Category: Uncategorized

What I’ve been reading

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. Rwanda, Inc., by Patricia Crisafulli and Andrea Redmond.  The positive story on that country, though I don’t buy it, given that the broader region still is not close to peace.  Governance problems will do them in.

2. Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675.  It is stunningly good, not just “stunningly good for a 90-year-old.”

3. Bee Wilson, Consider the Fork:  A History of How We Cook and Eat.  The first 61% of this book, as measured by Kindle, is fascinating and superbly original.  The rest is a well-done retread of other intelligent popular food books.  That is for me a high ratio of excellent to good.

4. Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds: A Novel.  Everyone else loved it, though for me it was too impressionistic.  Call it my fault.

5. Benoit Peeters, Derrida: A Biography.  An excellent book, though I find it hard to care.  Easier than reading Derrida, and the author doesn’t make the mistake of trying to tell you what Derrida is all about.

I have not yet seen a copy of Erik Angner, A Course in Behavioral Economics, but perhaps it is of interest.

Mustache markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen

…not all mustaches are created equal, and in recent years, increasing numbers of Middle Eastern men have been going under the knife to attain the perfect specimen.

Turkish plastic surgeon Selahattin Tulunay says the number of mustache implants he performs has boomed in the last few years. He now performs 50-60 of the procedures a month, on patients who hail mostly from the Middle East and travel to Turkey as medical tourists.

He said his patients generally want thick mustaches as they felt they would make them look mature and dignified.

“For some men who look young and junior, they think (a mustache) is a must to look senior … more professional and wise,” he said. “They think it is prestigious.”

Here is more and for the pointer I thank Michael Wellhouse.  And to overcome the shortage of collateral:

Men swore on their mustaches in sayings and folk tales, used them as collateral for loans and guarantees for promises, and sometimes even shaved their opponents’ lips as a punishment.

Assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Ted Gioia’s 100 favorite albums of 2012, excellent list.

2. Portrait of Maria Popova, appreciator (a real word of praise), and in her spirit credit card prototype up for auction.

3. John Adams reviews Camille Paglia, too harsh but “cross-star” reviews are often interesting (and often too harsh).

4. The war against music in northern Mali.

5. Big spider eats two birds (video).

6. Sundry observations from Scott Sumner.

The Monster of Monticello?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is a good NYT Op-Ed on Thomas Jefferson.  In one of his periodic falls into exaggeration, Bruce Bartlett (whom I admire and often agree with), tweets: “I have yet to meet anyone on the right willing to deal honestly with Jefferson’s slave ownership.”  I have met large numbers of such people and they show up at virtually any Liberty Fund conference, for a start.  In fact that is one reason why they call it Liberty Fund.

I would add this: I am grateful for Jefferson’s contributions to this country in the form of the Declaration and also the Louisiana Purchase, to cite the two biggest.  But as a thinker I find him decidedly mediocre, other than that the Declaration is truly stirring in parts and of course of major historical importance.  (That said, I don’t think it was obvious ex ante that independence was a good idea, so even there Jefferson may be open to criticism.)  Reading the rest is a chore and for me there is little or nothing of analytic interest, unlike with say Madison or John Adams.  I don’t mean to detract from his peaks, but his overall record has lots of negatives, in addition of course to owning slaves and often treating them badly.  His record in practice on civil liberties for white people also left a lot to be desired.  I am not a fan of the agrarianism and arguably that could be labeled less politely.

Here is my previous post on Thomas Jefferson.  I have never liked him.

Addendum: For an alternative perspective, you can try this post and paper by David Post.

Assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Excellent review of Goldacre’s Bad Pharma, and much Ben Goldacre in the MR comments section here, and many excellent points raised by others too.

2. Robert Mundell helped start the Pearl Spring Chess Tournament.

3. Good review of Rushdie, and portrait of Sudhir Venkatesh, and my earlier review of his work.  Lots in those portraits.

4. Insights into Chinese typewriters (interesting).

5. The simulated brain.

Is the eurozone doomed?

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the topic of my latest New York Times column, and I will start off  by stating the case for optimism (if that is the right word):

On the bright side, the fact that markets haven’t ended the European mess by themselves — say, through a truly huge capital flight from the more troubled countries — suggests that a solution does exist in principle, and may even take hold. That isn’t much to cheer about, but, under the circumstances, even simple survival is positive news. One specific bright spot is that both Spain and Greece have been making some wage adjustments to restore longer-term competitiveness.

I grant there has not been comparable progress in reducing suffering.  And here is the case for pessimism:

Imagine a situation where the sounder countries need to put up more money, or the troubled countries need to make bigger financial adjustments, or — most likely — both. Yet power vacuums on each side, or voter rebellions against cross-national agreements, could stop these responses from being applied in a timely way. Political paralysis could then become the harbinger of disaster.

The mess won’t be resolved until the various governments raise their hands and announce transparently just how much of the mess they will pay for — and how. Such announcements will then need to be validated by elections. That means sending a consistent message to other countries and to their own domestic electorates and interest groups. Until then, the game of chicken will continue, and the risks of financial catastrophe will remain high.

Overall I still do not think the current arrangement will work out.  On the positive side, the political commitment in Greece has turned out to be stronger than I had thought, with the comparable judgment for Spain and Italy remaining up in the air.  On the negative side, the broader eurozone recession has halted what was significant progress in Spanish exports.

