Results for “solve for equilibrium” 136 found
I am still unsure how to title this post
Here is the punchline:
“The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA seeks applications for an Assistant Adjunct Professor on a without salary basis. Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position.”
At first I was pondering “These wages are not sticky downwards,” and then “These wages are sticky downwards.” Or how about “Tax them anyway”? “Solve for the ZMP equilibrium”?
“One of the few jobs where your payments are inflation linked!“?
What else? Here is the ad, here are some possible explanations, I am not sure if those make it better or worse.
I thank several loyal MR readers for the pointer.
Thursday assorted links
Sunday assorted links
1. 52 things Yuri Khodjamirian learned in 2021.
2. Only one in six Americans are boosted. By one estimate, noting that the CDC is probably undercounting boosters and overcounting actual vaccinated cases.
3. Indian war of dogs vs. monkeys. Solve for the equilibrium.
4. David Wallace-Wells with Trevor Bedford on Omicron severity.
5. Socotra.
Monday assorted links
1. Why are crypto prices so volatile? (Diana Joy Xiuyao Yang on the job market from UC Irvine, note that crypto is not her main paper).
2. Dissecting economic growth in Uruguay (by Natasha Che).
3. Does disdain for women increase the pay gap? (Elizabeth Malony, job market paper from UCI).
4. Licensed to flesh out the James Bond world but without 007. Meh. What is next?: “Q equips Spiderman vs. Iron Man”?
5. Different stuff in the bill by the way composting is infrastructure.
Tuesday assorted links
1. Bye-bye white women Chicago docents. Solve for the equilibrium.
2. Bitcoin bodice rippers (MIE).
3. The world that was 1970 (Edison Lighthouse, short music video).
4. Sanity about Instagram (NYT). “Of the better studies [three separate links there] that have found a negative correlation between social media use and adolescent mental health, most have found extremely small effects — so small as to be trivial and dwarfed by other contributors to adolescent mental health. Complicating matters further is that in the Facebook surveys, twice as many respondents reported that Instagram alleviated suicidal thinking than said it worsened it; three times as many said it made them feel less anxious than said it made them feel more so; and nearly five times as many reported that Instagram made them less sad than that it made them sadder.”
5. “We examine how the net worth of billionaires relates to their looks, as rated by 16 people of different gender and ethnicity. Surprisingly, their financial assets are unrelated to their beauty; nor are they related to their educational attainment. As a group, however, billionaires are both more educated and better-looking than average for their age.” Paper here.
Malaysia is phasing out Sinovac
Malaysia’s Ministry of Health said yesterday that the country will stop administering the COVID-19 vaccine produced by China’s Sinovac Biotech once its current supplies run out, amid mounting evidence that the vaccines have limited efficacy against the Delta variant that is currently ravaging Southeast Asia.
They will switch mainly to Pfizer. Thailand also will not be relying on Sinovac, and Turkey and UAE are moving in similar directions. Here is the article, via Rich D.
I have a simple question, namely how to solve for the Chinese equilibrium. Are they too supposed to switch away from Chinese vaccines to the Western vaccines? Could the government stand that loss of face?
Seriously people, how is this one supposed to develop? Inquiring minds wish to know.
Facts and uncertainties about ear wax
Our attitude to ear wax is in some ways surprising. A review of impacted ear wax estimates that 2.3 million people a year in the United Kingdom suffer problems with wax needing treatment, with some 4 million ears being syringed annually.2 This makes it possibly the the most common therapeutic procedure carried out on any part of the body. Symptoms of excessive wax or impaction, especially in the elderly, include not only hearing loss but tinnitus, dizziness, infections, social withdrawal, poor work function and mild paranoia. Other problems include general disorientation and loss of an aural sense of direction. With unilateral wax, sounds can appear to be coming from the wrong side, leading to accidents as a driver or especially as a pedestrian. Inappropriate self-treatment (or even treatment by health professionals) can cause perforated eardrums and in very rare cases cochlear damage, leading to nystagmus and sensorineural deafness. In spite of this catalogue of harms, the clinical profile and management of excessive wax are poorly understood. The evidence base is poor and inconsistent, leading to few strong recommendations, even relating to the most commonly used treatments.
Low esteem for ear wax is surprising in other ways too. As a substance, it is unique in the human and mammalian body. This is due to its position in our sole anatomical cul-de-sac. Everywhere else on our body surface, dead and redundant skin cells fall off or are scrubbed away when we wash. In the ear canal – which points forwards and downwards and might otherwise turn into a dermatological garbage dump – ear wax binds these together, along with other assorted detritus that may have entered from the world outside. It is then moved up to the exit by jaw movements and as a result of the skin of the canal slowly moving outwards like an escalator. Wax also prevents multiplication of micro-organisms and infection. It is as essential as sweat and tears, although perhaps not quite as vital as blood. Wax is also fascinating in its own right.
Imagine an ear wax post that is not solely about Q-tips! (Have you ever wondered why they have to be so dangerous? Can’t you just put them in a little way? Or is there some indivisibility here? I have never understood the anguished warnings here. If you are not using Q-tips at all, you only have to put them in a little way to pull out a lot of earwax, right? Solve for the equilibrium!)
