Median voter theorem, again

by  Tyler Cowen in

Sweden looks set to miss its legislated climate targets, the latest sign of how combating global warming is slipping down the policy agenda.

The nation — the first globally to set a milestone target for net zero emissions — won’t reach that goal for 2045 with current measures, according to the center-right government’s 2024 budget submitted on Wednesday. It cited the tough economic climate along with a plunging krona, expecting to also fall short on other targets for protecting the environment.

Here is more from Bloomberg.  And from the BBC:

Rishi Sunak is considering weakening some of the government’s key green commitments in a major policy shift.

It could include delaying a ban on the sales of new petrol and diesel cars and phasing out gas boilers, multiple sources have told the BBC.

I do hope the median voter ends up happy with these ones…

The British ban on bully dogs

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:

The decision offers some important lessons about regulation. First, sometimes an outright ban is better than charging owners or users a fee, or what economists call Pigou taxes. Under some economic theories, bans should be exceedingly rare. Instead, the government should charge a high fee for the right to own or use something. In this case, people who really want to keep their XL bully dogs will just pay more for a license.

XL bully dogs are different. They are symbols of fear and aggression, and their muscular body and fierce countenance reflects this, as does their very name. They are especially popular with criminal gangs.

There is value in getting rid of the symbol altogether. An outright ban of XL bully dogs probably makes people feel more safe than a high tax that makes the dogs rare but not illegal. That extra feeling of security might be partly irrational, but it still matters for how people process their daily stress.

A ban is also easier to enforce than a tax. If the dogs are banned, it is difficult to take one around in public without being spotted. Tax evasion, in contrast, is quite common, and tax laws can be difficult to enforce. The British government may be unwilling to throw people in jail for their unwillingness to pay their XL bully dog tax. Nor is it easy for the government to determine which are the responsible owners of XL bully dogs and which are irresponsible.

The question, then, is how to value owner demand for XL bully dogs.

To put my own cards on the table: I am frankly suspicious of anyone who wants to own a bully dog. Limiting preferences for such dogs now would help limit the spread of the XL bully dog itself, which has been in the UK only since about 2014 or 2015. Over time the dogs could become more established with more clubs of dog owners, more specialized trainers, and in general more support services. By banning the dogs now, the government might stop a wider preference for such dogs from developing. A ban would also help limit long-term frustration if, as I suspect, the decision is reached that XL bully dogs cannot be allowed to spread without limit.

The low or black market capitalization of many bully dog owners is another reason why strict liability here may not work so well.

As a side note, I don’t think the United States should follow the same policy, as I note later in the piece.  One argument (which I did not get to) is that the more guns you have (for better or worse), the less you have to worry about your dog policies.

Think about it.

I thank Sam Bowman for the initial pointer to this issue.

What Explains Educational Polarization Among White Voters?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Over the past 40 years of American politics, college-educated white voters have defected from the Republican Party, while the white working class has become a reliable source of Republican support. I study the issue basis of this realignment. To do so,
I generate over-time estimates of public opinion on four broad issue domains from 1984 to 2020 and develop a theoretical framework to understand how issue attitudes translate into electoral coalitions. Using this framework, I find that both economic and cultural issues have contributed to the observed realignment. College-educated white voters have become increasingly liberal on economic issues since the mid-2000s; college educated voters now express more liberal views than working class voters on every issue domain. Over the same time period, cultural issues have become more important for the voting decisions of the working class. The increasing weight placed on non-economic issues means that the conservative cultural attitudes of white working class voters translate to Republican support at a higher rate than in the past. Together, these findings suggest a nuanced role for economic and cultural issues in structuring political coalitions. Educational realignment has deep roots across issue domains, suggesting that the new coalitions are likely to be stable into the foreseeable future.

That is a new paper by William Marble, from someone on Twitter.  That is in my view not really good news.

Tuesday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Can a turbo 3.5 GPT model play chess at around 1800?  And here it beats Stockfish 4 (not the strongest Stockfish, to be clear).  Not a perfect game, but a) it won, and b) every move it made was legal and coherent.  In other words, this version of GPT is teaching itself chess.  And replicated by Nabeel.  Too many people focus on “GPT as search and query engine” only, not realizing we have in essence invented a new kind of computer.

