Results for “alex tabarrok” 208 found
Software Patents
Excellent column by Gordon Crovitz in the WSJ on patents and the prospects for reform:
Today’s patent mess can be traced to a miscalculation by Jimmy Carter, who thought granting more patents would help overcome economic stagnation. In 1979, his Domestic Policy Review on Industrial Innovation proposed a new Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which Congress created in 1982. Its first judge explained: “The court was formed for one need, to recover the value of the patent system as an incentive to industry.”
The country got more patents—at what has turned out to be a huge cost. The number of patents has quadrupled, to more than 275,000 a year. But the Federal Circuit approved patents for software, which now account for most of the patents granted in the U.S.—and for most of the litigation. Patent trolls buy up vague software patents and demand legal settlements from technology companies. Instead of encouraging innovation, patent law has become a burden on entrepreneurs, especially startups without teams of patent lawyers.
…A system of property rights is flawed if no one can know what’s protected. That’s what happens when the government grants 20-year patents for vague software ideas in exchange for making the innovation public. In a recent academic paper (pdf), George Mason researchers Eli Dourado and Alex Tabarrok argued that the system of “broad and fuzzy” software patents “reduces the potency of search and defeats one of the key arguments for patents, the dissemination of information about innovation.”
…For now, the best prospect for real reform is in the Supreme Court, which earlier this month agreed to hear CLS Bank v. Alice Corp., a case about whether a bank’s computerized process for settling transactions via an escrow can be patented. A judge on the appeals court noted this idea was “literally ancient,” developed during the Roman Empire, and should not get a patent now just because a computer is involved.
I think it is too early to call CLS Bank v. Alice Corp. an obituary for software patents as The Economist does but real patent reform is stronger than I thought it would be even 6 months ago.
Addendum: Here is my 2 minute video on some of the problems with patents.
Firefighter Hysteresis
The number of fires is down but the number of career firefighters is up, as I showed last year in my post firefighters don’t fight fires. Leon Neyfakh of the Boston Globe covers the situation in Boston:
…city records show that major fires are becoming vanishingly rare. In 1975, there were 417 of them. Last year, there were 40. That’s a decline of more than 90 percent. A city that was once a tinderbox of wooden houses has become—thanks to better building codes, automatic sprinkler systems, and more careful behavior—a much less vulnerable place.
As this has happened, however, the number of professional firefighters in Boston has dropped only slightly, from around 1,600 in the 1980s to just over 1,400 today. The cost of running the department, meanwhile, has increased by almost $43 million over the past decade, and currently stands at $185 million, or around 7.5 percent of the city’s total budget.
Later, I am quoted:
Alex Tabarrok, an economist at George Mason University who discussed the fire statistics on the blog Marginal Revolution, explains it in terms of what’s called the “March of Dimes problem.” When polio was defeated, the March of Dimes, started under Franklin Delano Roosevelt to combat the disease, suddenly had no reason to exist. “They were actually successful, and it was something they never planned for,” said Tabarrok. “But instead of disbanding the organization, they set it onto a whole bunch of other tasks…and so it’s kind of lost its focus. It’s no longer easy to evaluate whether it’s doing a good job or not.”
This, in Tabarrok’s view, is what happened to the country’s fire departments: At a certain point, they became an organization in search of a mission. “So they ended up doing things they’re not necessarily the optimal people to do, like responding to medical emergencies.”
Some cities are trying to change but as I said in my original piece, “it’s hard to negotiate with heroes”. The situation in Toronto illustrates. Paramedics were recently assigned to more emergency calls at the expense of firefighters who have responded with photos ops in front of burned homes and threats that if their budget is cut children will die. Not wanting to lose their newly found responsibilities, the paramedics have responded with a campaign of their own leading to an awesome cat fight between the two agencies.
I enjoyed Margaret Wente’s conclusion:
A powerful combination of fear-mongering and hero worship has made Canada’s fire departments largely immune to budget cuts. As a consequence, the citizens are getting hosed.
*Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means so Much*
That is the new book by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, and as you might expect it is one of the most significant economics books of the year. Here is their bottom line:
The poor are not just short on cash. They are also short on bandwidth.
For an example, imagine giving both rich and poor an intelligence test with this question:
Imagine that your car has some trouble, which requires a $300 service. Your auto insurance will cover half the cost. You need to decide whether to go ahead and get the car fixed, or take a chance and hope that it lasts for a while longer. How would you go about making such a decision? Financially, would it be an easy or a difficult decision for you to make?
In their answers to that question, we are told, rich and poor look equally smart. Now run the same question with different groups, but change the first sentence to this:
Imagine that your car has some trouble, which requires an expensive $3000 service.
All of a sudden the poorer individuals did much worse in response to this question and the authors claim this result has been replicated repeatedly. Control studies suggest it is not about the number being larger per se, but rather that the poor individuals see this as a more stressful decision, which lowers their measured fluid intelligence.
Overall I find this all very intriguing, but would like to have a better sense of how this fits in with other results about the relative rigidity of IQ. I also worry about tests where there is an exogenous increase in stressfulness, to which test participants must submit. There are various ways that an examiner could stress me out, but part of one’s smarts, whether at high income levels or low, is exercising some control over matching your talents to the environment.
Here is a good review of the book by Oliver Burkeman. By the way, Alex Tabarrok and MR make a cameo appearance on p.103.
Addendum: Here is Alex on their work.
US Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure
If you are interested in energy policy and political economy, Peter Grossman has written a good book, US Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure. I was asked to blurb the book and was happy to do so:
For four decades, politicians have promised a solution to the “energy crisis” that will bring Americans “energy independence”. Fusion, wind, solar, switch grass, or algae, the salvation technologies have changed but the promises remain the same and broken. In this important and entertaining book, Peter Grossman documents the history of energy policy failure. Most importantly, he explains why policy has failed. Crisis-mentality thinking has promoted quick fixes and single-shot ‘solutions’ that ignore market and technology realities. What we need is not a solution in the style of the Manhattan project but stable rules that support basic research while leaving plenty of scope for American entrepreneurship and innovation. Professor Grossman’s careful history and insightful analysis is the key guide to a more modest but a more successful energy policy.
Alex Tabarrok, Director, Center for Study of Public Choice, and Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics, George Mason University
High School Safety in Northern Virginia
Here is a letter I wrote to the principal of my son’s high school:
Dear Principal _____,
Thank you for requesting feedback about the installation of interior cameras at the high school. I am against the use of cameras. I visited the school recently to pick up my son and it was like visiting a prison. A police car often sits outside the school and upon entry a security guard directs visitors to the main office where the visitor’s drivers license is scanned and information including date of birth is collected (is this information checked against other records and kept in a database for future reference? It’s unclear). The visitor is then photographed and issued a photo pass. I found the experience oppressive. Adding cameras will only add to the prison-like atmosphere. The response, of course, will be that these measures are necessary for “safety.” As with security measures at the airports I doubt that these measures increase actual safety, instead they are security theater, a play that we put on that looks like security but really is not.
Moreover, the truth is that American children have never been safer than they are today. Overall youth mortality (ages 5-14) has fallen from 60 per 100,000 in 1950 to 13.1 per 100,000 today (CDC, Vital Statistics). Yet we hide in gated communities, homes and schools as never before.
When we surround our students with security we are implicitly telling them that the world is dangerous; we are whispering in their ear, ‘be afraid, do not venture out, take no risks.’ When going to school requires police, security guards and cameras how can I encourage my child to travel to foreign countries, to seek new experiences, to meet people of different faiths, beliefs and backgrounds? When my child leaves school how will the atmosphere of fear that he has grown up in affect his view of the world and the choices he will make as a citizen in our democracy? School teaches more than words in books.
