Markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is one tidbit of several:

PET PORTE On those TV programs showing funny home videos, there’s
always a family finding a dog or raccoon stuck in their cat door. The
Pet Porte, $156 (PetPorte.com) uses the radio frequency from the
microchip already embedded in your cat (or small dog) to ensure that
furry crashers stay out. The clear, plastic door remains locked until a
sensor reads your pet’s microchip.
Pet Porte works only with European microchips; this autumn, the company will release a door that can read U.S. chips. Light sensors allow you to program the door to lock after certain hours so your kitty doesn’t go out for a nightcap.

And if you like to process information about canines, here is a new source of input:

SNIF TAG
Ever wonder if your dog walker is really giving your pup a workout? The
Snif Tag, $299 (SnifTag.com), is the equivalent of the baby cam for
neurotic dog owners. A small tag attached to the collar uses a
three-axis accelerometer and motion sensor software to determine what
your dog is doing – walking, running, sleeping–and records the
information within the tag’s flash drive. Back at your pad, where Snif
Tag’s base station connects by Ethernet cable to your home network, all
the information is uploaded to a Web site. The site breaks down your
pooch’s activity by minute, hour, day, week, and month, and lets you
determine, by breed and age, whether or not your dog is getting enough
exercise. The tag also features a social component: When your canine
companion has interacted with another Snif Tag wearer, you can contact
the owner of your pup’s new B.F.F. to set another play date. One
problem: Finding enough owners who are willing to buy the device.

There is also:

JOG-A-DOG The easiest way to deal with destructive behavior is with
exercise, but occasionally it’s not realistic to toss the ball with
your pup (long work hours, snowstorms, laziness). Doesn’t mean you
can’t wear your dog out. Joga- Dog, $1,195 and up (JogADog.com) is a
treadmill designed with canines in mind. Side guardrails ensure your
dog doesn’t escape his workout, and an 11- degree incline is said to
provide the resistance needed to build strength and muscle. But like
with human treadmills, the Jog-a-Dog is no substitute for the stimuli
of the great outdoors.

China do-over fact of the day, markets in everything minus one

by  Tyler Cowen in

Love Land,
a sex theme park set to open this October in China won't have the
chance to lose it's virginity. Chinese bureaucrats ordered the park
destroyed after details of the park's featured attractions were leaked.

The story is here.  The rest of the article relates:

The park was to have giant-sized reproductions of male and female
anatomy, and offered lessons in safe sex and the proper use of condoms.
There was also an exhibition about the history of sex, as well as
workshops offering sex techniques.

The entrance to park featured
a giant pair of women's legs clad only in a red thong. Those legs are
now closed forever. Officials would only say that the concept of the
park was vulgar, and deemed unnecessary. Bulldozers and wrecking ball
were seen destroying the exhibits as onlookers tried to get a peak.

China considers the topic of sex taboo, even though illegal prostitution is at an all-time high in the country.

Toward a theory of “Assorted links”

by  Tyler Cowen in

Brad DeLong and Matt Yglesias, trendsetters of the blogosphere if there were any, are assembling "assorted links" once a day or so.  As do I and Yves Smith, not to mention the Herculean efforts of Mark Thoma.

Does anyone click on these things or do you simply wish to feel you have experienced a more comprehensive menu of what you have refused to learn?

A second-order question is whether or not I should care about the answer to the first query.

Small steps toward a much better world, a continuing series

by  Tyler Cowen in

Remember that guy Hayek?  Or is it Walras?

The San Francisco Giants are experimenting with a possible solution – software that weighs ticket sales data, weather forecasts, upcoming pitching matchups and other variables to help decide whether the team should raise or lower prices right up until game day.

The story is here and I thank the excellent Michael Makowsky for the pointer.

My favorite things Barcelona and Catalan

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. Cellist: Pao Casals; see my comments under Puerto Rico.

2. Artist: Joan Miró, who remains underrated.  Oddly many people do not see him as better than the guy who puts the squiggles on their design bags.  Almost everything he did — across media — was phenomenal in terms of composition and textures.  I am fond of Antoni Tapies, although his work does not reproduce well on-line.  Aristide Maillol, who was French Catalan, did paintings and sketches.  Dali is now so vilified by some intelligent people that he can rightly be considered underrated.

3. Novelist: Albert Sanchez Piñol's Cold Skin is a favorite of mine.  Quim Monzó is a fun writer, as is Carlos Ruis Zafón.

4. Architect: I have mixed feelings about Gaudi; it feels to me like he is trying too hard.  How about Lluís Domènech i Montaner?  Try this one too.

5. Composer: Isaac Albeniz, especially as played by Alicia de Larrocha.  There is also Federico Mompou.  I grew up playing the guitar music of Fernando Sor, though it is less fun to listen to.

6. Economist: Xavier Sala-i-Martin; his home page is full of interesting links.

7. Bandleader: Xavier Cugat.  Wong Kar-Wai likes him but mostly he is forgotten.  Here is a good video and you can hear his unusual Spanish accent as well.

8. Medieval theologian and memory expert: Ramon Llull.  I am a big fan of Llull, a cosmopolitan polymath and early advocate of animal welfare.  I wrote a part of my next book about him, although I ended up cutting it out of the final draft because it didn't quite fit.

