Category: Web/Tech

Happy Birthday to Marginal Revolution!

by  Alex Tabarrok in

We are one year old today! Here is our first post. Since that time we have written 1,685 posts (388 from myself and an incredible 1,208 from Tyler, the remainder from some great guest bloggers) and have had over 870,000 visitors. When imported into Word, MRs first year is 1,842 pages long. Technorati watches 3.5 million blogs and ranks Marginal Revolution at number 463 and rising! Pretty good for a 1 year old. Sorry to crow but heh, I have to be paid somehow.

Guest Blogger: Eric Helland

by  Alex Tabarrok in

We are very pleased to have Eric Helland guest blogging with us. Eric has just finished a year as a senior economist with the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. So now instead of writing pithy statements of economic wisdom for the President he will be writing them for you. A tradeoff perhaps of power for attention. Eric is now back at Claremont-Mckenna College in California. He is the co-author of many brilliant papers (see here) as well as the co-author of many other very good papers (see here). We are delighted to have him with us.

Literary role models for bloggers

by  Tyler Cowen in

All writers have their role models. To whom should bloggers look?

One obvious choice is Samuel Pepys, who kept regular diaries for about ten years. But Adam Sisman’s excellent book, written before the advent of blogging, nonetheless directs our attention to the Scot James Boswell:

Boswell’s plain, direct prose was easy to read, and appealed to twentieth-century readers as [Samuel] Johnson’s mannered, classical style never could. Moreover, Boswell’s interest in himself, which seemed so peculiar to his contemporaries, was very much more acceptable two centuries later. Indeed, Boswell seemed to offer a unique combination: a writer who poured the contents of his mind freely into his journal, without either embarrassment or knowingness…Here was a miracle: a pre-Freudian autobiographer who revealed everything in his mind, without restraint, concealment, or distortion. Or so it seemed.

Boswell [borrowed] techniques from the novel, the theatre, and the confessional memoir. With meticulous care, with long-practised skill, and with a generous imagination, he crafted a character who lived and breathed [TC: I have long felt that Boswell, not Samuel Johnson, is the real biographical subject of Boswell’s Life of Johnson]. He also set new scholarly standards; his verification of every possible detail, which seemed so eccentric to his contemporaries, would become the norm. In doing what he did, he relied mainly on instinct, his sense of what would serve his purpose best.

Hmm…and like many bloggers, Boswell often got in trouble for writing up his private conversations with others.

Microsoft is selling Slate

by  Tyler Cowen in

Not only are they paying dividends, but they are seeking to unload the beloved Slate.com as well:

Microsoft Corp. is in talks with five or six potential buyers for its online magazine Slate, an executive said Friday.

Scott Moore, general manager of MSN Network Experience, which handles content for Microsoft’s MSN division, said the company is in early discussions with several media companies over a potential sale.

Moore declined to identify the companies, and cautioned that the deals might not come to fruition. “We’re at the beginning of the process,” he said.

Moore said Microsoft has been approached before about a possible sale of Slate, but this is the first time it is taking the offers seriously. He said Microsoft is especially interested in a deal that might allow it to create a partnership with another media company, which could potentially help increase advertising revenue on the MSN site.

The paper version of this article mentions The New York Times and Washington Post as possible buyers.

Here is the full story.

The bottom line: Slate will get worse. Current revenue is $6 million a year, the site breaks even, and visitor numbers are falling. Microsoft can treat it as a kind of vanity project, but trying to squeeze regular profit out of it is unlikely to succeed.

Could the iPod fail?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Above and beyond the ephemeral value of superior style, what is the source of Apple’s long-term competitive advantage? True, they have more artists signed up, but this is likely a short-term phenomenon. And there is a more serious problem as well:

MP3s downloaded from Sony’s Connect service can only be played on Sony’s MP3 Walkman, and not on the more popular iPod (and vice versa).

Behind the scenes, the battle waging for commercial dominance is reminiscent of the early 1980s cut-throat competition to establish video standards between VHS and Betamax. And lest we forget, VHS won despite being technically inferior.

Although Apple has been the pioneer in the MP3 market, with Sony/BMG controlling 25 per cent of the music market it will be interesting to see whose digital distribution platforms will survive. Will all those expensive iPods we have been rushing out to buy wind up piled high in car-boot sales alongside Betamax video players and 8-track cassette machines?

Here is the full account.