Finally, I don’t think we will know “the answer” anytime soon:

…the euro zone’s mess could last for a long time, with neither solution nor dissolution.

When matters appear to improve, or when the troubled countries receive more aid, there is more slack in the system. The troubled countries respond by behaving less responsibly and, as a result, move the financial situation closer to the precipice again. For instance, when the European Central Bank announced its debt monetization plans, Spain’s government suddenly faced lower borrowing rates and then refused to apply for a politically costly bailout and austerity package.

When matters become worse, the fiscally healthier countries pony up more aid, as we have seen them do repeatedly for Greece.

It is thus a mistake to overreact to most of the headline events about the euro zone crisis. The good news is never quite as good as it looks, and the bad news often brings beneficial responses. It seems that for dozens of months now, we’ve been hearing that the fate of the euro zone will be decided “shortly,” yet somehow the drama continues.

In normative terms, I see debt forgiveness as essential to moving forward in Europe.

Aggregating The New Statesmen book recommendations

by  Tyler Cowen

There are dozens of separate recommendations, by well-known writers, but these three books recur repeatedly:

1. John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead: Essays.  I enjoyed this one too.

2. Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, already out in the UK not yet out in the US.

3. Michael Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets.  Deirdre McCloskey had a good review of that book here.

Sentences to ponder

by  Tyler Cowen in

Fewer children in the United States grow up with both biological parents than in any other affluent country for which data are available.

Here is another bit:

Genuine progress probably hinges on poor or less-educated women delaying childbirth. Eventually, this will happen; the teen birthrate has already been dropping for nearly two decades, albeit slowly. For its part, Washington (or any other government) has only limited tools to speed it up.

That is from Lane Kenworthy, from his article on why opportunity has slowed down in the United States, hat tip Brad DeLong.

*Bad Pharma*, by Ben Goldacre

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is a simple sentence from Frank Lichtenberg, an economist who studies pharmaceuticals and a highly reputable researcher in the area:

This implies that the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (cost per life-year gained) of pharmaceutical innovation was about $12,900.

Read the whole paper, and if you wish to go further, you can peruse his entire body of work.

I am thus a little nervous when Ben Goldacre entitles his recent book Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients.  (I have a UK copy, and it is due out in the U.S. this February.)  I do in fact agree with Goldacre’s portrait of a sector wracked with massive corruption and shoddy scientific standards.  And I see many aspects of this book as deserving an “A” or “A+” rating, which I would not hand out lightly.  But I won’t continue down that track, because I suspect the book will receive many very positive reviews, as indeed it did in the UK.

Could he not have called the book Not Nearly as Good as it Could be Pharma: How Corruption is Diminishing One of Our Great Benefactors?  Admittedly that does not roll off the tongue as nicely.

Or how about Slow Pharma: How to Get the New Drug Pipeline Up and Running Again?

Goldacre’s policy recommendations would in general raise the costs of research and development, although they would  likely improve the accuracy of research results and reduce over-prescription and overuse of drugs.  It is quite possible they would lower the rate of return to pharmaceutical innovation, likely I would say.  These trade-offs are neglected, and, much as I admire many features of this book, I cannot help but, alas with trepidation, call some of its central features “Bad Science.”  Bad Economic Science.  The morality of the narrative and the Platonism of his vision distracts him from presenting the policy trade-offs clearly.

Lichtenberg’s name does not appear in Goldacre’s index.  Nor does the word “innovation.”

Recommended, with or without prescription, but use with extreme caution.  And you should “compound” this with other books.

Addendum: I bought this book myself, which included Amazon shipping charges from the UK, and was not sent a free sample or visited by an attractive sales representative.

Second Addendum: There is some back and forth between Goldacre and me in the comments section.

The North Korean productivity miracle

by  Tyler Cowen

…brewing remains just about the only useful activity at which North Korea beats the South. The North’s Taedonggang Beer, made with equipment imported from Britain, tastes surprisingly good.

That is from The Economist, I cannot confirm this judgment.  Furthermore there is no North Korean great stagnation:

Talking to CNN, a South Korea government official showed the apparently innocent objects that the killer was planning to use to kill Park Sang-hak on the streets of Seoul. Two of them were pens, which apparently are standard issue among North Korean secret agents. The first kills on contact, injecting quickly a poison that paralyzes the victim and kills it within seconds. The second one fires one single bullet, a tiny projectile which is also filled with a killing venom.

But those two were well known by the South Korean’s intelligence agency. The third weapon, however, is completely new to them: a flashlight that has three holes. Each hole is actually gun barrel, which gets activated with the push of a button. One click and boom, you are dead.

The article, with photos, is here. And North Korea may soon be launching long-range missiles.

For the pointer on the first item I thank Nick Slepko.

Assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. The net price myth will not save the sustainability of higher education.

2. Purely defensive technological innovation, for cows.

3. Chris Blattman’s African development exam.

4. Will the “buy a home, get a visa” idea spread?

5. Mistakes people make in buying Christmas gifts, by Cass Sunstein.  And good summary of what the Greek deal consists of.

6. Fun but somewhat off story on Krugman and Germany, too many overgeneralizations about German psychology, caveat emptor.