The culture that is Germany don’t let Forest Boy into the eurozone
Now dubbed the “Lying Dutchman” by the German press Robin van Helsum could face a bill of at least for his nine-month stay at the hands of Berlin’s social services. During his time in Germany he got free bed and board, clothing, German lessons and £200 a month in pocket money.
“We will file a suit for fraudulent appropriation of youth benefits during the course of the week,” Ed Koch, spokesman for the district youth welfare office, said. “We’re going to demand this money back. Whether we ever see it again, we don’t know.”
Mr Van Helsum, 20, had lived at Berlin’s expense while he maintained the fiction that he was a 17-year-old called Ray who had spent years living in the forests. His cover was only blown when old classmates in his hometown of Hengelo recognised his picture on the news. It emerged later that he had travelled to Berlin just days before he re-cast himself as Ray.
Social services also complained since his real identity became known he has failed to apologise or even say thank you.
The link is here (offers nothing extra) and for the pointer I thank Suzy Khimm.
Sentence reductions in Brazil
Brazilian prisoners are now able to shorten their sentences by reading books and writing essays about them.
…four days less for every book they read. Inmates in four federal prisons holding some of Brazil’s most notorious criminals will be able to read up to 12 works of literature, philosophy, science or classics to trim a maximum 48 days off their sentence each year, the government announced.
Prisoners will have up to four weeks to read each book and write an essay which must “make correct use of paragraphs, be free of corrections, use margins and legible joined-up writing,” said the notice published on Monday in the official gazette.
The story is here, and for the pointer I thank David Zetland. Here is the Reddit discussion.
Assorted links
1. Markets in everything: condoms to get you pregnant. Bonus prize for those who can guess the context without reading the article.
2. The popularity of in-game markets.
3. Employment at Apple stores, a good piece.
4. What predicts Muslim anti-Americanism?, and Madonna markets in everything?
5. Jerry Brito on Stuxnet, though it is stopping nukes that could encourage bioweapons.
My 28-minute talk on black swans
What would we do if it turned out there were more black swans than we had thought? What should we do?
You can view the talk here, given at the Legatum Institute in London not too long ago.
Toward perfect price discrimination in groceries? (from Graton Gathright)
First, thanks for many years of enjoyment from marginal revolution!
Second, I thought you would find it interesting that Safeway’s new “club” program (called Just for U) apparently uses shoppers’ purchase histories to offer household-specific prices. From the FAQ (italics added):
Why don’t I automatically get these offers?
Our systems use your purchase history to sort through and organize personal price offers, hundreds of coupons, and all of our weekly Card Specials. But only you can determine if our systems got it right.
That’s why we ask that you select offers by loading them to your Club Card. As you provide feedback based on what you select, our systems will improve their ability to sort through and personalize your offers. This will make the program even more valuable to you over time!
Why don’t you just give me these prices in the store?
If every shopper were exactly like you, we could! But the reality is every Safeway customer is different. This program is personalized just for U!
TC again: And via Justin Wolfers, Orbitz steers Mac users toward pricier hotels.
Ezra Klein predicts
…if the Affordable Care Act falls apart, the next time Democrats get a crack at passing universal health insurance, they’re going to want to do it in a way that avoids Republican obstruction and can’t be questioned by the Supreme Court. The most obvious policy path that achieves both goals is to expand public programs like Medicare and Medicaid, as that can be done through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process and it can’t be touched by the Supreme Court.
At the link he asks for alternative predictions. I am not sure the Democrats would have enough support — from other Democrats that is — to push through such a change. Note by the way that Ezra is not endorsing his prediction, relative to ACA.
What are your predictions?
New books in my pile
Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class–Revisited: 10th Anniversary Edition–Revised and Expanded.
There is also The Kipper und Wipper Inflation, 1619-23, An Economic History with Contemporary German Broadsheets, by Martha White Paas, John Roger Paas, and translations by George Schoolfield. The origins of German monetary thought turn out to be more important than might have been expected…
Is September the cruelest month?