Yours sincerely,
Alex Tabarrok
David Brooks on the conservative future
It is an excellent column and here is one good bit:
Soft Libertarians. Some of the most influential bloggers on the right, like Tyler Cowen, Alex Tabarrok and Megan McArdle, start from broadly libertarian premises but do not apply them in a doctrinaire way.
Many of these market-oriented writers emphasize that being pro-market is not the same as being pro-business. Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago published an influential book, “A Capitalism for the People,” that took aim at crony capitalism. Tim Carney of The Washington Examiner does muckraking reporting on corporate-federal collusion. Rising star Derek Khanna wrote a heralded paper on intellectual property rights for the House Republican Study Committee that was withdrawn by higher-ups in the party, presumably because it differed from the usual lobbyist-driven position.
There are additional shout outs to many other writers I admire (and like). And this:
Most important, they matured intellectually within a far-reaching Web-based conversation. In contrast to many members of the conservative political-entertainment complex, they are data-driven, empirical and low-key in tone.
But do read the whole thing.
Addendum: Paul Krugman comments.
Trade and Property Rights at MRU
Lots more material available at MRUniversity this week in our sections on Trade and on Property Rights. We review comparative advantage in three videos that will be useful to principles students and also for professors looking for an additional resource to assign students. We cover Trade and Tariff History and look at Trade and Poverty in India among other topics. We then cover property rights beginning with basic issues of private vs. collective property and moving to property titling. Finally, we take a look at James Scott’s argument that fee-simple property rights developed because of government taxation in our video on Communal Property, Enclosure and the State.
Tyler and I were grateful for this tweet from @seanite8 “I’m from Kuwait, and I never would have the chance to learn about #MRUDevEcon. Thank u”
And Andres Marroquin writes:
I think everybody should see a recent Alex Tabarrok’s class on the effect of geography on institutions and long term economic growth. It is here, and it is superb!
See the link for further comments from Andres.
Who will on-line education help?
Matt Yglesias has an analysis and a hypothesis:
Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, proprietors of one of the finest economics blogs on the Internet, are launching a cool new venture that they’re calling Marginal Revolution University aimed at doing online economics education and launching with a course on development economics.
It’s pretty clear that big change is coming to the higher education space through digital technology, but it’s also worth asking who’s going to really benefit from this kind of change. The key winner, it seems to me, is someone who’s intelligent, focused, and motivated but whose parents don’t happen to have much money.
There is more analysis at the link. Matt makes this very good point:
Last but by no means least, some of the biggest winners here will be people living in poor countries where the basic logistical barriers to accessing quality higher education are often very high. I suspect it’s no coincidence that development economics—a subject likely to be of particular interest to that demographic—is where MRU is starting.
Assorted links
1. Emily Chamlee-Wright is to be provost and dean at Washington College.
2. NBA geography.
3. A Straussian reading of Tabarrok’s Launching the Innovation Renaissance, by the excellent Eli Dourado; “Launching the Innovation Renaissance represents Alex Tabarrok standing athwart history, yelling “Back up 800 years!””.
4. Guns don’t kill people, cannonballs do.
5. The language that is German, a response to Michael Lewis.
From Facebook
“XXXX is becoming more and more convinced that Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok‘s textbook is the big news in the field of economics education. Hope to use it for my class soon, wish I had it when I was a student.”
The second editions are now out, Micro, Macro, and a consolidated book, more information here.
The Three Laws of Future Employment
Writing at New Geography Daniel Jelski offers a critique of (some of) Launching the Innovation Renaissance. We are in basic agreement about the laws of future employment:
Law #1: People will get jobs doing things that computers can’t do. Law #2: A global market place will result in lower pay and fewer opportunities for many careers. (But also in cheaper and better products and a higher standard of living for American consumers.) Law #3: Professional people will more likely be freelancers and less likely to have a steady job.
[But]…Laws #1 & 2 predict that there will likely be fewer STEM jobs in the future – they are both easily computerized and tradable. People will always be employed in STEM disciplines, many of them highly paid, but they’ll be paid for smarts rather than education. The disciplines will be much more competitive, with older and less talented workers left on the sidelines. Tom Friedman and Alex Tabarrok, reflecting conventional wisdom, are mistaken in maintaining that increasing STEM education is a key to future economic competitiveness.
