*Monocle* and high-altitude cities

by  Tyler Cowen in

Edition Alpino, for this month's issue.  I had not known there was a periodical called Monocle and now I have a piece in it, next to the ads for fancy watches and articles geared toward the European elite.  (Given the business model of this periodical, I believe the piece will never be on-line.)  There is also an article "Radio: Four modern alternatives to Alpine horn blowing."  And "Monocle goes on snow patrol with the Federal Republic's Gebirgsjägerbrigade, the traditional Alpine troops with a very modern mission."  

My fun but not very scholarly bit asks why so many cities of the far north are so pleasant to travel to, the task the editors set me.  Doing the piece got me thinking why cold, high altitude cities such as La Paz and Kathmandu do not always offer the same virtues.

In high altitude cities it is harder to raise large herds of pack animals, cultivate broad agricultural plains, establish critical mass in terms of size, or trade with heighbouring regions.  There are also fewer sea connections.  If we look in Europe, the largest Swiss cities are near the plain rather than tucked into the Alps.

This may be historical accident, but two of the more successful high altitude cultures came in the New World, namely the Incas and the Aztec alliance.  Is that because domesticated animals were less important on this side of the Atlantic?  That tomatoes and potatoes and corn can do well or better at high altitudes?  In and near Tenochitlan of course, the Nahuas built their own extensive network of canals.

One further note on Foucault, concerning methodological individualism

by  Tyler Cowen in

In my previous post, I neglected one point.  Reading Foucault is one useful path out of extreme positions of methodological individualism.  By methodological individualism I mean the view that "method aimed at explaining and understanding broad society-wide developments as the aggregation of decisions by individuals," as Wikipedia puts it.

Foucault understood how actual historical explanation relies on the use of broad categories, classes, and exemplars, and in a manner which is not logically reducible to statements about individual beliefs and desires.  The writer (theorist) has nothing close to a complete mental model of how the interacting categories reduce to component individual parts, and so some or most of the moving parts of the explanation retain their autonomy at a partially macro level.  The Austrians will kick and scream on this one, but if you combine imperfect information and the sense/reference distinction, methodological individualism ends up as more of a slogan than anything else.  There is a reflective equilibrium to the explanatory process, and micro relies on some macro foundations, not just vice versa, and individuals rely on the social for some of their cues.  Atomistic reduction to the level of the individual in general will not succeed.

The denier of strict MI is not committed to extreme Hegelian views about the autonomous existence of collectivities and it is debatable how much even Hegel himself made that mistake.

I grant that Foucault takes his own method too far in the anti-individualist direction, as did Hegel.

Foucault is by no means the only or even the best path out of extreme methodological individualism.  See this article by David Levy or late Wittgenstein or William James on pluralism, for instance, or more recently Geoffrey Hodgson, perhaps the best place to start.  Here is a quick overview of some of the debates, though it does not cover the best criticisms.  Neuroeconomics, and modular models of the mind, also can be read as critiques of MI, suggesting, as did Nozick, there is no particular reason to stop at the level of the individual in doing the explanation.

Oddly, for all their talk about methodological individualism, economists hardly ever engage in the medium for which it is most appropriate: biography.

A while ago I wrote a review essay on biography and economics.  Here's a challenge: if economics is so powerful, and MI is so persuasive, try writing a biography of a person, using economic tools, and see how much of that person's life you can explain.  It is a humbling and instructive experience and you can read my attempt here.

I Chose Liberty

by  Alex Tabarrok in

I Chose Liberty, a collection of short intellectual biographies of contemporary libertarians edited by Walter Block, is quite entertaining. Richard Epstein, Gordon Tullock, Judge Napolitano, John Hasnas, Ron Paul, Bryan Caplan, myself and many others are included.

Need I tell you whose biography begins:

When I was about thirteen, I decided I wanted to read all of the good books in the public library. I started with the Dialogues of Plato…

You can buy it here or here is the free pdf.

Hat tip: Bryan Caplan.

*FIxing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control*

by  Tyler Cowen in

For centuries, farmers in Austria shot consecrated guns at storms in attempts to dispel them.  Some guns were loaded with nails, ostensibly to kill the witches riding in the clouds; others were fired with powder alone through open empty barrels to make a great noise — perhaps, some said, to disrupt the electrical balance of the storm.  In 1896, Albert Stiger, a vine rower in southeastern Austria and burgomaster of Windisch-Feistritz, revived the ancient tradition of hagelschiessen (hail shooting)  — basically declaring "war on the clouds" by firing cannon when storms threatened.  Faced with mounting losses from summer hailstorms that threatened his grapes, he attempted to disrupt, with mortar fire, the "calm before the storm," or what he observed as a strange stillness in the air moments before the onset of heavy summer precipitation.

