Results for “africa”
1072 found

*The Other Barack*

The author is Sally H. Jacobs and the subtitle is The Bold and Reckless Life of President Obama’s Father.  But forget about “our Obama” and read this as a biography of colonialism, the 1960s, interracial relations, and most of all the East African intelligentsia.  In addition to being a life story, it’s an excellent treatment of those topics.  Here is one of the soggier excerpts:

As suddenly as it began, however, his ascent was over.  Six years after he returned from the United States, Obama had been let go from one promising job and was fired from another, his career abruptly dead-ended.  All three of his marriages had failed, and he was barely on speaking terms with any of his children.  Penniless and increasingly dependent on his beloved Johnnie Walker Black, he collapsed at night on the floor at a series of friends’ homes and lived for periods alone in a solitary hotel room.  It was a monumental fall.

…”He didn’t commit a crime.  He didn’t do anything wrong particularly.  He just didn’t finish the race.  As schoolboys, we were always taught that you must finish the race no matter what.  But he didn’t.  He just collapsed.”

Barack Obama Sr. spent two years in the Harvard economics Ph.d. program and had a very good knowledge of econometrics.  Edward Chamberlain, Robert Dorfman, Roger Noll, Sam Bowles, Lester Thurow, and John Dunlop make cameos in this part of the book.  Barack wanted to write his Ph.d. thesis on an econometric investigation on the staple theory of development, but after two years he lost his departmental funding and had to leave, eventually having to leave the U.S. as well.  Harvard was upset that he seemed to be married to two women at once and they looked to ease him out of the program; it’s an ugly story.

There are interesting bits on his time working at Shell, at the tourism bureau, his four months in traction following a major auto accident, his connection to domestic Kenyan political disputes, his role as a Kenyan urban planner, and how he would chat up women.  This book was very extensively researched.

Definitely recommended to anyone interested in East Africa.  Here is David Garrow’s review of the book.

*Unified Growth Theory*, by Oded Galor

In one scenario, the Neolithic revolution comes earlier to some areas than others; those areas then receive their gains in the form of higher population rather than higher wages, for Malthusian reasons.  Under some conditions, some of those regions manage slightly positive per capita income growth for extended periods of time (it is on this question that I find the argument both haziest and most parasitic on other theories; toward the end of the book the stress is on whether an economy has had prior selection for “quality” individuals).  That can lower their birth rates, which allows for a take-off out of Malthusian constraints.  There may be further positive selection for pro-economic growth humans, which compounds and extends growth.

That is not the entire unified theory but it does offer a flavor of which kinds of mechanisms do the work.  There isn’t much talk of government policies, coal, or liberal ideology, although every now and then incentives and intellectual property rights appear on a list of factors relevant for growth.

The book has many equations, right in the text, but the main arguments are explained clearly with words.

I would have found it valuable if the author would have asked a concrete question: “Could the Industrial Revolution have come to Song China (Rome, Baghdad, etc.)?” and told us in terms of the parameters of his theory why or why not.  I am never sure what stance he is taking on the degree of contingency in observed outcomes.

It is argued that Africa has too much genetic diversity, Native American populations too little.  This seems question-begging, and I wonder if the African populations which actually came into contact with each other on a regular basis, pre-imperialism, had so much genetic diversity.

The most valuable part of the book is the extended discussion of how “time since the Neolithic Revolution” matters and how subtle and indirect the indirect mechanisms of connection can be.  I consider those discussions to be a major contribution.

It’s certainly an interesting work, but most of the evidence offered is supporting the more general parts of the argument, not the more controversial or novel parts.  Galor is very smart, and anyone interested in economic growth should read this book, but I would not describe myself as a convert to either the conclusions or the overall method.

Here is my previous post on the book.

