Category: History
What should I ask Julia Ioffe?
Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with her. She has a new and very good book out, namely Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia. I will focus on that topic, but she has done much else as well. From Wikipedia:
…a Russian-born American journalist. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, The New Republic, Politico, and The Atlantic. Ioffe has appeared on television programs on MSNBC, CBS, PBS, and other news channels as a Russia expert. She is the Washington correspondent for the website Puck.
And here is Julia on Twitter. So what should I ask her?
Sectoral shifts in supply, wartime agriculture edition
It is all the more remarkable, then, that within six years Britain’s agricultural output had transformed, more profoundly and at a faster pace than any time since the start of the Industrial Revolution. The most urgent need was to provide a substitute for all that previously imported foreign wheat. In 1939, Britain only had 11.8 million acres of suitable land under the plough, compared to 17.3 million acres of grass and pastureland. Four years later those figures had been almost exactly reversed — to 17.3 million and 11.4 million acres respectively. The amount of tillage soil devoted to wheat had doubled. Just over 4.2 million harvested tons of wheat, barley and oats had become 7.6 million tons. By 1943 the potato crop was almost twice as big as it had been in 1939. Less pastureland meant fewer animals, and so a veritable massacre on pork and poultry farms ensued. By 1943 there were almost 30 million fewer British chickens and 2.2 million fewer pigs than pre-war numbers. Cows were spared — but strictly for milk production, not beef.
That is from the new and excellent book by Alan Allport, Advance Britannia: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1942-1945.
Measuring Efficiency and Equity Framing in Economics Research
Using LLMs:
We measure how frontier research frames what is normatively at stake along the efficiency and equity dimension. We develop and validate an LLM-based measurement pipeline and apply it to 27,464 full-text journal articles from 1950 to 2021. Efficiency focused framing rises through the late 1980s, then declines as equity related framing expands after 1990, especially in applied work and policy evaluations. By 2021, papers with an equity component are about as common as papers framed purely around efficiency. President transmittal letters in the Economic Report of the President show a similar post 1990 shift toward equity, providing an external benchmark.
Here is the new NBER working paper by . I take this to be a sign of radical decline in the quality of our profession. I am all for welfare economics considering values other than efficiency. How about liberty, opportunity, and merit? Actual people, especially Americans, care about those too. The longstanding focus on equity as the relevant alternative to efficiency is one of the most blatant politicizations of economic research you will find. Most people doing it are not even aware of that, they simply take for granted that is the relevant trade-off.
The Most Significant Discovery in the History of Biblical Studies
The great biblical scholar, Bart Ehrman, gave his retirement lecture at UNC. It’s an excellent overview on the theme of the most significant discovery in the history of biblical studies. After encomiums, Bart starts around the 13:30 mark with about 10 minutes of amusing biography. He gets into the meat of the lecture at 24:38 which is where it is cued.
Greenland fact of the day
Greenland held a referendum on 23 February 1982 and voted to leave the European Communities / European Economic Community (EEC) (about 52–53% for leaving).
GPT link. They left in 1985.
I write this not to justify current American policy, which I consider a major mistake with extremely poor execution. Rather the point is that we are pushing the Greenlanders into the arms of the Danes, when over some longer haul it could be very different.
The FT offers many more interesting facts about Greenland, including its growing dependence on Asian foreign labor.
When did Argentina lose its way?
From a new paper by Ariel Coremberg and Emilio Ocampo:
This paper challenges the increasingly popular view that Argentina’s economy performed relatively well under the corporatist import substitution industrialization (CISI) regime until the mid-1970s, and that its much-debated decline began only after 1975. Instead, it advances the alternative hypothesis that although real GDP per capita growth during this period was high by Argentina’s historical standards, it was low relative to the rest of the world, to typical comparator countries, and to what was achievable given the country’s factor endowments and investment levels. Distortions in relative prices and systemic capital misallocation generated significant inefficiencies that constrained economic dynamism and limited productivity gains. We support this hypothesis using a range of empirical methodologies—including comparative GDP per capita ratios, convergence analysis, growth accounting, and cyclical peak-to-peak analysis— complemented by historical interpretation. Although post-1955 modifications to the CISI regime temporarily improved performance, by the early 1970s it had exhausted its capacity to sustain growth. The prolonged stagnation that followed the 1975 crisis can be explained by the inability of successive governments to overcome the resistance of entrenched interest groups and thus complete the transition to an open market economy. Abrupt regime reversals fostered social conflict, political instability, and macroeconomic uncertainty, all of which undermined the sustained productivity gains required for long-term growth.
Via the excellent Samir Varma.