2. Working time lost to strikes; that was then, this is now.

3. Tribute to Victor Fuchs.

4. Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown, now out in the U.S.  Here is my earlier CWT with her.

5. Will OpenAI launch multimodal before Google?  (People, our very brief “AI winter” is over now!)

6. South Korea is still seriously considering nuclear weapons.

7. Amazon limits authors to self-publishing no more than three books a day.

Zero-Sum Thinking and the Roots of U.S. Political Divides

by  Tyler Cowen in

We investigate the origins and implications of zero-sum thinking – the belief that gains for one individual or group tend to come at the cost of others. Using a new survey of a representative sample of 20,400 US residents, we measure zero-sum thinking, political preferences, policy views, and a rich array of ancestral information spanning four generations. We find that a more zero-sum mindset is strongly associated with more support for government redistribution, race- and gender-based affirmative action, and more restrictive immigration policies. Furthermore, zero-sum thinking can be traced back to the experiences of both the individual and their ancestors, encompassing factors such as the degree of intergenerational upward mobility they experienced, whether they immigrated to the United States or lived in a location with more immigrants, and whether they were enslaved or lived in a location with more enslavement.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Sahil Chinoy, Nathan Nunn, Sandra Sequeira, and Stefanie Stantcheva.

How AI will change student evaluation

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:

The main point is that grades will come to mean something different. Traditionally, at least in theory, grades have been a measure of how well a student understands the material. If they got an A in US history, presumably they could identify many of the founders. In the future, an A will mark a kind of conscientiousness: It will mean that, at the very least, they applied their AI consistently to the questions at hand. Whether that counts as “cheating” or “allowed” will depend on the policies of the relevant educational institution, but anti-AI software is not reliable and anti-AI rules cannot be enforced very readily.

“Applied their AI consistently” might sound unimpressive as a certification. But I have known many students over the years who don’t meet even that standard. They may neglect to hand in homework or fail to monitor due dates. They may or may not know the relevant material — often they do not — and it is not at all clear to me that current AI technology will automatically enable them to get good grades.

In other words, an academic system replete with AI is still is testing for something, even if it is much less glorious than what we might have hoped for. Over time grades will come to indicate not so much knowledge of the material as a student’s ability to be organized and prepared.

The remainder of the column considers other possible changes, including greater reliance on oral exams and work done in class.

Is this about the poll or about the people? (model this)

by  Tyler Cowen in

EU May Ban Payments for Milk, Sperm and Blood

by  Alex Tabarrok in

BrusselsSignal: The European Parliament has approved a draft regulation banning payments for breast milk, sperm, blood and other “substances of human origin” (SoHO).

Billed as an attempt to increase safety across the bloc, the ban allegedly aims to ensure that those who are financially disadvantaged within the bloc are not subject to undue pressure to donate their cells and bodily fluids.

Hmmm. Why not ban the sale of labor to protect financially disadvantaged labor donors from undue pressure? Indeed, why not require that dangerous jobs like mining pay low wages so we can be sure that no one is induced to do these jobs by financial pressure?

More prosaically, the European Union falls short of producing all the blood plasma it needs to meet its demand for life-saving medicine. Consequently, the European Union depends on imports—primarily from compensated donors in the United States—to address its plasma deficit. Should the proposed EU legislation be enacted, the deficit is likely to get worse because Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, currently permit financial compensation. Indeed the U.S. and these EU countries together account for 90% of the global plasma supply. A ban on paid donations within the EU will thus decrease the quantity of plasma supplied from Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic and force the EU to rely even more on imports from the US.

The US is also the world’s biggest exporter of human sperm because US sperm donors can be compensated and remain anonymous (depending on the state). US donors are also carefully screened for quality, in part due to US regulations and in part due to market demand for information about the donors. Denmark is also a major exporter of sperm, in part because it, too, allows financial incentives to donors. Reduced donations from Denmark will make the European Union increasingly dependent on U.S. sperm supplies. Indeed, after Canada banned paid sperm donors in 2004, the supply of Canadian donors plummeted to just 35 (!) and US sperm exports to Canada increased. Unintended consequences, eh?

Creating EU wide standards for testing of blood, sperm and breast milk to allow greater flows across borders is a good idea. Shortages of baby formula in the US, for example, led to a valuable increase in breast milk donations and sales but it would probably be better if more breast milk donations went through a qualified milk bank rather than through Facebook (and the same is also true for sperm banks and sperm donations). But there is no call for banning paid donation.

