Category: Books
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.
What I’ve been reading
1. The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum, by Lawrence Rothfield. The definitive book on its topic.
2. Edward Skidelsky, Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture. A very clear and readable book on a still underrated thinker.
3. The Euro: The Politics of the New Global Currency, by David Marsh. I can't say this book is fun to read, but it is the new go-to source on an increasingly up-for-grabs topic. It's at least as much about the EMS as about the Euro.
4. Richard Dowden, Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles. Another mega-book on Africa, with mixed results. At least half of it is worth reading, and I learned a great deal (or at least I think I did) from the analysis of how Somalia is a relatively ethnically unified nation, by African standards at least.
5. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. Does our cooperative nature come from our love of babies? Maybe my expectations were too high, but I found her earlier book more revelatory.
Inside the Fed
I enjoyed this book, which is written by Stephen Axilrod and has the subtitle Monetary Policy and Its Management, Martin Through Greenspan to Bernanke.
I liked this part:
John Ehrlichman's arrival toward the end of our visit was the main event, unadvertised as it had been. He had something very definite to say to us.
His speech went something like this: "When you gentlemen get up in the morning and look in the mirror while you are shaving, I want you to think carefully about one thing. Ask yourselves, "What can I do today to get the money supply up?" That was it; that was why we were there — not to explain, but to hear.
p.167 has an interesting (though not quite accurate) discussion of what distinguishes some top economics scholars from obsessive-compulsives.
House of Cards
The author is William D. Cohan and the subtitle is A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street. It's the story of the recent history of Bear Stearns. Here is an NYT review. Here is a Business Week review. Here is an L.A. Times review; note that all reviews are very positive.
I've read only fifteen or so pages and I'm already convinced it's one of the must-read books relevant to the financial crisis. The other two books which come to mind are Lords of Finance and The Partnership, neither of which covers the crisis directly but both offer essential background.
What I’ve Been Reading
1. The Enormity of the Tragedy, by Quim Monzó. Originally written in Catalan, this short novel is popular throughout Europe for its priapic good humor.
2. Imagining India, The Idea of a Renewed Nation, by Nandan Nilekani. An excellent study of the microeconomics of entrepreneurship in India; I thank Carl Schramm for the pointer.
3. Richard A. Posner, A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression.
4. The "hot hand" hypothesis is hurting, according to John Huizenga.
5. Bonsai, Alejandro Zambra, 83 pp., the next literary rage to come from Chile since Roberto Bolaño.
What is driving the eBooks boom?
Via Yves Smith, here is one hypothesis:
What's popular on Fictionwise? Well, once again it seems like
porn is blazing a path to a new media format. Of the top 10 bestsellers under the "Multiformat" category, nine are tagged "erotica" amd the last is "dark fantasy"…People who read erotic romance and 'bodice rippers' love
ebooks because of the privacy they offer, both during purchase and when
reading.
By the way, Andrew Sullivan asks how one is to post 250 times a week and read Ulysses. The answer is simple: one page at a time.
One advantage of Kindle is that it provides a new tool for mental accounting. Call me irrational but formerly I could not read more than seven or eight books at a time without abandoning some of them midway. Kindle (like Netflix, I might add) gives me a new queue and allows me to have more "hanging," partially unread books at any point in time, yet without disrupting my mental equilibrium. I'm rereading Moby Dick, one chapter at a time, on plane trips, and next in line are Middlemarch and…Ulysses.
Sentences to ponder
Jason Kottke reports:
Now you can go to the iTunes Store to buy the Kindle app from Amazon that lets you read ebooks made for the Kindle device on the iPhone.
Reader request on James Wood
Here is an old, old request, which somehow I left behind in the archives:
The critic James Wood–despite his formidable intellect and depth of knowledge, he's awfully obtuse. Discuss.
Here are Wood's picks for the best books of the year. Here is a good (negative) review of the new Wood book. Here is writing advice from James Wood. You read people for their peaks and for me that means thumbs up for Wood. Here is a good short essay on Wood.
Of all those shouting that the literary emperor has no clothes, he is the most acute observer. But, most of all, other people have smarter things to say about Wood than I do.