Results for “400” 1128 found
Friday assorted links
1. Get feedback on your podcast (not to mention your date!) in real time.
2. “Rare” earths are suddenly not so rare in Wyoming (WSJ). “Never underestimate the elasticity of supply!”
3. Inside a prison in El Salvador. And The Telegraph on Bukele.
5. Political donations crowd out charitable donations.
7. Marius Schwartz podcast (with transcript) on the Robinson-Patman Act, which sadly is being resurrected by the FTC.
Tuesday assorted links
Sunday assorted links
1. The pessimistic view on Ethiopia.
2. Inside the NBA’s chess club.
3. Brian Goff on education and the cost disease.
4. Genes and depression and bad luck is endogenous.
5. TC on internet writing. And TC on Bill Laimbeer on passive-aggressive economists.
6. How should state and local governments respond to illegal retail cannabis?
7. Diaper spa for adults, and a licensing issue too.
8. The Karpathy review of Apple Vision Pro. I likely will try it once there is a small army of people who have figured out the ins and outs and who can serve as tutors, including for setting the thing up. One reason I am not “first in line” with this device is that it strikes me as a “technology of greater vividness” (a bit like some drugs? or downhill skiing?), and not so much a “technology to understand people and cultures more deeply.” I think the latter interests me more, and I also do better with the latter. But perhaps I am wrong! To be clear, I am not arguing that “technologies of greater vividness” are objectively or intrinsically worse, if anything more people seem to prefer them.
Wednesday assorted links
1. The Frick Museum will reopen with 14 (!) evening bars.
2. Sebastian Barry in conversation with Roy Foster.
3. On ideological gender disparities in Korea.
4. Those new service sector jobs, What is Intervenor Compensation?, and “robot wranglers” (WSJ).
5. Is Petro stifled in Colombia?
6. Further fresh Vitalik. Includes coverage of his childhood, more personal than about mechanism design.
7. Is there really a “National Hug an Economist Day”?
8. Other than this tweet, I know nothing about the new Catholic Institute of Technology.
Quick tour of Argentina’s fiscal deficit (from my email, anonymous author)
I won’t double indent, but this is not by me, though I agree with it:
“I agree with your read re Argentina’s history of fiscal stability. From this paper (unclear if the data is accurate), here is Argentina’s deficit from 1960 to 2016 or so:
[See Figure 3 here]
Notice 2003-2009 is the only time with a noticeable superavit (exports > imports, taxes > spending), which coincides with Kirchner. It happily coincided with booming soy prices and it was immediately followed by more public spending. Remember soy exports have their own special tax rate (retenciones + FX tax, ~double other exports). Here are soy prices (source):
[See Figure here]
Here is Carlos Pagni in 2009 covering the law that let the state spend as much as it pleased once again. This was only a few years after 2004, when the IMF had forced Argentina to pass Ley 25.917 constraining government spending and debt under GDP.
Also notice that the deficit continued after the hyperinflation of 1989-1990! Between the privatizations, Plan Bonex, and reduced social spending, Menem reduced inflation (and caused a recession for which he is resented to this day). Then Cavallo comes in with convertibilidad. This gets world bankers excited and the dollars start flowing back into Argentina but the fiscal deficit immediately resumes. That same Menem ran an ad campaign in 1999 partially based on infrastructure investments after his decade of deficit.
In other words, the Peronistas simply do not believe that too much spending leads to a crisis. They will always spend if allowed to. Argentina still lacks the institutions to prevent this.
Looking at the recent history of fiscal deficit, Milei can make two contributions:
Short-term: Cut spending before things explode. The Peronistas would’ve continued to print + spend, deepening the problems. Milei is already succeeding at this and will likely succeed while he remains in power. For example, he has cut some of the funding to the provinces, which will be forced to cut their spending. Some of them are already considering printing their own currency (paper bonds like the LECOP or Patacones from 2001).
Long-term: Prevent future spending. This is what the Libertarians promise: remove the people that spend us to the ground for good. We should measure “historical success” by this measure. This is why dollarization is attractive: it prevents the state from printing money to fund its deficit.
I have my hopes up but I don’t understand Argentinian institutions or history well enough to know if he can make progress on this. As a comparison, the Bank of England was founded in 1694 and became formally independent a few centuries later in 1997 (including an IMF intervention into fiscal spending as recent as 1976).”
What I’ve been reading
1. Hannah Ritchie, Not the End of the World: How We Can be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. An excellent book with sound conclusions, think of it as moderate Julian Simon-like optimism on environmental issues, but with left-coded rhetoric.
2. Colin Elliott, Pox Romana: The Plague that Shook the Roman World. Think of this as a sequel to Kyle Harper’s tract on Roman plagues and their political import, this look at the Antonine plague and its impact has both good history and good economics. It is also highly readable.
3. Carrie Sheffield, Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness. A highly effective and harrowing tale of a lifetime journey from abuse to Christianity: “Carrie attended 17 public schools and homeschool, all while performing classical music on the streets and passing out fire-and-insurance religious pamphlets — at times while child custody workers loomed.” The author is well known in finance, ex-LDS circles, public policy, and right-leaning media, and she has a Master’s from Harvard. This story isn’t over.
