Monday assorted links
1. Maybe cash transfers don’t boost cognitive skills by so much. Hope you enjoyed this year’s presents anyway.
2. Straussian Beatles, Christmastime edition.
3. WSJ piece on the Harvard Corporation. “One faculty member, citing a carve-out in the Massachusetts Constitution that reserves authority over Harvard to the state legislature, has urged Massachusetts lawmakers to install a government official on the board to provide more transparency and public accountability.” Brutal throughout.
4. The 2010 Census confidentiality protections failed.
Getting Closer to AGI–Happy Holidays!
My classical music listening for the year 2023
2023 has been one of my very best years for classic music listening. I’ve discovered an unusually high number of excellent recordings, and made a lot of progress in understanding many composers better. Most of all, that would be Bach, Scriabin, Byrd, Handel, Robert Ashley, and Caroline Shaw, but by no means exhausting the list. For whatever reasons, I’ve just had an immense amount of emotional energy to put into these discoveries.
I thought I would write up a list of my favorite new recordings, but there are too many of them. Here are just a few:
Handel, The Eight Great Suites and Overtures, Francesco Corti. My whole life I’ve preferred these for piano, say by Richter. Corti is converting me to the harpsichord versions.
Frank Peter Zimmermann, Bach, sonatas and partitas for solo violin, volumes one and two. These are some of my favorite works to buy multiple versions of. I started off preferring the Milstein recordings, which still are wonderful. Last year went through a Biondi phase, now am enamored of these. I never tire of these pieces.
Monteverdi, Vespro Della Beata Vergine, conducted by Raphaël Pichon, covered here by the NYT. Monteverdi’s greatest work, and this recording has been receiving special praise from many quarters.
Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma!, the complete score (for the first time recorded), John Wilson and Sinfonia of London.
Here is the Alex Ross New Yorker classical music recording list: “I can’t remember a year of so many pleasure-inducing, addiction-triggering albums.”
You also might consult these 2023 recommendations from Gramophone, the ones I have heard are excellent, the others are high expected value.
It is a marvel that such a revenue-poor, streaming-intensive musical world is generating so many new and amazing recordings for virtually all kinds of classical music. This is not what I was expecting five to ten years ago.
Another marvel is how many world-beating recordings are coming from young performers who do not have mega-strong preestablished reputations. A lot of them I have never heard of before.
Most of all, I am pleased to see that beauty is proving so robust.
Merry Christmas everybody!
Sunday assorted links
1. Mark Lutter claims:
“With the end of the Great Stagnation and the beginning of the Great Acceleration/roaring 20’s, it’s useful to consider relative status changes. Increase -Events -Brexit -Community Decrease -Universities -Government -Consulting”
2. Antonio Negri, RIP (NYT).
3. Why pharmaceutical drugs have become so costly to develop.
4. On the “Corporation” that runs Harvard (NYT).
5. Kind of true?: “The unconstitutional decree of President Milei announced on December 20 aims to deregulate not the economy but the entire life of our people and is supported by big businessmen and the “market”. The opposition is now mobilizing to strike back.
6. “Countries with a higher degree of UV-R exposure tend on average to have weaker states.“
What should I ask Marc Rowan?
I will be doing a Conversation with him. If you don’t know, here is a snippet from Wikipedia:
Marc Jeffrey Rowan…is an American billionaire private equity investor. He co-founded Apollo Global Management in 1990 with Josh Harris and Leon Black and took over as CEO in 2021.
Marc also has been involved in recent disputes over academia, anti-Semitism, and in particular concerning the University of Pennsylvania. But please note this Conversation was scheduled before all those issues came to the fore, and I do not intend to obsess over them.
So what should I ask Marc?
Tim Harford answers more of your crazy economics questions
Tim Harford answers more of your crazy economics questions:
Olly asks: What if your tax bill was discounted by the distance you lived from the centre of London (eg if you lived in Kingsway, you paid the full amount; if you lived in Shetland, you would pay no tax)?
