My favorite things Australian
1. Movies: Lots to choose from here, I’ll opt for Nicholas Roeg’s dreamy-erotic Walkabout (they actually let us gaze upon the naked Jenny Agutter in a 1977 NJ high school showing), or Jocelyn Moorhouse’s brilliant Proof.
2. Novel: Neither Peter Carey nor Patrick White clicks with me. How about David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life?
3. Book about: I remain a fan of Robert Hughes’s The Fatal Shore.
4. Music: Sorry mates, I’ve got to call this one a clunker. My desperation pick is Paul Kelly, here is a broader list to choose from. No need to write me about Crowded House or the other mostly mediocre indie bands from Down Under. If I can opt for a whole genre, my pick is didgeridoo music.
5. Painter: Fred Williams, here is one image, here are many more, here is my favorite. Aboriginal art is in the running as well.
6. Sculptor: Ron Mueck, yes he did the giant man sitting in the Hirshhorn Museum.
7. Disgusting culinary anecdote: I am told that in South Australia they take meat pies, turn them upside down, and add mushy peas and then ketchup. They call it a floater.
The Complete Works of David Ricardo
They are now published by Liberty Fund, that is the Sraffa edition, order them here, all for a mere $106. Or download here. Here is a searchable on-line edition of his Principles. I’ve loved Ricardo since I first read him; no economist more tightly mixed superb common sense and counterintuitive absurdities (theory of rent and implicit notion of opportunity cost), but there is more of the former. He is an excellent writer as well, and a classical liberal thinker of importance.
The used book market can boost the demand for new books
Professors Ghose, Smith and Telang chose a random sample of books in print and studied how often used copies were available on Amazon. In their sample, they found, on average, more than 22 competitive offers to sell used books, with a striking 241 competitive offers for used best sellers. The prices of the secondhand books were substantially cheaper than the new, but of course the quality of the used books (in terms of wear and tear) varied considerably.
According to the researchers’ calculations, Amazon earns, on average, $5.29 for a new book and about $2.94 on a used book. If each used sale displaced one new sale, this would be a less profitable proposition for Amazon.
But Mr. Bezos is not foolish. Used books, the economists found, are not strong substitutes for new books. An increase of 10 percent in new book prices would raise used sales by less than 1 percent. In economics jargon, the cross-price elasticity of demand is small.
One plausible explanation of this finding is that there are two distinct types of buyers: some purchase only new books, while others are quite happy to buy used books. As a result, the used market does not have a big impact in terms of lost sales in the new market.
Moreover, the presence of lower-priced books on the Amazon Web site, Mr. Bezos has noted, may lead customers to "visit our site more frequently, which in turn leads to higher sales of new books." The data appear to support Mr. Bezos on this point.
Applying the authors’ estimate of the displaced sales effect to Amazon’s sales, it appears that only about 16 percent of the used book sales directly cannibalized new book sales, suggesting that Amazon’s used-book market added $63.2 million to its profits.
Furthermore, consumers greatly benefit from this market: the study’s authors estimate that consumers gain about $67.6 million. Adding in Amazon’s profits and subtracting out the $45.3 million of losses to authors and publishers leaves a net gain of $85.5 million.
DÃa de los Muertos
I bolted upright in my bed and screamed. I’d had a nightmare. I suspect this had something to do with the fact that earlier in the day I´d seen 25,000 dead people.
I was visiting Lima´s Church of San Francisco. 
Underneath the church is a graveyard of catacombs. As you can see, it looks like the killing fields of Cambodia. Deep "wells" contains thousands of skulls and femurs (most of the other bones and flesh have dissolved in the lime that was added to prevent disease.) I snuck away from the tour group and found another well in which the skulls had been hung on the wall in a spiral of death. Apparently archaeologists in the 1950s arranged the bones, the bodies were originally tossed in more or less randomly.
During parts of the tour you could reach out and touch the bones (I did not). I am not religious but opening the graveyard in this way seems to me to be at the very least disrespectful and perhaps sacrilegious. I can hear my friend Bryan Caplan laughing at me, "but they are dead!" But even if I were to accept this argument I am shocked that the Franciscans allow this sort of thing.
By the way, ex-President Alberto Fujimori is rumored to have escaped through these catacombs which originally extended beneath all the main buildings surrounding the central plaza of Lima (not all have been uncovered and some have been blocked off for reasons of security).
Markets in everything: Only the lonely
Talking to yourself ? Â Well, never again! And if once again someone pities you for the fact that you have been living on your own for many years, you can always say: "Why? I’ve got someone!"
The single-wallpaper shows attractive, original-sized individuals, in different situations at home. It’s a photographic wallpaper, which is easily removable and  very practical!  It can always be reused when moving house.
You can look at the product here. Here is the home page. Thanks to Courtney Knapp for the pointer.
The “Failed States” index
I am surprised to see Ivory Coast as the very worst, my pick, the "Democratic" Republic of the Congo only manages to take second place. And Guatemala, for all its problems, should not be five places "more failed" than Lebanon. Still this is an interesting data source, click the colored box links at the top of the main page to see maps and the like.
