Why so many men’s suits for the communists?

by  Tyler Cowen

David Stearns asks:

I was looking at Kim Jonh-Il looking at things, and it struck me how many of his hangers on were wearing suits.  It seems odd given that this is probably the most anti-western country around.  Do you have any ideas on why this style of formalwear basically became the world standard?

Of course the Chinese communists experimented with other styles. Yet pushback came; in 2008, one part of the Chinese Communist Party began an anti-pajamas campaign, on the grounds they looked “uncivilized.”

Here is a rather frank web site on etiquette campaigns in China.  Recently, Chinese leaders seem to prefer red ties.

I would stress that non-free states tend to encourage conformity along many dimensions, and what better code of dress to match conformity into than men’s suits?

Don’t Mess with the Mouse

by  Alex Tabarrok in

On Saturday the House Republican Study Committee released a radical but sensible position paper on copyright that called for limiting statutory damages (which are typically far higher than actual damages), expanding fair use exceptions, punishing false copyright claims and limiting terms. The position paper included good material on how to interpret copyright law such as:


Myth: The purpose of copyright is to compensate the creator of the content:

…according to the Constitution, the overriding purpose of the copyright system is to “promote the progress of science and useful arts.” In today’s terminology we may say that the purpose is to lead to maximum productivity and innovation.

This is a major distinction, because most legislative discussions on this topic, particularly during the extension of the copyright term, are not premised upon what is in the public good or what will promote the most productivity and innovation, but rather what the content creators “deserve” or are “entitled to” by virtue of their creation. This lexicon is appropriate in the realm of taxation and sometimes in the realm of trade protection, but it is inappropriate in the realm of patents and copyrights.

The paper also made a number of excellent points about how too much copyright can impede innovation and how rent seekers may come to dominate the process.

Mike Masnick and Cory Doctorow called the report “a watershed moment,” and there was lots of discussion on twitter and elsewhere about how this represented a Republican move towards recapturing youth and reasserting support for markets and innovation over business interests.

Alas, it was not to be. Within 24 hours the report was yanked. It doesn’t take much inside knowledge to guess what happened  It does give me some pleasure, however, to say that you can still read the report courtesy of the Maryland Pirates.

The Incidence of Mandated Maternity Benefits

by  Tyler Cowen in

I know that is from 1994, but it is by Jonathan Gruber (pdf) and the point is an important one:

I consider the labor-market effects of mandates which raise the costs of employing a demographically identifiable group. The efficiency of these policies will be largely dependent on the extent to which their costs are shifted to group-specific wages. I study several state and federal mandates which stipulated that childbirth be covered comprehensively in health insurance plans, raising the relative cost of insuring women of childbearing age. I find substantial shifting of the costs of these mandates to the wages of the targeted group. Correspondingly, I find little effect on total labor input for that group.

This has become more relevant in light of a recent story out of California, excerpt:

The ability of the exchange to lower healthcare costs remains unclear. Experts said average premiums could rise in the exchange because the Affordable Care Act requires improved benefits, but consumers’ out-of-pocket medical costs could decrease under those same changes.

California insurance officials have expressed concern about substantial rate hikes for some existing policyholders going into the exchange.

Under a new rating map approved by state lawmakers, the Department of lnsurance estimated that premiums for similar coverage could increase as much as 25% in West Los Angeles, 22% in the Sacramento area and nearly 13% in Orange County.

I believe some of that is from a pooling effect and some from a greater coverage effect.  I do not, by the way, find this reassuring:

Janice Rocco, the state’s deputy insurance commissioner for health policy, said her agency is pushing a new rating map that would cap increases at 8%. That proposal could be considered during a special legislative session in the coming months.

“We want to minimize the rate spikes,” she said.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the mandate as currently constituted probably won’t work.  The Medicaid extension can, in principle, work, and yet the state-level rebellion against it does not seem to be fading away.

Indian economists want the Food Security Bill modified

by  Tyler Cowen in

You will find their petition here, signed by many notables including from MIT and Princeton.  They want to “abolish the distinction between general and priority households, and give the same PDS entitlements to all households outside the excluded category.”  Furthermore cash transfers are raised as an alternative possibility, a good idea in my view.

