Category: Uncategorized
Tuesday assorted links
1. Facial recognition without your consent.
3. Verifying identity as a social intersection.
4. A guy complaining about social media.
5. A polemic against podcasts.
6. Interview with Claire Denis, and yes “High Life” is much smarter and better than the reviews indicate (NYT).
Monday assorted links
1. Francis Hutcheson speaks to veganism.
2. “The Jamaican Stock Exchange sits on the waterfront in Kingston and has surged more than 300% over the last five years. Last year, the main index tracking the country’s stock exchange rose 29%.” And the resurrection of Buju Banton.
3. Robin Hanson on *Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero*. For purposes of context, I see Robin as leading a sustained mood affiliation crusade against hypocrisy, rather than performing comparative analysis of hypocrisy vs. the relevant alternatives.
4. Claims about brain evolution, and Lamarck, speculative, arguably unfounded.
6. New development is called “IMBY.”
7. Aaron Carroll on what we can learn from the Singaporean health care system (NYT).
Counterfactuals about social media
Let’s assume, for purposes of argument, that basically all of the complaints about social media are correct. Then let’s also imagine, as Matt Yglesias periodically suggests on Twitter, that Facebook is shut down altogether, toss in Twitter and the others as well.
What would happen?
One possibility is that America would move toward a Chinese-style solution, with heavy censorship of the internet. Still, I think both public opinion and the First Amendment make that outcome unlikely. Furthermore, while the Chinese solution has been relatively practicable (as opposed to desirable) to date, there is no guarantee that will continue to be the case.
Alternatively, without tight censorship substitutes for Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and Twitter will arise, possibly based in other countries if regulation so dictates. They might be less ad-funded, less profitable, and less easy to use, but the basic technologies for “putting every single idea out there” are already out of the box. Furthermore, it won’t be that hard to find and circulate those ideas, including the very bad ones, through a mix of aggregation and search and focused spread and redistribution.
The first question is whether anyone actually thinks that such a world of less heavily capitalized communications entities would lead to greater responsibility. The first cut answer, drawing on basic economics, would seem to be no.
The broader point is the relative popularities of various ideas and sources still will be upended, just as the printing press and radio also had some fairly radical (and not entirely positive) effects in their times. In essence, various intellectual and ideological debates will need to be re-litigated and re-fought over the internet, just as they were redone over television and radio, or earlier through papyrus and also clay tablets, of course with somewhat different results each time.
Many people hate that reality, but a reality it is. Let’s even say you are right to hate that reality (NB: not exactly my view).
Should you:
a) Go after the companies that make the clay tablets?
b) Go after the clay tablets and try to smash them?
c) Equip yourself to try to win the new intellectual and ideological battles for hearts and minds?
And what should we infer about the spiritual vigor of a society that might so heavily promote options a) and b)?
Sunday assorted links
1. Analysis of candidate websites, fonts, typography, etc.
2. Roger Lowenstein reviews *Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero*. He also offers some criticisms.
3. Peter Thiel debates William Hurtbut on whether death is an enemy.
4. “Eskom is the greatest systemic risk to the South African economy.” (The Economist)
5. The economics of Renaissance Italian art (pdf).
Tooth extraction markets in everything
Dozens of medical professionals in seven states were charged Wednesday with participating in the illegal prescribing of more than 32 million pain pills, including doctors who prosecutors said traded sex for prescriptions and a dentist who unnecessarily pulled teeth from patients to justify giving them opioids…
Another Alabama doctor allegedly prescribed opioids in high doses and charged a “concierge fee” of $600 per year to be one of his patients.
By Sari Horwitz and Scott Higham, there is more of interest at the link. For the pointer I thank Harrison Brown.