I suppose the aim here might be to encourage people to move away from London and into less populated areas. If this policy was a success, the likely outcome would be a damaged environment (with more driving and less travel by efficient methods such as trains, bicycles and elevators) and a much less dynamic economy (since cities are where most innovation takes place). I am reminded of the great urbanist Jane Jacobs’s sarcastic description of “a nice, even smear of mixed economic activity”, which seems so plausible from behind a bureaucrat’s desk, and which would be such a disaster in practice. Fortunately, this tax would make less difference than you think. In response to these tax incentives, some people would be minded to move further away from Kingsway and closer to Shetland. The mere temptation for this mass exodus to occur would prompt both rents and property prices to adjust, offsetting the tax. Owners of London property would suffer, while owners of property far from the charms of Kingsway would prosper. Not many people would actually move. Thank goodness.
See also Tim’s excellent answer on what would happen if we made inflation illegal?
*The Upside-Down World: Meetings with Dutch Masters*
By Benjamin Moser, I loved this book. It is one of my favorite books of art criticism ever, written from the perspective of a fan I might add. It talks you through the pictures and the lives of the 17th century Dutch artists and tries to tie it all together. It doesn’t spend too much time on the super-famous works or the anecdotes you might already know.
If you want to get down to brass tacks, after Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Fabritius — the top Dutch masters — I like Pieter Saenredam and Paulus Potter and Rachel Ruysch, who had ten children. I admire Hals, but don’t go to any great lengths to go see it. Judith Leyster remains modestly underrated. If you read this book, you’ll come away with your own opinions, or revise the ones you already have. The color plates are well presented.
Moser is highly rated but still underrated, and his Lispector and Sontag biographies are excellent as well.
“Around since xxxx”
From a reader, Matt:
Is “Since 19XX” a positive or negative signal for a restaurant? I passed a BBQ restaurant in Denver recently with such a sign. If it’s been around so long but is good, why haven’t I heard of it before? On the other hand, it’s seemingly a positive market signal?
I view that as mostly a negative signal. It does put the restaurant in the top half of the distribution, so if you don’t know where else to go, OK. But such restaurants are rarely excellent or on any number of cutting edges. They are used to serving large numbers of longstanding customers in a pretty reliable manner. Wonderful. Sadly, most people have OK but not great taste. And such restaurants self-consciously think of themselves as a “franchise,” perhaps a bit frozen in time, in a way to be admired by 67-year-olds. Fine.
For the best meals, mostly you should look elsewhere.
p.s. such restaurants also raise the interesting theoretical question of whether a time horizon can be too long. Arguably the most interesting restaurants will end up obsolete, or in some other other way lose their unique balance or capabilities. They just want to be great for a few years, and indeed they can be. The restaurant that sticks around for 57 years is one that makes “pizza” at a “6.7 on a scale of 10” level of quality. Eh.
Saturday assorted links
1. Interview with Mark Dybul about PEPFAR.
2. Women’s tears! Worth a sniff?
3. Macmillan Learning spotlight on Tyler Cowen. Excerpt: “I’ve been working with Alex for over 33 years,” Dr. Cowen said, “and after all of those years, I can still speak about him with affection in my voice.”
4. AI-written novel wins Chinese science fiction prize.
5. “Argentina is one of the most regulated countries in the world and has gotten worse over time. On regulation, it has fallen to a rank of 143 out of 165 countries in the Human Freedom Index.” Link here.
7. Cass Sunstein on free speech on campus. And Cass on Knightian uncertainty.
Sebastian Bensusan on Milei reform impressions (from my email)
This was great:
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/12/argentina-reform-impressions.htmlI think the biggest things that you missed are:
1. He is using the same “emergency measures” (DNUs ~ Executive Orders) that the Kirchner’s used. Many of the things in that DNU are very hard to justify as emergency measures and as such, I consider the method unconstitutional. In other words, he is playing dirty.
2. Many of the things in the bill are not directly relevant to the immediate economic crisis, are not necessarily why he was voted in, and are especially offensive to the side of the country that didn’t vote for him. For example, removing Ley de Tierras is not going to bring foreign investment immediately (nobody wants to invest in Argentina at this time) but it infuriates the losing side further. It is another example of him being ideologically driven. The more of these crusades he fights at the same time, the more likely a strong coalition forms against him.
*Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative*
That is the new memoir from Glenn C. Loury, and I cracked it open right away, here is one excerpt:
But now Harvard is looking to retool its ailing Afro-American Studies department, and Tom [Schelling] serves on the committee whose job it is to recruit new faculty worthy of the institution. The chair of that committee is the distinguished black historian Nathan Huggins, who has recently taken the helm in Afro Studies at Harvard. Apparently my Econometrica paper on intergenerational transfers had gotten their attention, and my writing on the dynamics of racial income differences has piqued their interest. I’m just six years past my PhD and they’re offering a joint appointment as full professor of economics and of Afro-American Studies. The appointment would make me the first black tenured professor in the history of Harvard’s economics department. I like the sound of that. In the past, the timing hadn’t quite felt right for Harvard. But now it does feel right, and I have the sense that if I say no a third time, they won’t be calling again.
You can pre-order the book here, it is self-recommending of course. And here is my earlier Conversation with Glenn Loury.
If you care enough, the state-contingent market will be there
Washington has the right to swap firsts with Phoenix in 2024 if the Wizards’ first (if 13-30) to New York is not conveyed. Phoenix can trade its 2024 first but not until the night of the draft. The Wizards also have the right to swap firsts in 2026 (if 9-30), 2028 (if 9-30) and 2030. Orlando then has the right to swap its 2026 first with the less favorable from Phoenix or Washington. Memphis has the right to swap the less favorable firsts of Phoenix and Washington in 2030. The Suns owe Brooklyn unprotected firsts in 2025, 2027 and 2029. Brooklyn also has the right to swap firsts with Phoenix in 2028. The Wizards then have the right to swap the least favorable first from the Nets, Suns or the 76ers first in 2028. Phoenix has three second-round picks available to trade.
Here is more from ESPN (gated) on NBA trade options as the trade deadline approaches. And how about the Zion Williamson contract? (NYT):
Beyond the shift for the final three years of the deal, Williamson is at risk of losing even more in guarantees if he doesn’t hit certain marks during regular checks of his weight and body fat. Under the contract, the sum of Williamson’s weight in pounds and his body fat percentage must be less than 295. He was listed as weighing 285 pounds last season, meaning his body fat could not be higher than 10 percent.
The Pelicans also have protected themselves in case Williamson has any further significant issues with the fifth metatarsal in his right foot. If he suffers a fracture or a stress injury to that bone or the healed callus, or has what the contract calls a “hardware failure” related to the previous injury there, then half of his base salary for 2024-25 would no longer be guaranteed if the team released him.
That is only one part of the complexity of the broader deal.
Argentina Milei reform impressions
I didn’t have much time in Argentina, but I can pass along a few impressions about how Milei is doing, noting I hold these with “weak belief”:
1. He is pretty popular with the general population. He is also popular in B.A. in particular. People are fed up with what they have been experiencing. It is incorrect to think of him as mainly a candidate for the elites.
2. Even if you think he “plays a clown on TV,” he is not a clown. He is a serious thinker who has facility with economic arguments, including at the academic level.
3. If he can lick hyperinflation, but that causes a recession for a year or two, the population will accept that trade-off.
4. Licking hyperinflation will not be so easy. The currency is still declining in value, and Milei has to solve major fiscal problems with 10-15 percent representation in the two-house legislature. For this reason alone, the whole project still could very easily fail, and it would be a long time before libertarian-style ideas would be given another chance in Argentina.
4b. Right now Argentina is auctioning off (FT) $3.6 billion USD worth (but denominated in pesos) in fresh debt. The goal is to clear off central bank debt, and to put fiscal instruments where fiscal instruments ought to be, and sever them from the monetary authority. Right now short-term central bank debt is about 10% of the country’s gdp, a bad place to be. But how well will this new borrowing go? How far can it be extended? The fate of the whole plan may rest on the efficacy of this very particular transition, and if more central government borrowing in Argentina makes you nervous it should. Keep in mind hyperinflation is not just “money printing” (though it is that too), it is after a while an entire interwoven web of corrupt and malfunctioning institutional arrangements. Just how easily and how quickly can those be untangled?
5. Milei’s political enemies are not entirely keen to seize power right now, since they would have to deal with a hyperinflation and possibly a recession. This is operating in his favor.
6. Some of his support is based in a kind of “free lunch” voter desire to simply have more dollars, as some of the populace expects “dollarization” to bring. That is one reason why he won, but it is worrying for his ability to sustain support.
7. What I understand from his deregulatory measures I am very much in support of. But until a broader business confidence is restored, they may not help economic growth much. I don’t think we are going to see a Ludwig Erhard-style economic miracle in Argentina.