China at the frontier

Following previous efforts (http://www.genomics.cn/en/news_show.php?type=show&id=644 and http://www.genomics.cn/en/news_show.php?type=show&id=647), BGI, based in Shenzhen, China, and its collaborators at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf, as well as a growing number of researchers around the world “crowdsourcing” this data, are exploring in-depth the European disease outbreak helping trace the origin and spread of the lethal E. coli strain. Different sources have reported that two strains, 01-09591 from Germany isolated in 2001 and 55989 from Central Africa in 2002, are highly similar to the 2011 outbreak strain. Based on the most recently curated assembly publically released by BGI yesterday (ftp://ftp.genomics.org.cn/pub/Ecoli_TY-2482), these strains have an identical Multi Locus Sequence Typing (ST678) based on analysis of seven important “housekeeping” genes*.

BGI (formerly known as Beijing Genomics Institute) was founded in 1999 and has become the largest genomic organization in the world. With a focus on research and applications in the healthcare, agriculture, conservation and bio-energy fields, BGI has a proven track record of innovative, high-profile research which has generated over 178 publications in top-tier journals such as Nature and Science.

Bravo.

*Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory*

Patrick Wilcken is the author of this excellent book, excerpt:

Lévi-Strauss began work in the autumn at the New School for Social Research, his name chopped down to Claude L. Strauss, to distinguish himself from the jeans.  “The students would find it funny,” he was told by way of explanation.  The confusion would plague him throughout his life. “Hardly a year goes by without my receiving, usually from Africa, an order for a pair of jeans,” he told Didier Eribon in the 1980s — though, with fame, Lévi-Strauss found he could almost hold his own.  When he gave his name while queuing for a restaurant in San Francisco in the 1980s, the waiter shot back, “The pants or the books?”

Definitely recommended, read the Amazon reviews at the link.

The EU is to end passport-free travel?

European nations moved to reverse decades of unfettered travel across the continent when a majority of EU governments agreed the need to reinstate national passport controls amid fears of a flood of immigrants fleeing the upheaval in north Africa.

In a serious blow to one of the cornerstones of a united, integrated Europe, EU interior ministers embarked on a radical revision of the passport-free travel regime known as the Schengen system to allow the 26 participating governments to restore border controls.

Here is the story, which I take to be big news indeed.  Addendum: Some of the comments claim that the Guardian’s account is exaggerated.  Here is a more balanced story.

In my pile

1. Food Trucks: Dispatches and Recipes from the Best Kitchens on Wheels, by Heather Shouse.  I’ve read enough of this book to know it is true to its title.

2. The Moral Lives of Animals, by Dale Peterson.  It looks like Adam Smith’s TMS applied to the moral sense of non-human animals, making the point that the moral sense is not unique to human beings.

3. Music for Silenced Voices: Shostakovich and his Fifteen Quartets, by Wendy Lesser.

4. Zoo City, by Lauren Beukes; so far I love it, imagine a mix of Raymond Chandler, near-future science fiction, and South African grit.

All are worthy of purchase, we will see how they develop.  I found The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi, the most enjoyable science fiction novel I’ve read in a few years, and it should appeal to fans of Thailand too.

The Lost Eden of Childhood. Not Lost. Not Eden.

Jim Manzi warms to Paul Krugman’s nostalgia:

It’s difficult to convey the almost unbearable sweetness of this kind of American childhood to anybody who didn’t live it. The safety and freedom that Krugman describe are rare now even for the wealthiest Americans – by age 9, I would typically leave the house on a Saturday morning on my bike, tell my parents I was “going out to play,” and not return until dinner; at age 10, would go down to the ocean to swim with friends without supervision all day; and at age 11 would play flashlight tag across dozens of yards for hours after dark. And the sense of equality was real, too. Some people definitely had bigger houses and more things than others, but our lives were remarkably similar. We all went to the same schools together, played on the same teams together, and watched the same TV shows. The idea of having, or being, “help” seemed like something from old movies about another time.