AI Physicians At Last
In 2004 (!) I wrote:
Many people complain that medicine is too impersonal. I think it is not impersonal enough. I have nothing against my physician (a local magazine says he is one of the best in the area) but I would prefer to be diagnosed by a computer. A typical physician spends most of the day playing twenty questions. Where does it hurt? Do you have a cough? How high is the patient’s blood pressure? But an expert system can play twenty questions better than most people. An expert system can use the best knowledge in the field, it can stay current with the journals, and it never forgets.
It took longer than it should have, but we are finally here. Today, most people already use AI to help diagnose and manage medical conditions, and now:
Utah is letting artificial intelligence — not a doctor — renew certain medical prescriptions. No human involved.
It’s a pilot program for routine renewals but a welcome start. The AMA, of course, is not pleased.
In a statement, Dr. John Whyte, CEO and executive vice president at the American Medical Association, said: “While AI has limitless opportunity to transform medicine for the better, without physician input it also poses serious risks to patients and physicians alike.”
One concern is misuse or abuse, including the possibility that people struggling with addiction could try to game automated systems to obtain drugs inappropriately. Another concern is missing subtle clinical red flags or drug interactions that a doctor would catch.
It’s amazing that anyone can say these things with a straight face. As far as I know, AI has never run a pill mill, unlike human physicians. And the AI
“missing subtle clinical red flags or drug interactions that a doctor would catch.” Is this a joke?
Chairman Powell’s Statement
Whether an independent Fed is desirable is beside the point. The core issue is lawfare: the strategic use of legal processes to intimidate, constrain, and punish institutional actors for political ends. Lawfare is the hallmark of a failing state because it erodes not just political independence, but the capacity for independent judgment.
What sort of people will work at the whim of another? The inevitable result is toadies and ideological loyalists heading complex institutions, rather than people chosen for their knowledge and experience.
It is time to back off from Greenland
I do hope it falls eventually into U.S. hands, as I explain in my latest Free Press piece. But now is not the time and furthermore that should happen voluntarily, not coercively. Here is an excerpt:
The better approach is to let the Greenlanders choose independence on their own. They may be ready to do so. In a survey last year, 56 percent of Greenlanders favored independence from Denmark, with just 28 percent opposed. This should not be a tremendous surprise. The Danes have not always treated Greenland well; the legacy of Denmark taking away the children of Greenlanders 75 years ago still remains—and similar issues crop up to this day.
If and when Greenlanders do choose independence, the U.S. should, when conditions feel right, make a generous offer to Greenland. If they do not take the offer, we might try again later on, but we should not intimidate or coerce them. We should respect their right of independence throughout the process. That would increase the likelihood that the future partnership will be a cooperative and fruitful one.
The courtship could take 20 or 30 years, but I am pretty sure that eventually Greenlanders will see the benefits of a stronger U.S. affiliation.
I do not think that simply trying to “buy” Greenland is going to work. I am reminded of my own fieldwork, roughly 20 years ago, in a small Mexican village in the state of Guerrero. General Motors wanted to buy most of the land in and around the village, for the purpose of building a racetrack to test GM cars. It had a lot of money to offer, and at the time a family of seven in the village might have earned no more than $1,500 a year. But the negotiations never got very far. The villagers felt they were not being respected, they did not trust the terms of any deal, and they feared their ways of life would change irrevocably. The promise of better roads, schools, and doctors—in addition to whatever payments they might have negotiated—simply fell flat.
These are very important issues, so we need to get them right.
The puzzle of Pakistan’s poverty?
Until 2009, India was poorer than Pakistan on a per capita basis. India truly became richer than Pakistan after 2009 and since then it hasn’t looked back. If trends continue for a decade, India will be more than twice as rich as Pakistan soon…
So why has India pulled ahead in GDP per capita? The reason is simple. Pakistan’s high fertility has driven population growth faster than India’s. In 1952 Pakistan had about one-tenth of India’s population; by 2025 it had grown to nearly one-seventh.
In other words, many of the added Pakistanis have not started working yet, but they are on the books to lower the per capita esstimate. There is much in this Rohit Shinde essay I disagree with, but it is a useful corrective to those who simply wish to sing “policy, policy, policy.” Putting aside its per capita lag, Pakistan has done a better job keeping up with India than you might think at first.
In any case, I am not predicting that trend will continue in the future, I do not think so. So someday this essay might look especially “off,” nonetheless it is worth a moment of ponder.
U.S. interventions in the New World, with leader removal
I can think of a few. I am not thinking of ongoing struggles, such as the funding of opposition to the Sandinistas, rather I wish to focus on cases where the key leaders actually were removed. After all, we know that is the case in Venezuela today. Maybe these efforts were rights violations, or unconstitutional, and yes that matters. But how did they fare in utilitarian terms?
Puerto Rico: 1898, a big success.
Mexican-American War: Removed Mexican leaders from what today is the American Southwest. Big utilitarian success, including for the many Mexicans who live there now.