Our three new hires at George Mason economics
Northwestern Ph.D, Brown post doc, Joel Mokyr student. Here is her job market paper:
Job Market Paper
The Political Economy of Famine: the Ukrainian Famine of 1933 Download Job Market Paper (pdf)
Abstract: The famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine killed as many as 2.6 million people out of a population of approximately 30 million. Three main explanations have been offered: negative weather shock, poor economic policies, and genocide. This paper uses variation in exposure to poor government policies and in ethnic composition within Ukraine to study the impact of policies on mortality, and the relationship between ethnic composition and mortality. It documents that (1) the data do not support the negative weather shock explanation: 1931 and 1932 weather predicts harvest roughly equal to the 1925 — 1929 average; (2) bad government policies (collectivization and the lack of favored industries) significantly increased mortality; (3) collectivization increased mortality due to drop in production on collective farms and not due to overextraction from collectives (although the evidence is indirect); (4) back-of-the-envelope calculations show that collectivization explains at least 31\% of excess deaths; (5) ethnic Ukrainians seem more likely to die, even after controlling for exposure to poor Soviet economic policies; (6) Ukrainians were more exposed to policies that later led to mortality (collectivization and the lack of favored industries); (7) enforcement of government policies did not vary with ethnic composition (e.g., there is no evidence that collectivization was enforced more harshly on Ukrainians). These results provide several important takeaways. Most importantly, the evidence is consistent with both sides of the debate (economic policies vs genocide). (1) backs those arguing that the famine was man-made. (2) — (4) support those who argue that mortality was due to bad policy. (5) is consistent with those who argue that ethnic Ukrainians were targeted. For (6) and (7) to support genocide, it has to be the case that Stalin had the foresight that his policies would fail and lead to famine mortality years after they were introduced (and therefore disproportionately exposed Ukrainians to them).
Cultural economics and economic history, St. Gallen Ph.D, Harvard post doc, co-author with Joe Henrich.
Job market paper, “Catholic Church, Kin Networks, and Institutional Development“:
Political institutions vary widely around the world, yet the origin of this variation is not well understood. This study tests the hypothesis that the Catholic Church’s medieval marriage policies dissolved extended kin networks and thereby fostered inclusive institutions. In a difference-in-difference setting, I demonstrate that exposure to the Church predicts the formation of inclusive, self-governed commune cities before the year 1500CE. Moreover, within medieval Christian Europe, stricter regional and temporal cousin marriage prohibitions are likewise positively associated with communes. Strengthening this finding, I show that longer Church exposure predicts lower cousin marriage rates; in turn, lower cousin marriage rates predict higher civicness and more inclusive institutions today. These associations hold at the regional, ethnicity and country level. Twentieth-century cousin marriage rates explain more than 50 percent of variation in democracy across countries today.
Harvard Ph.D, assistant professor of economics at University of Toronto, he works in the new field genonomics and has co-authored with David Cesarini. Here is his presentation on GWAS of risk tolerance:
Here is his paper (with co-authors) “Genome-wide association analyses of risk tolerance and risky behaviors in over one million individuals identify hundreds of loci and shared genetic influences.”
I am very much looking forward to their arrival, they all seem like great colleagues, and I am honored to have played a role on the recruiting committee.
Saturday assorted links
*An Economist Walks into a Brothel*
That is the new Allison Schraeger book, the subtitle is And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk, and here is one excerpt:
In many ways, the brothel is like any other workplace. There are weekly staff meetings (in a departure from the tradition at most companies, the women often wear outlandish hats and drink tea), access to financial advisers, performance bonuses, and even corporate housing…
But where Hof [the owner-manager] provided value was by reducing risk for both buyers and sellers of sex.
The top-earning woman at that brothel pulls in about $600,000 a year, and about half of that goes to Hof. And to audition for the brothel, women have to invest about $1500 in upfront costs (travel, clothing), with no guarantee of a job at the end of the process.
Here is an NPR interview with Allison.
What should I ask Russ Roberts?
I will be doing a Conversations with Tyler with Russ, the master podcaster himself, but of course also a prolific author in multiple fields. So what should I ask him? Here is Russ on Wikipedia, here is Russ’s home page.
Friday assorted links
1. “The evening’s entertainment harshly criticizes capitalism, and at $2,000 a seat…” (NYT)
2. “Pledges to Notre Dame by rich stir resentment…” (NYT) More information here.
3. Has TikTok learned how to censor the internet?
4. Me on The Gist, Slate podcast with Mike Pesca. And Ryan Bourne reviews *BIg Business* in the Daily Telegraph.
5. Have we finally figured out how general anesthesia works?
6. Emily Oster on evidence-based parenting and breast-feeding (NYT).
Baseball umpires are not so great, and older umpires are much worse
This deep-dive analysis demonstrated that MLB umpires make certain incorrect calls at least 20 percent of the time, or one in every five calls. Research results revealed clear two-strike bias and pronounced strike zone blind spots. Less-experienced younger umpires in their prime routinely outperformed veterans, and umpires selected in recent World Series were not the best performers. Results showed a declining but still unacceptably high BCR score, but on a positive note, only a marginal inter-inning call inconsistency.
