Estimating when the Soviets could produce a nuclear weapon

by  Tyler Cowen in

Following up on Alex's post on Soviet economic growth forecasts, I was intrigued to read the 1940s estimates, emanating from the United States, about when the Soviets would obtain a nuclear weapon.  Leslie Groves — who knew something about building a bomb — testified in front of Congress that it would take them twenty years.  In 1948 many Kremlinologists were saying "five to ten years," when in fact the Soviets had a usable bomb in 1949.  In 1948 an engineer in Look magazine predicted the Soviets would get the bomb in 1954.  Many scientists predicted 1952 and some thought 1970.  The Joint Chiefs of Staff were predicted the mid- to late 1950s.  The Air Force was the one institution which got it right and remarks from Senator Arthur Vandenberg were close to the truth as well.

Groves was skeptical of the Soviet engineers, who did not turn out to cause delays and who regularly did very well with what they had to work with.  Other commentators did not realize that 40 percent of the world's known uranium reserves were within the Soviet Union, or that the Soviets could use German uranium quite well.

All this is from the truly excellent new book Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly, by Michael D. Gordin.  Here is one very accurate review of the book.

One question is what kind of ideological biases, if any, colored these forecasts.  Another question is whether today's estimates of Iranian production are any better.

*You are Not a Gadget*

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the new book by Jaron Lanier, a humanist critic of how the internet is shaping our lives and cultures and providing a new totalizing ideology.  Of all the books with messages in this direction, it is the one I would describe as insightful.  Here is one bit:

It breaks my heart when I talk to energized young people who idolize the icons of the new digital ideology, like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, and free/open/Creative Commons mashups.  I am always struck by the endless stress they put themselves through.  They must manage their online reputations constantly, avoiding the ever-roaming evil eye of the hive-mind, which can turn on an individual at any moment.  A "Facebook generation" young person who suddenly becomes humiliated online has no way out, for there is only one hive.

And this:

People live longer as technology improves, so cultural change actually slows, because it is tied more to the outgoing generational clock than the incoming one…So Moore's law makes "generational" cultural change slow down.

It's still a book I mostly disagree with.  You can buy the book here; too bad it isn't on Kindle yet.  Reviews are here.

Thai-Cambodia refugee camps, 1975-1999

by  Tyler Cowen in

Study this model and try to improve on it.  Here is further historical information.

What does the domestic U.S. political equilibrium look like when we are funding and running these camps?  Will Obama be seen as "doing too much" for "black people"?  How will we punish wrongdoers in the camps?  Will the residents be treated better than those in Guantanamo?  What happens when we, explicitly or implicitly, start using Haitian gangs to keep order in the camps?  How many Haitians will the DR shoot crossing the border? 

Haitians are extremely nationalistic, sensitive to foreign influence, and they have a clear historical memory of the U.S. occupation of 1915-1934.  What if they ask us to leave before the camps are self-sustaining?  For how long will we pretend that Haiti still has a real government?

Those are my questions for today.

Assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. Why such a deep recession?

2. How much of the consumption binge was health care?

3. An economic analysis of "hearts and minds."

4. DR newspapers (here and here) have lots of extra and highly detailed Haiti stories, in Spanish, mostly bad news relative to U.S. accounts.

5. How much does Minnesota value the Vikings?

6. Why men visit prostitutes; here is one take: "I am paying for it and it is her job to give me pleasure. If she enjoys it I would feel cheated."  It's a scary article.

7. And this time it's legal.  The interview is an interesting and indeed Gladwellian perspective on the "talent" of the first legal male prostitute, via Chris F. Masse.

The political economy of earthquakes

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here's a paper by Nejat Anbarci, Monica Escaleras, and Charles Alan Register:

In our theoretical model, we show that as per capita income decreases and the level of inequality increases, different segments of society are less likely to agree on the distribution of the burden of the necessary collective action, causing the relatively-wealthy simply to self-insure against the disaster while leaving the relatively-poor to its mercy. We then evaluate 269 large earthquakes occurring worldwide (1960-2002), taking into account other factors such as an earthquake's magnitude, depth and proximity to population centers. Using a Negative Binomial estimation strategy with both random and fixed estimators, we find strong evidence of the theoretical model’s predictions.

I haven't read it yet but wanted to pass it along; here are varying drafts, go through JSTOR (gated) and Journal of Public Economics for the final version.  By the way, the model predicts bad news for Haiti.

For the pointer I thank the excellent Daniel Sutter, who has done a good deal of work on the economics of natural disasters.  

My history with Haiti

by  Tyler Cowen in

Looking back fifteen years or so, I regarded Haiti as an extreme which people did not dare visit.  I had the image that if I walked down the street someone would come along and lop off my arm with a machete.  I wondered if visitors could go out without armed support.  Somehow I felt that if I could manage a trip to Haiti, I could deal with many of the life problems which would, sooner or later, come my way.

