Impact of major awards on the subsequent work of their recipients
To characterize the impact of major research awards on recipients’ subsequent work, we studied Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and Physics and MacArthur Fellows working in scientific fields. Using a case-crossover design, we compared scientists’ citations, publications and citations-per-publication from work published in a 3-year pre-award period to their work published in a 3-year post-award period. Nobel Laureates and MacArthur Fellows received fewer citations for post- than for pre-award work. This was driven mostly by Nobel Laureates. Median decrease was 80.5 citations among Nobel Laureates (p = 0.004) and 2 among MacArthur Fellows (p = 0.857). Mid-career (42–57 years) and senior (greater than 57 years) researchers tended to earn fewer citations for post-award work. Early career researchers (less than 42 years, typically MacArthur Fellows) tended to earn more, but the difference was non-significant. MacArthur Fellows (p = 0.001) but not Nobel Laureates (p = 0.180) had significantly more post-award publications. Both populations had significantly fewer post-award citations per paper (p = 0.043 for Nobel Laureates, 0.005 for MacArthur Fellows, and 0.0004 for combined population). If major research awards indeed fail to increase (and even decrease) recipients’ impact, one may need to reassess the purposes, criteria, and impacts of awards to improve the scientific enterprise.
That is from a newly published paper by Andrew Nepomuceno, Hilary Bayer, and John P.A. Ioannidis, via Michelle Dawson.
The Jennifer Burns Milton Friedman biography, and what should I ask her?
It is a wonderful book which I felt compelled to read in a single sitting on a long plane ride. Full of surprises and revelations, and fascinating in its portrait of a rather catty and spiteful economics profession in earlier days. And who knew that Aaron Director and Mark Rothko were good childhood friends? Definitely one of the best books of the year.
Here is Jennifer Burns on Twitter. Here is her home page. Here is her soon to be released Milton Friedman biography. Here is her 2009 Ayn Rand biography. She is currently associate professor of history at Stanford.
I will be doing a Conversation with her. So what should I ask her?
Sunday assorted links
2. Brad Setser on the Chinese economy.
3. The India revolution in chess. And Bhagavad Gita chatbot.
4. How Karachi has been changing for women.
5. The American future is a mix of steady-state Woke and also this.
Diego on gas station drugs
From my email:
The average gas station is now packed to the brim with drugs. This place had a Whip-it stand near the checkout, that I imagine is for recreational nitrous oxide users rather than whipped cream enjoyers, as well as a massive selection of kratom. ‘Whippets’ can cause irreversible brain damage and kratom has opiate-like effects, binding to the same receptors as morphine. There were also 3 stands near the checkout dedicated to weed-adjacent things including a mix of gummies, vapes, and flower bud containers. Unsure exactly what the weed-adjacent stuff was, some of it was Delta-8. Seems like a lot of these weed derivatives stemmed from the 2018 farm bill. The kratom proliferation has been insane. One of the main kratom brands, Botanic Tonics, sells super-popular small blue vials under the name ‘Feel Free’ that merely say ‘Plant-based herbal supplement’ on the front. Despite the FDA recently seizing $3M of kratom from Botanic Tonics as well as endless stories of addiction on the subreddit r/Quittingfeelfree, Botanic Tonics is an official sponsor of UT Austin and Florida State University and gives out free vials to students.
I do not personally have data on this question, but I thought this content was worth passing along.
Doha travel notes
Qatar is a greatly underrated tourist destination.
The Museum of Islamic Art is one of the finest museums in the world, with a collection of unsurpassable quality, drawing on Islamic creations from as far away as Sumatra and the Philippines, as well as the more familiar Persian, Indian, Turkish, and Central Asian items. The I.M. Pei building offers fantastic views, and there is an Alain Ducasse restaurant on the top floor.
The National Museum of Qatar is more didactic, but still I found it spectacular, including the architecture and external sculptures on the front side of the building. Usually I dislike audiovisual displays in museums, but their films on the history of Qatar — shown on very large Imax-like screens — were spectacular. The costumes and jewelry displays are hard to top. “Culture” and “growth” seemed to be the organizing themes of the exhibits. The progressions were logical, and at the end of it all I came away thinking that Qatar has had cultural sophistication for a long time, and is not just a place where they throw a lot of money at art. I fell for their propaganda, but now I am going to read up and see just how true that is.
