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Diamond arbitrage!
That diamond ring your newly engaged friend is showing off? It may not be a traditional diamond.
More than a third of all engagement rings with center stones purchased last year were created in a lab, according to an online survey of nearly 12,000 U.S. couples by wedding-planning website The Knot. That’s double the number from 2020.
A natural diamond takes billions of years to form deep within the earth. The diamond industry, it seems, evolves almost as slowly. But a major shift seems to be under way.
As the technology to make lab-grown diamonds has improved, production has increased and retail prices are falling. Their growing popularity, especially among younger consumers, has caught the attention of jewelers and watchmakers — and is challenging traditional diamonds that are mined from the earth.
It’s not just engagement rings. Diamonds grown in a lab accounted for 13.6% of the $88.6 billion in diamond jewelry sold globally in 2022, up from less than 1% in 2015 where they had hovered since the early 2000s, according to Paul Zimnisky, a diamond industry analyst.
Here is more from the WSJ, and the article is interesting throughout. Here is my 2004 post on diamonds. Didn’t Alex once have a long post on this as well? (I can’t find it in the MR search function.)
*The Chile Project*
An excellent book, the author is Sebastian Edwards, and the subtitle is The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism. This is the only book on this topic where I feel I am finally getting to the bottom of what happened. Here are a few points:
1. The Chicago School ties to Chile go as far back as 1955, when Theodore Schultz, Earl Hamilton, Arnold Harberger, and Simon Rottenberg visited to strike up an agreement with Catholic University in Santiago.
2. The same year Chilean students started arriving at U. Chicago for graduate study.
3. Edwards himself, at the age of 19, worked on price controls under the Allende regime.
4. Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, the (left-wing) Austrian economist, was critical of the Allende regime for deviating from true socialism.
5. The Allende regime was a disaster, with for instance real wages falling by almost 40 percent (this one I knew).
6. Pinochet’s much-heralded private pension reform really did not work (I may do a whole post on this).
7. Milton Friedman’s famed visit really was quite modest, contrary to what you sometimes hear. Nonetheless he was so persuasive he really did convince Pinochet to proceed with the shock therapy version of reform. He had mixed feelings about this for the rest of his life, and did not like to talk about it: “But deep inside, Friedman was bothered by the Chilean episode.”
8. You may know that pegging the exchange rate was one of the major Chilean mistakes during the reform era. Friedman, although usually a strict advocate of floating exchange rates, did not take the opportunity to criticize that decision, and in fact made some remarks that suggested a possible willingness to tolerate a moving peg regime for the Chilean exchange rate.
9. Friedman underestimated how long Chilean unemployment would last, following shock therapy.
10. Arnold Harberger “…prided himself in not being doctrinaire and not being a Milton Friedman clone.”
11. Much more recently, Chile turned to the Left, in part because Chilean market-oriented economists retreated from public debates.
Strongly recommended, one of the must-reads of the year. You can buy it here.
Sunday assorted links
1. Padma Desai has passed away.
2. The new Pigou Club?: “Prolific sperm donor with over 500 children must pay $110K if he donates again, court rules.”
3. How to deregulate the airlines (by Air Genius Gary Leff). And no, we Americans still have not done so.
4. First Congressional rep. to end college degree requirement for staffers.
5. How barbacoa evolved into barbecue.
6. “Militarized Dolphins Protect Almost a Quarter of the US Nuclear Stockpile.”
7. In no simple way does the King own all the swans in Britain.
Emergent Ventures Africa and Caribbean, third cohort
Dr. Keabetswe Ncube is a Geneticist from South Africa. Her EV grant is for her work in using statistical and genetic inferences to help rural farmers maximize yields.
Frida Andalu is a petroleum engineer by training from Tanzania and a Ph.D. candidate. Her EV grant is to assist in her research of developing plant-based volatile corrosion inhibitors to mitigate top-of-line corrosion in natural gas pipelines.
Desta Gebeyehu is a biochemical researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist in her research of developing bioethanol-gel fuel from organic waste.
Bobson Rugambwa is a software engineer from Rwanda. After graduating with a master’s from Carnegie Mellon University he co-founded MVend to tackle the problem of financial inclusion in Rwanda.
Sylvia Mutinda is a Chemist and Ph.D. researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist with her search on strigolactone biosynthesis focusing on countering striga parasites in sorghum farms in Kenya.
