its progress.” Princeton will publish The Invisible Hook in June.
Here is the link.
Do men and women read books differently?
A study of reading habits showed almost half of women are 'page
turners' who finish a book soon after starting it compared to only 26
per cent of men.
The survey 2,000 adults also found those who
take a long time to read books and only managed one or two a year were
twice as likely to be male than female.
Men are also more likely to have shelves full of books that have never been opened.
The
only similarities between the sexes came among those who have two books
on the bedside table at once and who start one book on the middle of
reading another, switching easily. Twelve per cent of women were in
this category – exactly the same number as men.
Wars, Guns, and Votes
The subtitle is Democracy in Dangerous Places and the author is Paul Collier. Here are three bits:
Anke and I have estimated the proportion of Africa's private wealth that is held outside the region. By 2004 it had reached the astounding figure of 36 percent: more than a third of Africa's own wealth is outside the region.
And:
Collectively, the countries of the bottom billion are spending around $9 billion on the military, of which up to 40 percent is being financed by donors.
And:
The history of Britain post-403 makes the post-colonial history of Africa look like a staggering success.
The key point of the book is how and why democracy doesn't work so well for the bottom billion. The early discussion of the incentives facing quasi-democratic governments is dysfunctional societies is brilliant. It's the best discussion I've seen of why "produce better government" is not the prevailing incentive in such societies. You can learn why ethnic diversity lowers the value of public sector activity but raises private sector productivity, why skills for construction are often a binding constraint in very poor societies, why the social returns to peacekeeping are so high, why Kalashnikovs are cheaper in Africa, why there are fewer civil wars in larger countries, and how the Ivory Coast went from development model to disaster.
One main policy recommendation that the West should promise "coup-proof" defensive interventions to any African government which abides by real democratic elections. Can this work?
The claimed takeaway is that African nations have too much sovereignty, not too little.
It's not a perfect book. Collier describes his work frequently, and fairly (he doesn't overclaim), but often I would have liked to hear more about the broader literature as well.
Paul Collier has done it again. This will be one of the "must buy" books of this year. Buy it here.
Keynes’s General Theory, chapter ten
The velocity of money can vary, aggregate demand matters, and the multiplier is real. Let's get those preliminaries out of the way. That all said, this is one of the least accurate chapters in Keynes's General Theory. To pull out one key quotation (pp.116-117, in section II):
It follows, therefore, that, if the consumption psychology of the community is such that they will choose to consume e.g., nine-tenths of an increment of income, then the multiplier is 10; and the total employment caused by (e.g.) increased public works will be ten times the primary employment provided by the public works themselves…
AARRRGGHH!
Empirically a typical estimate of a multiplier might be 1.3 or 1.4, not 10, not even in a deep slump. (Valerie Ramey points out that the key issue in estimating a multiplier is to determine when the fiscal innovation actually occurred; this is not easy.) One theoretical problem in generating a high multiplier is this. Say you have a debt-financed increase in government spending. You can get some dollars out of low-velocity pools into high-velocity pools on the first round of redistributing the spending flow. Do not expect complete crowding out and so nominal aggregate demand can increase, thus boosting output and employment. But the second and third round effects of the redistributed money are usually a wash and the boost to velocity dwindles. Why should it stay in a high-velocity sector of the economy?
It is common in the GT that Keynes confuses marginal and average effects and, for all of his explicit talk about average and marginal in this chapter, he is making one version of that error again. Rothbard and Hazlitt are not in general reliable critics of Keynes, but
they do have a good reductio (see chapter XI) on crude interpretations of the multiplier and that is what Keynes is serving up here. You can't just take a partial derivative of an accounting identity and call the result a causal relationship.
In addition to velocity/spending effects, there are also multiplier effects through real production. The most insightful analysis of supply-side multipliers comes from the work of W.H. Hutt.
The multiplier is a legitimate concept but often it is overestimated in its import. This chapter in Keynes is a step backwards from Richard Kahn, the father of the multiplier concept.
Here is one critique of Keynes on the multiplier.
Don't forget Alex's comments on fiscal policy and velocity.
The information architecture of Kindle 2.0
Chris F. Masse alerts me to this very interesting article. Excerpt:
Letting customers read a book's initial pages for free is a great
Kindle innovation and makes good use of the digital medium's ability to
dissolve the print requirement to bundle chapters. (Thus, this is a better-than-reality
feature.) The innovation will no doubt sell more books – particularly
for fiction, where people will want to see what happens next once
they're gripped by a story. In fact, for mystery novels, Amazon could
probably give away the first 90% for free and charge the entire fee
just for the last chapter.
The article is interesting throughout on a variety of Kindle-related topics. The author agrees with my basic claim that the Kindle favors plot-driven fiction over complex non-fiction or for that matter postmodern fiction. Referring back and forth across sections is a no-no, so goodbye Pale Fire.