Category: History
Economists who are clergy
Your post on economist/artists got me thinking about economists/clergy.Obviously the most famous is Reverend Malthus. A Google search for “Economist Catholic priest” didn’t turn up much. “Economist rabbi” discloses that Israel Kirzner is the rabbi of a congregation in Brooklyn. “Economist clergyman” turned up Richard Jones but I’ve never heard of him. Economist/Jesuit turned up a number of names, all of them obscure to me.
My favored explanation is that “clergy” is an artificially higher bar than “artist”. Probably a large number of economists are and were devout people with learned and creative views on religion without having been ordained. E.g. Karl Homann is a first-rate theologian but not a priest. Robert Aumann is a first-rate Talmud scholar but not a rabbi. If the bar for “clergy” were parallel to that for “artist” these fellows would certainly make it.
Who else comes to mind? The School of Salamanca, and going back many medieval theologians wrote on economic issues. Paul Heyne. Heinrich Pesch. Galiani was an Abbey. Philip Wicksteed was a Unitarian theologian. The still underrated Richard Whately was the Archbishop of Dublin. Bishop George Berkeley wrote on monetary theory, as did Reverend Jonathan Swift.
The 18th century clergyman John Witherspoon wrote on monetary economics. Thomas Chalmers, who wrote on the Poor Laws and theories of underconsumption in the early 19th century, was ordained in the Church of Scotland.
Did all these 19th century figures really want to be economists, really want to be clergy, or both?
I thank Maria Pia Paganelli for a useful discussion of this point.
why are americans less stylish than europeans/japanese?
From Bob Unwin:
i mean style in clothing, but the same question could be asked about taste in architecture, interior design and other domains. (blog post by a fashion person: http://bangsandabun.com/2010/03/europeans-dress-better-than-americans-fact/)
1. greater average distance to a major fashion center. both physical and cultural distance.
2. less urbanization [these points 1&2 were maybe more important in the past]
3. distance from europe and few of the relevant european style-leaders emigrating
4. different signaling aims (more internal cultural diversity and weaker class distinctions; male clothing needing to be less ‘gay’ and more conventional).
5. any relation to the late blooming of US visual art and music on the world scene?
6. american is more informal in style and has been an influential exporter of informal styles (this doesn’t undermine the general point about the style difference)
related question: are there any fashionable american economists? i’d be especially interested in any that dress like artists or literary intellectuals.
The Flynn Effect in East Germany
Economic, Educational, and IQ Gains in Eastern Germany 1990-2006 (gated), Eka Roivainen, Intelligence, Nov/Dec 2012
Abstract: Lynn and Vanhanen (2012) have convincingly established that national IQs correlate positively with GDP, education, and many other social and economic factors. The direction of causality remains debatable. The present study re-examines data from military psychological assessments of the German federal army that show strong IQ gains of 0.5 IQ point per annum for East German conscripts in the 1990s, after the reunification of the country. An analysis of IQ, GDP, and educational gains in 16 German federal states between 1990 and 1998 shows that IQ gains had a .89 correlation with GDP gains and a .78 correlation with educational gains. The short time frame excludes significant effects of biological or genetic factors on IQ gains. These observations suggest a causal direction from GDP and education to IQ.
For the pointers I thank Michelle Dawson and Ron Unz.
The new Oded Galor and Quamrul Ashraf paper
Here is from an editorial summary published in Science (gated):
…Ashraf and and Galor present the hypothesis that genetic diversity has exerted a long-lasting effect on economic development—which is quantified as population density in the precolonial era and as per-capita income for contemporary nations—beyond the influences of geography, institutions, and culture. They posit that intermediate levels of heterozygosity allow for a productive balance between the social costs of high diversity and the creative benefits of higher variance in cognitive skills. They show that the optimal level of diversity was approximately 0.68 in 1500 CE, and that this increased to 0.72 (which is pretty much where the United States sits) in the year 2000, with the most homogeneous country, Bolivia, placed at 0.63 and the most diverse country, Ethiopia, at 0.77. Just how large an effect are we talking about? They estimate that genetic diversity accounts of 16% of the cross-country dispersion in per-capita income; put in another way, shifting the diversity of the United States higher or lower by one percentage point would decrease per-capita income by 1.9%.
One version of the paper is here, and it will be coming out in the American Economic Review. Being on the road, I have yet to read this work.
MRUniversity will have a course unit especially on India
This will be a special part of our opening course on Development Economics. The topics we will cover will include:
History of the East India Company
The economics of Gandhi’s attack on the salt monopoly
Was British rule good for India?
