Sunday assorted links
What do panda rental contracts look like?
Administrators cannot discuss panda illness, death, disease or “any other important matters” without first consulting with their Chinese partners, whose views “shall be fully respected.”
“In cases where release of related information to the outside world or acceptance of media interviews is necessary, it shall be implemented only after communication and consultation between the parties and a consensus is reached,” the contracts read. “And where no consensus is reached, no news shall be released.”
In a statement, the San Diego Zoo said it was common for partners to discuss animal well-being “and come to a mutual understanding before sharing updates publicly.”
Previous contracts did not contain such “information management” restrictions.
Here is more from Mara Hvistendahl at the NYT, interesting throughout.
Musk on Sharks
A great little video on over-regulation.
Saudi construction project of the day
Saudi Arabia is preparing to begin construction work on its next giga-project: a cube-shaped skyscraper big enough to fit 20 Empire State Buildings.
The Mukaab will be 400-meters on each side when construction is finished, which would make it the largest built structure in the world. The building will be the centerpiece of New Murabba, a community the country hopes will be a new destination within the capital city of Riyadh.
“It’s masquerading as a building today but it’s so much more,” Michael Dyke, chief executive officer of New Murabba, said in an interview. “Ultimately, a capital city the size of Riyadh deserves to have a global, central icon as other capital cities do.”
Here is more from Zainab Fattah at Bloomberg. Here are various images based on artist renderings. Here is further information.
The Declining Relative Quality of the Child Care Workforce
Although it is widely acknowledged that high-skilled teachers are integral to service quality and young children’s well-being in child care settings, little is known about the qualifications and skills of the child care workforce. This paper combines data from multiple sources to provide a comprehensive assessment of the quality of individuals employed in the child care sector. I find that today’s workforce is relatively low-skilled: child care workers have less schooling than those in other occupations, they score substantially lower on tests of cognitive ability, and they are among the lowest-paid individuals in the economy. I also show that the relative quality of the child care workforce is declining, in part because higher-skilled individuals increasingly find the child care sector less attractive than other occupations. Furthermore, I provide evidence that at least three other factors may be associated with the decline in worker quality. First, the recent proliferation of community college programs offering child care-related certificates and degrees may divert students away from attending four-year schools. Second, those majoring in child care-related fields are negatively selected for their cognitive skills, thereby decreasing the quality of the child care labor pool. Third, I show that the increased availability of outside employment options for high-skilled women had a detrimental effect on the quality of the child care workforce.
That is from a new paper by Chris M. Herbst. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Saturday assorted links
The protest culture that is Maine
A man used homemade explosives, some of which he dropped from drones, to attack or intimidate in a dispute rooted in local politics in a community in northern Maine, law enforcement officials said. No one was hurt.
Joshua Brydon, 37, of Woodland, appeared in court this week after authorities say he set off explosives near the homes of several people with devices he created from fireworks, propane bottles and other materials, according to court documents. One of the blasts was strong enough to knock items off a wall in a home, and several of the explosives were dropped by drones operated by Brydon, according to documents.
Court records indicate Brydon targeted people who had taken issue with a former member of the Woodland Select Board or with his father-in-law, the town’s road commissioner.
Here is the full story, via Mike Rosenwald.
Iranian Kidney Donors
Iran is one of the few countries in the world to have eliminated the shortage of kidneys. A useful new paper looks at what donors are like,
First some background:
The adoption of a regulated market mechanism for kidney procurement in Iran started in 1988 in the absence of sufficient posthumous donations (Ghods and Savaj, 2006). The mechanism allows living unrelated Iranian individuals to donate kidneys to Iranian patients with end stage renal disease (ESRD) for financial gains. The program was successful in eliminating the renal transplant waiting list within a decade of its implementation (Mahdavi-Mazdeh, 2012). In addition, the Organ Transplant Act legalized brain-stem death donations in 2000. Both ESRD patients and potential kidney donors are referred to and registered with The Association for Supporting Renal Patients, a non-profit organization (NGO) which conducts a primary medical evaluation and facilitates the market exchange. Upon successful completion of the test, a formal consent is acquired and the potential donor and the recipient are introduced to each other. At this stage both the patient and the donor are referred to a nephrologist for further evaluation, cross-match, and angiography. If the patient-donor pair is compatible, in the next step the pair negotiate the terms and conditions of the exchange. All terms within the price-cap are guaranteed and enforceable by the NGO. The price-cap is frequently adjusted for inflation and during the course of our study was set at 180 million Iranian Rial (US$4700 in August 2017). However, the negotiation is private and the pair can agree any terms they wish. The donor also receives a “gift of altruism” and 1 year of insurance from the government through the Charity Foundation for Special Diseases. Transplant surgery is carried out free of charge in public university hospitals. The Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education introduced further procedural changes in July 2019. In particular, they established a center for organ transplant and procurement at the ministry which acts as the matching centre and provides oversight and overall control of the process.