Vipin Veetil and Atanu Dey raise some issues which these economists neglected, for instance:

On the production side, laws restricting for-profit corporate investments in agriculture (like those forbidding corporate ownership of agricultural land) starve the rural economy of capital investment and technology transfers. Such laws have two effects. First, they impoverish farmers by reducing demand for their primary asset – agricultural land. Second, corporations bring efficiency gains through large-scale knowledge-intensive farming. This is equally damaging but more difficult to detect. In addition they furnish a steady wage income to workers; this is desirable for low-income households. In the absence of corporations (and markets for insurance) farmers have no way of transferring the risk of production, i.e. they borrow money on fixed rates but face an uncertain return on investment. A crop failure then has the potential to begin a debt-cycle.

All those smart economists on the first petition, and not nearly enough talk of markets.

The MR Fanfare aggregator

by  Tyler Cowen

Fanfare is an excellent periodical of classical music reviews, and every year I aggregate the results from the “Critics’ Want Lists.”  This year, these were the works that made the Want Lists of more than one critic:

Havergal Brian, The Gothic Symphony, conducted by Martyn Brabbins.

Hector Berlioz, Requiem, conducted by Paul McCreesh.

John Adams, Harmonielehre, Short Ride in a Fast Machine.

Busoni’s Doktor Faust, conducted by Adrian Boult.

That’s three out of four in the “large and unmanageable” category.  Perhaps they have been made manageable, or perhaps we are deciding to live with unmanageability these days.

The Gramophone best classical CD of the year was Heinrich Schütz’s Musicalische Exequien, conducted by Lionel Meunier, which I enjoy very much.

Above and beyond the usual retreads, I was impressed by the vitality of:

Bach, St. John’s Passion, conducted by Monica Huggett, with a stripped-down orchestra, not just a stripped-down choir.  Here is one good review, here is another.

There is more taste aggregation on the way.

The culture that is Japan

by  Tyler Cowen in

The number of elderly criminals being caught by Japanese police has rocketed, the Japanese Justice Ministry said yesterday, with pensioners committing almost 50 times more assaults than two decades ago.

The number of criminals aged 65 or older booked by police last year increased by 475 from the previous year to 48,637, more than six times as many as 20 years ago, the ministry said in its latest white paper on crime.

Here is more, courtesy of Mark Thorson.

Florida markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

The airsoft don’t inflict serious damage but they do hurt. An explainer on the Combat City website explains, “There is a degree of pain associated with airsoft just like paintball.  It is significantly less than paintball and without the swelling.”

A trip to Combat City costs about $150, which includes the cost of the gun modification.

And for added safety, participants are outfitted in a set of protective gear including helmets and padding over sensitive areas.

“There is supposed to be a degree of pain so that you do learn from it,” Kaplan said. “Someone’s trying to hurt you.  You learn how to be as tactical as a civilian can be.”

All of the action takes place inside a former grocery store that has been modified into an indoor combat setting.

From there, customers are broken up into teams and take part in various games ranging from capture the flag to hostage simulations.

And in a move that may shock some, children are allowed to participate as well.

“We get ’em at all ages,” Kaplan said in a separate interview with Fox35, noting that one of the participants on the video was 8-years-old.

A disclaimer on the Combat City site says “all ages are welcome,” adding, ” We can not tell you what you or your child can handle.  There are young kids playing at Combat City on a daily basis, only you can decide.”

Here is more, and for the pointer I thank Daniel Lippman.

Eurozone fact of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

The number of Greeks moving to Germany jumped 78% in the first half of 2012 from a year earlier, Germany’s statistics office said.

In all, more than 16,000 people moved to Germany from Greece between January and June, an acceleration of a trend that began in 2010 after the Greek crisis began. The number of immigrants to Germany from Spain and Portugal was up by 53% for each country.

Here is more.

Assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Western Oklahoma markets in everything; “In other classes, students who don’t pass an exam the first time are allowed to try again. And none of the exams in the two-week format are monitored.”

2. The book marketing campaign of Tim Ferriss.

3. Twitter as weapon.

4. More on the Medicaid wars, a high stakes game of chicken.

5. The culture that is living in guilt in Paraguay.

6. The Manzi list.

The political culture that is Uruguay

by  Tyler Cowen in

Laundry is strung outside the house. The water comes from a well in a yard, overgrown with weeds. Only two police officers and Manuela, a three-legged dog, keep watch outside.

This is the residence of the president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, whose lifestyle clearly differs sharply from that of most other world leaders.

President Mujica has shunned the luxurious house that the Uruguayan state provides for its leaders and opted to stay at his wife’s farmhouse, off a dirt road outside the capital, Montevideo.

The president and his wife work the land themselves, growing flowers.

This austere lifestyle – and the fact that Mujica donates about 90% of his monthly salary, equivalent to $12,000 (£7,500), to charity – has led him to be labelled the poorest president in the world.

…His charitable donations – which benefit poor people and small entrepreneurs – mean his salary is roughly in line with the average Uruguayan income of $775 (£485) a month.

In 2010, his annual personal wealth declaration – mandatory for officials in Uruguay – was $1,800 (£1,100), the value of his 1987 Volkswagen Beetle.

The article is here, and for the pointer I thank Adam Dayan.

Why are observations of inflation so biased? And biased by gender?

by  Tyler Cowen in

This is from an older piece, but I ran across it while browsing the internet.  It is from the Cleveland Fed, by Michael Bryan and Guhan Venkatu, 2001, excerpt:

The data indicate that the public’s estimates and predictions of inflation are significantly and systematically related to the demographic characteristics of the respondents. People with high incomes perceive and anticipate much less inflation than people with low incomes, married people less than singles, whites less than nonwhites, and middle-aged people less than young people. This Commentary describes what is perhaps the most curious observation of all: Even after we hold constant income, age, education, race, and marital status, men and women hold very different views on the rate at which prices are changing.

And now, more specifically:

In the roughly 20,000 responses we have received from our telephone survey since August 1998, the average rate at which respondents thought prices had risen over the previous 12 months was about 6.0 percent. This “perception” of inflation is more than twice the rise recorded by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) over the same period (2.7 percent). Further, if we separate our sample by gender, we find that the average inflation perceived by the nearly 8,500 men who answered our survey was 4.6 percent. While this response is higher than the official CPI inflation estimate, it pales in comparison to the 6.9 percent inflation perceived by the roughly 11,500 women who took our survey. What accounts for such a large discrepancy between the inflation rate perceived by the two sexes?

I found it through this piece, cited by Instapundit.  Is it possible that a high perception of inflation is largely the result of a relatively low real income, perhaps mixed in with a slight unwillingness to blame oneself for imperfect labor market prospects?  Does this help explain why tight money and stagnant median income have come together?

Exports as a factor behind the poor performance of the UK economy

by  Tyler Cowen in

This is from Gavyn Davies and Juan Antolin-Diaz:

We conclude that fiscal policy is responsible for a little less than half of the UK’s under-performance compared with the US, with much of the rest being due to the sluggish growth of UK export markets in recent years. The decline in UK oil production, and the possible under-recording of UK GDP in the official statistics, should also be taken into account. Therefore, while there is certainly some truth in the fiscal story, it is far from the whole truth.

So why the big difference with the U.S. performance?

We find that a large amount of the difference is explained by the fact that US export markets have grown much more strongly than UK markets over the past 5 years. This has been for two reasons. First, the UK’s greater exposure to the recession-hit markets of the eurozone has been very damaging, especially in the past two years. Second, and actually much more important, the UK’s lack of exposure to the rapidly growing markets in the emerging economies has been a major structural problem in recent years. The US, in contrast, has greatly increased its exposure to the emerging markets, notably in Latin America.

The summary blog post is here, and underlying research is here. Note that the bigger you make the multiplier, the more that exports should matter as well.