Results for “age of em” 15667 found
Only in England, part III
From MissMarketCrash, apparently these words have been banned by British local government authorities:
across-the-piece, actioned, advocate, agencies, ambassador, area based,
area focused, autonomous, baseline, beacon, benchmarking, best
practice, blue sky thinking, bottom-up, CAAs, can do culture,
capabilities, capacity, capacity building, cascading, cautiously
welcome, challenge, champion, citizen empowerment, client, cohesive
communities, cohesiveness, collaboration, commissioning, community
engagement, compact, conditionality, consensual, contestability,
contextual, core developments, core message, core principles, core
value, coterminosity, coterminous, cross-cutting, cross-fertilization,
customer, democratic legitimacy, democratic mandate, dialogue,
direction of travel, distorts spending priorities, double devolution,
downstream, early win, edge-fit, embedded, empowerment, enabler,
engagement, engaging users, enhance, evidence base, exemplar, external
challenge, facilitate, fast-track, flex, flexibilities and freedoms,
framework, fulcrum, functionality, funding streams, gateway review,
going forward, good practice, governance, holistic, holistic
governance, horizon scanning, improvement levers, incentivising, income
streams, indicators, initiative, innovative capacity, inspectorates,
interdepartmental, interface, iteration, joined up, joint working,
LAAs, Level playing field, lever, leverage, localities, lowlights,
MAAs, mainstreaming, management capacity, meaningful consultation,
meaningful dialogue, mechanisms, menu of options, multi-agency,
multidisciplinary, municipalities, network model, normalising,
outcomes, output, outsourced, overarching, paradigm, parameter,
participatory, partnership working, partnerships, pathfinder, peer
challenge, performance network, place shaping, pooled budgets, pooled
resources, pooled risk, populace, potentialities, practitioners,
predictors of beaconicity, preventative services, prioritization,
priority, proactive, process driven, procure, procurement, promulgate,
proportionality, protocol, provider vehicles, quantum, quick hit, quick
win, rationalisation, rebaselining, reconfigured, resource allocation,
revenue streams, risk based, robust, scaled-back, scoping, sector wise,
seedbed, self-aggrandizement, service users, shared priority, shell
developments, signpost, single conversations, single point of contact,
situational, slippage, social contracts, social exclusion, spacial,
stakeholder, step change, strategic, strategic priorities, streamlined,
sub-regional, subsidiarity, sustainable, sustainable communities,
symposium, systematics, taxonomy, tested for soundness, thematic,
thinking outside of the box, third sector, toolkit, top-down,
trajectory, tranche, transactional, transformational, transparency,
upstream, upward trend, utilise, value-added, visionary, welcome,
wellbeing, worklessness.
Whenever I step off the plane in the U.K. or Netherlands a tear (or more) comes to my eye as I contemplate those countries as birthplaces of individual liberty. But this: is it a move for or against liberty?
It's funny, but if you Google "predictors of beaconicity" you get lots and lots.
My bloggingheads.tv with Peter Singer
Find it here. Not at all like my Bloggingheads with Robin ("but which Tyler will show up?").
There were two tough questions I didn't get to pose him but I had time for most of the rest.
The listed topics don't quite give the sense of it:
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Peter’s new book, “The Life You Can Save” (03:08)
What is the most effective way to end poverty? (06:45)
Genetically reprogramming humans to be more generous (05:35)
What charities does Peter give to? (06:27)
Advice for a young utilitarian (04:49)
How to achieve a higher happiness (03:17)
Read the comments on the site to get the flavor of the dialogue. Recommended viewing, definitely, and I don't just say that because of the participants.
Addendum: Buy Peter's book here.
Quantitative easing
Bernanke will do it. I'm sitting in an airport, so here is a very quick take. It is cheaper and quicker than fiscal stimulus; this should have been our first move. It is more likely to work. There are two effects: lowering long-term interest rates and the helicopter drop of the cash. It belies previous talk of a liquidity trap. It does not address most of the underlying problems in the real economy and as you know I see the "sectoral shift" element of this downturn as very much underrated. In that sense don't expect too much. It shows that at the limit fiscal and monetary policy blur together. The more the Fed takes on its balance sheet, the more the long-run independence of the central bank is damaged. Monetizing so much government debt is what Third World nations do. Draining the new money from the system will someday be a problem. It may introduce a round of "beggar-thy-neighbor," central bank-engineered currency depreciations. "Operation Twist," from the 1960s swapped short- for long-term assets but did not seem incredibly effective, although it was done under very different circumstances. Trillion is the new billion. If this fails the U.S. economy, and the stock market, will test new bottoms. The most articulate advocate of quantitative easing is Scott Sumner.