Are the donors irrational, risk-loving, impatient? No, they are normal people making the best of sometimes limited opportunities:
The overall picture is of individuals who were in financial need, often unemployed but with a family to support and where alternatives sources of financial support were grim. However, despite their financial position, these individuals were typically patient and not especially prone to risk-taking. They were no less rational than the average, but those who ended up completing the process might be characterized as more altruistic than those who did not….More broadly our findings indicate that even in situations of extreme poverty we should not assume lower levels of rationality will be pervasive.
Given that donation saves lives and that kidney donation is not especially risky (much less risky than driving a motorcycle, for example) the tradeoff seems positive and well within ordinary bounds.
Turning to the US, here is Sally Satel on a proposed tax credit for kidney donation:
What if we could solve the organ donor shortage with a simple tax credit? That is the idea behind the End Kidney Deaths Act (EKDA) (HR 9275).
The bill, advanced by the Coalition to Modify NOTA (NOTA stands for the National Organ Transplant Act passed in 1984) would provide a $50,000 refundable tax credit—$10,000 per year for five years—to any living donor who gave a kidney to the next person on the waiting list. The tax credit would be a 10-year pilot program.
The credit would save 10,000 to perhaps as many as 100,000 lives over ten years.
FYI, I am a supporter of Modify NOTA (along with Al Roth, Steve Levitt, and Mario Macis, to name just a few of the economists, joined by surgeons, nephrologists and others).
Hat tip: Kevin Lewis.
Fluoride revisionism?
I am usually skeptical of such efforts, but Journal of Health Economics is quite a serious outlet:
Community water fluoridation has been named one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century for its role in improving dental health. Fluoride has large negative effects at high doses, clear benefits at low levels, and an unclear optimal dosage level. I leverage county-level variation in the timing of fluoride adoption, combined with restricted U.S. Census data that link over 29 million individuals to their county of birth, to estimate the causal effects of childhood fluoride exposure. Children exposed to community water fluoridation from age zero to five are worse off as adults on indices of economic self-sufficiency (−1.9% of a SD) and physical ability and health (−1.2% of a SD). They are also significantly less likely to graduate high school (−1.5 percentage points) or serve in the military (−1.0 percentage points). These findings challenge existing conclusions about safe levels of fluoride exposure.
That new article is by Adam Roberts. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
The Political Transformation of Corporate America, 2001-2022
This article reconciles conflicting views about the political landscape of corporate America with new data on the revealed political preferences of 97,469 corporate directors and executives at 9,005 different U.S. companies. I find that average ideology for these individuals has shifted meaningfully to the left over time, changing from modestly conservative in 2001 to roughly centrist by 2022. This finding supports a middle-ground position between conventional wisdom casting “big business” as a conservative stronghold and revisionist views holding the opposite. Counterfactual simulations and a difference-in-differences design suggest multifaceted causes for these changes, and hand-collected data on corporate stances on LGBTQ-related legislation coupled with an instrumental variables design indicate that individual ideology has large effects on firm-level political activity. Overall, this transformation has profound implications for American politics, as the individuals comprising one of the most powerful interest groups—corporate elites—appear to be fracturing ideologically and to some degree even switching sides.
That is from a new paper by Reilly Steel.
Saudi claim of the day
The Neom giga-project in Saudi Arabia is currently using one fifth of all the steel produced in the world, an official said on Monday.
