Category: Books
The new Greek-language edition of Modern Principles of Economics
Alex and I are very happy to see this edition has come out:
We thank Theodore Pelagidis for a superb translation.
*Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals?*
That is the new book by my colleague Virgil Storr and co-author Ginny Seung Choi. Here is a summary take on it, excerpt:
This book explores whether or not engaging in market activities is morally corrupting. Storr and Choi demonstrate that people in market societies are wealthier, healthier, happier and better connected than those in societies where markets are more restricted. More provocatively, they explain that successful markets require and produce virtuous participants. Markets serve as moral spaces that both rely on and reward their participants for being virtuous. Rather than harming individuals morally, the market is an arena where individuals are encouraged to be their best moral selves. Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals? invites us to reassess the claim that markets corrupt our morals.
Here is a Deirdre McCloskey blurb:
“Storr and Choi have brought economics and politics back to ethics, which should never have been left. Of course values matter. Of course markets smooth off the rough sides of humans. Of course ‘sweet commerce’ reigns, and should. Of course. But it took a brilliant book like this one to show it.”
You can order the book here.
*10% Less Democracy*
The author is Garett Jones and the subtitle is Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses A Little Less, coming soon to a theater near you, early 2020.
If you believe in judicial independence, you do not believe in complete democracy.
If you do not think we should elect judges, sheriffs, and dog catchers, you do not believe in complete democracy.
If you believe in those European proportional representation systems, with post-election bargaining, you do not believe in complete democracy.
If you are a fan of the EU…etc.
Here is an excerpt from Garett’s excellent book:
Some cities in California appoint their treasurers and others elect their treasurers. Cities can have elections to decide whether the city treasurer should be appointed by the city government; the default is that they’re elected. Whalley checks to see which kinds of cities have lower borrowing costs: ones with appointed treasurers or elected ones. The interest rate paid on a city’s debt is a useful index of how well the city is running its finances…So Whalley’s overall question is this: Do cities with appointed treasurers pay lower interest rates on their debt?
…Over the period Whalley examined, 1992 to 2008, forty-three cities held referenda to ask whether they should switch to appointed treasurers. He’s therefore able to look at the before-and-after differences of these elections…
[there is] an even bigger benefit of appointed treasurers: seven-tenths of a percent lower interest rates every year. The average city has $30 million in debt, so that comes out to a savings of $210,000 per year.
Do I hear eleven percent anybody? Though twenty percent I do not wish to hazard, not at all.
You can pre-order the book here.
*The Enchantments of Mammon*
The author is Eugene McCarraher, and the subtitle of this Belknap Press book is How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity. Here is one excerpt:
The world does not need to be re-enchanted, because it was never disenchanted in the first place. Attending primarily to the history of the United States, I hope to demonstrate that capitalism has been, as Benjamin perceived, a religion of modernity, one that addresses the same hopes and anxieties formerly entrusted to traditional religion. But this does not mean only that capitalism has been and continues to be “beguiling” or “fetishized,” and that rigorous analysis will expose the phantoms as the projections they really are. These enchantments draw their power, not simply from our capacity for delusion., but from our deepest and truest desires — desires that are consonant and tragically out of touch with the dearest freshness of the universe. The world can never be disenchanted, not because our emotional or political or cultural needs compel us to find enchantments — though they do — but because the world itself, as Hopkins realized, is charged with the grandeur of God…
However significant theology is for this book, I have relied on a sizable body of historical literature on the symbolic universe of capitalism. Much of this work suggests that capitalist cultural authority cannot be fully understood without regard to the psychic, moral, and spiritual longings inscribed in the imagery of business culture.
I remain wedded to the traditional Weberian view that capitalism represents a discrete break away from such modes of thought, and I believe this perspective supported by the work of Joe Henrich and co-authors on WEIRD. Nonetheless, this is a book of note, and it has a clearly stated thesis on matters of direct relevance to what is explored on Marginal Revolution. Due out in November, pre-order at the link above.
