Category: Books

Here is a new list from The Guardian (I’ll second the call for Alasdair Gray’s Lanark).  Here is an only slightly older list from New York magazine, I like David Markson too.

…comes again on the question of science.  He points out correctly that most of the major technological innovators did not get much for their efforts.  Clark therefore does not see the late 18th century or early 19th century as giving special incentives for science.  I agree as far as he goes, but I view the incentives for science more broadly.

Core Europe, starting in late medieval times, developed a new and still poorly understood organizational technology.  This was, very roughly, the ability to work in groups, cumulate technologies and advances, and learn from each other in competitive environments.  Most notably, this new technology led the Florentine and Venetian Renaissances, especially in the visual arts.  But there was more.  The rise of printing.  The rise of classical music, starting in 1685 or whenever.  The rise of early modern philosophy.  Europe goes crazy with inventiveness, albeit in splats and bursts.  (Clark’s own chapter 12 gives good evidence for this tendency, though it will play a less central role in his version of the story.)

It is also the case that most of these bursts of inventiveness didn’t do much for the average standard of living.  Yes mastering oil paint technique made Florence richer but not so much.

It just so happened that one of these bursts came in science, technology, and engineering.  And it came in England, mostly for reasons of "national character."  It just so happened that the English burst did more for the standard of living, for reasons of external benefits.  But having had such a burst was not unique to England.  England was just one spoke on a more broadly turning wheel, and a European distribution of bursts was well in place prior to most of the special conditions we might find in England.

England, by the way, also had the literary revolution of the 18th century, and England plus Scotland drove the rise of modern economics.  There is no Chinese Adam Smith and that is because that Europe was pulling decisively ahead in ideas production.  I consider this a fact of great importance whereas for Clark it is a sideshow to some other story.

Most generally, I see the historical problem of growth through the lens of culture — in the sense of the history of the arts, music, and letters — more than through the economic history literature.  I am very taken by Max Weber’s writing on Western music and also his conception of the broader style of Western rationality.  And I see the rise of these organizational improvements as a central — the central? — story of early modern Europe and the move to prosperity.  It simply took a long time to apply these organizational movements to science, and to turn that science into concrete technical advances.

None of this need contradict Clark and indeed you will find parts of this narrative in his book.  But unlike Clark I would not superimpose this on a broader Malthusian story or an emphasis on the long run.  Nor am I putting much stock in genetic evolution.  So these organizational/technological improvements, in my view, move closer to the center of the story of European progress.

Unlike Clark, I think incentives to create matter greatly, but not through patents or other direct pecuniary rate of return effects.  The great creators have a burning desire to create, provided they have the opportunity to do so.  This new European technology of organization (whatever it should be called), combined with growing wealth for the upper classes, meant that such creative opportunities were far more available than ever before.  And powerful intellects grabbed them, for reasons of psychic incentives.  So incentives are paramount to the European story, while Clark remains correct in criticizing the standard account of how those incentives might have mattered.

I also see England has having innovated with the quality of its state in particular its fiscal grounding.  I wish this played a larger role in Clark’s account although of course I understand why it does not.  Institutions are not allowed to become a competing force on center stage.  The economic returns from colonies might be given more play as well.

Overall I am willing to accept many of Clark’s arguments, but I always go back to wanting to superimpose a broader institutional story on his microfoundations.

He resists that move, and that is the major place where I part company with him.  I think he is too intent on pushing institutional and ideological factors off the stage; I am happy to allow Clark’s factors on the stage — most of all gradual growth downward mobility and quality of labor — but I want a very busy and cluttered stage.

I believe, by the way, that if Clark’s vision were correct, Australia and New Zealand would be stronger economic powerhouses than has turned out to be the case.

The subtitle is How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich, written by financial journalist Jason Zweig.  I enjoyed the content of this book, and would recommend it as a stimulating source of ideas, but with some caveats:

1. The new science of neuroeconomics cannot help make you rich, unless perhaps you have inherited a scanner and then rent scanner time to neuroeconomists (often $500 an hour or more).  Or unless you decide to simply buy and hold, compared to some other foolish plan you might have had.

2. I would have liked more emphasis on the tentative nature of neuroeconomics results.  Most studies have very few data points (see #1).  And if human choice is so context-dependent — a message of the book — doesn’t it matter if people are removed from their normal environment, told they are in an experiment, and subjected to a loud, whirring machine?