The futuristic city will be the world’s largest customer for construction materials for several decades, said Manar Al Moneef, Neom’s chief investment officer.
She told the Global Logistics Forum in the King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh that the $500 billion project would be one of the world’s leading drivers of the global logistics sector in coming years.
“Neom is going to be the largest customer over the next decade. If you look at our demand in logistics it’s 5 percent of the global logistics market,” she told the forum, in rare public comments.
Here is the full story, via Mike Doherty.
Friday assorted links
1. Choose the right status hierarchies. An excellent short essay.
2. How to solve America’s housing crisis.
3. Hugh Grant sides with Schelling and rebels against Adam Smith.
4. The new Sienese painting show at the Met (New Yorker).
6. AI in Africa (FT).
Noah Smith on the vibe shift
My values haven’t become more conservative — my desire for a more economically egalitarian and socially tolerant society has not diminished an iota. You won’t see me bellowing “I didn’t leave my party, my party left ME!!” and storming over to the GOP in a huff. But I have to say that I now doubt the practical effectiveness of some of the policies I embraced in previous years. Others still seem like good ideas, but I’ve been dismayed at their botched implementation where they were tried. And many progressive ideas simply don’t seem like they’ll be able to win majority political support in the near future. It’s looking more and more likely that America is headed for a more conservative decade.
I’m not the only person to have noticed the shift. Dave Weigel recently wrote a post detailing all the ways that Kamala Harris’ campaign is to the right of Biden’s 2020 run, both in terms of tone and rhetoric and in terms of actual policy. Harris and other Dems have touted their tough stances on the border, abandoned big new spending programs, stopped talking about a public option for health insurance, trumpeted their support for Israel, embraced oil drilling, and gone tough on crime. Harris’ policy agenda includes plenty of pro-business and deregulatory ideas. She even brags about owning a gun and being willing to shoot intruders.
Here is the full post. And this, from later on, past the gate:
The sheer range of issues where progressivism seems adrift and directionless leaves me pensive and morose. I believe in the power of wonky technocrats to implement incremental policy tweaks to accelerate the energy transition, fix the immigration system, and make police more effective and less violent. But what’s left to fight for? Other than defending America against the depredations of Trump and the right, what big political goal can mobilize the masses to get out there and vote for left-of-center politicians?
I do see two big bright spots here. The first is industrial policy, which promises not just to restore American manufacturing, but to revitalize whole areas of the country. The second is the abundance agenda and YIMBYism, which promises to provide cheap housing, energy, and transportation for all.
Recommended.
Will Trumpian tariffs attract more foreign direct investment?
That is the theme of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
In the debates over Brexit almost a decade ago, it was periodically suggested that Britain’s higher trade barriers with the EU could lead to a beneficial upsurge in foreign direct investment, to serve the British market. So far Britain continues to languish in stagnation, and foreign direct investment into the country has fallen. To the extent a nation is not part of the world’s free-trade system, it may be less desirable to invest there.
Now consider the US. It is a much bigger market than Britain, yet a Trumpian trade war will not in every way reassure foreign investors. “America First” is a big part of the core Trump message, and foreign investors may fear their longer-term rights will not be fully respected under such a regime. In contrast, Ronald Reagan’s threat to Japanese automakers four decades ago was one small part of a broader commitment to the US as a (mostly) free-trading nation.
Trump, it is fair to say, does not share that commitment. Under Trump’s plans for tariff hikes, the US would repudiate all of its previous trade agreements, including with neighbors and major trade partners Canada and Mexico. Would anyone be surprised if Trump’s next step was to impose a higher corporate tax rate on foreign-owned capital in the US?
Countries that have been successful at attracting foreign capital, such as Singapore and Ireland, have tended to follow a similar strategy: They are credible, predictable and keep their word.
Note also that capital inflows strengthen the dollar, which is not in every way consistent with Trump’s other objectives…
The best fesenjan I’ve had in years
Toranj
10861 Lindbrook Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90024
Via Jeff Holmes. And a little space birdy tells me that the best sandwich in LA is Roma Market, in Pasadena.