Going out on a limb: I’ve never been convinced that the “iPod as we know it” could make money, especially once the market becomes more competitive for hardware. Right now the songs are being used as a loss leader for the gadget. And dare I cite Apple’s history of being a leader with ideas but failing to lock up the market? But hey, I’m the same guy who said the Dow was overvalued at 7000 and the single European currency would never happen.

Addendum: Andrew McGuinness recommends this reading on the topic, especially the excellent section five.

Watch what you write me

by  Tyler Cowen in

According to research from Forrester Consulting, 44 per cent of large corporations in the United States now pay someone to monitor and snoop on what’s in the company’s outgoing mail, with 48 per cent actually regularly auditing e-mail content.

The Proofpoint-sponsored study found the motivation for the mail paranoia was mostly due to fears that employees were leaking confidential memos and other sensitive information, such as intellectual property or trade secrets, with 76 per cent of IT decision makers concerned about the former and 71 per cent concerned about the latter.

Here is the full story, from the ever-excellent www.geekpress.com.

How do political blogs matter?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Blogging is politically important in large part because it affects mainstream media, and helps set the terms of political debate (in political science jargon, it creates ‘focal points’ and ‘frames’). Note that we don’t provide an exhaustive account of blogs and politics – some aspects of blogging (fundraising for parties, effects on political values in the general public), we don’t have more than anecdotal data on.

So writes Henry of CrookedTimber, concerning his recent paper with the ever-prolific Daniel Drezner.

I would phrase my view as follows. Blogging creates “common knowledge,” even if only among a few at first. Will an idea fly or not? You find out quickly by sending it out into the blogosphere and seeing the reaction. The verdict will be swift and often ruthless, but more often than not fair. And once this common knowledge leaks out to broader and more general communities, the effect is powerful. People will abandon an indefensible idea before it gets started. Or they will jump on the bandwagon right away. They already know how the fight will turn out. In short, the blogosphere is like simulating the larger debate with very swift intellectual mini-armies.

Under this account what matters about the blogosphere is the quick back and forth and the ability to construct rapid-fire dialogues through links. It also means that a better than average debator can influence the broader world by swaying the earlier mini-debate through sheer force of intellect. Of course as the blogosphere gets larger this will become harder to do. The argument will be “thicker,” and arguably less conclusive as well. After all, what if everyone wrote a blog? The debate would not be simulated any more.

What else does it mean for ideas to be evaluated more quickly? Many new ideas will have better chances than before. Throw it out there and see if it sticks; the blogosphere is relatively egalitarian with regard to traditional credentials. Debate-defensible ideas will do better, on average. I hold a number of views that I believe are true, but find difficult to defend in debate on blogs. Either the supporting data are not on the web or the ideas may sound politically incorrect. Ideas that take time to mature, and reveal their full wisdom, may suffer as well.

Print out and read the whole paper; at the very least it is likely to become a mini-classic, maybe more.

Teaching with blogs

by  Tyler Cowen in

That’s right, make your students write a blog. I suggested this idea some time ago, now David Tufte has tried it. Here is the result. Keep in mind they are undergraduates. Here is one cynical but not totally inaccurate post about “bad economists.”

The advantages of this teaching method? People tend to remember and care about what they write. And getting students to write regular short bits is probably better than giving them a procrastination-inducing longer paper.

The disadvantages? There are not enough constraints on blather and fallacious reasoning. And perhaps the students decide that whatever they wrote is in fact true, a kind of lock-in bias. [Not that we professional bloggers ever have this problem…]

Here is Tufte’s own blog, and he directs my attention to this post. It is reported that only ten percent of published Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking papers can be replicated by outside parties.

Is economics a science? Yes, but let’s keep in mind that being a science, taken alone, doesn’t get you very far.

Missing markets: wireless assistance

by  Tyler Cowen in

The Scandinavian countries all have wireless directory assistance, but the U.S. does not, largely because of privacy concerns and fear of telemarketers. Here is a summary of recent debates.

This week’s Fortune magazine (June 28, p.47) writes:

…directory assistance could be much more than just a repository for phone numbers. She argues that the phone companies, with some new software and employee training, could begin offering new services, such as a system that allows an operator to forward, for a fee, a text message to the unlisted customer you’re trying to reach. And why stop at wireless numbers? Directory assistance could list e-mail addresses, work numbers, website addresses — or any other info-nugget a customer might desire.

What I want: Large numbers of well-educated Indians, standing by a phone in Bangalore, who can use Google for me and answer my queries when I am on the road. Some of these Indians would be conversant with macroeconomic time series data, others would be experts in the use of MapQuest.com.