Category: Books

Harford writes that voters aren’t fooled into thinking their
votes affect the outcome and that most people vote because it makes them feel
good. These ‘expressive’ explanations
help us preserve the idea that people are rational (a great book is by Brennan
and Lomasky).  But is this an actual account of why people
vote? Until we have better survey data, anecdotal evidence will have to do.

Go to a diner, bus stop, retirement home or even a college
campus and almost invariably people will tell you that their vote counts. What
does ‘count’ mean here?  It might mean
they think their vote is important because it satisfies a civic duty to support
democracy (but why would so many think this
is the best way to discharge that duty unless they think their vote counts in
the more literal sense). Or maybe it means they think their vote somehow
encourages more people to vote (but why isn’t lying more efficient? And why
would people get influenced into voting, unless they think it matters? ) Isn’t
it possible to think that people actually believe their votes count?  But if this were true, how could we best make
sense of it? One way is to bite the bullet and accept that (a lot of) people
might just be irrational.

Voting does of course increase with education level, but
this doesn’t defeat the claim that voters might be irrational. Most of our civic/political
education in high school and college centers on the details of how democracy
functions and why voting is important, and not on the trivial impact of our
votes.

And remember the way that voting works in the U.S. at least—through some freaking inscrutable thing known as the electoral college.
On my not so good days, I still have no idea how this works and, like most MR
readers, have above average education. Does my vote count more in states with
fewer delegates, or not at all in some locations, or because this is a
republican state does this mean my vote for a democrat wouldn’t matter or would
it matter more, and where is this school? My neuronal synapses die just a little.

Also, without voter irrationality it’s hard to make sense of
the success of campaigns such as “a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush” in resonating
with potential voters—the aim of these kinds of slogans is to encourage people
to vote in a particular way. If people don’t believe their votes count,
why would these slogans be effective and why would the slogan designers
anticipate they would be effective? Harford seems to hint at this kind of
problem when he points out that while voters don’t go to the polls to impact
results, they don’t realize that what they do once they get to the booths
doesn’t matter—but I wish he gave us his thoughts on this sort of inconsistency.

The fact that people don’t simply vote, but vote for a
particular candidate, at best suggests that if people feel duty-bound it’s not
to some abstract ideal but to particular parties and groups, which raises another,
and not incompatible, potential motivation for voting.

Some might think that their votes count not individually,
but as part of a group. Harford and other economists aside (including this
one), people don’t always act on their (individual) self-interests.  (for just some examples, see Fehr and Fowler on
altruistic punishment)

There are good evolutionary reasons to think that we
frequently adopt the perspective of “what is good for us”.  You don’t have to believe in the
group-selectionist theories of people like Sober and Wilson.

If that makes you feel dirty—selfish
gene will get you there if there are enough genes shared in common among a
group. And, a la Robert Frank, what
starts out as emotional incentives to act on behalf of a fairly specified,
narrowly defined, and kin-based group gets co-opted and extends (irrationally?)
to larger, less cohesive groups. The group in this case would simply be the
class of people thought to share the same values and beliefs.

Of course, like all evolutionary explanations, this is a
just-so story and needs to be tested, but so does the rational voter idea. We still don’t have very good insight into
the motives of voters, and until we do we should remain skeptical of any one
model.

I’m not a hater–in many (maybe most) areas of life, the rational
choice model makes damn good sense. In
some areas of politics, however, emotions run high and irrationality can be
bliss, and these may be areas where dynamic writers like Harford should resist the
model a little.

Back to TC: Readers, do tell us what you think…

Tom Stoppard weighs in on the burn it/don’t burn it debate about Nabokov’s unfinished work: "It’s perfectly straightforward: Nabokov wanted it burnt, so burn it."

That is from Bookslut, but Stoppard is wrong.  Dead people don’t count in the social welfare function. (If they did, how many of them would prefer non-democratic or racist outcomes?  And would we count that?  We shoudn’t and we don’t.)

Don’t destroy the output.  Nor is there an incentive problem.  If we release Nabokov’s papers as a book, maybe the next Nabokov will burn the manuscript in the first place.  We’re no worse off, compared to not releasing such manuscripts.  Kafka told Max Brod to burn his works, but we’re all glad Brod didn’t.  Think of the current generation as a player in the multiple selves game of the author (he could have burnt it himself long ago) and then the right answer is obvious.

Descubre al Economista que llevas dentro.  That’s the Spanish language translation of my Discover Your Inner Economist, due out in Spain February 19.

You can order copies through some of these sources.

The translation is very well done and accurate, though it is odd to read myself sounding like a Spaniard instead of a colloquial Mexican.  Whenever I go to Spain I am in fact shocked to discover that there is an entire European country in which the people speak Spanish.  And they speak it well.

If you want to come to my talk in Madrid next week, here is the link.

