Category: Uncategorized
Is the Great Mirror Stagnation over?
“There hasn’t been much innovation with the mirror,” said Ming-Zher Poh, who, as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, developed a bio-sensing system called the Medical Mirror.
Introduced in 2010, the Medical Mirror uses a camera to measure a person’s pulse rate based on slight variations in the brightness of the face as blood flows each time the heart pumps. A two-way mirror creates a reflection while keeping visible the pulse reading on a computer monitor behind the mirror’s surface.
And this:
Japanese electronics conglomerate Panasonic Corp. initially considered targeting household consumers with its digital mirror—a flat-screen display powered by a computer behind a two-way mirror—but the company decided to target business customers instead because of the price.
In July, Panasonic started accepting orders for its mirror—priced at nearly Y3 million ($38,000)—targeting physical rehabilitation centers.
At the Yokohama Rehabilitation Center in Japan, a test site for the device, 77-year-old Takao Yamamura uses the digital mirror to rehabilitate after suffering extensive nerve damage following a spinal cord infarction.
The full article is here. One problem is that consumers do not buy new mirrors very often, plus they are used to prices below $38k.
Assorted links
It’s the bias against stale labor, not the sticky nominal wages
At this point, at least. Read this bit from Chris Blattman. Apparently, most of the staleness sets in within eight months. Note, by the way, that this explanation simultaneously can account for a) unemployment not being very nice for the unemployed, and b) inability to use lower wage demands to get a job, even with ngdp ten percent above its pre-crisis peak.
Assorted links
1. What Emma Thompson likes to read.
2. is there a poet for romney?
3. The sad tale of infrastructure in Valencia.
4. Beijing’s dangerous game, and the economics behind the islands dispute.
5. Felix Salmon encounters Joseph Stiglitz and theology.
6. New Chronicle story of neuroeconomics, and there is no great stagnation.
The $35 tablet (perfect for MRU)
Do you want a tablet but don’t have enough money to buy one of those high-end tablets available in the market today? Here’s some good news for you. There’s a new $35 tablet, the catch is, you can only get it in India.
The new Aakash UbiSlate 7Ci comes equipped with WiFi so you can connect to the internet but if you’re living in India, you can avail of the $64 upgrade and have yourself a cellular Internet package of $2/month for 2 GB of data which translates to roughly 25 emails, 25 websites, 2 minutes of streaming video, and 15 minutes of voice chat a day. It also features voice search, so it might help pacify your need for something similar to Apple’s Siri.
It features a 7.5-inch display, a front facing VGA camera, and a Cortex A8, 1Ghz Processor. According to reports, it’s as fast as an iPhone, so it can’t be too bad. It runs Android but the version hasn’t been specified yet.
The cheap tablet is part of the Indian government’s move to technologically mobilize the country. The first batch of the affordable tablets will hit universities around India sometime this month and via a “special offer”, DataWind, the carrier and maker of the tablet, will offer broadband for a monthly cost of US$1.78. And for those living in remote areas where electricity is sparse, they can get a solar charger for the Aakash UbiSlate 7Ci.
Here is more, and for the pointer I thank Mark Thorson.
Paul Romer on what happened in Honduras
Paul sends me the following, which he describes as “a personal statement to the news media”:
Qn: Prof. Romer, are you still working with the government of Honduras on the creation of a RED – a Region Especial de Dessarrollo? Or on what some have called a model city?
Ans: I and the other people who were named to the Transparency Commission wrote a public letter to President Lobo stating that we have no ongoing role in the project. Personally, I have also resigned from the CORED advisory committee.
Qn: In the beginning, you were an active supporter of the RED project. What changed?
Ans: From recent newspaper reports, I learned that the Honduran agency responsible for public-private partnerships had signed an agreement about a RED with a private company. When I asked for information, I was told that I could not see this agreement.
This was a departure from the standards of transparency that the administration had led me to expect. It was also a departure from the role for the Transparency Commission outlined in the Constitutional Statute passed by the Honduran Congress.
Qn: How can it be that a member of the Transparency Commission could not see such an agreement? Under the process set out in the Constitutional Statute, doesn’t the Transparency Commission have to give an opinion about any proposed RED?
Ans: In December 2011, President Lobo signed a decree naming me and four other internationally respected individuals to the Transparency Commission. At the time, these appointments were reported in the international news media, in particular by the The Economist. However, the government never completed the process of publishing this decree in the Gazette. The administration’s current position is that because the decree was never published, the Transparency Commission does not exist in the eyes of the law and the five named members have no legal basis for reviewing any agreements.
Qn: Can the government create a RED if the Transparency Commission does not yet exist?
Ans: If the Transparency Commission does not yet exist, the administration can propose a RED directly to the Congress. The RED will then come into existence if the Congress passes an act describing its geographical boundaries. Passing an act that specifies boundaries may seem like a minor detail, but under the Constitutional Statute, it has important legal consequences.
Qn: Does the administration have to disclose the terms of any agreement that it signs with a company that will invest in or manage a RED? Does the company have to disclose the identities of its financial backers? Does the company have to disclose anything about its experience or qualifications?