Dr. Lamin Sonko, born in the Gambia and raised in the U.S., is an Emergency Medicine physician and recent Wharton MBA graduate. He is the founder of Diaspora Health, an asynchronous telemedicine platform focused on patients in the Gambia and Senegal.
Cynthia Umuhire is an astronomer from Rwanda and Ph.D. researcher. She works as a space science analyst at the Rwanda Space Agency. Her EV grant is to assist her in establishing a knowledge hub for junior African researchers in space science.
Brian Kaaya is a social entrepreneur from Uganda. He is the founder of Rural Solars Uganda, a social enterprise enabling rural households in Uganda to access electricity through affordable solar panels.
Shem Best is a designer and urban planning enthusiast from Barbados. His EV grant is to start a blog and podcast on urban planning in the Caribbean to spur discourse on the built environment in the Caribbean and its impact on regional integration.
Susan Ling is an undergraduate researcher from Canada. Her EV grant is to continue her research on biodegradable, long-acting contraceptive implants with a focus on Africa, and general career development
Elizabeth Mutua is a computer scientist and Ph.D. researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist in her research on an efficient deep learning system with the capacity to diagnose retinopathy of prematurity disease.
Youhana Nassif is the founder and director of Animatex, the biggest animation festival in Cairo, Egypt. His EV grant is for the expansion of the festival and general career development.
Esther Matendo is a Ph.D. candidate in food science from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her EV grant is to assist in her research on plant-based treatments of mycotoxin contamination on maize in South Kivu (one of the main maize production zones in the DRC).
Alex Kyabarongo is a recent graduate of veterinary medicine from Uganda. He is now a political affairs intern at the Implementation Support Unit of the Biological Weapons Convention at the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs in Geneva. His EV grant is for general career development.
Margaret Murage is a Ph.D. researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist in her research of developing new photosensitizing agents for photodynamic therapy for cancer treatment.
Kwesiga Pather, for design and development of low-cost drones for agricultural uses in Uganda and general career development.
Dr. Sidy Ndao is a materials engineer by training from Senegal. He is the founder and President of the Dakar American University of Science and Technology (DAUST). The university provides a rigorous American-style English-based engineering education to African students.
Chiamaka Mangut is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University from Nigeria. Her EV grant is to fund new field research using archaeobotanical methods to study ancient populations in the Jos Plateau.
Dr. Yabebal Fantaye is Cosmologist by training from Ethiopia. He is the co-founder of 10 Academy, a training bootcamp to assist recent graduates of quant fields to acquire remote data science-related jobs.
For his very good work on these award I wish to heartily than Rasheed Griffith. And here is a link to the previous cohort of Africa winners.
The first recorded scientific grant system?
“Encouragements” from the French Académie des Sciences, 1831-1850.
The earliest recorded grant system was administered by the Paris-based Académie des Sciences following a large estate gift from Baron de Montyon. finding itself constrained in its ability to finance the research of promising but not-well-established savants, the academy seized on the flexiblity afford by the Montyon gift to transform traditional grands prix into “encouragements”: smaller amounts that could broaden the set of active researchers. Even though the process was highly informal (the names of the early recipients were not published in the academy’s Compte rendus), it apparently avoided suspected or actual cases of corruption…Throughout the 19th century, however, the academy struggled to convince wealthy donors to abandon their preference for indivisible, large monetary prizes in favor of these divisible encouragements.
That is from the Pierre Azoulay and Danielle Li essay “Scientific Grant Funding,” in the new and highly useful NBER volume Innovation and Public Policy, edited by Austan Goolsbee and Benjamin F. Jones. (But according to the book’s own theories, shouldn’t the book be cheaper than that?)
Saturday assorted links
*Voters as Mad Scientists*, by Bryan Caplan
This new collection has some of Bryan’s best material, and perhaps also his best single piece of writing ever. Here is an excerpt from “My Simplistic Theory of Left and Right“:
This:
1. Leftists are anti-market. On an emotional level, they’re critical of market outcomes. No matter how good market outcomes are, they can’t bear to say, “Markets have done a great job, who could ask for more?”
2. Rightists are anti-leftist. On an emotional level, they’re critical of leftists. No matter how much they agree with leftists on an issue, they can’t bear to say, “The left is totally right, it would be churlish to criticize them.”
Yes, this story is uncharitable and simplistic. But clarifying. Communists and moderate Democrats are vastly different, but they have something in common: Free markets get on their nerves. Nazis and moderate Republicans are vastly different, but they too have something in common: Leftists get on their nerves. Within each side, the difference between moderates and extremists is the intensity of their antipathy, not the object of their antipathy.