8. So far he has yet to make an obvious mistake.
9. Fossil fuel megaprojects (WSJ), such as “Vaca Muerta” may prove Milei’s ace in the hole, if he can hold on long enough.
10. U.S. mainstream media are not doing a good job covering these developments, or even devoting much attention to them.
I will continue to follow this issue.
Friday assorted links
1. Curtis Yarvin on techno-optimism.
2. The economics of time travel.
3. Ken Regan on statistically detecting cheating.
4. India fact of the day: “Solar and wind were 92% of India’s generation additions in 2022. It deployed as much solar in 2022 as the UK has ever built. Coal also was down 78%.”
5. The Catalan gridlock. The role of (Catalonian) economists in encouraging and sometimes leading this movement remains an underreported story.
7. “I’m excited to share News Déjà Vu (newsdejavu.github.io), which uses a custom large language model to retrieve historical news articles that are the most similar to modern news articles.” From Melissa Dell.
Why Do Poor People Commit More Crime?
It’s well known that people with lower incomes commit more crime. Call this the cross-sectional result. But why? One set of explanations suggests that it’s precisely the lack of financial resources that causes crime. Crudely put, maybe poorer people commit crime to get money. Or, poorer people face greater strains–anger, frustration, resentment–which leads them to lash out or poorer people live in communities that are less integrated and well-policed or poorer people have access to worse medical care or education and so forth and that leads to more crime. These theories all imply that giving people money will reduce their crime rate.
A different set of theories suggests that the negative correlation between income and crime (more income, less crime) is not causal but is caused by a third variable correlated with both income and crime. For example, higher IQ or greater conscientiousness could increase income while also reducing crime. These theories imply that giving people money will not reduce their crime rate.
The two theories can be distinguished by an experiment that randomly allocates money. In a remarkable paper, Cesarini, Lindqvist, Ostling and Schroder report on the results of just such an experiment in Sweden.
Cesarini et al. look at Swedes who win the lottery and they compare their subsequent crime rates to similar non-winners. The basic result is that, if anything, there is a slight increase in crime from winning the lottery but more importantly the authors can statistically reject that the bulk of the cross-sectional result is causal. In other words, since randomly increasing a person’s income does not reduce their crime rate, the first set of theories are falsified.
A couple of notes. First, you might object that lottery players are not a random sample. A substantial part of Cesarini et al.’s lottery data, however, comes from prize linked savings accounts, savings accounts that pay big prizes in return for lower interest payments. Prize linked savings accounts are common in Sweden and about 50% of Swedes have a PLS account. Thus, lottery players in Sweden look quite representative of the population. Second, Cesarini et al. have data on some 280 thousand lottery winners and they have the universe of criminal convictions; that is any conviction of an individual aged 15 or higher from 1975-2017. Wow! Third, a few people might object that the correlation we observe is between convictions and income and perhaps convictions don’t reflect actual crime. I don’t think that is plausible for a variety of reasons but the authors also find no statistically significant evidence that wealth reduces the probability one is suspect in a crime investigation (god bless the Swedes for extreme data collection). Fourth, the analysis was preregistered and corrections are made for multiple hypothesis testing. I do worry somewhat that the lottery winnings, most of which are on the order of 20k or less are not large enough and I wish the authors had said more about their size relative to cross sectional differences. Overall, however, this looks to be a very credible paper.
In their most important result, shown below, Cesarini et al. convert lottery wins to equivalent permanent income shocks (using a 2% interest rate over 20 years) to causally estimate the effect of permanent income shocks on crime (solid squares below) and they compare with the cross-sectional results for lottery players in their sample (circle) or similar people in Sweden (triangle). The cross-sectional results are all negative and different from zero. The causal lottery results are mostly positive, but none reject zero. In other words, randomly increasing people’s income does not reduce their crime rate. Thus, the negative correlation between income and crime must be due to a third variable. As the authors summarize rather modestly:
Although our results should not be casually extrapolated to other countries or segments of the population, Sweden is not distinguished by particularly low crime rates relative to comparable countries, and the crime rate in our sample of lottery players is only slightly lower than in the Swedish population at large. Additionally, there is a strong, negative cross-sectional relationship between crime and income, both in our sample of Swedish lottery players and in our representative sample. Our results therefore challenge the view that the relationship between crime and economic status reflects a causal effect of financial resources on adult offending.