Ans: The law states that the Transparency Commission must be given all the information needed to evaluate any proposed RED. If there is no Transparency Commission, the Congress is the only remaining protection. To make sure that it is comfortable with the identities of the investors and the governance structure that the investors have negotiated in their agreements, the Congress could insist on full disclosure before it votes a RED into existence. The Congress might also want to insist that it have a separate right to approve any agreement related to a proposed or existing RED that could place a financial burden on the Honduran government. This kind of burden could arise, for example, through an agreement that lets a private party bring a claim for damages against the government.
Qn: Do you know how the misunderstanding about the legal status of the Transparency Commission came about?
Ans: Various explanations have been offered, but I cannot be certain why the decree naming the members of the commission was never published in the Gazette. Nor can I be certain why the administration did not disclose its decision not to publish the decree.
Whatever the reasons for these decisions, the result was an important failure of transparency. The public perception, that the Transparency Commission was in operation, differed from the reality. This gave the wrong impression about the checks and balances that would be operating as the first RED came into existence.
From the very beginning, I made a commitment to the citizens of Honduras, to the members of the Honduran Congress, and to the many people around the world who wish Honduras well. I committed that I would work for their benefit and do so transparently. This means that at a time such as this I have to be willing to state to the public what I know to be true.
Paul also sends along these links (in Spanish):
Assorted links
Assorted links
Assorted links
1. There is no great stagnation (video).
2. Update on the French economy (there is a great stagnation).
3. Interesting findings on poverty, mobility, and happiness.
4. Martin Wolf on the UK productivity and output puzzles.
Assorted links
Mexico fact(s) of the day
Today, Mexico exports more manufactured products than the rest of Latin America put together.
And this:
Partly as a result, the sum of Mexico’s imports and exports as a percentage of its gross domestic product, a strong indicator of openness, rose to 58.6 per cent in 2010. In the case of China, it was 47.9 per cent, and just 18.5 per cent in the case of Brazil. HSBC in Mexico City estimated recently that the figure for Mexico could increase to as much as 69 per cent this year.
And this:
In 2009, Mexico overtook South Korea and China to became the world’s leading producer of flatscreen television sets. The bulkier the item, the more Mexico makes sense. According to Global Trade Atlas, the country is also the leading manufacturer of two-door refrigerators.
Cars made in Mexico are now being exported to China. Here is more (FT).
What is the smallest prime?
From Chris K. Caldwell and Yeng Xiong:
What is the first prime? It seems that the number two should be the obvious answer, and today it is, but it was not always so. There were times when and mathematicians for whom the numbers one and three were acceptable answers. To find the first prime, we must also know what the first positive integer is. Surprisingly, with the definitions used at various times throughout history, one was often not the first positive integer (some started with two, and a few with three). In this article, we survey the history of the primality of one, from the ancient Greeks to modern times. We will discuss some of the reasons definitions changed, and provide several examples. We will also discuss the last significant mathematicians to list the number one as prime.
The paper is here, hat tip goes to Natasha Plotkin.
Are we still in the short run?
The excellent Eli Dourado reports:
I think there is good reason to think that the short run is over—it is short, after all.
My first bit of evidence is corporate profits. They are at an all time high, around two-and-a-half times higher in nominal terms than they were during the late 1990s, our last real boom…
If you think that unemployment is high because demand is low and therefore business isn’t profitable, you are empirically mistaken. Business is very profitable, but it has learned to get by without as much labor.
A second data point is the duration of unemployment. Around 40 percent of the unemployed have been unemployed for six months or longer. And the mean duration of unemployment is even longer, around 40 weeks, which means that the distribution has a high-duration tail…
Now, do you mean to tell me that four years into the recession, for people who have been unemployed for six months, a year, or even longer, that their wage demands are sticky? This seems implausible.
A third argument I’ve heard a lot of is that mortgage obligations have remained high—sticky contracts—while income has gone down. Garett Jones endorses this as a theory of monetary non-neutrality, and I agree. In fact, I beat him to it. But just because debt can make money non-neutral in the short run does not mean that we are still in the short run.
In fact, there is good evidence that here too we are out of the short run. Household debt service payments as a percent of disposable personal income is lower than it has been at any point in the last 15 years.
There are numerous pictures at the link.
Assorted links
Makers vs. takers
The correct point is not about slotting particular individuals into one category or the other. Rather, on a given policy issue what is the relevant political influence of — on that issue — the makers vs. the takers? Very often the takers are the classic better-mobilized concentrated interest groups, a’la Mancur Olson. Consider farm policy and patents as examples but the list is long.
Many commentators are framing the matter in terms of raising or lowering the relative status of aid recipients. So it’s the aspiring student, the virtuous retiree, and the brave veteran, rather than the irresponsible bums. That’s a distraction (albeit a legitimate correction), as the real question is whether the political equilibrium is shifting toward takers. That’s takers as roles in particular political struggles, not individuals with “taker” stamped on their foreheads.
Various forms of crony capitalism arguably are on the rise. Is the political influence of the issue-specific takers, relative to the issue-specific makers, a growing problem in American politics? What does the evidence actually suggest?
It seems Romney got a lot wrong in his remarks, but I haven’t seen many of the commentators move the ball to even that simple place on the field.