The second strangest headline I read today

by  Tyler Cowen in

Or is it the strangest?  In any case, I never thought it would be so close:

Mongolian neo-Nazis: Anti-Chinese sentiment fuels rise of ultra-nationalism

Don't neglect the photo.  The subheader is:

Alarm sounds over rise of extreme groups such as Tsagaan Khass who respect Hitler and reject foreign influence

Tsagaan Khass, by the way, means, rather incongruously, "White Swastika."  I wonder if they know that Hitler was an Austrian ruling Germany?  And, excuse me for sounding silly, but isn't respecting Hitler, in addition to all of its other problems, accepting foreign influence?  I guess "foreign" here means "Chinese."

The strangest headline I read today

by  Tyler Cowen in

Monkeys hate flying squirrels, report monkey-annoyance experts

Yet the subheader is arguably yet stranger:

Japanese macaques will completely flip out when presented with flying squirrels, a new study in monkey-antagonism has found. The research could pave the way for advanced methods of enraging monkeys.

That is from the Christian Science Monitor.  Hat tip goes to Andrew Sullivan.

*Risk and Business Cycles* is now available in paperback

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is my 1998 book on business cycles.  Mario Rizzo writes:

I am happy to report that Tyler Cowen’s book, Risk and Business Cycles: New and Old Austrian Perspectives  is now available, as of July 15th, in a reasonably-priced paperback edition from Routledge…

This is not an orthodox Austrian approach. In fact, Cowen criticizes that version. However, the “new Austrian” inspired version he presents seems especially relevant in view of the widespread, but not uiversal, agreement that the pre-recession period of very low interest rates contributed to the search for yield and greater risk taking. As the title indicates, Cowen’s theory emphasizes the importance of low interest rates on risk-taking.

This book appears in the Routledge series, “The Foundations of the Market Economy” edited by Larry White and me. Tyler’s book is well worth reading as are many books in this series (now approaching thirty books).

Here is another blog post discussing the book.  Here is the Amazon listing.  At the time this book was published, it was unpopular to suggest that everyone simply might take too much risk at once, leading to an eventual overextension and collapse.  Yet theories of that nature have held up relatively well, in light of the financial crisis.

My one-sentence summary of the book is that it offers various accounts of how an economy might end up in the position of taking too much risk and how that can help explain business cycles.  And since these scenarios involve risk, rather than direct negative productivity shocks, they can look fairly innocuous in advance.

Elephant Jumps, Thai food in Merrifield

by  Tyler Cowen in

8110 A Arlington Blvd, Falls Church, 22042, (703) 942-6600, in the Yorktowne Center, more on Gallows than Route 50, home page here.

Home-style Thai food, with four levels of spicy, culminating in “Thai spicy.”  It’s not as good as Thai X-ing, but it’s probably better than any other local Thai competitor.  They will watch you sweat and they will giggle.


Here is one good review of the restaurant.  Here is a short bit on how elephants were viewed in antiquity.  Here is my favorite book on elephants. 


After we exchanged impressions of the other local Thai restaurants, the proprietor said to me: “You know a lot about food and you get around — you should be a food critic.  You could write up what you think about all these places!”


If we’re not going to have much more economic growth, we can at least have a few locales like this.  

Health care and revenue competition in Britain

by  Tyler Cowen in

Elite NHS foundation trusts are gearing up to lure private patients from home and abroad as health budgets are squeezed – a decision made possible after health secretary Andrew Lansley said he would abolish the cap limiting the proportion of total income hospitals can earn from the paying sick…

With a £20bn black hole opening up in NHS budgets, a group of top performing trusts are seeking to profit from paying patients and use the money to fund public healthcare in Britain.

Previously,

Labour's cap had meant most hospitals were unable to generate more than 2% from private income.

Here is more, although full details are not yet clear, it seems doctors will be much more in charge, in a decentralized manner.  Here's one opinion:

"What's to stop US healthcare companies coming over here to poach patients. Or GPs sending patients to India for cheap operations? Or English hospitals raiding Scotland for sick people?" said Alan Maynard, professor of health economics at the University of York. "It could be a real mess."

How long will it be before the entire NHS, as it was known, goes down as a collapsed model?  What exactly caused the collapse?  (I was surprised to read that Labour had tripled the budget since 1997.)  Will "the line" be that evil ideologues are dismantling a working system?  How will greater competition for patients alter our assessments of various national health care systems?  Is empowering doctors going to cut costs?  How much loyalty will patients, and voters, show to the old NHS model?

Haiti facts of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here's how the public sector is doing:

…one-sixth of its staff died, virtually all its buildings were damaged, and its meagre tax revenues fell by 80%.

Here's how the private sector is doing:

…over 1m people are still packed into 1,300 tent cities in and around the capital. The camps’ population is rising. Haitians who fled to the countryside after the disaster have returned in search of jobs and services. And soaring property prices–inevitable after the ruin of so much of the country’s housing–have put rents beyond the reach of most of the displaced.