My Conversation with Hollis Robbins
Here is the audio and video, here is part of the CWT summary:
Now a dean at Sonoma State University, Robbins joined Tyler to discuss 19th-century life and literature and more, including why the 1840s were a turning point in US history, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Calvinism, whether 12 Years a Slave and Django Unchained are appropriate portraits of slavery, the best argument for reparations, how prepaid postage changed America, the second best Herman Melville book, why Ayn Rand and Margaret Mitchell are ignored by English departments, growing up the daughter of a tech entrepreneur, and why teachers should be like quarterbacks.
Here is one excerpt:
COWEN: You’ve written a good deal on the history of the postal service. How did the growth of the postal service change romance in America?
ROBBINS: Well, everybody could write a letter. [laughs] In 1844 — this was the other exciting thing that happened in the 1840s. Rowland Hill in England changed the postal service by inventing the idea of prepaid postage. Anybody could buy a stamp, and then you’d put the stamp on the letter and send the letter.
Prior to that, you had to go to the post office. You had to engage with the clerk. After the 1840s and after prepaid postage, you could just get your stamps, and anybody could send a letter. In fact, Frederick Douglass loved the idea of prepaid post for the ability for the enslaved to write and send letters. After that, people wrote letters to each other, letters home, letters to their lovers, letters to —
COWEN: When should you send a sealed letter? Because it’s also drawing attention to itself, right?
ROBBINS: Well, envelopes — it’s interesting that envelopes, sealed envelopes, came about 50 years after the post office became popular, so you didn’t really have self-sealing envelopes until the end of the 19th century.
COWEN: That was technology? Or people didn’t see the need for it?
ROBBINS: Technology, the idea of folding the envelope and then having it be gummed and self-sealing. There were a number of patents, but they kept breaking down. But technology finally resolved it at the end of the 19th century.
Prior to that, you would write in code. Also, paper was expensive, so you often wrote across the page horizontally and then turned it to the side and crossed the page, writing in the other direction. If somebody was really going to snoop on your letters, they had to work for it.
COWEN: On net, what were the social effects of the postal service?
ROBBINS: Well, communication. The post office and the need for the post office is in our Constitution.
COWEN: It was egalitarian? It was winner take all? It liberated women? It helped slaves? Or what?
ROBBINS: All those things.
COWEN: All those things.
ROBBINS: But yeah, de Tocqueville mentioned this in his great book in the 1830s that anybody — some farmer in Michigan — could be as informed as somebody in New York City.
And:
COWEN: Margaret Mitchell or Ayn Rand?
ROBBINS: Well, it’s interesting that two of the best-selling novelists of the 20th-century women are both equally ignored by English departments in universities. Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind is paid attention to a little bit just because, as I said, it’s something that literature and film worked against, but not Ayn Rand at all.
And:
COWEN: What’s a paradigmatic example of a movie made better by a good soundtrack?
ROBBINS: The Pink Panther — Henry Mancini’s score. The movie is ridiculous, but Henry Mancini’s score — you’re going to be humming it now the rest of the day.
And:
COWEN: What is the Straussian reading of Babar the Elephant?
ROBBINS: When’s the last time you read it?
COWEN: Not long ago.
Recommended throughout.
*Good Economics for Hard Times*
Yes, that is the new and forthcoming book by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, and it tells you what they really think about everything. Everything in mainstream economic policy debate, at least.
So far I have read only the first chapter, on migration, but I found it informative, highly readable, and (unlike many other popular books) subtle. I am excited to read the rest of the book, in the meantime here is one short excerpt:
Mahesh found these would-be [Nepali] migrants were in fact somewhat overoptimistic about their earnings prospects. Specifically, they overestimated their earning potential by around 25 percent, which could be for any number of reasons, including the possibility the recruiters who go to them with job offers lie to them. But the really big mistake they made was that they vastly overestimated the chance of dying while they were abroad. A typical candidate for migration thought that out of a thousand migrants, over a two-year stint, about ten would come back in a box. The reality is just 1.3.
Here is the table of contents:
1. MEGA: Make Economics Great Again
2. From the Mouth of the Shark
3. The Pains from Trade
4. Likes, Wants and Needs
5. The End of Growth?
6. In Hot Water
7. Player Piano
8. Legit.gov
9. Cash and Care
Due out November 12, you can pre-order here.