9. Movie, set in: I've never seen Barcelona (is it good?), so I have to go with Vicky Cristina Barcelona.  There's probably a better movie set in Barcelona, but offhand I don't know it.

10. Chess opening.  Duh.

They have a bunch of opera singers too.

The bottom line: This is an impressive showing, yet what ties it all together remains elusive in my mind.  Perhaps that is what makes the region so interesting.

Hennessey on CAFE

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Excellent post, filled with detail, by Keith Hennessey on CAFE.  Some highlights:

The NHTSA analyses look at a range of benefits to society, including economic and national security benefits from using less oil, health and environmental benefits from less pollution, and environmental benefits from fewer greeenhouse gas emissions (this is new).  They also consider the costs, primarily from requiring more fuel-saving technologies to be included by manufacturers….

Rather than maximizing net societal benefits, [the Obama] proposal raises the standard until (total societal benefits = total societal costs), meaning the net benefits to society are roughly zero…

The Obama plan will increase costs enough to further suppress demand for new cars and trucks. This will cause significant job loss, and probably in the 150K 50K range over 5-ish years, with a fairly wide error band….[updated to reflect an error in calculation, AT]

The Obama option would reduce the global temperature by seven thousandths of a degree Celsius by the end of this century….[and] would reduce the sea-level rise by six hundredths of a centimeter.  That’s 0.6 millimeters.

Note that these points are all drawn from NHTSA work (see Hennessey's post for details) not from a "think tank" study.  Finally, Hennessey is concerned about the future:

…As early as this fall, greenhouse gases could become “regulated pollutants” under the Clean Air Act. Once something becomes a “regulated pollutant,” a whole bunch of other parts of the Clean Air Act kick in, and EPA is off to the races in regulating greenhouse gases from a much (much) wider range of sources, including power plants, hospitals, schools, manufacturers, and big stores.

One of the scariest elements of this is called the “Prevention of Significant Deterioration” permitting system. In effect, EPA could insert itself (or your State environmental agency) into most local planning and zoning processes. I will write more about this in the future. It terrifies me.

Sentences to ponder

by  Tyler Cowen in

From Arnold Kling:

So, my advice to Paul and Brad is this: don't start with a model that
focuses on investor beliefs about real economic variables. Instead,
start with a model in which financial firms use signaling to expand,
and the credibility of those signals increases over time as long as
nothing adverse happens. It should be easy to develop a model in which
signaling devices gain credibility slowly but lose credibility
suddenly. That will (a) produce the asymmetry between euphorias and
crashes and (b) tell a story that puts the fragility of the financial
sector in the middle, where it belongs.

Profile of Nouriel Roubini

by  Tyler Cowen in

This one was fun.  Excerpt:

Some economists — strict academics mostly–have long considered Roubini a quack. They
sneer at his approach, which is wide, deep, and deeply unconventional.
When he travels, for instance, he says his research includes talking to
"everyone from the airport cab driver all the way to the finance
minister." One prominent economist who studies recession indicators
recently slammed Roubini for his "subjective," "wild man" predictions
because they don't always rely on econometric modeling. And Roubini
certainly didn't help his case at an IMF conference in September 2006,
when he guesstimated the chances of a world recession at 70 percent
before offering, by way of explanation, that he had pulled the number
"just out of my nose."

Estonia Schadenfreude

by  Tyler Cowen in

It is now common in the left-leaning blogosphere to cite Estonia, its rapidly collapsing economy, and its earlier free market policies.  Sometimes the name of Dan Mitchell pops up as well.

I would add a cautionary note.  Recall for instance that Chile and South Korea and New Zealand also had collapsing economies, for a while (the early 80s for Chile and late 80s for NZ) but they rebounded because they were built on relatively sound economic policies.  The point can be made that they, like the Estonians, indulged in too much speculative excess but most Estonian decisions have been good ones.

Which Eastern European economy has suffered least from the financial crisis?  By most accounts it is Bulgaria.  Should we envy their economic policies?  Should you prefer the Bulgarian Way to the Estonian Way?

Which country has a future you would bet upon?

Etc.

The new Gabriel García Márquez biography

by  Tyler Cowen in

One day [Alvaro] Mutis climbed the seven flights of stairs, carried two books into the apartment without saying hello, slapped them down on the table, and roared: "Stop fucking about and read that vaina, so you'll learn how to write!"  Whether all García Márquez's friends really swore all the time during these years we will never know — but in his anecdotes they do.  The two slim books were a novel entitled Pedro Páramo, which had been published in 1955, and a collection of stories entitled The Burning Plain (El llano en llamas), published in 1953.  The writer was the Mexican Juan Rulfo.  García Márquez read Pedro Páramo twice the first day, and The Burning Plain the next day.  He claims that he had never been so impressed by anything since he had first read Kafka; that he learned Pedro Páramo, literally, by heart; and that he read nothing else for the rest of the year because everything else seemed so inferior.

That is from the new and noteworthy Gerald Martin biography of García Márquez.  This very impressive (and enjoyable) book was seventeen years in the making.  It's also not a bad way to learn about the political and economic history of northern Colombia.  This should make any short list of either the best non-fiction books this year or the best literary biographies.  The reader also learns the probable origins of the famed spat with Mario Vargas Llosa (p.375); it had to do with a woman, namely Vargas Llosa's wife.