Opening Borders

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Open borders hasn’t been getting a lot of good press recently but next week Bulgaria and Romania will join the Schengen Area for air and sea travel (road travel will likely follow). No more passports or visa necessary! The Schengen Area is a remarkable achievement for a part of the world once riven by violence and rivalry. Recall:

Created in 1995 with 10 countries, the Schengen Area has since grown to cover more than 1.5 million square miles, allowing almost 420 million people to move freely between 27 countries, currently. It’s important not to confuse the Schengen Area with the European Union—the former is a travel zone where citizens can cross country borders without a passport or visa, whereas the latter is an economic and political union of countries. The Schengen Area currently includes Austria, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

According to the Council of the European Union, “Each day around 3.5 million people cross internal borders for work or study or to visit families and friends, and almost 1.7 million people reside in one Schengen country while working in another.” Being a part of the zone saves citizens time and hassle from passport checks. It also helps travelers from 59 countries outside the EU, including the United States, as they can travel without visas for up to 90 days within the Schengen Area for tourism and business.

Unfortunately, the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS) means that US citizens will require a visa to travel to Europe next year–this is a step in the wrong direction. Nevertheless, the entry of Bulgaria and Romania to the Schengen Area is something to celebrate.

It would be great to see a Schengen Area for say the United States, Canada, Australia, the U.K and New Zealand (the US plus the CANZUK countries).

*Nuclear War: A Scenario*

by  Tyler Cowen in

By Annie Jacobsen, a very good book.  What would happen if a nuclear weapon actually were launched at the United States?  On the ground?  In the chain of command?  Organizationally and otherwise?  A good book, sadly still of relevance.  Full of drama throughout, and tactically astute.  Excerpt:

Ted Postol is blunt.  “Russian early-warning satellites don’t work accurately,” he says.  “As a country, Russia doesn’t have the technological know-how to build a system as good as we have in the United States.”  This means “their satellites can’t look straight down at the earth,” a technology known as look-down capability.  And as a result, Russia’s Tundra satellites “look sideways,” Postol warns, “which handicaps their ability to distinguish sunlight from, say, fire”

Notably troublesome is how Tundra sees clouds.

It was North Korea who started the whole thing, you can buy the book here.

Disparities in psychological traits and incomes

by  Tyler Cowen in

There are pronounced racial, ethnic, and gender gaps in income in the U.S. We investigate whether these correspond with differences in competitiveness, risk tolerance, and confidence relative to performance in a large, stratified sample of the U.S. prime-age population. We find substantial differences in all three traits across Black, Hispanic, and White males and females. These traits predict individual income. Competitiveness and risk tolerance help explain the White gender income gap. Competitiveness also affects the Black-White income gap between men. Confidence about one’s performance helps explain a substantial and significant portion of all five race-gender income gaps with White men.

That is from a new paper by Aurélie Dariel, John Ham, Nikos Nikiforakis, and Jan Stoop.  The number of data points is 2,463.  Here is one sentence from the paper:

The sizes of the effects are substantial: individuals above the median in terms of competitiveness and risk tolerance,
for instance, have incomes that are 21.2% and 15.7% higher than those below the median, respectively, when jointly estimated. Confidence in relative performance is also associated with income: individuals in the upper and lower third of the distribution (the upper third being overconfident and the lower third being underconfident) have incomes that are 23.5% and 16.7% lower than the middle third, who are better at evaluating their relative performance.

And this:

We find that controlling for confidence substantially and significantly reduces the unexplained income gaps between White men and all of our other five REG groups; the effects range from 7.2% of the differential (White women versus White men) to 18.7% (Hispanic men versus White men). Only controlling for competitiveness significantly reduces the unexplained income gap between White women and White men by 5.9%, but increases the unexplained income gap between Black men and White men by 5.1%. Only controlling for risk tolerance, on the other hand, does not significantly affect any of the income gaps, with the exception of a (marginally) significant reduction of 4.1% in the gap between White women and White men. Jointly controlling for the three traits significantly reduces the unexplained income gap between Black women and White men (by 15.2%), Hispanic women and White men (by 11.5%), and White women and White men (by 15.0%). However, these traits do not explain the gap between Black men and White men, as the overconfidence and competitiveness effects go in opposite directions.

All worthy of a ponder.  I did find this result of particular interest:

On average, Blacks and Hispanics are 9.7% more competitive than Whites.

You will note this is based on self-reports.  While self-reports often are more reliable than outsiders might think, are they so reliable for making comparisons across different groups in this manner?  And the variable “confidence in relative performance” — might that be a proxy for other, unobserved but also quite real factors?

Via a loyal MR reader, and I commend the researchers for their courage, even if I am not convinced by everything they have done.

San Francisco dining

by  Tyler Cowen in

Dwarkesh brought me to the very good Sizzling Pot King, 139 8th St, San Francisco, genuine Hunan food and yes I have been to Changsha.  Don’t walk there though, take an Uber or better yet a Waymo.  Dwarkesh was kind enough to call me one for the trip back to the hotel.  When I asked for jazz music, I was shocked to hear a very high quality Bill Evans trio cut, not some popular slop.

The Guam restaurant on Mission — Prubechu — is quite interesting and serves largely the indigenous Chamorro food.  It is rare that I have the chance to try an altogether new cuisine, in any case I would eat there again.

Tuesday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Autistic 27-year-old Canadian now allowed to end her life.  It’s time to end the Canadian suicide regime as it currently exists: “…the province [Alberta] operates a system where there is no appeal process and no means of reviewing a person’s MAID approval.”