Paying donors of blood, sperm and breast milk is an ethical way to increase the quantity supplied and it can be done while ensuring that the donations are high-quality and safe.

Does an AI Pause make sense?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Should we lobby governments to impose a moratorium on AI research? Since we don’t enforce pauses on most new technologies, I hope the reader will grant that the burden of proof is on those who advocate for such a moratorium. We should only advocate for such heavy-handed government action if it’s clear that the benefits of doing so would significantly outweigh the costs.[1] In this essay, I’ll argue an AI pause would increase the risk of catastrophically bad outcomes, in at least three different ways:

  1. Reducing the quality of AI alignment research by forcing researchers to exclusively test ideas on models like GPT-4 or weaker.
  2. Increasing the chance of a “fast takeoff” in which one or a handful of AIs rapidly and discontinuously become more capable, concentrating immense power in their hands.
  3. Pushing capabilities research underground, and to countries with looser regulations and safety requirements.

That is from Nora Belrose, here is much more.  Via N.

Who in America has mental health problems?

by  Tyler Cowen in

There is a new EJPH paper on these questions by Junxiu Liu, et.al.  Let’s start with some geography:

The prevalence of symptoms varied significantly across states, ranging from 27.9% (95% CI = 23.8%, 32.0%) in Florida to 46.4% (95% CI = 41.9%, 50.9%) in New Hampshire…

How much of that is a sunshine effect?  The full ranking of states supposedly is given in their Appendix A, but I can’t find that on-line.  If you can, please let us know.

Furthermore, when it comes to your parents — income good, education bad!  Graduate education yikes:

Youths with parents with higher education had more mental health symptoms; the prevalence of mental health symptom was 37.4% (95% CI = 36.3%, 38.5%) among youths whose parents had graduate degrees compared with 30.3% (95% CI = 23.8%, 36.8%) among those whose parents had less than a high school–level education. By contrast, youths from households with the highest income level (≥ $200 000) had a lower prevalence of mental health symptoms at 30.7% (95% CI = 29.1%, 32.3%) than did those from households with the lowest income level (< $25 000) at 37.3% (95% CI = 34.8%, 39.8%).

We’re into uh-oh territory here.  As for ethnic groups, mental health problems measure as worst for whites and also for an assorted group known as “other.”

Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.

Claims about food allergies

by  Tyler Cowen in

I find it is very difficult to trust written material on this topic, nonetheless here is a hypothesis I had not heard before:

So why have our immune systems suddenly gone haywire? One theory notes that we (mostly) eradicated hookworms by the 1980s in the United States. And roundworms. And tapeworms. All the classic parasites are mostly kaput. Without those actual threats, our immune system downshifts to tackle the biggest possible threat on the horizon. Which, these days, might be cashew butter or Camembert.

“It’s looking for stuff to do and it’s staying busy,” Warren said. “But it’s busy doing stupid stuff like reacting to walnuts and birch pollen.”

Some support for this theory comes from anecdotes offered by experts who infected themselves with hookworms to distract their overactive immune systems. While this method achieved some success in curbing stubborn allergies and other conditions, it seems unlikely we’ll see a massive experiment anytime soon that randomly infects healthy Americans with hookworms. Still, this so-called hygiene hypothesis helps explain why allergies may be on the march: Back when they were more widespread, hookworms and their friends may actually have reined in our immune systems’ most aggressive tendencies.

Here is more from Andrew Van Dam.

Sunday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. “Mobility indicators measuring voluntary decisions to socially distance, comprising measures of visitors/visits to recreational locations, and mobility proxy measuring duration of hours away from home show that a lower prevalence of long-term orientation traits explains persistent resistance to social distancing.”  Link here, speculative.

2. Neanderthal genes and Covid risk? (WSJ)

3. “Masked ‘Boot Girls’ Are Freeing Booted Cars All Over Atlanta.”

4. Victor Fuchs has passed away.

5. Why it took the FDA so long to review the disputed cold remedy (NYT).  And flying taxi executive to head the FAA.

6. “Japan’s Productivity Ranks Lowest Among G7 Nations for 50 Straight Years.”  Why hasn’t YIMBY done more to fix that?