Here is more by John Launer, about ear wax throughout, via Michelle Dawson.
Thursday assorted links
1. Do mongooses sit behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance?
2. “…despite the socially progressive and egalitarian outlook traditionally associated with liberalism, the most liberal Democrats actually expressed the greatest dehumanization of Republicans.” And how about this clincher: “…and demonstrates the need to develop more constructive outlets for social identity maintenance.”
4. Solve for the fungi equilibrium?
5. Please let’s not regulate private space tourism.
6. Good piece on why the Benin bronzes should be returned (NYT).
Monday assorted links
1. What do Finns think of Covid restrictions?
2. New York City’s bird paramedics (New York magazine). And how the health care DARPA is coming along.
3. “American said that alcohol would continue to be served in first class and business class…” (NYT)
4. Solve for the equilibrium: “Any doofus can be a cybercriminal now,” said Sergei A. Pavlovich, a former hacker who served 10 years in prison in his native Belarus for cybercrimes. “The intellectual barrier to entry has gotten extremely low.” (NYT)
5. Danish spying markets in everything?
6. Observations on gerrymandering.
7. No wonder we are doing so well: “The number of Master’s and Doctoral degree holders more than doubled (in the US) from 2000 to 2018.”
Friday assorted links
2. A funny kind of Taiwanese marriage arbitrage.
3. Solve for the lovely biscuit equilibrium.
4. Oxford malaria vaccine looking good in (small) Burkina Faso trial.
5. Ranked-choice voting for the New York mayor (NYT).
6. Greece reopens to American tourists.
7. EU proposing to regulate the use of Bayesian estimation. What’s the chance of that actually happening?
Cybercrime and Punishment
Ye Hong and William Neilson have solved for the equilibrium:
This paper models cybercrime by adding an active victim to the seminal Becker model of crime. The victim invests in security that may protect her from a cybercrime and, if the cybercrime is thwarted, generate evidence that can be used for prosecution. Successful crimes leave insufficient evidence for apprehension and conviction and, thus, cannot be punished. Results show that increased penalties for cybercriminals lead them to exert more effort and make cybercrimes more likely to succeed. Above a threshold they also lead victims to invest less in security. It may be impossible to deter cybercriminals by punishing them. Deterrence is possible, but not necessarily optimal, through punishing victims, such as data controllers or processors that fail to protect their networks.
Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Sunday assorted links
1. Interview with me in Korean, on the Biden administration and also Chinese-American relations, among other matters.
3. “Seeing this kind of censorship leak into the United States is why Zhou says he supports the Trump administration’s push to ban WeChat.” Solve for the international equilibrium.
4. The 1861 storming of electoral certification (NYT).
5. “However, IMPORTANTLY, of those who received the AstraZeneca vaccine, beyond 10 days after receiving the vaccine, not a single person was hospitalized. By this measure, we would call the AZ vaccine 100 percent effective.” Link here.
6. Uh-oh.
Sunday assorted links
2. Ross Douthat on why so many people believe in election conspiracy theories (NYT).
3. C4 rice is finally making progress. That could be a big deal.
4. Gene editing is showing progress against sickle cell anemia (WSJ). And more here. And gene editing for Mendelian disease.
5. Peter Thiel also seems to be saying that the Great Stagnation is over. And Japanese space probe lands with asteroid rocks in Australian outback.
6. NYT obituary for Walter Williams.
7. The guy who bought Green Mountain College in Vermont. And what he will do with it.
8. Sweden truly abandons its prior approach to the pandemic (WSJ). And seven-day moving average Covid deaths for America just passed their April peak (“where are the deaths?” I used to hear…or “you can always test more and find more cases…”)
9. They solved for the equilibrium: Virginia GOP picks convention over primary to nominate gubernatorial candidate. WWGJS?
10. Hoover is hiring junior fellows.
When there are many links, it is because a lot is happening!
Does Demand for New Currencies Increase in a Recession?
Every time there is a recession we hear more about barter and new currencies, especially so-called “local” currencies. An inceased interest in barter and new currencies suggests a theory of recessions, the lack of liquidity theory:
Bloomberg: “In times of crisis like the one we are jumping into, the main issue is lack of liquidity, even when there is work to be done, people to do it, and demand for it,” says Paolo Dini, an associate professorial research fellow at the London School of Economics and one of the world’s foremost experts on complementary currencies. “It’s often a cash flow problem. Therefore, any device or instrument that saves liquidity helps.”
I wrote about this several years ago but on closer inspection it’s not obvious that interest in barter or new currencies increases much in a recession or that these new currencies are helpful. Here’s my previous post (with a new graph) and no indent.
Nick Rowe explains that the essence of New Keynesian/Monetarist theories of recessions is the excess demand for money (Paul Krugman’s classic babysitting coop story has the same lesson). Here’s Rowe:
The unemployed hairdresser wants her nails done. The unemployed manicurist wants a massage. The unemployed masseuse wants a haircut. If a 3-way barter deal were easy to arrange, they would do it, and would not be unemployed. There is a mutually advantageous exchange that is not happening. Keynesian unemployment assumes a short-run equilibrium with haircuts, massages, and manicures lying on the sidewalk going to waste. Why don’t they pick them up? It’s not that the unemployed don’t know where to buy what they want to buy.