That is from Greg Ip, reporting the work of Luc Laeven and Fabian Valencia (pdf), feel free to regard it as a spurious correlation!
The Massachusetts health care reform reduced emergency room visits
I just spotted a new paper by Sarah Miller (a fellow Messiaen fan), who seems to be on the job market this year from U. Illinois:
Abstract:This paper analyzes the impact of a major health reform in Massachusetts on emergency room (ER) visits. I exploit the variation in pre-reform uninsurance rate across counties to identify the causal effect of the reform on ER visits. My estimates imply that the reform reduced ER usage by about 8 percent, nearly all of which is accounted for by a reduction in non-urgent visits that could be treated in alternative settings. In contrast, I find no effect for non-preventable emergencies such as heart attacks. These estimates are consistent with a large causal effect of insurance on ER usage and imply that expanding insurance coverage could have a substantial impact on the efficiency of health services.
Don’t worry, I’ll get back to Stuxnet and related topics by Thursday.
One of the best nature videos I have seen
Killer whales hunt a seal, from the superb series Frozen Planet.
Today is probably a funny blogging day
If the Supreme Court strikes down ACA in part or as a whole, and you did not like the law in the first place, do not assume you should be happy. It is far from obvious that we will end up with something better. I do hope that today (or later this week) is not simply a big exchange of anger and recrimination. No matter what happens, America still needs health care reform and this will require cooperation across the ideological spectrum.
By the way, didn’t it just come out in The Washington Post that the United States helped attack Iran with Flame, Stuxnet and related programs? If they did this to us, wouldn’t we consider it an act of war? Didn’t we just take a major step toward militarizing the internet? Doesn’t it seem plausible to you that the cyber-assault is not yet over and thus we face immediate questions looking forward? Won’t somebody fairly soon try to do it to us? Won’t it encourage substitution into more dangerous biological weapons?
I do understand that these are fairly superficial questions and that I do not have the expertise to write a detailed and insightful blog post on these topics. Still, it seems odd not to mention them at all. While I read in limited circles, I do not see many writers devoting much attention to the matter. Shouldn’t this have set off a large-scale national debate?
Assorted links
Very good sentences
Italy’s political parties appointed him because they needed a plumber to succeed the playboy, not a gambler. The last thing they wanted was a leader.
And:
The Germans have developed a strange narrative of the crisis.
And:
When the pressure for a break-up comes, it will come from Italy.
Here is more, “Why Mario Monti Needs to Speak Truth to Power.”
*Prometheus* (some economic notes)
The years to 2090 show remarkable technological progress in transportation and health care delivery and artificial intelligence. Labor-saving innovation eliminates even the job of Peter O’Toole. Before departing on an interstellar mission, have each crew member read Richard Epstein’s Simple Rules for a Complex World. Do not bring anyone who was brought up in a barn. Not all animals are cute. It is possible to signal that you have a really important message to be heeded. When making a project shutdown decision, it is long-run marginal variable cost which matters. Rates of capital depreciation are sometimes lower than you think.
The Stiglitz hypothesis
Today, persistent low interest rates encourage firms that do invest to use capital-intensive technologies, such as replacing low-skilled checkout clerks with machines. In this way, the Fed may still be contributing to a jobless recovery, when we finally do recover.
If you read these two sentences with sufficient brute literality, they may well be true. And more generally I would admit, and indeed stress, that we are in an age of labor-saving innovation. Still:
1. Fed policy is a minor factor behind that trend, and would be recognized as such by all empirical researchers in the area,
2. Never reason from an interest rate change (erect statue to Scott Sumner), and
3. A tighter monetary policy would be far worse for the labor market. Furthermore weaker incentives for investment also would be worse for the labor market, although Stiglitz’s passage can be read as implying the opposite.
If you think Sumner-Avent-Yglesias-Soltas thought has taken over the world, Stiglitz shows a blindness to monetary options:
If we want recovery, there is no choice but to rely on fiscal policy.
Not “fiscal policy is better,” but rather “there is no choice.” There is also no explanation.
The link is here.