*Fully Grown: Why a Stagnant Economy is a Sign of Success*
That is the new book by Dietrich Vollrath, strongly recommended, it is a primer on the current state of knowledge about economic growth. Tightly argued, and a remarkable amount is covered in 216 pp. of regular text. Here is one excerpt:
Although there were plenty of changes in the individual markups firms charge, many of them actually fell over the last twenty years. What explained the overall rise in markups from 1.18 to 1.67 was that spending shifted away from firms with low markups and toward firms with high markups. Which high markup firms did we shift our spending to? Well, a lot of service firms, including those involved in communications, technology, health care, and education. In short, the rise in economic profits and markups we see at the aggregate level is part of the overall shift toward services we discussed a few chapters ago.
Here is where things get a little weirder. Baqaee and Farhi show that the shift toward high-markup firms was good for productivity growth. Whatever the source of a high markup, it indicates a product that is very valuable relative to its marginal cost. If we take the inputs required to produce a low-markup product and use them to instead produce a high-markup product, then we have raised the value of what we produce. As this increase in value came from reallocating our existing inputs toward a different use, rather than from accumulating new physical or human capital, the shift in spending toward high-markup firms shows up as an increase in productivity growth.
More books should be like this, it actually tries to teach the reader something! And succeeds. Definitely recommended. Due out in January, you can pre-order here.
*The Economist’s Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society*
That is the new and forthcoming book by New York Times writer Binyamin Appelbaum. I did not agree with all of the perspectives in the book, but enjoyed reading it, and found no errors of fact in it (rare for a book on free market economics!). I was happy to give it this blurb:
“I very much enjoyed reading The Economists’ Hour, an entertaining and well-written look at how market-oriented ideas rose from the academy and transformed nations. I do not agree with each and every perspective, but found this a valuable and highly recommendable book, which I devoured in a single sitting.”
The text even covers Walter Oi, who is arguably the most accomplished blind economist to have lived. Lots more on Laffer, Friedman, Alfred Kahn, Aaron Director, Thomas Schelling, the Chile episode, and more.
First world problems
Soon there may be non-stop 19 hour flights from New York to Sydney, Australia:
On long-haul flights, cabin lights are typically dimmed about two hours after take-off and turned back up about two hours before landing, said Sveta Postnova, a senior lecturer in neurophysics and brain dynamics at the University of Sydney. Depending on the destination, that practice can make jet lag worse, she noted.
One of the test [19 hour] flights from New York will follow the normal pattern. But on the other flight, lights will stay on for about six or seven hours after departure. Researchers will compare passenger data from the two flights to determine whether the lighting change affected jet lag. Meal service will be aligned with the lighting, Ms. Postnova said.
Light plays a key role in regulating sleep, but “recently we are learning that meals, exercise and other environmental factors also affect our body clock,” Ms. Postnova said. A big unknown for air travel is how to schedule lighting, meals and exercise to minimize jet lag.
Here is the WSJ article. My preference is for them to keep the lights on, and the windows open, for much longer than is currently the case. Eyemasks are cheap and underused.
Also, it may be my imagination, but anecdotally I observe that screen viewing has (additionally) replaced reading to an extraordinary extent even in just the last five years. True?
Those new (old) service sector jobs: personal book curator
From the unusual products flogged on health and wellbeing site Goop to her one-of-a-kind beauty habits, Gwyneth Paltrow never fails to surprise us. Case in point: she once hired a ‘personal book curator’.
Back in 2001, the former actress decided to redesign her Los Angeles home and realised that to complete the gram-worthy look, she needed a good five to six hundred books to fill the empty shelves.
So what does a Hollywood star do when their personal novel collection doesn’t quite make the necessary requirements? They call in a celebrity-approved book curator of course.
The 46-year-old asked longtime friend, Thatcher Wine, a long-time book collector and the founder of Juniper Books, to complete the task. But with A-list clientele including the likes of Laura Dern and Shonda Rhimes, he was certainly no stranger to the job in hand.
And this is indeed an art:
Over in the dining room, Wine made sure to organise the books in a more minimal fashion in keeping with a “rigid colour palette of black, white, and grey since it was less of a space where one might hang out and read”.
Upon closer inspection, heavyweight coffee table books take price of place with shelves dedicated to artists including Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali and Leonardo Da Vinci.