In value terms, the government of Qatar is the largest buyer of art in the world. The country has other notable museums as well, but I did not have the time to visit them, as sometimes their hours are irregular, or they are private collections which require special appointments.
In most public spaces you will see some attempt to make them look creative or aesthetic. By no means do all such displays succeed, but they are always trying. Many of the contemporary buildings, or sculptures along the road, are worthy of inspection.
In the water you still can see wooden dhows, and on the roads you might see a man in desert gear shepherding his camels across the road. The main souk has a whole section devoted to falcons and falconry. The souk at dusk is magnificent.
Overall the place feels cheerier and homier than does Dubai. Everyone I met was friendly. English is the lingua franca, and most of the people here do in fact speak reasonable English.
“Cultural Village” and “Pearl Island” are hard to explain, but they are parts of town worth a visit, moving at times in Las Vegas and “Venetian” directions.
The nearby development of Lusail (is it a separate city?) has some iconic buildings and is worth a visit, check out the medical center, it looks better in real life than in the photos.
Doha sparkles when it comes to food. The Parisa Persian restaurant in Souq Waqif (don’t go to the other Parisa restaurant, supposedly it is worse) was the best fesanjan I ever have had, excellent decor too.
Saasna is one local high-quality place for Qatari food. Not cheap, but excellent ingredients. The dishes skew in the Saudi direction (“lamb shank on saffron rice,” or “beef stewed with wheat”) rather than Persian.
Good Indian and Chinese places seem to abound, I even saw an apparently high-quality Miami restaurant. The breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel was first-rate, most of all the pistachio labneh.
Based on n = 6, this seems to be one of those countries where they ask if you want lemon in your sparkling water, you say no, and they give it to you anyway.
On Fridays, the country does not open until 1:30 p.m., so if you are doing a short visit try to avoid that day.
The on-line visa form was easy to fill out, and I received a positive response within seconds.
Going in August, as I have done, is not crazy. Sometimes the temperatures reach 47 degrees or higher, but somehow it is manageable, or at least it was for me. Perhaps more people are around other times of the year? In any case you should go, as Qatar ought to join the list of must-visit destinations, and it is easy enough to combine it with other trips, given the use of Doha as an air hub.
Why is the Russian ruble now doing so poorly?
And Russia has finally lost control of their currency. The Russian Ruble has officially hit triple digits vs the US Dollar. It is only going to get worse for Russia going forward. pic.twitter.com/Z8Q8libsMV
— Jake Broe (@RealJakeBroe) August 11, 2023
The talks from the Civic Future conference on the Great Stagnation
From my email, from Civic Future:
We held our inaugural annual conference The Great Stagnation Summit 2023 last month at the University of Cambridge. Well, you can now watch and listen to videos of the panel discussions on our YouTube channel. We have also made the discussion transcripts available, which you can read using the links below or on the summit page.
Progress: Have we run out of road? – Tyler Cowen (keynote), David Edgerton, Sam Bowman, Diane Coyle Video / Transcript
Rekindling Britain’s economic flame – Lord Sainsbury, Andy Haldane, Anton Howes, Deirdre McCloskey, Tim Besley Video / Transcript
Progress on trial – Aria Babu, Nicholas Boys Smith, Matt Ridley, Sam Richards, Inaya Folarin Iman Video / Transcript
How to be good stewards of progress – James Phillips, Ben Reinhardt, Stian Westlake, Rachel Wolf, Munira Mirza Video / Transcript
Unlocking the Potential – Matt Clifford, Logan Graham, Saffron Huang, Marc Warner, John Thornhill Video / Transcript
Saturday assorted links
1. How the theater needs to be reformed.
3. Tim Harford on the successes of Freiburg (FT).
4. Dwarkesh Patel interviews Dario Amodei of Anthropic. Video and transcript, Amodie is good at thinking like an economist.
5. Odd Lots interviews Paul Krugman, including on aliens, science fiction, and AI (Bloomberg).
6. Economic crisis in Sri Lanka altered the taste of tea.
7. Different ways that regulation could boost AI risk. And “Text with Jesus.”
The Root of the Problem
It’s almost like the government’s imposing its will on its residents,” Trayon White, the D.C. council member for Ward 8, said at the council’s June 6 legislative meeting. He wasn’t talking about a proposed highway, a subway station, a power plant, or—perish the thought—an apartment building…White said he was concerned about the potential risk to property values and what he sees as a “reasonable fear”…[of] a public-safety concern.” He asked his colleagues to support an emergency resolution to remove them before this happened.