4. Charles Freeman,
5. Erin Accampo Hern, Explaining Successes in Africa: Things Don’t Always Fall Apart. I found this book highly readable and instructive, but I find it more convincing if you reverse the central conclusion. There is too much talk of the Seychelles and Mauritius, and is Gabon the big success story on the Continent? Population is 2.3 million, the country ranks 112th in the Human Development Index, and almost half the government budget is oil revenue. Still, this book “tells you how things actually are,” and that is more important than any objections one might lodge.
Recent and noteworthy is Peter Jackson, From Genghis Khan to Tamerlane: The Reawakening of Mongol Asia. You may recall that the Mongol empire at its peak was much larger than the Roman empire at its peak, but how many young men think about it every day?
Then there is Jian Chen’s Zhou Enlai: A Life, which seems like a major achievement. I’ve only had time to read small amounts of it…is it “too soon to tell”? I say no!
U.S.A. facts of the day
The R&D spending of Amazon is greater than the R&D spending of all companies and government in France. Alphabet beats Italy.
Pepsi’s R&D spending beats all sources in Nigeria.
Here is more from Ethan Mollick.
Is real estate in Roatan undervalued?
By a lot. I was briefly on the island, and also visited Próspera there (I thank my hosts for their time and efforts, and I believe Vitalia will be posting my session with them on-line, much of it covering life extension and crypto).
I have been to plenty of both Latin America and the Caribbean, and I was struck by how safe the island is. Most anything of significance is priced in dollars, and you can pay with dollars, even in small restaurants. The core language is English, although Spanish seems to be increasing rapidly, due to migration from the mainland, itself a good sign for Roatan. Population is about 100,000 on a small island, but I didn’t encounter any traffic problems. Electricity and water seemed to be reliable. The local seafood is of very high quality.
At the top end I found this home selling for over 3m. I was in Jonesville, an extremely charming small town right on the water with picture-perfect views. Here are some home and lot prices. Below 400k at the top end, something wonderfully placed for below 90k, and empty lots in the 70k range.
Much of the Caribbean I don’t find so attractive, as it can be too dry or scrubby, but Roatan is truly beautiful. The views from some parts of Próspera are among the best Caribbean views I have seen.
From conversation, I infer that better direct flight service and better facilities for private planes are holding back real estate prices in Roatan. Neither of those seem to be insurmountable problems. Maybe the Honduras label puts some people off?
For dining, by the way, eat the Garifuna offerings at Punta Gorda, such as Garifuna Living Foods.
Is the mortgage interest deduction a good idea?
I usually don’t like arguments like the one that follows, as purely short-run second best considerations tend to rub me the wrong way. Nonetheless I had never thought of it before, so I am happy to present it for our collective enlightenment:
Mortgage interest deductions and other homeownership subsidies are widely believed to be harmful because they redistribute resources from lower-income renters to higher-income homeowners. We argue that renters actually benefit from these policies in general equilibrium for two reasons. First, the rental supply curve is relatively inelastic, which means that rents fall when these policies reduce rental demand. Second, many renters spend most of their income on housing, and these renters gain substantially from rent decreases. We calibrate a quantitative model to match empirical evidence on these factors and show they are strong enough that subsidizing homeownership actually increases welfare.
That is from a newly published article by Shahar Rotberg and Joseph B. Steinberg. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Thursday assorted links
1. Jeffrey Paller 19 books to read on Africa.
3. Miss America supports nuclear power.
5. Why is the Dominican Republican incumbent popular?
6. Very good Douthat column on higher education (NYT). And: “Yet, through all her troubles, not a single right-leaning voice spoke up on Gay’s behalf. Indeed, during the past month, I didn’t talk to a single Republican on the Hill or around D.C. who had any kind of relationship with Gay. You might ask how Harvard’s president could have so few relationships.” A good piece.
Wednesday assorted links
1. Cam Peters does his Favorite Things New Zealand.
2. China accusation of the day, anal beads edition.
3. Progress on the Moderna mRNA cancer vaccine. This shows you just how bad and anti-scientific the anti-vaxx movement currently is.
4. First nuclear reactor since 2016 in the U.S. is now in operation.
My first Paraguayan restaurant, and a test of GPT-4
That was the menu from Tal Cual!, in Buenos Aires, the first Paraguayan food I have had. I showed GPT-4 that menu and asked why there were no posted prices on it. It responded that the restaurant wanted to economize on the cost of price changes, and afterwards mentioned a fixed price menu as an alternative explanation. I then added that I was in Argentina, and would that help improve the answer any? GPT responded that high inflation was likely the reason why the restaurant might want to economize on the cost of frequent price changes. Not bad.
A fun time was had by all.
Sunday assorted links
2. My New Statesman interview about the UK.
3. Electric air taxis for NYC?
4. Metaphor does something with MR’s assorted links, don’t ask me exactly what.
5. EA commentary from Brian Chau, his representation of my remarks is accurate.
Quantity theory of money, or fiscal theory of the price level?
The rebel-controlled Yemeni rial is made up entirely of a fixed supply of notes printed prior to 2016. In the chart below you can see it appreciating in value (the blue line) against the dollar, issued by the world's most powerful state. pic.twitter.com/vioXHmz2wQ
— John Paul Koning (@jp_koning) November 15, 2023
Tuesday assorted links
1. The economics team at Instacart.
2. Josh Hart invents a new basketball play?
4. Digitization has increased the demand for the printed books.
5. Pet psychics are entering the mainstream (WSJ). “People book sessions with animal communicators to unravel behavioral issues, to learn about preferences for end-of-life care, and when the time comes, to make sure their pets are enjoying the afterlife.”