That's a heap of bad news, but the part about the growing tent cities is perhaps the worst bit.  It means that whatever you read about the tent cities is reflecting the more desirable side of life in Haiti.

Robert Shiller on direct government employment

by  Tyler Cowen in

Big new programs to create jobs need not be expensive. Suppose the cost of hiring a single employee were as high as $30,000 a year, several times typical AmeriCorps living allowances. Hiring a million people would cost $30 billion a year. That’s only 4 percent of the entire federal stimulus program, and 0.2 percent of the national debt.

There is more here.  Do any of you know of a policy paper on whether any labor market deregulation (e.g., Davis-Bacon?) would be required for this to happen?  Davis-Bacon did precede some of the major Roosevelt jobs programs, so I've never understood how this fits together.  How was it ruled that the relatively low-paying jobs of the WPA satisfied the Davis-Bacon requirement?

*Agora*

by  Tyler Cowen in

I am surprised this film, set in ancient Alexandria, has not occasioned more controversy.  It is the most pro-science, pro-rationalist, anti-Christian movie I have seen — ever. — and it does not disguise the message in the slightest.  The director and scriptwriter is Spanish and Chilean, namely Alejandro Amenábar.  It offers a Voltairean portrait of Judaism, as an oppressed rabble, most of all responsible for the crime of having birthed Christianity.  There are some not-so-subtle parallels shown between the early Christians and current Muslim terrorists.  

The visual rendering of antiquity is nicely done and without an excess of CGI.

Here is a positive New York Times review.  Here is a positive Guardian review.  Not everyone will like this movie.

Earl Thompson has passed away at 71

by  Tyler Cowen in

Scott Sumner offers a tribute.  Earl Thompson was one of the most genuinely creative economic minds of his generation.  In my view he was often wrong, such as when he argued that markets would overproduce (excludable) public goods.  Nonetheless his work always inspired fruitful thought, even if one did not accept his conclusions.  Here is his famous paper on taxation and national defense.  He used "national defense" arguments to try to explain the pattern of government subsidies and taxes.  His paper on monetary theory will make your head spin.  Here is his paper on the economics of charity.

Here is Earl offering advice to Obama and sounding like Scott Sumner.  He attributed excessively tight monetary policy to banker (i.e., creditor) control of the Fed.  Read this too; he disliked the Bernanke reappointment.

Here is my review of Earl's book; read the first six lines.

Here is his home page, with many more links to articles.  Here is a UCLA obituary:

Earl Thompson was an eccentric in an age of conformity. He kept odd hours: he was alone in his office in Bunche Hall at 4:31 AM on January 17, 1994 when the Northridge earthquake hit, where he found himself unharmed but covered with fallen books. He loved muscle cars, dressed as if the 1950s were just yesterday, and always had a sneaky grin on his face. He will be missed by his colleagues, his students, his friends and his family.

Earl Thompson was an American original.

Five books on information technology

by  Tyler Cowen in

This interview with me is from the often-interesting FiveBooks web site; I was asked to recommend five books on information technology, other than my own.

Here is part of my take on Hayek's Individualism and Economic Order:

And is it a readable book?

In many ways not, which is why I picked it. I think there is a lot to be said in any area for having at least one book which isn’t very readable. And there Hayek is my pick. But it’s brilliant, it won a Nobel Prize, and it’s one of the most important books of the century. Is it clear and fun? No.

I believe my list selected too many accessible books, as I was tired when I did the interview.  Still, Pessoa, Hesse, and David Weinberger don't make it on to most of the other comparable surveys.

Negative complementarities in the labor market

by  Tyler Cowen in

The Miami Heat easily sold out its season tickets after LeBron James announced he was joining the team. That turned out to be bad news for the ticket-sales staff, which the Heat fired Friday.

“Now that the supply for [season tickets] has been exhausted we no longer require a season ticket sales team,'' the Heat said in a brief statement Friday afternoon.

A team spokeswoman, Lorrie-Ann Diaz, declined to comment or answer questions about the firings, which one staffer said cost roughly 30 people their jobs.

The full story is here and for the pointer I thank Michael R.

*The Fever*

by  Tyler Cowen in

The author is Sonia Shah and the subtitle is How Malaria has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years.  Excerpt:

The mosquito's immune system instinctively attacks the parasite, encapsulating the intruder in scabs and bombarding it with toxic chemicals.  To survive, the parasite must unleash armies of progeny in such massive numbers that fighting it off becomes more trouble than it's worth.  Male and female forms of the parasite, called gametocytes, then fuse, and the resulting parasites create cysts that cling to the walls of the bug's gut.  (The spasmodic waving of the male gametocyte's long tail, which precedes the act of fusing with the female — yes, this microbe reproduces sexually as well as asexually — is called exflagellation.)  Tens of thousands of slithering threads explode from the cysts and swarm up to the mosquito's salivary gland.  This is the form of parasite must take to infect human beings.  Malariologists call it the sporozoite.  When a mosquito starts a blood feed, some two dozen slivery sporozoites will escape into their next host.

It's an excellent book.  There is a short review and excerpt here.