Jelski instead recommends English lit and psychology, at least if you are young and hot! The logic–computers don’t write well and people don’t want to have sex with or be counseled by computers (yet!),–seems strong but wage rates and unemployment levels don’t support the argument. Jelski is correct about demand but forgets to take into account supply. Thus, the way to go is to be a hot engineer who can write well and get along with other people. (Jelski also forgets that my argument for STEM was in large part about the spillover effects).
I am in strong agreement with Jelski, however, that education is only the first step to success. Education is a tool; to truly succeed one must have skills developed with grit and applied with passion.
Launching the Innovation Renaissance
Launching the Innovation Renaissance (Amzn link, B&N for Nook, also iTunes) my new e-book from TED books is now available! How can we increase innovation? I look at patents, prizes, education, immigration, regulation, trade and other levers of innovation policy. Here’s a brief description:
Unemployment, fear, and fitful growth tell us that the economy is stagnating. The recession, however, is just the tip of iceberg. We have deeper problems. Most importantly, the rate of innovation is down. Patents, which were designed to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, have instead become weapons in a war for competitive advantage with innovation as collateral damage. College, once a foundation for innovation, has been oversold. We have more students in college than ever before, for example, but fewer science majors. Regulations, passed with the best of intentions, have spread like kudzu and now impede progress to everyone’s detriment. Launching the Innovation Renaissance is a fast-paced look at the levers of innovation policy that explains why innovation has slowed and how we can accelerate innovation and build a 21st century economy.
Here is a blurb from Paul Romer (NYU):
Progress comes from improvements in both our technologies and our rules. Alex Tabarrok makes a compelling case that in the United States, our rules on patents, education, and immigration are holding us back. If you want to think clearly about policies that matter for growth, turn off the TV, stop surfing the web, and read this book!
I discuss prizes and education in Launching and so was especially pleased to get this endorsement from Tom Vander Ark, formerly the president of the X PRIZE Foundation and the Executive Director of Education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and now CEO of Open Education Solutions.
If you’re a fan of MarginalRevolution like I am, you’ll want to read Tabarrok’s latest book. If you’re interested in innovation like I am, you need to read Launching the Innovation Renaissance. Alex poses thought experiments from patents to prizes, from health to education to immigration. He skewers Soviet-style employment bargains and offers insightful alternatives to improve our educational system. Alex is occasionally snarky, often witty, always incisive. Read this on your next flight.
FYI, I began this book before I read a draft of Tyler’s book The Great Stagnation and was interested to see that although we share a few common themes that perhaps due to differences in personality Tyler focuses on describing problems while I am more excited to promote solutions!
Who are the favorite economic thinkers, journals, and blogs?
The piece, by Daniel Klein, et.al., has this abstract:
A sample of 299 U.S. economics professors, presumably random, responded to our survey which asked favorites in the following areas: Economic thinkers (pre-twentieth century, twentieth century now deceased, living age 60 or older, living under age 60), economics journals, and economics blogs. First-place positions as favorite economist in their respective categories are Adam Smith (by far), John Maynard Keynes followed closely by Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, and Paul Krugman. For journals, the leaders are American Economic Review and Journal of Economic Perspectives. For blogs, the leaders are Greg Mankiw followed closely by Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok). The survey also asked party-voting and 17 policy-view questions, and we relate the political variables of respondents to their choice of favorites.
The favorite twentieth century economists are Keynes, Friedman, Samuelson, and Hayek, in that order. Kenneth Arrow doesn’t do as well as he should, though he comes in second, after Gary Becker, in the category, favorite living economists, sixty years or older.
As for favorite living economists, under age sixty, Paul Krugman wins by a long mile, followed by Greg Mankiw, then Acemoglu, Levitt, and David Card. I do not deserve my position at #16, but thanks if you voted for me! Scroll to p.13 for that list.