I also imagined the place was full of lush trees, which is the direct opposite of the reality.

I set off in (I think) 1993.  The place was popular as late as the 1970s, but by then hardly any Caribbean guidebooks covered Haiti at all.  My friend Christopher Weber, the investment writer, ended up coming with me at the last minute, maybe as more of a dare than anything else.  Plus he had the longtime dream of visiting the remote Haitian city of Jeremie, because of its association with the family background of Alexander Dumas.  

Upon arriving, I realized the country was relatively peaceful, provided you were not there in times of elections, coups, or demonstrations.  The terrain is so crowded, and white people are so conspicuous, it is (was) hard to get into trouble.  Plus Haitian crowds are known to knock down and kill petty thieves on the spot.  There's just not enough room for anyone to mug you, at least if you exercise due caution.  Nor, for that matter, were there very many beggars, since usually there was no one to beg from. 

Despite oppressive poverty (other than India, I've never seen anything comparable), there's simply a remarkable feeling there and most visitors to Haiti end up sharing this understanding with other Haitiphiles.  I've long wished I could explain this.  I've since been five times, though never to the north.  I also started collecting Haitian art and reading everything I could about the country and going to Haitian concerts.  

For the last ten years I've been afraid to go, mostly because kidnappings started on some of the roads.  Finally, it seemed safe enough and the economy was improving.  Over last weekend, in Miami, Natasha, Yana and I drove around Little Haiti, ate a wonderful meal, and bought some Haitian gospel and compa CDs, which served as the soundtrack for the rest of the day in the car.  I was all set to plan my next trip back.

Neither Chris nor I ever made it to Jeremie.

Haitian demographics and mortality

by  Tyler Cowen in

“Something like 40 to 50 percent of the population of Port-au-Prince is kids,” he said. “Kids are much more fragile – a 30-pound block of a wall that would only seriously injure an adult will kill a child. They die much more rapidly of dehydration, of loss of blood, of shock. An infection will cause explosive diarrhea, which can kill a trapped child. Everything about this is devastatingly worse for kids than for adults.”

That's Dr. Irwin Redlener from Columbia University and the full story is here.

Getting drunk as signaling behavior

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is the abstract, I look forward to reading the paper:

It is argued that drug consumption, most commonly alcohol drinking, can be a technology to give up some control over one’s actions and words. It can be employed by trustworthy players to reveal their type. Similarly alcohol can function as a “social lubricant” and faciliate type revelation in conversations. It is shown that both separating and pooling equilibria can exist; as opposed to the classic results in the literature, a pooling equilibrium is still informative. Drugs which allow a gradual loss of control by appropriate doses and for which moderate consumption is not addictive are particularly suitable because the consumption can be easily observed and reciprocated and is unlikely to occur out of the social context. There is a trade-off between the efficiency gains due to the signaling effect and the loss of productivity associated with intoxication. Long run evolutionary equilibria of the type distribution are considered. If coordination on an exclusive technology is efficient, social norms or laws can raise efficiency by legalizing only one drug.

I thank Brian Dailey for the pointer.

How to help Haiti

by  Tyler Cowen in

…contact the White House and tell them that you support granting Haitians Temporary Protected Status (TPS) immediately.

TPS is a form of temporary humanitarian immigration relief given to nationals of countries that have suffered severe disasters, natural or man-made. (For example, El Salvador got TPS was after the country was hit by a terrible earthquake in 2001, Honduras after Hurricane Mitch in 1999, and Burundi, Liberia, Sudan, and Somalia were designated because of ongoing armed conflicts.)

Once a country has been given TPS, its nationals who are in the United States can apply for work authorization (a very useful thing to have if, say, one needs to send money home to family members in need of medical care or a house that has not been reduced to rubble), can't be deported or put into immigration detention (also quite handy if you're trying to work and send money home), and can apply for travel authorization, which allows them to visit their home country and return to the US, even if they wouldn't otherwise have a visa that would allow them back into the country (incredibly important if you have loved ones who have been badly hurt and need to visit them, or if you need to go home to attend funerals).

Designating Haiti for TPS status would provide an immediate, tremendously valuable benefit to Haitian immigrants in the United States. But, more importantly it would benefit their loved ones who remain in Haiti and are in desperate need of their assistance.

That's Amanda Taub.  Chris Blattman agrees.  Here is a relevant Michael Clemens talk.  Another idea is cancel Haiti's debt.

North Carolina teaching symposium, February 5

by  Tyler Cowen in

It's a symposium for teaching Principles of Economics, in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Alex and I are speaking, information and registration can be found here.  My talk is on how to teach the financial crisis using basic economic tools and Alex's talk is on "Seeing the Invisible Hand"; there will be other speakers as well.  If you are involved with the teaching of Principles, do come, we would like to meet you and also hear your thoughts on what we will present .