3. What does it really mean if some part of your brain lights up?  Who really knows?

4. The book mixes in results from experimental economics, surveys, and field experiments.  That’s fine, but if the neuro results had to stand alone on an open plain they would look less impressive.

I genuinely am a fan of neuroeconomics, but in the interests of science it’s important not to oversell it.

So few other people sample books en masse, yet the practice strikes me as trivially correct.  If I buy a book the odds that I finish it are reasonably high, certainly above fifty percent.  Why spend the money on a longshot?  (Btw, "What I’ve Been Reading" is almost always books I have finished, otherwise why report them?)  But when I troll a public library for free books, which I do virtually every day, should I pick up only those books I expect to finish?  No, I slide further along the marginal benefit curve and that means I grab lots of books with relatively small but positive expected values.

Yesterday’s haul from Arlington Public Library included You Never Call! You Never Write!, and Otherwise Normal People: Inside the Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening, neither of which I expect to finish (though I will if I love them).  The real question is should I read more on-line book reviews (which are free), or do my own "reviews" by pawing the free book for a few minutes? 

What are other reasons not to sample?  Are library trips so costly?  Are you so confident in social filters relative to your own judgment/pawing?  Have blogs outcompeted book pawing?  Is the goal of reading simply to share impressions with other people, and there is little uncertainty about what are the hot-selling books?

I say go and grab, go and grab, go and grab.

"Every reader has a personal ethic for how to treat a book, a morality for what can and can’t be done to the physical object."  Is dog-earing a page a violation of the sanctity of the volume, or an easy way to hold your place?  What about highlighting key passages, or writing notes in the margins?  Or even (gasp!) throwing out an old book you don’t want anymore?

Here is the link.  I do not believe that books have rights, Nozickian or otherwise.  I am most likely to rip up travel books if only to minimize my carry burden.  But I don’t write in books because I wish to discover new ideas — and not just my old ideas — each time I open them up.  Dog-earing pages is useful because you can go back to old books and see how far in them you read and then decide you really shouldn’t give it another chance after all.

Here is a story about book left behind in hotel rooms, including a list of the top 10 most abandoned titles (UK).

It will come next Tuesday, and cover pp.193-272.  In the meantime, here is an interesting interview with Greg over at Gene Expression.

Addendum: And here is Arnold Kling on Clark.

1. Open Secrets of American Foreign Policy, by Gordon Tullock.  A history of the bloopers and stupidities of American foreign policy, from virtually day one.  If you think Gordon embraces a narrow, reductionist rational choice view of the world, here is the antidote.  Gordon tells me that foreign policy has long been his number one interest, although he has written on the topic only now.

2. One Economics, Many Recipes, by Dani Rodrik.  I agree with much of the substance of this book, namely that we know a lot less about the causes of economic growth than we like to think.  I am less happy with the implied rhetorical choices; in particular I wish Rodrik were more consistently agnostic.  For instance Rodrik defends industrial policy, but at times this just translates into lower (or no) taxes for export zones.  So why frame it as a larger rather than a smaller claim? 

3. The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by CrackpotEconomics , by Jonathan Chait.  I’ve taught Ph.d. macroeconomics to some of the people referred to, either directly or indirectly, in this book.  They didn’t all get A pluses.  So I see the talk of conspiracy as way, way overblown.  This book catalogs many good criticisms of the Bush administration, and in that sense is valuable, but it does not raise the level of debate.

4. Do Economists Make Markets?, an edited collection of essays.  How could they not cite Alex’s Entrepreneurial Economics?  Or pay homage to Robin Hanson and prediction markets?  Still, this is a useful introduction to how economists have tried to shape real world markets, from spectrum auctions to options pricing.

The first thing I said was "Hey, you have a much better voice than I do!"

The guy who heard that — I won’t tell you his name — is reading the audiobook CD book and audiocassette versions of Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist. 

He called me for advice on how to pronounce various words in the book.  My surprise was how many words and names I wrote that I didn’t really know how to pronounce.

1. Exactly which national groups evolved a sufficient love of capitalist ways of life?  Clark’s statistics show that the wealthy had more surviving kids in England, relative to the poor.  Furthermore some numbers suggest that the same was less true in accident-prone primitive societies, where selection is based more on luck and physical force.