The subtitle of the work is Essays in Political Irrationality. Definitely recommended, buy it here. Fittingly, the dedication of the book is “To Alex Tabarrok, a captain of reason in a sea of political irrationality.”
Wings at the Speed of Sound — a review
Was it Ian Leslie I promised this review to? Time is slipping away!
Speed of Sound (songs at the link) was much derided upon its release in 1976, and more recently one scathing reviewer gave it a “1” score out of 10. Yet I find this an entertaining and also compelling work. At least Eoghan Lyng had the sense to call it “definitely infectious and decidedly hummable.” But it’s better than that, and I would stress the following:
1. The album very definitely has its own “sound.” Super clean production, a limpid clarity in the mix, and sparing deployment of guitar. Not all of that works all the time, but there is a coherence to a production often described as a mish-mash. The sound of the whole is best reflected by “The Note You Never Wrote,” a McCartney song sung by Denny Laine, placed wisely in the number two slot. Nothing on either the disc or the original album sounds compressed, rather it all comes to life. It’s better than the sluggish, overproduced, horn-heavy Venus and Mars.
2. The unapologetic presentation has held up fine, rejecting its own era of albums that were overloaded with ideas, overproduced, and too self-consciously parading their messages. Speed of Sound is so deliberately unhip you can hardly believe it — who else in 1976 would pay tribute to “Phil and Don” of the Everly Brothers? And Paul was thanking MLK (“Martin Luther”) when others were still flirting with the Black Panthers. Surely he was right that “Silly Love Songs” would persist, so maybe people were hating on how on the mark he was.
2. At exactly the same time Wings was evolving into one of the very best live acts of the 1970s, far better than the Beatles ever were. (Yes, I know it is hard to admit that.) Their live act sizzled, and yes I did see it back then and I have listened to it many times since. Check out the YouTube channel of jimmymccullochfan, for instance “Beware My Love” or “Soily,” or how about “Call Me Back Again“? For Macca, Wings at this time was essentially a live band, and it proved to be his greatest live band achievement of all time (with some competition from his early 1990s shows), most of all pinned down by Jimmy McCulloch on guitar and Paul on bass.
You have to think of Speed of Sound as a complementary valentine to the live shows, a sweeter and more digestible version of what went into the road. Most of all it is about Paul and Linda, about the maturation of Wings as a group, about opennness to the world and to each other (a recurring Macca theme) and about domestic life, with recurring melancholy thrown in. Maybe those ideas are not your bag, but at least you can accept this as one piece of the broader McCartney tableau.
Now Macca knew you might not know about the live shows, but he didn’t care. He figured he was giving you two monster hits (“Let Em In,” “Silly Love Songs”) in the process, and that was good enough. And yes I agree he was too much the satisficer in this period.
3. The weak songs are “Wino Junko” and “Time to Hide” — 10% less democracy as Garett Jones says! “Time to Hide” is almost good, but it relies too heavily on horns and then drags on. “San Ferry Anne” also has a weak use of horns and the melody never quite takes off. “Cook of the House” goes into a category of its own. I’ll say only Wings [sic] needed to get this out of its system to move on to other approaches. I am pleased, however, that the lyrics are fulsome in their praise of domesticity, compare it to Lennon’s effort in an analogous but not similar vein. I don’t mind “dares to be appalling” as much as many others do. Frankly, I enjoy this song.
4. Excellent are “Let ’em In,” “The Note You Never Wrote,” “She’s My Baby,” “Beware My Love,” “Silly Love Songs,” and “Warm and Beautiful.” That is six very good songs on an album, with “Must Do Something About It” as “pretty good.” The prominence of the former set on Beatles XM satellite radio should not go unremarked, as presumably listeners are not switching the dial away. These songs are still popular nearly fifty years later.
5. “She’s My Baby” is the most underrated cut of that lot. It starts before you realize it and it just gets down to business. Thumping bass, innovative vocal, it keeps on going and then it segues into “Beware My Love.” Does not wear out its welcome.