That is from the new and quite good book by James Rodger Fleming.  If you are wondering, Windisch-Feistritz is now in Slovenia and it is known as Slovenska Bistrica.  It looks like this.

Sex and Statistics or Heteroscedasticity is Hot

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Ok Trends has another great post combining statistics, sex and even a little "game theory" (read that in whichever sense you prefer). The statisticians at OK Trends discovered that the number of messages a women receives varies widely even after conditioning on the women's attractiveness rating. Why do some 7's receive far more messages than other 7's? It turns out that it's much better to receive some 10's and some 1's than all 7's. Or as OK Trends beautifully expresses it:

http://cdn.okccdn.com/blog/math_of_beauty/Paradox.png

A lot of this can be explained by a non-linear function of messages to attractiveness; that is if 2 men rate three women, A,B,C, as A:{0,10}, B:{5,5} and C:{10, 0} it's not that surprising that A and C each receive one message and B receives none.

But OK Trends argue that more is going on. In a regression of messages on number of rankings in each category (1 being lowest, 5 being highest) they find, not surprisingly, that more high rankings increase messages but also that more low rankings increase messages. That is they find that a ranking of {0,10} can be better than a ranking of {6,10}.  Ok Trends hypothesize the following explanation:

Suppose you're a man who's really into someone. If you suspect other men are uninterested, it means less competition. You therefore have an added incentive to send a message.

I have my doubts. Rather I think there are certain types of beauty that greatly attract some men but repel others. Analagously, some people will pay hundreds of dollars for an ounce of caviar that other people won't eat for free. The reason some people love caviar, however, is not that other people dislike it. Instead, it just so happens, that the thing that some people love is the very thing that repels others. We see the same phenomena in art, some people love John Cage, other people would rather listen to nothing at all. 😉

Now if we mix in this kind of beauty–beauty over which there are violent disagreements–with the kind that most people do agree upon (think Haagan-Dazs vanilla ice cream) then I suspect that it will appear that lower rankings increase messages. But what is really going on is that high rankings–conditional on their also being many low rankings–actually signal an extra strong attraction. Someone who tells you that John Cage is their favorite composer is telling you more than someone who says Aaron Copland is their favorite composer.

Note that even if rankings were not public this theory would predict that the same women would receive more messages than their (non-public) rankings would suggest. 

Which ever explanation holds, some advice follows: In the marriage market what you want is not so much to increase your attractiveness to the average person but rather to the one person who will  cherish your unique features. Thus–conditional on attracting a decent number of suitors from a reasonable pool etc.–what you want to do is accentuate your unique features even if doing so reduces your average ranking. In short, heteroscedasticity makes you hot.

FYI, OK Trends will analyze women's reactions to men in a future post.

New paper on gene-environment interaction

by  Tyler Cowen in

The authors include Eric Turkheimer and the abstract is here (link to paper requires a university connection I believe):

Recent research in behavioral genetics has found evidence for a Gene × Environment interaction on cognitive ability: Individual differences in cognitive ability among children raised in socioeconomically advantaged homes are primarily due to genes, whereas environmental factors are more influential for children from disadvantaged homes. We investigated the developmental origins of this interaction in a sample of 750 pairs of twins measured on the Bayley Short Form test of infant mental ability, once at age 10 months and again at age 2 years. A Gene × Environment interaction was evident on the longitudinal change in mental ability over the study period. At age 10 months, genes accounted for negligible variation in mental ability across all levels of socioeconomic status (SES). However, genetic influences emerged over the course of development, with larger genetic influences emerging for infants raised in higher-SES homes. At age 2 years, genes accounted for nearly 50% of the variation in mental ability of children raised in high-SES homes, but genes continued to account for negligible variation in mental ability of children raised in low-SES homes.

I found this to be an important paper.  One lesson is further confirmation that environment matters more for people in less fortunate circumstances (oddly, Progressive "dream policies" would bring about a world where genes matter much more at the margin than they do today).  A second lesson is how early "early intervention" has to be for potency, two years and under and that is assuming the procedures work in the first place.  The authors criticize Heckman but they do not follow up with much explanation.