The Logic of Life contains an excellent chapter explaining statistical discrimination but does the theory hold up?  Bryan Caplan says no. 

…[Tim] heavily emphasizes a few experiments showing that statistical
discrimination could be a "self-fulfilling prophesy." For example, he
describes a resume experiment where otherwise identical fake resumes
with "black names" were less likely to get a response. "High-quality
applicants were more likely to be invited for an interview, but only if
they were white. Employers didn’t seem to notice whether black
applicants had extra skills or experience." If that is how employers
treat black applicants, what’s the point of trying? As Tim asks, "Why
bother to get a degree or work experience if you are young, gifted, and
black?"

But is it really true that the market fails to reward blacks for
getting more education? Is it even true that the market rewards them
less? I tested these claims using one of the world’s best labor data
sets, the NLSY.  The results directly contradict Tim’s self-fulfilling prophesy story.  Blacks actually get a substantially larger
return to education than non-blacks! The same goes for experience,
though the result is not statistically significant. The real lesson of
the data is that if you are young, gifted, and black, you should get a
ton of education, because it has an exceptionally large pay-off.

Why would this be so?  I’m not sure, but one simple story is that counter-stereotypical
behavior stands out. When my sons were young, my wife was working a
lot, so I often took my kids places on my own. Funny thing: Time and
again, strangers came up and said, "Wow, you’re such a great dad!" But
there were moms of young kids doing the same thing in plain sight, and
the strangers rarely praised them.  Why not?  Because a dad taking care of two babies is counter-stereotypical, which grabs people’s attention. 

Purely anecdotal, yes. But it is consistent with the small academic
literature on counter-stereotypical behavior. If you clearly violate
expectations, people not only notice; they often over-react.

The upshot is that stereotypes may actually be self-reversing
rather than self-fulfilling. The marginal payoff of distinguishing
yourself from the pack is high if people think poorly of the typical
member of the pack.

Bryan has much more on the unpleasant truths about discrimination.  Read the whole thing.

Tim Harford has the best exposition of Tom Schelling’s segregation model I have read.  Maybe no one prefers segregation, but if you mind being a minority in a neighborhood an invisible hand process can lead to segregated outcomes.  Individuals will move closer to their compatriots, giving rise to an overall separation of groups.  This paper has some good models and fills out the main conditions behind the result.

But is it true?  Schelling would be the first to admit he created only a partial model.  Human genetics show more and more out-breeding over time.  Those first cousins just don’t cut it any more.  No, the earth isn’t flat but outmigration is increasing and many more people are choosing to live as minorities in foreign lands, most of all in the EU.  I live in Northern Virginia, one of the most successfully integrated regions of the United States, whether it be along lines of race, religion, or nationality.  Latino arrivals are concentrated in the American Southwest but over time they are spreading out to many other states.  What is the segregation model missing?

Gains from trade, in a nutshell.  If I’m the first Mexican to arrive in North Carolina, yes maybe I feel lonely.  But I also can fill some empty economic niches and overall it may beat East L.A.  Other immigrants will follow, but if too many come some of them will move on to South Carolina.  And so on.

High levels of inequality often bring more integration, at least in terms of spatial proximity.  Even with high rents there is a large community of Latinos living just outside of Aspen, Colorado.  Guess why.  They don’t live right next to the very rich but they do live among non-Latinos.  And the greater availability of cheap services is one reason I prefer life in the United States to Western Europe.  Cheap shipping of goods means I still can get French cheese and German books.

It is harder to ship services.  The more we become a service economy, the more you have to live near the people you trade with.

So what’s the problem in Newark, NJ or for that matter Northeast Washington?  Schelling’s model seems to work better there perhaps because of high unemployment and fewer services.  That said, both areas have seen considerable Latino integration over the last twenty years, as well as outmigration to the suburbs.

Thus the more general model starts with the idea of gains from trade and then asks when those gains won’t be especially strong, or when they won’t require much physical proximity.  Note that Schelling’s original paper, published in 1971, very much represents a 1960s perspective on its topic.

Addendum: Tim Harford also discusses urban crime and its control; here’s a good new paper on that topic.

Here is a short piece of mine on Slate.com:

The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman. This book is essential to anyone looking for a) a love letter to Los Angeles, b) a chance to cultivate an obsession with Raymond Chandler, or c) a new model for writing intelligent nonfiction. It’s a colorful local history of the California metropolis in the first half of the 20^th century plus an erotic biography with lots of speculative commentary interspersed, most of all on how Chandler conducted his unorthodox love life (he married a woman 18 years his senior). Freeman often veers into the first person, yet she retains some level of objectivity by always presenting multiple hypotheses. The Long Embrace sheds more light on its subject than do most standard biographies. It turns out that Chandler’s love for his wife, Cissy, is essential to understanding how he constructed his female temptresses. And in evoking a centerless Los Angeles, Freeman helps us appreciate the essential vision of the Chandlerian mystery: that people, like the vast cities they inhabit, are really unknowable.