If barter were easy, this couldn’t happen. All three would agree to the mutually-improving 3-way barter deal. Even sticky prices couldn’t stop this happening. If all three women have set their prices 10% too high, their relative prices are still exactly right for the barter deal. Each sells her overpriced services in exchange for the other’s overpriced services….
The unemployed hairdresser is more than willing to give up her labour in exchange for a manicure, at the set prices, but is not willing to give up her money in exchange for a manicure. Same for the other two unemployed women. That’s why they are unemployed. They won’t spend their money.
Keynesian unemployment makes sense in a monetary exchange economy…it makes no sense whatsoever in a barter economy, or where money is inessential.
Rowe’s explanation put me in mind of a test. Barter is a solution to Keynesian unemployment but not to “RBC unemployment” which, since it is based on real factors, would also occur in a barter economy. So does barter increase during recessions?
There was a huge increase in barter and exchange associations during the Great Depression with hundreds of spontaneously formed groups across the country such as California’s Unemployed Exchange Association (U.X.A.). These barter groups covered perhaps as many as a million workers at their peak.
In addition, I include with barter the growth of alternative currencies or local currencies such as Ithaca Hours or LETS systems. The monetization of non-traditional assets can alleviate demand shocks which is one reason why it’s good to have flexibility in the definition of and free entry into the field of money (a theme taken up by Cowen and Kroszner in Explorations in New Monetary Economics and also in the free banking literature.)
During the Great Depression there was a marked increase in alternative currencies or scrip, now called depression scrip. In fact, Irving Fisher wrote a now forgotten book called Stamp Scrip. Consider this passage and note how similar it is to Nick’s explanation:
If proof were needed that overproduction is not the cause of the depression, barter is the proof – or some of the proof. It shows goods not over-produced but dead-locked for want of a circulating transfer-belt called “money.”
Many a dealer sits down in puzzled exasperation, as he sees about him a market wanting his goods, and well stocked with other goods which he wants and with able-bodied and willing workers, but without work and therefore without buying power. Says A, “I could use some of B’s goods; but I have no cash to pay for them until someone with cash walks in here!” Says B, “I could buy some of C’s goods, but I’ve no cash to do it with till someone with cash walks in here.” Says the job hunter, “I’d gladly take my wages in trade if I could work them out with A and B and C who among them sell the entire range of what my family must eat and wear and burn for fuel – but neither A nor B nor C has need of me – much less could the three of them divide me up.” Then D comes on the scene, and says, “I could use that man! – if he’d really take his pay in trade; but he says he can’t play a trombone and that’s all I’ve got for him.”
“Very well,” cries Chic or Marie, “A’s boy is looking for a trombone and that solves the whole problem, and solves it without the use of a dollar.
In the real life of the twentieth century, the handicaps to barter on a large scale are practically insurmountable….
Therefore Chic or somebody organizes an Exchange Association… in the real life of this depression, and culminating apparently in 1933, precisely what I have just described has been taking place.
What about today (2011)? Unfortunately, the IRS doesn’t keep statistics on barter (although barterers are supposed to report the value of barter exchanges). Google Trends shows an increase in searches for barter in 2008-2009 but the increase is small. Some reports say that barter is up but these are isolated (see also the 2020 Bloomberg piece), I don’t see the systematic increase we saw during the Great Depression. I find this somewhat surprising as the internet and barter algorithms have made barter easier.
In terms of alternative currencies, the best data that I can find shows that the growth of alternative currencies in the United States is small, sporadic and not obviously increasing with the recession. (Alternative currencies are better known in Germany and Argentina perhaps because of the lingering influence of Heinrich Rittershausen and Silvio Gesell).
Below is a similar graph for 2017-2020. Again not much increase in recent times.
In sum, the increase in barter and scrip during the Great Depression is supportive of the excess demand for cash explanation of that recession, even if these movements didn’t grow large enough, fast enough to solve the Great Depression. Today there seems to be less interest in barter and alternative currencies than expected, or at least than I expected, given an AD shock and the size of this recession. I don’t draw strong conclusions from this but look forward to further research on unemployment, recessions and barter.
Brazil fact of the day
Considering the limited infrastructure routes, high rate of wear and tear, and the need for various input materials, per-mile Brazilian infrastructure costs are typically quadruple those of a flat, arable, temperate territory — with additional premium for the roads that must pierce the Escarpment.
That is from Peter Zeihan’s quite interesting Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in a Disunited World. The Escarpment, by the way, refers to the cliffs that run along Brazil’s coastal zones and have kept Brazil so long from integrating their cities and building a truly stable nation-state. The lack of navigable rivers throughout most of the country does not help either — North America was blessed in this regard.
Here is Zeihan’s take on Rio:
…its decline will be emblematic of several of the country’s coastal cities. It’s too far from the Northern Hemisphere to be involved in manufacturing supply chains, too isolated to serve as entrepot or processing center, and too densely populated to be safe.
Zeihan likes to solve for the equilibrium.