An incredible story by Jerusalem Demas about local politics that starts with small absurdities but raises larger questions. Can you guess the subject of concern?
Which countries will win the AI race?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, and I mean this above and beyond whichever countries make and sell AI services. Here is one bit:
Broadly speaking, most economic endeavors fall into one of two categories: those with known routines, and new projects. AI will favor nations that excel at the latter and hurt those which rely on the former.
Most activity falls into the routinized category — it describes a lot of bureaucracies, attempts at medical diagnosis, back-office work, and so on. To be clear, this is not a criticism: Routinizing activities lowers their costs. New projects — startups, attempts to build new towns or cities, trying to establish a colony on Mars, founding a new university — are different…
So to the extent a country specializes in providing routine activities, such as the call centers and back-office support provided by firms in India and the Philippines, AI presents a risk. It could take away many of those jobs and shift the associated profits to foreign firms…
In contrast, consider new projects. Current AI models are not anywhere close to being able to conceptualize a new idea, communicate the new vision, assemble and inspire the necessary talent, raise money and deal with the corporate politics — to name just a few important components of new projects. So AI cannot substitute for the essential creative forces of entrepreneurs.
That said, AI makes many new projects easier to pull off by aiding with the routine work along the way. Say you have a brilliant new idea for a fintech firm, but need help with the slide deck and marketing copy and all the email inquiries. AI will be of use to you.
So countries and regions that are good at executing new projects are the most likely to benefit from the AI revolution. Which countries might those be?
One possible candidate is China, which has successfully carried out a large number of infrastructure projects. But there is a tension between free-flowing commercial AI and the Chinese government’s policy of censorship. What if someone asks the AI some political questions that the regime is not so keen to see discussed? Exactly how much will the Chinese government allow or encourage decentralized access to quality AI models?
India is another possible winner, even though it is vulnerable in the area of back-office support. Indian infrastructure has improved by leaps and bounds in the last 10 years, a sign the nation now has greater ability to pull off new projects. The Indian Aadhaar program, which has done bio-scans of well over 1 billion Indians and helped them make and receive payments, was a major new project that largely succeeded. India has some censorship issues as well, although they are not as serious as China’s.
Saudi Arabia is planning some major projects, such as the ambitious desert city of Neom. Perhaps the Saudis will need yet further technological advances to pull off those plans, but at least they are trying to make some significant changes. They are possibly a big winner from AI advances.
Recommended, I consider other countries as well.
AOC Gets on the Anti-FDA Bandwagon
At least when it comes to suncreen. As long-time readers will know, I have been complaining about FDA over-regulation of sunscreen for a decade! Maybe now that AOC is on the case things will change.
AOC’s sunscreen video is pretty good. One point she doesn’t stress is that requiring Americans to use more oily, less natural-feeling sunscreen can cause less use and thus more skin cancer. Even more important is the general issue of reciprocity or polycentric authority:
My rule is very simple. I don’t think the FDA is better than the EMA so if any drug or device is approved in Europe it ought to be available for purchase in the United States with a label saying “Approved by the EMA. Not approved by the FDA.” (By the way, we do have reciprocity type agreements with Canada and New Zealand for food so this would not be unprecedented.)
US sunscreens are far behind the rest of the world and our regulations aren’t necessarily making our sunscreens better or safer — but it doesn’t have to be this way! pic.twitter.com/vaZXpZ2a7S
— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@RepAOC) August 11, 2023
Ken Rogoff on chess and AI
From an interview:
Rogoff, who is also the Maurits C. Boas Chair of International Economics at Harvard University, doesn’t see artificial intelligence as bad for chess. “It’s actually made it more interesting so far,” he says.
Having seen how fast AI evolved within the game, Rogoff predicts applications like ChatGPT will be unrecognizable in five years. Advancements will come “faster than you think,” but if the experience of chess is any indication, the technology’s evolution won’t be as “detrimental” as some may fear…
I don’t want to sound evangelical, because I don’t know which way it’s going to go. But, yes. If you look at the experience of chess faster than you think and for longer than you think but also not necessarily as detrimental as you might think. Humans have adjusted. And it’s been very good.