Here is the whole winter books symposium.

1. Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America, by Andrei S. Markovits.  Not the usual swill on this topic; sadly the main prediction of this book is that the passing of Bush will not make America much more popular in Europe.  Read this short article on the same.

2. Dante, Paradiso, translated by Robert and Jean Hollander.  There still is not a gripping English-language Paradiso on the market, as the Mandelbaum translation is flawed as well and don’t ever trust Penguin translations with anything.  This one doesn’t elevate me as the text should.  But it has the best notes of any edition, is laid out most nicely, and is the best for trying to follow the Italian and cross-reference the translation.  If you buy only one English-language Paradiso maybe it is this one.  An alternative is the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow edition, lyrical but archaic, on-line for free.

3. Castles, Battles, and Bombs: How Economics Explains Military History, by Jurgen Brauer and Hubert van Tuyll.  The table of contents looks amazing, but my browsing indicated this book to be boring.  Still, some of you should read it.  It is full of factual substance, slotted into an economic framework.

4. Americanos: Latin America’s Struggle for Independence, by John Chasteen.  Every now and then a history book sweeps you up into its world; this one did it for me, most of all the treatment of Alexander von Humboldt but from beginning to end as well.  The best and most readable book on its topic.

5. William Gibson, Neuromancer.  Wow, this is now twenty-four years old.  I’m teaching it next week in Law and Literature class.  Upon rereading what strikes me most is how little science fiction it offers and how much it follows in the stylistic footsteps of Hammett and Chandler.

For commentary on chapter four from Tim Harford’s The Logic of Life, Megan McArdle steps up.  The post is over at her blog, go over there to leave your opinions and show the Atlantic Monthly who’s got the better commentators!

Addendum: In the comments it is written: "I think the we should distinguish ourselves from them by ending the comments with ‘MR’."

Most likely we’ll get our next installment of the book forum tomorrow morning; there is some chance it will pop up today.

When we set the price of a Lindt truffle at 15 cents and a Kiss at one cent, we were not surprised to find that our customers acted with a good deal of rationality: they compared the price and quality of the Kiss with the price and quality of the the truffle, and then made their choice: About 73 percent of them chose the truffle and 27 percent chose a Kiss.

Now we decided to see how FREE! might change the situation.  So we offered the Lindt truffle for 14 cents and the Kisses free…

But what a difference FREE! made.  The humble Hershey’s Kiss became a big favorite.  Some 69 percent of our customers (up from 27 percent before) chose the FREE! Kiss, giving up the opportunity to get the LIndt truffle for a very good price. 

That is from Dan Ariely’s new and excellent Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions.  Here is Dan’s book-related blog.  All of a sudden my head is spinning, wondering what a relative price ratio really means (we can’t divide by zero).  Or is this just the Alchian and Allen theorem on steroids, namely the claim that fixed charges encourage the consumption of the higher quality good?  Or I think: "Zero, is there something special about that number?"

There is more on the way in behavioral economics.  There is Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, by Ori and Rom Brafman and Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, the defense of voluntary paternalism from Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, due out later this June and April respectively.

This review is cross posted at the orgtheory.net, the management and social science blog.

In chapter three, "Divorce is Underrated," Tim Harford explores the economics of love, marriage, and divorce. It’s the kind of topic that makes people hate economists. Of all the subjects studied by economists, can’t love be spared the rational choice treatment? Of course not! If you spend a few moments thinking about how men and women scheme in the dating world, you’ll quickly see that a rational choice theory of relationships isn’t such a crazy idea after all.

Harford hits the major points you’d expect. People make substitutions, and they respond to supply and demand in dating and sex. One interesting section talks about the “optimal” divorce rate and how in the post-1970s era, we’re probably switching from a situation of many marriages with many divorces, to less frequent marriages and less frequent divorce. Harford quotes MR regular Justin Wolfers in saying that there is social learning and that we should appreciate that the optimal divorce rate is not zero, lest we believe in perfect marriages.

The average person probably hates this econo-talk because it seems to devalue love. Here’s where it helps to be a sociologist. Yes, from the bird’s eye view, there is a “love market” and you are just a love widget. But let’s take the symbolic interactionist perspective. Relationships are highly customizable. Once you bond with a person, you can make the relationship highly unique and hard to substitute. Even if two people are similar, they can form very different relationships with different histories. If you’ve done that, then you’ve created a fairly unique thing that’s hard to replace. By yourself you might be generic, but in a relationship you can be very special.

Translating back into econo-talk, people in loving relationships differentiate their “love product.” A person in a couple with a special history knows that there will never be another person who has lived the same life with them. That knowledge makes them stick it out. If you can do that in a way that improves both parties, then you won’t contribute to the optimal divorce rate.

Including The Colbert Show, Google, and also BloggingHeads, here are the links.