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Top Posts of 2025

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Here are the top MR posts of 2025 as measured by page views. Number one post goes to Tyler:

  1. Trumpian policy as cultural policy.

An excellent post that pairs well with another Tyler post, also in the top ten, A median voter theory of right-wing populism which has the punchline:

The right-wing populists are gaining ground in so many countries because the cultural liberals in various parliaments and congresses are extremely reluctant to meet the preferences of their median voters.

Number two was also a Tyler post. Why I think AI take-off is relatively slow, an excellent accounting of AI economic and institutional bottlenecks. This pairs well with another top-ten post in which Tyler announces that AGI is already here. Both posts are correct. An interesting conundrum.

Third and fourth are two of my posts:

3. UCSD Faculty Sound Alarm on Declining Student Skills

4. One-Third of US Families Earn Over $150,000

Next is Tyler’s rundown of non-fiction books. Well worth re-reading.

5. Best non-fiction books of 2025 with one late addition.

Next I was pleased to see my post in which I explain some standard economics but in a deeper, more fundamental way than is usually done: One of my favorite posts of the year:

Why Do Domestic Prices Rise With Tariffs?

Zephyr Teachout’s op-ed wasn’t fun to read but I admit I did have some fun writing a response

Gross(ery) Confusion

Here’s another issue which makes me mad. The destruction of boarding houses, a perfectly reasonable housing form that reduces homelessness. Or to put it more simply, why is sharing a house illegal? Outrageous.

The War on Roommates: Why Is Sharing a House Illegal?

I am all for American greatness but the approach of the Trump administration is often backwards. I pointed out the big differences between the Sputnik moment and what I called the DeepSeek Moment in two posts.

The Sputnik vs. DeepSeek Moment: Why the Difference? and The Sputnik vs. Deep Seek Moment: The Answers.

I was pleased that David Brooks picked up on my framing in the NYTimes.

Finally my post The Library Burned Slowly sparked a brief spat with Chris Rufo. Rufo’s ability to turn the tools of the left on them is impressive but I haven’t changed my mind that “Bludgeoning your enemies is fun while it lasts but you can’t bludgeon your way to a civilization.”

What were your favorite posts of the year, either at MR or elsewhere?

J. M. W. Turner, financial arbitrageur

by  Tyler Cowen in

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.

The Inflation Attention Threshold

by  Tyler Cowen in

From Oliver Pfäuti:

The recent inflation surge brought inflation back on people’s minds. I quantify when and how much attention to inflation changes and derive the macroeconomic implications of these attention changes. I estimate an attention threshold at an inflation rate of 4%, that attention doubles when inflation exceeds this threshold, and that supply shocks have stronger and more persistent effects on inflation in times of high attention. Developing a model featuring the attention threshold, I show that the observed attention changes offer a joint explanation for the recent inflation surge, its interplay with inflation expectations, and the long last mile of disinflation.

Here is the paper.

Sunday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. On deathbed regret.

2. Ryan Briggs: “Prediction: in the short-to-medium term LLMs will make the reputation of the researcher matter more for whether or not we view results as credible because it will become too hard to read everything and people will want shortcuts for filtering. Again, this hits juniors hardest.”

3. Brian Greene and Ed Witten discuss string theory.

4. Short video of the Grand Egyptian Museum.  Go, go, go!

5. Why Israel recognized Somaliland? Many things going on, risk of war in East Africa is now heightened, here is some speculation.  Big story for 2026?

6. Gary Graffman, RIP (NYT).

More Saturday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Turning a pdf into a short class.

2. Those mid-Atlantics love to fly to Tokyo.  Mexico City not good enough for you?

3. Major AI researchers are rapidly turning more bullish for instance here is Roon.  And here is Andrej.

4. The boom in Mexican trade (WSJ).

5. Thailand says its bombings in Cambodia are targeting the scam industry (NYT).  Here is some commentary, the whole matter is deeply weird.  Consider this a new take on Clausewitz!

6. Good Mike Pesca piece on The Free Press.

Saturday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Some observations on immigration and wage effects.  The spread of immigrants to incipient high-wage areas may be one rise why the geographic mobility of resident Americans has gone down.

2. No good explanation for why more boys than girls are born after wars.

3. Slides on ticket resale, by Eric Budish.

4. Steven Durlauf recommends five 2025 books in economics.

5. The ongoing rise of YouTube (FT).  “The creator economy advertising market is expected to reach $37bn this year, up 26 per cent from a year ago, according to the estimates by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The group expects the market to rise another 18 per cent in 2026.”

