Category: Data Source

When an investment banker set out to buy a $1.5 million home on Long
Island last month, his mortgage broker quoted an interest rate of 8
percent.  Three days later, when the buyer said he would take the loan,
the mortgage banker had bad news: the new rate was 13 percent.

Here is the full story.

The air filling Carnegie Hall weighs about seventy thousand pounds.

That is from the new Ocean of Air: Why the Wind Blows and other Mysteries of the Atmosphere, by Gabrielle Walker.

China could buy every African quoted company with its foreign-exchange reserves.

Here is the source, and that is via Pablo Halkyard, who wonders: "Maybe its actually an Africa fact of the day."

Here are Greg Rehmke’s links to material on Africa and development.

In response to Paul Krugman and others, FCC commissioners Robert McDowell writes:

The OECD says the U.S. has dropped from 12th in the world in broadband subscribers per 100 residents to 15th.  The OECD’s methodology is seriously flawed, however. According to an analysis by the Phoenix Center, if all OECD countries including the U.S. enjoyed 100% broadband penetration — with all homes and businesses being connected — our rank would fall to 20th. The U.S. would be deemed a relative failure because the OECD methodology measures broadband connections per capita, putting countries with larger household sizes at a statistical disadvantage.

Here are statistics on household size; I am suspicious that McDowell cites only a polar point (which in essence is ranking *only* household size, and not how much household size contributes to the current rank order) in support of his case.  Not every argument in his rebuttal succeeds.

More fruitfully, should we should compare Europe to the whole U.S. or to individual states?:

…if we compare many of our states individually with some countries that are allegedly beating us in the broadband race, we are actually winning. Forty-three American states have a higher household broadband adoption rate than all but five EU countries. Even large rural western states such as Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and both Dakotas exhibit much stronger household broadband adoption rates than France or Britain. Even if we use the OECD’s flawed methodology, New Jersey has a higher penetration rate than fourth-ranked Korea. Alaska is more broadband-saturated than France.

Maybe federal policy is not mainly at fault, though more contestability is still a good idea.  By the way, here are some alternative broadband rankings, the U.S. comes in twelfth.

The pointer is thanks to Ben Davis.

Addendum: Over at Mark Thoma’s, Peter Schaeffer has a good comment at July 23, 2007 at 11:05.

Singapore comes in first, Russia comes in last ("Natasha, we’re going to be late!"); not all countries were surveyed.  Here is the article and graph, via Private Sector Development blog.  Having an orientation toward the future is also strongly correlated with both happiness and confidence.

Statisticians have been scratching their heads lately over figures
that suggest Germans, among the most barren of western Europeans, are
rediscovering the joys of procreation.  In the first quarter of 2007, nearly 15 per cent more babies were born in Düsseldorf than in the same period last year.

Here is more.

Maybe this paper will help.  The more globalized parts of Mexico — most of all the north — have done extremely well since NAFTA passed.  The biggest problems remain in the least globalized parts, most of all the south and big chunks of the interior.  The paper has just appeared in the new NBER book on globalization and poverty.

Hunan rice is a Giffen good?  And maybe wheat flour in Gansu?

I am shocked to see this paper (Mark Thoma comments).  Future world powers should not have Giffen goods, much less two of them.

Addendum: David Leonhardt reports on a different kind of upward-sloping demand curve.

If Wal-Mart were a country, it would be China’s eighth largest trading partner…

That is from Jeremy Haft’s cheesy-looking but at times interesting All the Tea in China: How to Buy, Sell, and Make Money on the Mainland.

Today, study published Science magazine: 396 subjects wear tiny
microphones. Result: whoops.  Women emit 16,125 words per day, men
15,669.  Statistically, even-steven.

Here is the story.  I am pretty quiet, though, so I do my part to uphold the honor of men.

A fifth of the population of Mali, for instance, already moves to Ivory Coast during drought years.

Here is the link.

Pollution is more globalized too:

Bruce Hope, a senior environmental toxicologist at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, estimates that global sources contribute 18 percent–more than four times the local share–to Oregon’s air pollution.  Increasingly, the ozone on the west coast will be determined by China.  In California, for example, some researchers believe at least one-third of California’s fine particulate pollution–known as aerosol–originates from Asia.  These pollutants could potentially nullify California’s progress on meeting stricter Clean Air Act requirements.  In May 2006, University of California-Davis researchers claimed that almost all the particulate matter over Lake Tahoe was from China.  The great irony is that these pollutants are mainly due to the burgeoning demand of U.S. and EU consumers for cheap Chinese goods–which is driving the Chinese economic development.  Some estimates cite that 7 percent of China’s CO₂emissions are due to production of U.S. imports.

Here is the source, the pointer is from Robin Hanson.  Concerning the last sentence, if you haven’t already seen it by now, here is Hal Varian’s piece on where the iPod is made.

Between 2000 and 2005, [real] compensation for the average worker rose $3000.  But money income was only 29% of the increase.

Here is the link.  Some of you will understand the title of this post…

Enough said.  Thanks to Christopher Hessenflow for the pointer.

That sign is from Brasilia, here is the link.