Who doesn’t look upon their childhood with wistfulness for what has been lost?  Exile from Eden is one of the oldest stories on record. But don’t mistake personal narrative for reality.  When Manzi says “we all went to the same schools together, played on the same teams together, and watched the same TV shows.” He isn’t talking about African Americans. And was the idea of having or being help, really “from a different time”? Again, not for African Americans. In 1950 more than 40% of African American women in the labor force were domestic servants. (Moreover, given these numbers a back of the envelope calculation suggests proportionately fewer homes with maids today.) See also Megan McArdle on Manzi’s vision and women staying at home.

Growing up in Northern Virginia, my children experience far more ethnic, cultural, racial and sexual diversity and equality than just about any child growing up outside of a commune did in the 1950s and 1960s.

Has childhood freedom been lost?  No. Childhood freedom hasn’t been “lost,” it has been taken away by parents. As a child, I too was free to play in the woods but then again my parents didn’t buckle me up in the car, either.

Has safety decreased? It is true that one of the most horrible things we can imagine, homicide, is up. For kids aged 5-14 homicide mortality went from 0.5 per 100,000 in 1950 to 0.8 per 100,000 in 2005. Overall, however, kids are much safer today than in the 1950s. Accident mortality, for example, is down from 22.7 per 100,000 in 1950 to 6.2 per 100,000 in 2005 (see Caplan’s Selfish Reasons for more details). Maybe buckling up and ocean supervision isn’t so bad. Maybe parents today worry too much. Probably some of both.

There have been big improvements in accident risk since even my childhood years.  I remember those idyllic summers of the 1970s earning a few extra dollars mowing lawns–80,000 amputated fingers, hands and mangled toes and feet every year back then and just 6,000 today. Would I even let me kid use a mower from the 1970s?  Disease mortality is also way down, from 36.6 per 100,000 in 1950 to 8.6 per 100,000 in 2005.  For good or for ill, parental fears have increased even as risks overall have fallen.

There is nothing wrong with a bit of personal nostalgia but when nostalgia is taken for reality it biases our thinking in counter-productive ways. One wonders, for example, what those who look back longingly at the freedom of their childhood would say about Lenore Skenazy and her free-range kids. Skenazy let her fourth-grader take the NYC subway home alone.  Would Manzi applaud Skenazy for giving her kids the same freedoms he had?  Or would he denounce her, as many parents did, for something tantamount to child-abuse?

The Great Stagnation, in agriculture

Overall, it is neglected knowledge just how much the “Green Revolution” has slowed down since the 1990s.  In Africa, measured heights have stagnated or declined in recent times.  Robert Paarlberg’s Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa is an excellent book on its title topic and more generally on falling TFP in global agriculture.

On other commodities, there are further charts and graphs (on both sides of the debate) here.  The article is overwrought but worth the read, as it shows how far we are currently from the world of Julian Simon.

Banerjee and Duflo on poverty and food

It is an excellent piece, excerpt:

The poor often resist the wonderful plans we think up for them because they do not share our faith that those plans work, or work as well as we claim. We shouldn’t forget, too, that other things may be more important in their lives than food. Poor people in the developing world spend large amounts on weddings, dowries, and christenings. Part of the reason is probably that they don’t want to lose face, when the social custom is to spend a lot on those occasions. In South Africa, poor families often spend so lavishly on funerals that they skimp on food for months afterward.

And don’t underestimate the power of factors like boredom. Life can be quite dull in a village…

We often see the world of the poor as a land of missed opportunities and wonder why they don’t invest in what would really make their lives better. But the poor may well be more skeptical about supposed opportunities and the possibility of any radical change in their lives. They often behave as if they think that any change that is significant enough to be worth sacrificing for will simply take too long. This could explain why they focus on the here and now, on living their lives as pleasantly as possible and celebrating when occasion demands it.

Hat tip goes to half of the people I follow on Twitter.

Bryan Caplan defends pacifism

In the real-world, however, pacifism is a sound guide to action.