Chile, and the coup against Allende: A utilitarian success, Chile is one of the wealthiest places in Latin America and a stable democracy today.
Grenada: Under Reagan, better than Marxism, not a huge success, but certainly an improvement.
Panama, under the first Bush, or for that matter much earlier to get the Canal built: Both times a big success.
Haiti, under Clinton, and also 1915-1934: Unclear what the counterfactuals should be, still this case has to be considered a terrible failure.
Cuba, 1906-1909: Unclear? Nor do I know enough to assess the counterfactual.
Dominican Republic, 1961-1954, starting with Trujillo. A success, as today the DR is one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America. But the positive developments took a long time.
I do not know enough about the U.S. occupation of the DR 1916-1924 to judge that instance. But not an obvious success?
Can we count the American Revolution itself? The Civil War? Both I would say were successes.
We played partial but perhaps non-decisive roles in regime changes in Ecuador 1963 and Brazil 1964, in any case I consider those results to be unclear. Maybe Nicaragua 1909-1933 counts here as well.
So the utilitarian in you, at least, should be happy about Venezuela, whether or not you should be happy on net.
You should note two things. First, the Latin interventions on the whole have gone much better than the Middle East interventions. Perhaps that is because the region has stronger ties to democracy, and also is closer to the United States, both geographically and culturally. Second, looking only at the successes, often they took a long time and/or were not exactly the exact kinds of successes the intervenors may have sought.
Absher, Grier, and Grier consider CIA activism in Latin America and find poor results. I think much of that is springing from cases where we failed to remove the actual leaders, such as Nicaragua and Cuba. Simply funding a conflict does seem to yield poor returns.
Why Some US Indian Reservations Prosper While Others Struggle
Our colleague Thomas Stratmann writes about the political economy of Indian reservations in his excellent Substack Rules and Results.
Across 123 tribal nations in the lower 48 states, median household income for Native American residents ranges from roughly $20,000 to over $130,000—a sixfold difference. Some reservations have household incomes comparable to middle-class America. Others face persistent poverty.
Why?
The common assumption: casino revenue. The data show otherwise. Gaming, natural resources, and location explain some variation. But they don’t explain most of it. What does? Institutional quality.
The Reservation Economic Freedom Index 2.0 measures how property rights, regulatory clarity, governance, and economic freedom vary across tribal nations. The correlation with prosperity is clear, consistent, and statistically significant. A 1-point improvement in REFI—on a 0-to-13 scale—correlates with approximately $1,800 higher median household income. A 10-point improvement? Nearly $18,000 more per household.
Many low-REFI features aren’t tribal choices—they’re federal impositions. Trust status prevents land from being used as collateral. Overlapping federal-state-tribal jurisdiction creates regulatory uncertainty. BIA approval requirements add months or years to routine transactions. Complex jurisdictional frameworks can deter investment when the rules governing business activity, dispute resolution, and enforcement remain unclear.
This is an important research program. In addition to potentially improving the lives of native Americans, the 123 tribal nations are a new and interesting dataset to study institutions.
See the post for more details amd discussion of causality. A longer paper is here.
What should I ask Henry Oliver?
Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him. We will focus on our mutual readings of Shakespearer’s Measure for Measure, with Henry taking the lead. But I also will ask him about the value of literature, Jane Austen, Adam Smith, Bleak House, his book on late bloomers, and more.
Here is Henry’s (free) Substack. Here is Henry on Twitter.
So what should I ask him?
J. M. W. Turner, financial arbitrageur
Abstract. J. M. W. Turner is famous for his achievements in graphic arts. What is not known is that he engaged in some pioneering market arbitrage, a profitable and risk-free swapping of British government securities. His activities lead to interesting insights into British markets of the 19th century. Financial innovation frequently created profitable arbitrage opportunities. However, among regular investors it seems that it was mostly mavericks like Turner who took advantage of them. Apparently there were strong cultural factors that inhibited most people from imitating him, which allowed obvious pricing anomalies to persist for extended periods.
That is from a recent paper by Andrew Odlyzko. Via Colin.
What should I ask Kim Bowes?
Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with her. Here is Wikipedia:
Kimberly D. Bowes (born 1970) is an American archaeologist who is a professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She specializes in archeology, material culture and economics of the Roman and the later Roman world. She was the Director of the American Academy in Rome from 2014–2017.[2] She is the author of three monographs…
While she is continuously focused on the archaeology and material culture of the Roman and later Roman worlds, her research interests have shifted from late antiquity and the archeologies of religion and elite space to historical economies with a distinct focus on poverty and the lived experience of the poor. Her forthcoming study on Roman peasants in Italy reflects a greater attention to non-elites in the studies of Roman archaeology and economic history and a shift in her methodology, integrating archaeological and scientific data, anthropological theory and historical economics become.
I am a big fan of her new book Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent. So what should I ask her?