You know you are a nerd when…
you look at an amazing vista of mountain peaks, crags, and valleys and you say to yourself "Wow, that looks just like fractal geometry!"
English words with different meanings in Singlish
Here is a list. My favorite?
- choose – browse – "Choose, choose, choose, but never buy, is it?"
Here is a fuller description of Singlish. I’ve had some people speak Singlish for me, and I didn’t understand a word of it, nor would I have realized it had any relation to English-as-I-know-it.
Economic podcasts
You knew it was only a matter of time, here they are. The blog title is www.radioeconomics.com. This is not my forte — I can read much faster than I can listen — but you can hear James Hamilton, John Palmer, Skip Sauer, and I am sure there will be more to come. Thanks to Ben Muse for the pointer.
Risky business
More evidence for the existence of a rational – if unpleasant – universe. Paul Gertler, Manisha Shah and Stef Bertozzi show in the Journal of Political Economy that Mexican prostitutes sometimes accept a premium (about 25 percent) not to use condoms. This paper uses panel data and is probably a better estimate than some previous ones.
The real punchline, though, is that they’ve worked out the implied value to these women of a year of healthy life: $15,000 – $50,000, which is (relative to income) extremely close to previous estimates from other dangerous jobs. If you want to increase condom use, education for prostitutes seems to have reached diminishing returns – instead, we need to reach the tougher goals of improving job opportunities for Mexican women, or persuading men that risky sex is not worth paying for.
Incidentally, I’ve been looking into this story for my next book. It is surprising (perhaps I should not be surprised) to discover how much you can learn from sex-tourism websites. Between the inevitable ponography, some of the advice to tourists is thoughtful and erudite, like a good restaurant review. Just a shame about the subject matter.
This is the last post of my stint on Marginal Revolution. Thanks very much to Tyler and Alex for the opportunity. It’s not as easy as they make it look.
Pizarro slept here
Last night I stayed in the Hotel Libertador whose main claim to fame is that it is built on Incan foundations and parts of the building date to the 16th century when it was occupied for a time by Pizarro. The claim is plausible as he certainly pillaged the temple next door.
The other contender for Cusco´s finest hotel is the more expensive Hotel Monasterio where you can get what I call a "Michael Jackson" room, a sealed room which is flooded with oxygen to help combat altitude sickness.
The Hotel Los Andes where I stayed most of the time was excellent.
How to improve taxi markets
Singapore has solved this problem, with a little assistance from satellite technology. Imagine Walrasian taxi markets. The taxi driver receives a satellite message on his little thingie, specifying where the customer wishes to be picked up and where he wishes to go. The cabbie, if interested, then enters a bid for how much he will charge. The customer is matched with the cabbie who enters the lowest bid. Amazing, no? And if it is raining, you have the ability to pay more to actually get a taxi.
This is for real (i.e., I saw it twice), but alas I cannot find anything through Google. It is called CanBid, at least on the little machine thingies in the cabs. I’ve opened up comments in case you know more than I do.
They also price the roads, I might add, using electronic sensors. Privacy is no issue, since you don’t have any privacy here anyway.
You should consider this place for your next vacation. I came for work, but I have been consistently charmed and delighted.
Is the new NBA age limit a good idea?
Here are the data. The conclusions?
…college education does not appear to diminish the probability of a player getting in trouble with the law. In fact, some of the most notorious NBA players are those with college degrees, while many others have three years of a college education…actually, the data suggests that premiere high school seniors might be better off skipping college altogether, perhaps in order to avoid the disturbing external influences that afflict many college basketball programs…
No matter the interpretation, it doesn’t appear that the recent decision by the NBA and NBPA to raise the age of NBA draft eligibility from 18 to 19 (or one year out of high school) will improve the overall law-abidingness of NBA players. If anything, actually, this data suggests that it might have the opposite effect.
Second, players appear more likely to get in trouble with the law towards the middle and end of their careers than at the start. This could be interpreted in a number of ways. For instance, it might suggest that the “pressures of being an NBA player” are more manageable at the start of one’s career, perhaps because the player is less autonomous and more reliant on the team. This interpretation is bolstered by the financial stake of NBA teams in facilitating the transition of their players from life as an amateur to life as a pro. Second, and related to the preceding interpretation, new NBA players are often surrounded by veterans in their late 20s and 30s who can monitor them and serve as de facto “big brothers.” The presence of these veteran players is obviously something distinct from the college experience, where the “veterans” are often just 20 or 21-years old, and are thus not likely to be as well-equipped in steering their 18 and 19-year teammates away from nefarious influences. Alternatively, the data may suggest that as the player accumulates wealth and notoriety, he is more likely to succumb to these “pressures.”
Thanks to Todd Zywicki for the pointer. Here is my earlier post on age limits in sports.
Heard on the train
The kidnappers in Colombia are so advanced they check your credit report and other information to compute the optimal ransom. Tyler wrote earlier on the economics of Mexican kidnapping.
Thanks to Christina for the tip.
Machu Picchu
Words fail. Pictures fail. Some things you just have to experience.
That is my main message (and when a blogger says words fail that means something!). Conditional on certain failure I will try to say more next week when I have collected my thoughts.