2. Highlights from SF CWT listener meet-up event.

3. “More than 60 percent of Ohio’s driver’s license suspensions do not stem from bad driving; instead, they arise because the driver owes an unpaid debt.”

4. Bears take a ride on swan pedalo at Woburn Safari Park.

5. Economics round-up from Zvi.

6. Finding excessive sentencers in the judicial system.

7. On the Bach cello suites.

What I’ve been reading

by  Tyler Cowen

Christopher Phillips, Battle Ground: Ten Conflicts that Explain the New Middle East.  A good, “simple enough” introduction to the wars going on in Syria, Yemen, and other parts of the Middle East.  If you are worried you will hate, you can just skip the Palestine chapter.

Catherine Pakaluk, Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth.  About five percent of American women end up having five children or more — what do you learn by talking to them?  (“Which one should I give back?”)  The author herself has eight children.

Beth Linker, Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America.  For a long time I’ve been thinking there should be a good book on this topic, and now there is one.  Both fun and interesting.

Maxwell Stearns, Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing our Broken Democracy argues for proportional representation and accompanying reforms.  Putting aside whether this ever can happen, I am never quite sure how this is supposed to work when nuclear weapons use is such a live issue.

Ethan Mollick is the best and most thorough Twitter commentator on LLMs, he now has a forthcoming book Co-Intelligence.

Andrew Leigh, an Australian MP and also economist, has published The Shortest History of Economics, recommended by Claudia Goldin.

An RCT for income-sharing agreements

by  Tyler Cowen in

Is this the first one?

We conduct a survey-based experiment with 2,776 students at a non-profit university to analyze income insurance demand in education financing. We offered students a hypothetical choice: either a federal loan with income-driven repayment or an income-share agreement (ISA), with randomized framing of downside protections. Emphasizing income insurance increased ISA uptake by 43%. We observe that students are responsive to changes in contract terms and possible student loan cancellation, which is evidence of preference adjustment or adverse selection. Our results indicate that framing specific terms can increase demand for higher education insurance to potentially address risk for students with varying outcomes.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Sidhya Balakrishnan, Eric Bettinger, Michael S. Kofoed, Dubravka Ritter, Douglas A. Webber, Ege Aksu & Jonathan S. Hartley.

Netherlands fact of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

The country, which is a bit bigger than Maryland, not only accomplished this feat but also has become the world’s second largest exporter of agricultural products by value behind the United States. Perhaps even more significant in the face of a warming planet: It is among the largest exporters of agricultural and food technology. The Dutch have pioneered cell-cultured meat, vertical farming, seed technology and robotics in milking and harvesting — spearheading innovations that focus on decreased water usage as well as reduced carbon and methane emissions…

The country has nearly 24,000 acres — almost twice the size of Manhattan — of crops growing in greenhouses. These greenhouses, with less fertilizer and water, can grow in a single acre what would take 10 acres of traditional dirt farming to achieve. Dutch farms use only a half-gallon of water to grow about a pound of tomatoes, while the global average is more than 28 gallons.

Here is the full article, via S.  The article is interesting throughout.  However here is a more recent piece on the Dutch nitrogen revolt.

Teaching the Solow Model

by  Alex Tabarrok in

The Solow model is a foundational model for understanding economic growth. Yet it’s typically not taught to principles students because it’s considered too difficult. In Modern Principles, however, Tyler and I develop a super simple version of the model that is fun to teach and accessible to students of all levels. I’ll be talking about the Super Simple Solow model in a short webinar tomorrow (Tuesday March 26) at 1pm est. Register here.

My review of Suno, AI-generated music

by  Tyler Cowen in

Try it here, click on the right on the mention of making full, two-minute songs and use the Explore tab.  To me it is remarkable the resulting AI-generated music is as good as it is.  But it still isn’t anything I would listen to, other than out of curiosity.  It is best at edm, standardized genres such as routine heavy metal, and certain ethnic musics, especially if “the affect” can be created by methods of layering.  Its weakness is an ability to generate the simple, memorable melody, a’la Sir Paul or the other Paul namely Paul Simon.  For my taste there is “not enough music in the music.”  Suno cannot yet create the ineffable something, which is what I listen to music for.

That said, it is not worse than what most people listen to.  It remains to be seen at what pace progress will be made, or whether current approaches, extrapolated to allow for further improvement, can get us to real music, rather than stuff that sounds like music.

*Who’s Afraid of Gender?*

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the title of the new Judith Butler book, focusing mostly on trans issues.  To be clear, on most practical issues concerning trans, I side with the social conservatives.  For instance, I don’t think trans women have a right to compete in women’s weightlifting contests.  And I have not been happy with how many schools have been teaching about trans issues, due to social contagion effects that are larger than I would have expected.   And yet — when it comes to the grounds of theory I think Butler is more right than wrong.  This is a very good book, and in some critical ways a very libertarian book (again to be clear I think Butler is wrong about most other things).  But on this issue — why so insist on such a rigid male-female set of binary categories?  Why be so afraid of alternative, more flexible approaches?  Why restrict our conceptual freedoms and ultimately our life practical freedoms in such a manner?  Especially when a minority of people — admittedly a small minority but also much larger than the mere category of “trans” — will suffer greatly from such attitudes and such practices?

So I am happy to recommend this book, noting that not everyone will like it, to say the least.  My main criticism is that Butler spends too much time with what I consider to be weaker views (e.g., the Pope), and not enough time with the more difficult problems concerning real and potential harms to children.  Her neglect of the latter verges on the intellectually criminally negligent.  And yet the key is to see that it is still a good and interesting book.