JULIE HYMAN: Well, can you elaborate on that a little bit? You said it’s made chess more interesting. How?
KENNETH ROGOFF: Well, first of all, people have thought a lot of positions were boring. That the computer shows, well, try me at this position, and it turns out to be just wellsprings of creativity positions, where the best player in the world, Bobby Fischer, I think would have maybe even given me a draw back in 1975. Now is the beginning of the game for many players, so this depth of learning. Players venture much more complicated and interesting positions because they have other ways to explore them.
So surprisingly, we thought it would lead to more draws, right? If you figured out better, you’re going to get more draws. Not at all. So here’s this simple compared to human intelligence game, which you would think you would solve out, and yet you find these layers of interest. I think we’ll see this in art and many, many things.
Here is the link, it references the longer chat with some economics of debt and inflation.
Friday assorted links
1. “With a database of 33 929 individual observations, the findings show that Spaniards who left the country to settle in the Spanish territories were positively self-selected. Additionally, differences are observed in the human capital of those who chose to settle in Mexico, who had a higher level of numeracy, than those who chose Peru.” Link here.
2. Jason Furman on why we didn’t have a recession.
4. More on reading ancient scrolls. From the great Casey Handmer.
5. Very bad markets in everything. And is there a neo-Nazi resurgence in southern Brazil? (FT).
Deregulating Oregon (from my email)
It is now legal to pump one’s own gas at gas stations in Oregon, making New Jersey the only US state where it’s not. (Article link.) The surprising part of the new Oregon law: The price must be identical for self-serve and attendant-pumped gas. Also, at least half the pumps must have an attendant. I’m no economist, but it does seem like the self-pump patrons will be subsidizing the “free” labor received by the others. I’m also no political scientist, but I wonder if this bit is intentional to dampen the possible success of self-serve gas. I’m also curious what the calculations on the part of station owners will be in terms of how much labor to employ. My estimate would be that if a $15/hr attendant takes about 4 minutes per service and each is $50, labor costs would be adding about 1% to the fuel price, but this would be much higher in places that are less busy and not working constantly, and lower in places that are busy enough to constantly have many overlapping cars being filled. There’s some sort of equilibrium balancing waiting times for attendants and gas prices that awaits…
That is from Raghuveer Parthasarathy.
On the negative correlation between price and restaurant quality
From my email, from an anonymous reader:
On your question of whether there’s a model for the apparent negative correlation between food quality and price:
It is often observed that food quality and the “atmosphere” of a restaurant appear to be negatively correlated. (As I’m sure Taleb points out somewhere, they are not actually negatively correlated, but only appear so because the restaurants that are low quality in both food and atmosphere do not survive.)
I think the apparent negative correlation between quality and atmosphere among surviving restaurants presents itself as a negative correlation between quality and price for two reasons:
1) There are far more people who go to a restaurant because it is familiar and/or convenient (“comfort market”) or fashionable/trendy (“mimetic market”) than people who actively seek out restaurants with good food (“gourmet market”). The demand curve is higher in the market for comfort/mimetic restaurant services (in which food quality does not matter above a certain baseline level of palatability) than in the market for gourmet restaurant services. While restaurants serving the gourmet market and restaurants serving the comfort/mimetic markets are substitutes, the cross-price elasticity of demand between them is probably quite low. When PF Chang’s raise their prices the customers go to Applebee’s, not to the high quality, family-owned Chinese place in the strip mall.
People who actively seek out good food are more likely to know how to cook good food themselves, providing a dimension of competition for restaurants in the gourmet market that restaurants in the comfort and mimetic markets do not have to deal with.
Within the gourmet market I would imagine that price and quality are positively correlated. If it really is the case that price and quality are negatively correlated even within the market of restaurants serving people who care about food quality, then I don’t know how to account for that or why anyone would ever go to the higher priced restaurant, unless purely for variety or for mimetic reasons, in which case those higher priced restaurants are not in the gourmet market but are in the mimetic market (since they would be paying extra for something other than pure food quality, even if the food is quite good – the restaurant is not entirely about the food).
The essential point is that since food quality and restaurant “atmosphere” appear to be negatively correlated, and since most will pay more for atmosphere (comfort, familiarity, fashion, etc) than for quality food, it also appears that food quality and price are negatively correlated.