Even putting aside the debate on how long evolution requires (who will be the first to mention lactose intolerance and dachsunds in the comments?), does this explain the economic supremacy of England?  Recall that England climbed out of the Malthusian trap but most of the rest of Europe did not.  Was positive selection more pronounced in England than in Italy?  Than in France?  There is no evidence for those propositions, which in any case strike me as unlikely.  Even if one buys into positive selection, we have at most "positive selection for some countries vs. others," not "positive selection elevating England over the rest of Europe and driving an industrial revolution."  Positive selection doesn’t get us very far in explaining the climb out of the Malthusian trap, which was more or less unique to England and the Netherlands. 

Clark mentions in passing that positive selection bred the Chinese to be natural capitalists.  If we accept this portrait, I am now more confused about a) where positive selection operated and where it did not, and b) what was the marginal product of positive selection, vis-a-vis industrialization?  Until the 1980s or so, the Chinese record simply isn’t very good over the last few centuries.

In fairness to Clark we have not yet finished his discussion of these factors.

I’ll also note that I see positive selection in terms of culture, family norms, and peer effects, rather than genes.  Or you might think it is some mix of the two.  If you focus on the biological issues in the comments I think you’re missing the strongest and most general version of the argument.

2. I am not persuaded by Clark’s argument that "institutions do not matter."  True, medieval England had limited government intervention but it did not industrialize or "take off."  Clark’s discussion is right on, and if the English example does not persuade you try medieval Iceland, which was probably even freer.

But my conclusion differs from Clark’s.  I conclude "science is more important for growth than we had thought, and the simple fact of freedom does not itself guarantee much progress for science."  In this view the institutions which support science matter profoundly.  Science, science, science.  I recommend Jack Goldstone’s forthcoming book, much of which focuses on science and engineering culture in early modern England. 

Infrastructure also matters.  In medieval England the state wasn’t strong enough to help establish a large open geographic area for trading.  Early English economies were still local rather than national, and yes economies of scale matter.

That all said, I will accept a reformulated argument: "Institutions matter, but we should not take institutions as exogenous."  On this middle ground just about all of Clark’s substantive contributions will hold up.  So I view him as overstating his case, and taking too big a swing at institutional theories.  This overreaching, however, does not negate his core arguments.  So maybe you disagree with Clark on this point, as I do, but you cannot use it as reason to dismiss his other claims.

By the way, here is Ricardo Hausman on the book.  Here was installment one of this BookForum.

In closing, we can now see that Clark’s core arguments don’t depend on Malthusianism; they require only that economic growth is something very difficult to accomplish, and indeed that is the case.

I saw this and thought I should buy the book — Kate Christensen’s novel The Great Man — just because I liked the cover.  As an experiment, I deliberately did not scan the contents or read the blurbs on the back.  The title isn’t very descriptive either.  I then bought the book.

My thought was this: presumably the publisher designs the cover to
appeal to people who will spread favorable word of mouth about the
book.  As a sometimes good (but non-reductionist) Bayesian, if I like
the cover I should infer I will praise the book.  Furthermore I should
be especially keen to buy on this basis for a "word of mouth book," and
indeed this author does not have a celebrity name.

If I like the cover *a lot*, can I receive a worse evaluation by
checking out the blurbs and thus skewing or minimizing my gut reaction
to the image?  Surely if someone is able to manipulate me, my optimal
strategy is let just some of the manipulative information through.  The
case for viewing the cover — and only the cover — is simply that many
more people see the cover than evaluate any other part or aspect of the
book.  Might we then not expect the cover to be the strongest and best
thought out signal?

I can now report that the topic of the book interests me greatly,
and I am enjoying the first half of the book.  I fully expect to finish
it.

I will continue this experiment by buying another book just for its cover.

I do understand that this is usually considered the strategy of a relatively stupid person.

Under what conditions should a smart person prefer books with stupid or ugly covers?

Under what conditions should you — for non-superficial reasons — prefer other items, just because of their looks?

1. A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium, by Robert Friedel.  A very good treatment of the history of Western technology, although it is not accessible reading for most non-specialists.

2. Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming, by Chris Mooney.  The lower your social discount rate, the more you should worry about (growth-reducing) storms, and the less you should worry about one-time adjustments, such as moving islanders to a mainland.  In other words, you should worry about storms.

3. Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969, by Dan Nadel.  Some of the best evidence that comic books are valuable art.

4. Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne.  On this rereading, I am obsessed by the notion that it is actually Uncle Toby who is Tristram’s biological father.  In any case this book has held up very well.

5. Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire, by Alex von Tunzelmann.  Yet another high quality book on modern Indian history, here the theme is the departure of the British, the establishment of modern India, and of course partition.

I’d like to thank all of the commentators and especially Greg Clark for making the first MR BookForum a resounding success.  The plan is to continue next Tuesday with pp.112-193, stay tuned! 

1. Did hunter-gatherers really have living standards as high as people in 18th century England?  By focusing on the long run, Clark neglects the pains of equilibration.  Hunter-gatherers who survived to 30 maybe had decent lives, but population was very low.  It was kept low, in part, by lots of brutal and painful death.  We can’t just focus on the steady-state conditions in making welfare comparisons.  Modern research is also discovering that primitive societies have very high levels of war and violent death; if we’re playing time travel games, I’m opting for 1800, and not just to have a chance of hearing Haydn.  I’ll also take modern Tanzania over the hunter-gatherers, in a heartbeat, contra what Clark implies.

2. Why should we aggregate income comparisons by country (or the whole world) rather than by city?  World history looks very different if we do the latter.  Aren’t most countries relatively recent inventions anyway?  More generally, I would like a more disaggregated look at the data.  Big chunks of the urbanized human population — pre 1800 — seem to have violated Malthusian precepts for centuries on end.  "Stadtluft macht frei" was the old German saying.

3. How long is the long run?  This is one of my biggest questions about the work and about Malthusian predictions more generally.  Are we just comparing 30,000 B.C. to 1800 A.D.?  If so, we have only two data points.  If we look at times in between, there is much more scope for non-Malthusian results, even if they hold for "only centuries."

4. Violent conflict and predation are not given enough (any?) importance.  Cities that avoid violent conflict do pretty well.  Admittedly, violence is itself endogenous to Malthusian considerations, but I’m not going to reduce war to population pressures (and certainly Clark never tries to.)  Isn’t part of the historical inability to boost long-run living standards simply the result of recurring wars and depredations?  17th century European history, among other times, shows just how much war matters.

5. Should I reject the Julian Simon model I grew up with?  In that view there are increasing returns to scale within cities, where people usually don’t starve.  The countryside languishes in poor countries, in part because it is underpopulated.  Rather than having a "one population model" with an aggregate "n," labor markets are local.  The "plagued by diseconomies of scale rural folk" cannot sufficiently connect with the "economies of scale urban sophisticates," mostly because of bad institutions and backward infrastructure.  And the cities prove unable to protect themselves against all ongoing predations.  Doesn’t that model fit the data too, and fit the disaggregated and shorter-run data better?

6. I can’t find the single place where Clark directly tests the Malthusian model.  I fear he will regard this observation as unfair, since there is argumentation and data of some kind on virtually every page.  But I still am not satisfied.  I see lots of evidence for "history shows mean-reversion and population pressures are one factor affecting wages."  It is harder to find a) what "best alternative" the Malthusian model is being tested against, b) what evidence would adjudicate between models, c) what is the short-run claim about the response of population to real wages, and d) what in history are the "hard cases" for the Malthusian model and how does Clark handle them?

7. Charles Kenny argues that the Malthusian model does not explain observed short-run dynamics for population and real wages.  I don’t regard this piece as a refutation of Clark by any means, but the evidence on how well real wages predict population growth seems to me murky rather than decisively in Clark’s favor.  There’s just not a single, simple model at work here.

If you are coming to the book blind, here is a short piece by Clark.  Here is my earlier column on the manuscript.  Here is a survey paper on the Industrial Revolution and the Malthusian trap.  Here is more good background.  Peter Lindert considers how much real wages predict population growth in British history.  Read this too.

What do you all think?

1. Be even more polite than usual.

2. Relate your points to Greg Clark’s book as much as possible.  This is a forum on his book.

3. You are engaging the book, and if you end up in a running back and forth with another commentator, the odds that you are producing a public good are no more than p = 0.21.

4. Comments which "leap ahead" and focus on later parts of the book, beyond the specified pages, will be deleted, no matter how brilliant.