Private education in India
Economic research on the caste system in India
The timing of Indian economic reforms and the boost in Indian economic growth, as discussed by Rodrik, DeLong, and others.
The contributions of the most famous and most important Indian economists.
Why does Kerala have such a good record when it comes to public health?
RCTs in India by Poverty Action Lab.
And much more.
Today I have a request for you. If you have any connection with India, please spread the word of this material to other people you may know who have a connection to India.
The motto of MRU is “Learn, Teach, and Share.” You can register for the course to come here. Background on MRU is here. Background on the development economics class is here.
Charter cities and extraterritoriality
In part I am writing this post because Google yields so little on that combination of words.
It would be a mistake to equate charter cities with extraterritoriality. For one thing, a charter city has its own laws and governance, possibly enforced by overseas courts, rather than imposing foreign courts upon domestic governance, a’la Shanghai through the early 20th century. Still, the history of extraterritoriality gives us some sense of what it looks like to have foreign courts operating outside their usual domestic environment.
The problem with extraterritoriality, as I read the literature, is not the Chinese courts had a superior system of commercial or criminal law which was tragically pushed out by inferior Western ideas. The problem was that the foreign courts were not supported by comparably strong domestic interest groups and there was a clash between the foreign courts, national symbols, fairness perceptions, domestic rents and the like, all in a manner which led to eventual talk of foreign devils and violent overreaction against the influence of outsiders.
The history of extraterritoriality focuses one’s attention on the question of who has an incentive to support the external system of law, when such a system is transplanted abroad. This question does seem relevant to charter cities and related concepts.
Hong Kong worked because the UK and USA were able to exert enough control at a distance, at least for a long while, and because China was weak.
One vision is that a charter city works because a dominant hegemon — perhaps at a distance — supports the external system of law.
A second vision is that a charter city works because the external system of law serves up some new and especially tasty rents to domestic interest groups. In the meantime, avoid Tongans.
A related question is what it means for the external legal system to be “invited” in, and how much such an invitation constitutes prima facie evidence of real domestic support.
I would like to see these topics receive more discussion.
Two interesting books are:
1. Wesley R. Fishel, The End of Extraterritoriality in China, and
2. Par Kristoffer Cassel, Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan.
Addendum: Here is an update about Romer’s group and Honduras. There is lots going on, and probably even more than is captured in this story. Here is the account from Romer’s group.
A short note on the gold standard
I do not favor a gold standard, nor do I for that matter favor price stability, nor do I think a gold standard brings short-run price stability. I think a gold standard today would be much worse than the 19th century gold standard, in part because commodity prices are currently more volatile and may be for some time. I do not favor commodity bundle standards. I favor some amount of ongoing inflation, and my reasons for this view are close to those of Larry Summers.
That all said, when I read recent critiques of the gold standard, occasioned by recent GOP debates on the topic, I feel I am living in a different universe than those who wrote them. A few points:
1. Jim Hamilton aside, hardly anyone has reported the denouement: “…the final document [the GOP platform] makes no mention of gold, and instead seems to have settled on a proposal that is unlikely to do any harm…”
2. Why is no one mentioning Christina Romer’s work on how discretionary macroeconomic management does not have a totally superb comparative historical record in lowering volatility? Start here, but there is more in this literature. She is still a prominent economist.
3. Dare anyone critical of the gold standard bring themselves to utter these (roughly true) words?: “For the Western world, the gold standard era, defined say as 1815-1913, was arguably the greatest period of human advance ever, at least in matters of economics, culture, and technology.” Chunks of the post-WWII era contend for this designation, but still this sentence is not a crazy one.
4. I remain baffled by treatments of Japan’s slow growth era as primarily a monetary phenomenon. Under such a view, how was Europe’s 19th century possible at all? Why wasn’t it a total economic disaster? Data from government bonds show that “expected inflation” across the period was close to zero, yet somehow “For the Western world, the gold standard era, defined say as 1815-1913, was arguably the greatest period of human advance ever, at least in matters of economics, culture, and technology.”
Good economics is to integrate #2 and #3 with the fact that one need not favor a gold standard. I’ve been seeing a lot of arguments against gold standards, many of which I agree with. What I haven’t been seeing is the integration with the broader set of relevant facts, which of course present a more complicated picture.