And that includes an unwillingness to kill innocent civilians as collateral damage while acting in defense of one’s country. The original post is here, the defense against critics is here

There is not enough consideration of specific times and place.  Had England been pacifist in 1914, that might have yielded a better outcome.  Had England been pacifist in 1939, likely not.  Switzerland has done better for itself, and likely for the world, by being ready to fight back.  Pacifism today could quite possibly doom Taiwan, Israel, large parts of India (from both Pakistan and internal dissent), any government threatened by civil war (who would end up ruling Saudi Arabia and how quickly?), and I predict we would see a larger-scale African tyrant arise, gobbling up non-resisting pacifist neighbors.  Would China request the vassalage of any countries, besides Taiwan that is?  Would Russia “request” Georgia and the Baltics?  Would West Germany have survived? 

And this is the best we can do?  It’s much worse than the status quo, which is hardly delightful enlightenment.  I don’t see these examples mentioned in Bryan’s post.  There is also a Lucas critique issue of how the bad guys start behaving once they figure out that the good guys are pacifist, and I don’t see him discussing that either. 

It would be a mistake to add up all the wars and say pacifism is still better overall, because we do not face an all-or-nothing choice.  Many selective instances of non-pacifism are still a good idea, with benefits substantially in excess of their costs.  Bryan, however, has to embrace pacifism, otherwise his moral theory becomes too tangled up in the empirics of the daily newspaper

Which is exactly where I am urging him to go.

*Before the Revolution*

The author is Daniel K. Richter and the subtitle is America’s Ancient Pasts.  I admit I am a sucker for books on this topic, but so far it is one of my two or three favorite non-fiction titles of the year.  Excerpt:

The end of the Chesapeake chiefs’ efforts to use prestige goods to build power in the traditional way resulted from a more basic factor than the violent refusal of the English to play along.  Once substantial numbers of European and Native people began living near each other, it became virtually impossible for any chief to control the flow of goods to his people, even if, as Powhatan apparently tried to do, he redefined prestige in ever more esoteric directions.  As early as January 1608 — only a few months after the establishment of Jamestown — Smith complained that ordinary colonists and visiting sailors were trading so much metal to ordinary Indians that corn and furs “could not be had for a pound of copper, which before was sold for an ounce.”  Archaeological excavations confirm that the jewelers and metalworkers textbooks have long derided as useless appendages to the lazy Jamestown colonists worked busily to make copper and other metal items to trade with Native people.  This might have been the colony’s only productive enterprise in its earliest years.  All along the costs — and soon along the interior rivers — of eastern North America, this kind of unregulated trade between commoners was bad news for chiefs like Powhatan, whose power depended on European goods remaining rare and under their personal control.  But the opportunities that such trade represented — for both Europeans and Native people — were enormous.  Some chiefs found ways to turn the new conditions to their advantage.  Others did not.

Definitely recommended.  My favorite parts are about the agricultural revolutions experienced in native American societies, before the arrival of the colonists.  Here is part of the Amazon summary:

Richter recovers the lives of a stunning array of peoples—Indians, Spaniards, French, Dutch, Africans, English—as they struggled with one another and with their own people for control of land and resources. Their struggles occurred in a global context and built upon the remains of what came before. Gradually and unpredictably, distinctive patterns of North American culture took shape on a continent where no one yet imagined there would be nations called the United States, Canada, or Mexico.

What determined the playing length of an audio CD?

Here is one account:

Sony had initially preferred a smaller diameter, but soon after the beginning of the collaboration started to argue vehemently for a diameter of 120mm.  Sony’s argument was simple and compelling: to maximize the consumer appear of a switch to the new technology, any major piece of music needed to fit on a single CD…Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was quickly identified as the point of reference — according to some accounts, it was the favorite piece of Sony vice-president Norio Ohga’s wife.  And thorough research identified the 1951 recording by the orchestra of the Bayreuther Festspiele under Wilhelm Furtwängler, at seventy-four minutes, as the slowest performance of the Ninth Symphony on record.  And so, according to the official history, Sony and Philips top executives agreed in their May 1980 meeting that “a diameter of 12 centimeters was required for this playing time.”