For the pointer to the paper I thank Michelle Dawson.  Via Bryan Caplan, here are other papers by Turkheimer.

Facts about European banks

by  Tyler Cowen in

“A large part of the Greek debt is hidden on the balance sheets of the Greek banks,” said Theodore Pelagidis, an economist at the University of Piraeus and the co-author of “Understanding the Crisis in Greece,” a scathing account of Greece’s economic implosion. “So you cannot just say ‘Let’s restructure.’ It is not so easy.”

Goldman estimates that requiring a lender to give up 40 percent on holdings of Greek sovereign debt would result in a loss of 5.3 billion euros for the National Bank of Greece, the country’s largest bank. While that bank, which is in the process of raising fresh cash, probably has the capital to survive such a loss, Greece’s other banks may not be so lucky.

As for Portugal, its domestic debt burden is divided more proportionally among foreign and domestic banks, compared with Greece. Still, two out of the three largest holders of its debt are Portuguese, Caixa Geral de Depósitos and Banco BPI, with 11 billion euros combined.

The No. 2 holder, behind Caixa Geral de Depósitos, is the Spanish giant, Santander, according to Goldman, with 4.9 billion euros.

The article is here.  The problem, of course, is this: if the government stops payment on some of the debt, they then will have to bail out their domestic banks.

Economics and Michel Foucault

by  Tyler Cowen in

Joshua Miller, a loyal MR reader, asks:

Another cut on local knowledge: what is economics' relationship to Michel Foucault? Often I see folks like you and Hanson making points that the rest of the social sciences and humanities would call Foucauldian, about the role of disciplinary power in knowledge-production, but you don't seem to ever reference or perhaps even read him. Perhaps he is simply not considered very interesting? Given the fact that there is some history of economics in his "Les Mots and les choses," I'd think there'd be more of an attempt to discredit or claim him.

Foucault is interesting, but use him with caution.  Most of his books have not held up very well as history, even if he succeeded in drawing people's attention to some neglected factors.  On top of that, his theoretical framework is incoherent.  Try reading The Archaeology of Knowledge.  I find The Order of Things to be an insightful but skewed account of the seventeenth century; detailed objections aside, it goes astray by assuming, implicitly, explicitly or otherwise, that structural categories somehow interact with each other in the world of ideas.  It's much more micro and disaggregated than he lets on, but still I am glad I read the book.  This volume is a good, readable introduction to his work.

Perhaps Foucault is best on prisons and hospitals, though again caveat emptor on the history.  His most valuable insight, both theoretically and historically, is that what appears to be "enlightenment" (or for that matter "Enlightenment") is often anything but.

Foucault is important, and he deserves to be read, but I am not sure he will be much read fifty years from now.  I also view "engaging with him" as a much overdone and much overrated exercise, carried in large part by the less salubrious tendencies in Continental and U.S. humanities scholarly discourse.  It is better to simply work on the topics he cared about, using his books as a reminder to consider some different angles.

Did you know that Foucault — at least the late Foucault — appreciated Mises, Hayek, and Friedman?

*Progress for the Poor*

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the new, "Kindle singles-length" book by Lane Kenworthy, who writes the blog Consider the Evidence.  It is about how the poor are making, or not making, progress, and also how the poor could make better progress.  I especially liked the chapter on how the quality of government expenditure can help alleviate the consequences of poverty.  It is due out in 2011, from Oxford University Press, so why are there still no links for the book, Amazon or otherwise?  In any case, recommended.

Here is a related paper.  Here is Kenworthy on Bill Simmons.

The 19th century was truly bad for Mexico and for Mexicans

by  Tyler Cowen in

From an international perspective, Mexicans' height in the mid-eighteenth century was "not too short"…The declining trend over the second half of the eighteenth century was nothin exceptional in international perspective either.  The early nineteenth century, however, was a watershed as the trends diverged: height recovered or stagnated in France, Spain, and other countries, but it continued to decline in Mexico: by the 1830s, Mexicans had finally become "too short."  …I have proposed that population growth, and more frequent El Niño events, and real grain prices reduced the availability of food and had a likely detrimental effect on living standards.

That is from an essay by Amílcar Challú, from the new and excellent book Living Standards in Latin American History: Height, Welfare, and Development, 1750-2000, edited by Ricardo D. Salvadore, John H. Coatsworth, and Amílcar Challú.