Questions about John Cage
Wednesday will count as his 100th birthday. Here are a few of my views:
1. Is it actually good music?
Much of it is, once you get past the gimmicks. For direct musical listening (skip 4’33”) I recommend the piano music, most of all by Herbert Henck or David Tudor or Stephen Drury. The important pieces have held up very well, and even the lesser pieces still are worth hearing at least once.
2. If I wish to try one important piece?
Perhaps “In a Landscape,” on this CD.
3. What if I am looking for a good sampler to reflect his diverse contributions?
Try the Barton Workshop grab bag.
4. Are you pulling my leg?
No.
5. Is aleatory music interesting?
To me, no.
Here is Wikipedia on John Cage. Here is John Cage on a 1960 game show, being thwarted by a union dispute. Here is good commentary on that clip. Here is TNR commentary on that clip. Cage was also an expert mycologist. Here are the Italian prizes he won for mushroom identification. Here is the iTunes prepared piano app.
Here are good quotations from John Cage.
Background on Assam
A local publicist wryly observed, “Even if it was British rule, ordinary people called it rather the time of the Bangals [from Bengal].”
That is from Jayeeta Sharma’s Empire’s Garden: Assam and the Making of India, a book which I am finding very useful for background on current troubles concerning Assam.
The next transformational technology?
Noah Smith writes:
Addendum: I seem to be the only person talking about Desire Modification as a transformational technology. Greg Egan and Vernor Vinge have written books in which this technology plays a central role. In my “spare time” I’m writing a couple of sci-fi short stories based on the idea. It’s a really big deal, and I’ll write a post about it soon.
The rule of law? (talk about “money laundering”)
Wells Fargo Home Mortgage (WFC) has fired a Des Moines worker over a 1963 incident at a Laundromat involving a fake dime in the wake of new employment guidelines.
Richard Eggers, 68, was fired in July from his job as a customer service representative for putting a cardboard cutout of a dime in a washing machine nearly 50 years ago in Carlisle, the Des Moines Register reported Monday.
Warren County court records show Eggers was convicted of operating a coin-changing machine by false means. Eggers called it a “stupid stunt,” but questions his firing.
Big banks have been firing low-level employees like Eggers since new federal banking employment guidelines were enacted in May 2011 and new mortgage employment guidelines took hold in February, the newspaper said. The tougher standards are meant to clear out executives and mid-level bank employees guilty of transactional crimes — such as identity theft and money laundering — but are being applied across the board because of possible fines for noncompliance.
Here is more, courtesy of Tim Johnson.
Reihan Salam summarizes Charles Blahous
Roughly 49% of the fiscal deterioration relative to the expectations of the CBO circa its 2001 projections can be attributed to increased spending, 27% to the failure to predict the less-than-smooth business cycle perturbations of the decade, and 24% to tax cuts.
Here is more. I have not myself worked through this calculation, but if you know of any good rebuttal to it, I will be happy to take a closer look and report back. I believe it also does not include increases in state and local spending, which ultimately do tie back into the consolidated fiscal position of all U.S. governments as a whole.
A look at U.S. income growth
Hat tip from @JustinWolfers.
By the way, Robert Gordon has a new paper pessimistic about future economic growth, using this tagline at the end of the abstract: “A provocative “exercise in subtraction” suggests that future growth in consumption per capita for the bottom 99 percent of the income distribution could fall below 0.5 percent per year for an extended period of decades.” Mark P. Mills is more optimistic.
The path dependence of astronaut walks
…there was a fierce behind-the-scenes battle between them to be first to set foot on the Moon. Early plans were for Aldrin, as module pilot, to step out first, but one version reported by Smith has it that Armstrong, as mission commander, lobbied more vigorously than Aldrin, and Nasa backed him up because he would be ‘better equipped to handle the clamour when he got back’ and, more mundanely, because his seat in the lunar module was closer to the door. Aldrin paid Armstrong back by taking no photographs of him on the Moon: the only manually taken lunar image of the First Man on the Moon is in one of many pictures Armstrong snapped of Aldrin, showing himself reflected in the visor of Aldrin’s spacesuit.
That is from this excellent Steve Shapin article, hat tip goes to @MauraCunningham. I liked this part:
…they were on the same basic pay rates as other US military officers: most were captains, making about $17,000 a year. (On their missions to the Moon, they were entitled only to the standard $8 per diem for being away from base, with deductions for ‘accommodation’ provided in the spaceship.)
Astronaut self-insurance durable goods monopoly problem
During the 60s and 70s it would appear that private life insurance was not available to astronauts. Autograph Magazine has a good post about how astronauts of the time used their own autographs as a form of life insurance for their families.