That is from the new and interesting book by Tim Büthe and Walter Mattli, The New Global Rulers: The Privatization of Regulation in the World Economy, the book’s home page, with free chapter one, is here.  Speaking of which, Garth Saloner is another very good South African economist and he is now Dean of Stanford Business School.

Globalization and the Expanding Moral Circle

In 1869 the Irish historian William Lecky (1838-1903) wrote that moral progress is about extending the moral circle.

At one time the benevolent affections embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity…

What is the effect of globalization on the moral circle? Does trade melt barriers and expand the moral circle or does globalization make "the other" a more salient division allowing politicians to demonize and control through xenophobia?

Two pieces of evidence, one anecdotal the other experimental, suggests that globalization expands the moral circle. The anecdotal evidence is the cover story of this month's Wired titled "1 Million Workers. 90 Million iPhones. 17 Suicides. This is where your gadgets come from? Should you care?"

Now from a rational point of view this is absurd. Put aside that the suicide rate is higher among American college students than Chinese workers at Foxconn, even odder is that the writer cares about 17 suicides but not say the million plus deaths in China due to lung disease. But no one said that the moral circle grows for rational reasons. In this case, the writer, Joel Johnson, found that the purchase of the cell phone extended his moral circle to workers who assembled the phone half a world away: 

I was burdened by what felt like an outsize provision of guilt–an existential buyer’s remorse for civilization itself. I am here because I want to know: Did my iPhone kill 17 people?

What about the experimental evidence? In an excellent paper, Buchan et al. discuss results from a public good dilemma game that they ran on thousands of people in six countries around the world: Iran, South Africa, Argentina, Russia, Italy and the United States.

In each country the players could contribute to themselves, to a local group or to a world group. Local contributions were doubled and world contributions were tripled such that the world-group maximizing strategy would be for all contributions to go to the world account, the local-group maximizing strategy would be for all contributions to go to the local account and (as usual) the dominant strategy was to contribute to self only. (Local contributions also paid more to self than did contributions to the world account). 

The authors find two strong effects. First, the rate of donation to the world account increased significantly with the extent of a country's globalization, as measured by a globalization index. Second, within countries the rate of donation to the world acount increased with an individual's globalization index (based on measures such as whether the individual worked for an international firm, watched foreign movies, called people abroad etc.) Thus, globalization increases the potential for global cooperation.

The authors conclude:

…not only is living in a more globalized country associated with more cooperation at the world level, but the same relationship holds as the degree of individual global connectedness increases as well. The cosmopolitan hypothesis receives clear support from our experiments.

… our findings suggest that humans' basic “tribal social instincts” may be highly malleable to the influence of the processes of connectedness embedded in globalization. 

The countercyclical asset, a continuing series, white women’s hair products edition

Bridget J. Crawford, of the Pace University School of Law, serves up an entry:

This short essay is a reflection on the relationship between the economy and women’s hair. I suggest that examining women’s spending on hair care products during uncertain financial conditions provides insight into the gendered aspects of the economy. As the economy has declined, sales of home hair-care products targeted toward white women have increased. Major news outlets report on salon customers trying to stretch out the time between their regular $250 hair salon treatments. Certain women turn to home hair dyes to maintain conforming appearances. In popular culture, to have white skin and gray hair is to be old (unemployable and unattractive) or menopausal (unproductive and unsexual). An attempt to retain their hair color (natural or chosen) is, for certain women, an attempt to retain a currency of employability, utility and desirability.

The hair-care spending of African-American women (of all socio-economic classes), in contrast, appears to be less susceptible to economic cycles.

The next two sentences of the abstract shift the nature of the paper considerably:

African-American legal scholars have given voice to the complex role that hair can play in the personal, professional, social and legal lives of black women. I argue that only in a down economy do some white women grapple with their hair’s complex signaling function, including its link to race and privilege.

Hat tip goes to the always-excellent www.bookforum.com.  Here are previous installments in the series.