The most likely mistakes are made at the top of the strike zone. And older umpires really are worse:
Based on the research, professional umpires, similar to professional baseball players, have a standard peak. The study revealed that home plate umpires who made the Top 10 MLB performance list (2008-2018) had an average of 2.7 years of experience, and averaged 33 years of age with a BCR of 8.94 percent. None of these top performers had more than five years of experience or were older than 37…
In contrast to the overall top performers, research uncovered that umpires on the Bottom 10 MLB performance list (2008-2018) had an average experience level of 20.6 years, were 56.1 years of age, and had an average BCR of 13.96 percent. This group’s error rate was a staggering 56 percent higher than the top 10 MLB performers. Umpire Jerry Layne, with 29 years on the job and at age 61, sported the highest BCR, 14.18 percent. This performance research clearly indicates that more experience and age does not necessarily produce the best umpires.
Here is the full story, written by Mark T. Williams, who also did the data work, via the excellent John Chamberlain.
Thursday assorted links
1. Robin Hanson wants to publish tax returns.
2. How to charm Trump, Japanese style?
3. University rejects call to fire Camille Paglia.
4. Jennifer Doleac, first episode of Probable Causation podcast: “Episode 1 is now available! @chloergibbs talks about the intergenerational effects of Head Start on criminal behavior.”
5. Paul Krugman markets in everything, this one seems to be for real.
Wednesday assorted links
1. Robert Wiblin podcast with Mark Lutter and Tamara Winter.
2. College selectivity over time.
3. Switzerland signs Belt and Road deal with China.
4. Ross Douthat on Notre Dame (NYT).
5. The Economist on Joko Widodo.
6. “Not all Chinese warm to hotpot. Some older Sichuanese disown it altogether. They complain that it is causing an escalation of chilli-use in other dishes that drowns out subtle flavours. Chua Lam, a celebrity food critic based in Hong Kong, caused a stir in December when he wished hotpot would disappear from the face of the Earth. He dismissed it as “the most uncultured form of cooking”, requiring no real culinary knowledge.” It’s better in Chengdu (The Economist).
7. Business is not running the show in D.C. (The Economist).
Tuesday assorted links
1. Are patents responsible for declining business dynamism? (Not my view, but fyi.) Here is a paper blaming the slowdown on a deficiency in knowledge diffusion, I blame talent differentials in those cases.
2. “…measured productivity responds directly to competition.”
4. A short Time piece by me, excerpted and adapted from *Big Business*, on why current CEO pay is not outrageous. I do consider your most likely objections in the full chapter in the book.
5. Looking for Shakespeare’s library.
6. David Henderson on *Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero*.
Tax returns should not be made public information
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is an excerpt:
This idea has been suggested recently by Binyamin Appelbaum of The New York Times and also Matt Yglesias of Vox. In Norway it has been policy since 1814 and Finland does something similar.
I’m afraid, though, that universal tax transparency would boost U.S. economic inequality, take away second chances and devastate privacy.
And:
Or think about the dating market. Tax transparency would give high-earning men and women a bigger advantage and hurt their lower-earning competitors. Do we really wish to do that in an age of growing income inequality and diminished upward mobility?
Is it better if your parents and all your friends can see how well your new job is going or how much in royalties your last book earned? As it stands, we exist in a slightly more comfortable social equilibrium where your close associates assume the best or at least give you the benefit of the doubt. Transparency of earnings would increase stress and make failure and disappointment all too publicly evident. Or entrepreneurs with long-term projects which are going to make it — but not right away — might face too many social or family pressures to quit.
Snooping through the tax system would definitely happen. Evidence from Norway indicates that in 2007, 40 percent of Norwegian adults checked somebody’s tax information online, higher than the penetration of Facebook in Norway. Anonymity of the snooper was removed in 2014, and visits fell dramatically (88 percent by one measure), but still you can imagine paying others to snoop for you or the information eventually getting out over time.
The result of tax-record publication was that “this game of income comparisons negatively affected the well-being of poorer Norwegians while at the same time boosting the self-esteem of the rich,” according to Ricardo Perez-Truglia, a UCLA economics professor writing last week in VoxEU. There’s even a smartphone app that creates income leaderboards from the data on your Facebook friends.
Just as personal freedom and economic freedom are not so easily separable, the same is true for personal privacy and financial privacy. Are there actually people out there worried about Facebook privacy violations who wish to make all tax returns public and on-line?