Here is the full story, here is the interview with Thatcher Wine. Via Ted Gioia.
The nature of pessimism
Pessimists are happy dreamers. They make the world in their own image and so always manage to feel at home.
That is from Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet.
What I’ve been reading
1. Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell, Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World. A good, short “give it to your high school kid” book on why socialism is not an entirely ideal way to arrange society.
2. Ben Lewis, The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World’s Most Expensive Painting. I felt I knew this story already, but nonetheless found interesting information and conceptual analysis on virtually every page. And while the author is agnostic and balanced, the text upped my opinion of the “likely Leonardo weighted expected value” component from about 0.1 to maybe 0.25? Yet so much fuss about a painting that resurfaced in 1907 — model that… And don’t forget: “None of the great art historians and connoisseurs who saw it before 1958 identified it as a Leonardo.” Recommended.
3. Lene Rachel Andersen and Tomas Björkman, The Nordic Secret: A European story of beauty and freedom. There should be many more books about why the Nordics are special, and this is one of them. The central notion here is “secular Bildung” as a means of elevating society and cooperative relations. Uneven in its structure of exposition, but definitely interesting in parts and the importance of the question makes this better than most of the other books you might be likely to read. Just don’t expect 100% polish.
4. David Cahan, Helmholtz: A Life in Science. At 768 pp., I only read about half of this one. Nonetheless I read the better half, and it is one of the more useful treatments of 19th century German science. I hadn’t realized the strong connections with Siemens and Roentgen, for instance, and one clear lesson is that German science of that time had some pretty healthy institutions outside of the formal university system.
David Wright interviews me
Dave is an actuary, super-talented, and one of my very favorite interviewers and best prepared interviewers in the whole wide world (do say yes if he offers to interview you for his podcast).
Here is the audio, most of the questions go well beyond the usual. It starts with my book Big Business but even gets into the Straussian side of things, globalization, the price of fame, and much more.
Recommended.
What should I ask Ben Westhoff?
I will be doing a Conversation with him, no associated public event, here is from his home page:
Ben Westhoff is an award-winning investigative journalist who writes about culture, drugs, and poverty. His books are taught around the country and have been translated into languages all over the world.
His new book Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic releases September 3, 2019 in the U.S. (Grove Atlantic) and October 10, 2019 in the UK, Austrailia, and New Zealand (Scribe). Here’s more information.
His previous book Original Gangstas: Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, and the Birth of West Coast Rap has received raves from Rolling Stone and People, a starred review in Kirkus, a five-star Amazon rating, and made numerous year-end best lists. More info can be found here.
…his 2011 book on southern hip-hop, Dirty South: OutKast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop was a Library Journal best seller.
Here is my review of his excellent forthcoming Fentanyl, Inc. He also has a well-acclaimed book on New York City bars and dives. All of his work is fascinating.
So what should I ask him?
Venice adopting the Renaissance
Venice’s adoption of these Renaissance styles was itself a remarkable break with the past, for the Venetians had always favored the sophisticated East when it came to artistic expression. But times were changing. The flame of Byzantium was flickering and even Venice turned its attention to the Western terra firma. Among the earliest Renaissance artists in Venice was Jacopo Bellini. The son of a Venetian tinsmith, Bellini worked under Gentile da Fabriano, who produced various now-lost works for the Great Council in 1408. Bellini accompanied his master to Florence, where he remained for some years learning the new artistic techniques pioneered there. Later, Bellini traveled to Bruges, where he was introduced to the use of oil paints on canvas — a medium that would forever change Venice.
The seat of high culture in fifteenth-century Venice was not at the governmental center, but in its outskirts at Padua. There, since 1222, a university had flourished that drew the best minds in Europe and provided an excellent education for Venice’s elite. After returning to Venice, Bellini set up shop in Padua with his two sons, Gentile and Giovanni. They were likely influenced by the arrival in 1443 of Donatello, who lived in Padua for about a decade. His masterwork during those years was the equestrian statue of the condottiere Erasmo da Narni…This magnificent life-size bronze was the first such statue produced since the days of ancient Rome.
That is from Thomas F. Madden, Venice: A New History.