On p.14 there is a fascinating chart about the political orientations of the voters for various favorite economists. Krugman for instance is more popular among left-wing economists.
The votes for favorite journal are on p.16, no surprises there. p.17 has the favorite blogs chart. Krugman and DeLong are third and fourth, after Mankiw and MR.
It is a fascinating paper which says much about our profession.
That is all from the latest issue of Econ Journal Watch, the link to the whole issue is here. Here is a good piece about the embarrassment of Richard T. Ely.
Weight Loss and Incentives
Ted Frank reports on his 60k weight-loss bet with Ray Lehmann:
In late 2008, Ray Lehmann and I made an audacious bet: we would put up $60,000 that we would lose 60 pounds in nine months, and pay each other $1,000 for each pound the other lost.
…I lost 32 pounds, Ray lost 41, and we were on pace to lose 60 each. StickK.com was offering to make us their official spokespeople.
Then things fell apart. We couldn't negotiate an appropriate contract with StickK, which wanted exclusive rights to our story without any compensation. The delay caused us to stop writing about the diet while we had false dreams of fame and glory from StickK promotion, and then we both got distracted with starting new jobs and the disappointment of shattered expectations when StickK stopped returning our calls.
Alex Tabarrok correctly predicted that the danger of the two-person bet was that we would collude not to enforce it.
And, indeed that was what happened. We started gaining weight, and started pushing back the goal-line for the end of the bet…neither of us held the other's feet to the fire….
Professor Tabarrok's solution was to create a third-party Leviathan to enforce the bet: he facetiously offered to pay us $500 to be the collector [not facetious, Ted!, AT]. Of course, that was a negative-expectation transaction for each of us, unless we thought we had a 90%+ chance of succeeding…Even the threat of public humiliation on Marginal Revolution wasn't enough to stop us from colluding.
But Ted isn't giving up. He is looking for other people to take the bet to reduce the possibility of collusion or he would like to auction off leviathan rights.
Are there three other people out there willing to wager that they can lose 50 pounds over a reasonable amount of time? (Forty? Sixty?) Who's in, and under what conditions?
…In the alternative, how much is someone willing to pay to be Leviathan and have the opportunity to collect tens of thousands of dollars from me or Ray for failing to lose weight? I suppose I could put Leviathan rights up on eBay; if Marginal Revolution and a few other blogs publicized it, we could reach a good solid equilibrium price. What do people think?
I see this is as a good case study in the difficult of setting up an appropriate incentive scheme and also the difficulty of losing weight. When I put on my Tyler hat, however, I have to wonder whether all this effort put into clever incentive schemes is not a way of avoiding the real issues. "Less blogging, more jogging," my friends.
What Ted and Ray are trying to do is to sail between Scylla and Charybdis by offsetting the pull of food with the pull of lost money. Carrot cake versus stick. But in this tug of war, how long will the balance last? How permanent will the weight loss be?
The real trick in weight loss, as in other areas of life, is to change wants not oppose them. Unfortunately, Seth Roberts nothwithstanding, this is a struggle with no easy solutions.
Nevertheless, I have proudly helped others to lose weight with unusual incentives, and my $500 bid for leviathan rights over Ted and Ray still stands. Good luck guys.
“Three good books”
Tim Harford reports on his reading:
Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, Modern Principles of Economics (UK) – well-written, interesting, and some material not normally covered in econ. textbooks. I’ll try to find time to write more about this textbook, but guess students and professors will be the judges.
Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science. I’m a bit embarassed not to have read this until now, but the first few chapters are exceeded even my high expectations. Really very good indeed. Apparently a US edition is in the works – I’ve just been asked to blurb it. Will be a pleasure.
Jonah Lehrer’s The Decisive Moment (now republished as How We Decide). A nice science-and-stories approach to neuroscience, psychology and behavioural economics. I finished the book wanting to put it into action – not as easy as Lehrer makes out – and learned plenty I didn’t know I didn’t know.
All three are recommended.