Friday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. David Brooks offers some Sidney awards, including to Works in Progress (NYT).

2. If you are the Lakers, of course you should have traded for the new superstar, namely Luka.  But by now it is clear the trade actually will not work out so well, and Dallas is better off with Cooper Flagg.

3. “The threat to German auto producers isn’t from Chinese cars flooding Germany. It’s from Chinese cars flooding to emerging markets (red), where they’re killing the market for German cars. That’s not something EU tariffs on China are going to be able to fix.” Link here.

4. Why everyone loves Japan.

5. The brother Megan McArdle lost.

6. “Our Archivara Math Research Agent (in alpha) just became the first AI system to fully solve an Erdős problem on its own (zero human input or literature online).” Link here.

7. Israel just recognized Somaliland.

Cayman (U.S.) fact of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

Over the past four years, hedge funds have doubled their footprint in the U.S. debt market, making the Cayman Islands — where many hedge funds are officially based — the place where the most U.S. debt outside the United States is held, according to the Fed. Typically, people flock to Treasuries for safety in times of crisis. Yet, driven in large part by hedge fund activity, the Treasury market went through unusual turbulence during recent shocks, including the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 and President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement in April 2025.

And this:

By the early 2010s, these foreign governments made up over 40 percent of Treasury holdings, excluding those the Federal Reserve held. That was up from just over 10 percent in the mid-1990s…Foreign governments now make up less than 15 percent of the overall Treasury market.

Here is more from Geng Ngarmboonanant at the NYT.

Christmas assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. When were the Tylers born?

2. India is prepping for major economic reforms (FT).

3. One view on why computers cannot be conscious.

4. “America’s six largest banks added $600bn in market value in 2025, spurred on by the Trump administration’s push to deregulate the industry and a revival in investment banking.” (FT)  This is one reason why gdp growth has been robust.  Whatever you think of bank regulation more generally, in 2025 we needed less of it, not more.

5. Inmates could escape jail on drones (Times of London).

6. What do soccer tickets cost in New Jersey?

7. The origins of European thought on new discoveries.

8. Titanic, Hagen, 33-minute Guatemalan/Mexican musical avant-garde creation.  Here is some background (NYT).  I am growing increasingly bullish on Latin American and also Spanish-language music.  I will be following it more closely in 2026.

Year end CWT retrospective episode with Jeff Holmes

by  Tyler Cowen

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  In this episode we look back on the year in CWT podcast space, excerpt:

HOLMES: Yes. All right. Next question from Jumfrey Tuckins: “When was the last time you had uncontrollable laughter, and what caused it?”

COWEN: Probably the correct answer is never. Literally never in my life.

HOLMES: Aw, Tyler.

COWEN: Why should it be uncontrollable? Things just aren’t that funny. How good can something taste? Take the best sushi I’ve ever had, which was quite good. Things can taste a bit better than that, but not much. Funniness is a maximum. It does not bring me to uncontrollable laughter. That’s just the equilibrium.

HOLMES: This is consistent with how you presented yourself before, where you’ve talked about how you feel like you don’t have the extreme highs and lows of other people. You’re much more of a steady middle kind of person. Either displeasureor pleasure, you don’t get the extremes as much.

COWEN: Isn’t uncontrollable laughter in some ways a kind of displeasure? I don’t know, since I’ve never had it.

HOLMES: In the sense that sometimes, if you get tickled, sometimes you’re laughing, but you want it to stop.

COWEN: Right.

HOLMES: No, I think what that’s getting at is those times where something has just so metaphorically tickled you that you — usually, it’s with another person.

COWEN: Not going to happen. Sorry.

HOLMES: That makes me a little sad.

COWEN: Maybe just you’re not funny enough. Have you considered that?

HOLMES: Oh, shots fired, Tyler. Oh, my gosh.

COWEN: I don’t mean you, but you, collective humanity.

HOLMES: Okay, collective you. All right.

COWEN: I heard Louis C.K. live, which is the funniest show I’ve ever heard. I laughed quite a bit, but I was not close to uncontrollably laughing.

HOLMES: Do you have any theory as to why that is? When that happens, again, there’s something that you and another person are experiencing together, that you’ve realized you’ve had the same thought or same experience, and it’s just —

COWEN: I suspect it’s heritable, with apologies to Alison Gopnik.

Rrecommended, and of course this year there will be much more to come.