6. There is no good reason to mock “Silly Love Songs,” which is a classic, ecstatic in its peaks, and which deploys disco influences in just the right way. The vocal and bass lines work perfectly, as does Linda’s vocal counterpoint. It stays vital at almost six minutes long. Once you step out of your ingrained bias, it is easy to see this is better than many of the classic McCartney Beatle songs. I would rather hear it than say Lennon’s soppy “Imagine,” which is ideologically ill-conceived to boot. Macca in this one is sly, mocking, and sardonic too, such as when he subtly refers to the problematic nature of mutual orgasm (“love doesn’t come in a minute…sometimes it doesn’t come at all…”).
7. “I must be wrong” in “Beware My Love” (plus the preceding guitar break) and “I love you” in “Silly Love Songs” are the two highlight moments of the album.
There are definitely disappointments in this work, but it is time we were able to view its contributions with some objectivity. Wings at the Speed of Sound is an excellent album, still worth the relistens. And I really am glad that the Beatles broke up — it meant more music from the group as a whole.
My talk for Amazon Business
You’ve cut costs, changed business hours, and stocked up on deals. Is there anything else you can do to brave the recession and inflation? Join my keynote session at the Amazon Business #SmallBusiness Summit to learn more. Register for free: https://business.amazon.com/en/events/small-business-summit/registration?ref_=b2b_sow_org_social_events_sbm23_smt_tc_0423
https://www.facebook.com/AmazonBusiness/
https://twitter.com/AmazonBusiness
https://www.linkedin.com/company/amazon-business
Friday assorted links
3. Some limits of self-improving AI.
4. The battle over refrigerating butter (WSJ). “Claire Dinhut, who goes by “Condiment Claire” on TikTok, prefers to eat salted butter cold for its thicker texture. She talked about the Danish word tandsmør, which translates to a layer of butter so thick that a bite leaves teeth marks.”
5. Cass Sunstein: Artificial Intelligence and the First Amendment. How about bots that pay humans small amounts of crypto to “co-author” articles, so that the bots may receive additional First Amendment protections?
How much smaller will big business become?
At least on the tech side:
Consider the most prestigious service that generates images using AI, a company called Midjourney. It has a total of 11 full-time employees. Perhaps more are on the way, but that is remarkably few workers for a company that is becoming widely known in its field.
Part of the trick, of course, is that a lot of the work is done by computers and artificial intelligence. I don’t think this will lead to mass unemployment, because history shows that workers have typically managed to move from automating sectors into new and growing ones. But if some of the new job-creating sectors are personal services such as elder care, those jobs are typically in smaller and more local firms. That means fewer Americans working for big business.
Or consider ChatGPT, which has been described as the most rapidly growing consumer technology product in history. It is produced by OpenAI, headquartered in San Francisco. By one recent estimate the company has about 375 employees. By contrast, Meta, even after some layoffs, currently has more than 60,000.
Perhaps cloud computing will be run through a few mega-firms such as Microsoft and Amazon, but — due largely to AI — we can expect many firms to radically shrink in size?
Here is the rest of my Bloomberg column.
Executive in Residence, Math Talent Search
Who We Are: Carina Initiatives
Carina Initiatives is a philanthropic fund working to send more kids from more communities to the frontiers of science and technology. We see math as fundamental to future innovation; as such, we fund and support organizations that work to inspire, unearth, and train math talent.
Here is the link. This has the promise to be an important post, but it needs the right person.
Thursday assorted links
1. New Charles Jones paper analyzing the normative issues behind existential risk (though not its likelihood).
2. Banks don’t use swaps very much to hedge interest rate risk.
3. Do automobile touchscreens work?
4. Dutchman wins European seagull screeching championship.
5. Adrian Woolridge on Roger Scruton (Bloomberg).
6. How good or bad are coffee dates? Compared to what?
At the Helm, Kirk or Spock? The Pros and Cons of Charismatic Leadership
That is a new paper (AEA gate) by the very smart Benjamin Hermalin, here is the abstract:
Charismatic leaders are often desired. At the same time, experience, especially with demagogues, as well as social science studies, raise doubts about such leaders. This paper offers explanations for charismatic leadership’s “mixed report card.” It offers insights into why and when charismatic leadership can be effective; which, when, and why certain groups will prefer more to less charismatic leaders; and how being more charismatic can make leaders worse in other dimensions, particularly causing them to work less hard on their followers’ behalf.
And here is one important part of the model:
…a charismatic leader can get away with concealing bad news without triggering overly pessimistic beliefs.
I like the paper, but isn’t Spock super-charismatic, and all these women want to sleep with him? And isn’t there a long article about all the terrible decisions and advice stemming from Spock in various Star Trek episodes?