Reforms for money market funds
»» Tighten the portfolio maturity limit currently applicable to money market funds and add a new
portfolio maturity limit.
»» Raise the credit quality standards under which money market funds operate. This would be
accomplished by requiring a “new products” or similar committee; encouraging advisers to follow best practices for determining minimal credit risks; requiring advisers to designate the credit rating agencies their funds will follow to encourage competition among the rating agencies to achieve this designation; and prohibiting investments in “Second Tier Securities.”
»» Address “client risk” by requiring money market fund advisers to adopt “know your client” procedures and requiring them for the first time to disclose client concentrations by type of client and the potential risks, if any, posed by a fund with a client base that is strongly concentrated.
»» Enhance risk disclosure for investors and the market and require monthly website disclosure of a money market fund’s portfolio holdings.
»» Assure that when a money market fund proves unable to maintain a stable $1.00 NAV, all of its
shareholders are treated fairly…
»» Enhance government oversight of the money market by developing a nonpublic reporting regime for all institutional investors in the money market, including money market funds, and encouraging the SEC staff to monitor higher-than-peer performance of money market funds.
»» Address market confusion about money market institutional investors that appear to be—but are not—money market funds.
pp.7-8 tell you what they don't want to do, take a look. Maybe that above list sounds reasonable, but it also sounds designed to prevent money market-like institutions from…guess what…competing with money market funds. It also sounds designed to preserve the good name of money market funds next time something goes screwy. It is designed to preserve p (share) =1 without requiring a legal commitment to that effect and without instituting overly burdensome regulation. Pretty neat, huh? It's a circle the wagons approach, combined with a reluctance to ante up any cash on the table. You don't suppose they are still planning to depend on the Fed as a lender of last resort, do you?
You'll see a lot more proposals like this from industry participants. "Help me look good again," but with little recognition of the toothpaste tube metaphor and with few remedies for wherever the next bout of systemic risk gets squeezed to. I don't blame the money market sector for not solving this problem (economists can't solve it either), but at the same time it's important to recognize such proposals for what they are: the new financial services sector equivalent of NIMBY. Put your systemic risk junk somewhere else. But where?
Sentences to ponder
You people do like to comment on A.I.G. bonuses, don't you? That's exactly my worry about the whole debate. If my last post on the topic had elicited only five comments I would feel much better about what is going on.
In any case, this sentence, by John Carney (via Felix Salmon) caught my eye:
I don't see anything about voiding the contracts on the grounds of public policy as violating the sanctity of contracts.
In any case, the best way to prove me wrong is for you to never think about this entire topic, ever again. In the meantime, beware your intuitions about vindication and payback, I would say.
Ruth Marcus makes good points. Read Jim Manzi too. Steven Pearlstein says they could have, when the bailout started, preemptively based on the bonuses on minimizing taxpayer liabilities. They didn't.
What is Russia’s GDP per capita?
Andrew Gelman has a simple question, What is Russia's GDP per capita? Fortunately this information is easy to find on the web. As Gelman reports, the answer is:
- $7,600 (World Bank 2007)
- $9,100 (World Bank 2007)
- $14,700 (PPP adjusted, World Bank 2007)
- $4,500 (World Bank 2006)
- $7600 or $14,400 (gross national income: "Atlas method" or "purchasing power parity," World Bank 2007)
- $12,600 (IMF 2008), $9,100 (World Bank 2007), or $12,500 (CIA 2008)
- $2,637 in 2000 US dollars (World Bank 2007); that's $3,200 in 2007 dollars
- $2,621 (World Bank 2006) or $8,600 (IMF)
Here are three lectures if you want to understand why this is a harder question than it appears!
A market in something, every now and then
North Korean edition, of course, and now it is pizza:
It has taken almost 10 years of work, but North Korea has acquired the
technology to launch a project very dear to its leader's heart – the
nation's first "authentic" Italian pizzeria…
Last year a delegation of local chefs was sent by Kim to Naples and
Rome to learn the proper Italian techniques after their homegrown
efforts to mimic Italian cuisine were found by Kim to contain "errors".
In
the late 1990s Kim brought a team of Italian pizza chefs to North Korea
to instruct his army officers how to make pizza, a luxury which is now
being offered to a tiny elite able to afford such luxuries in a country
that cannot feed many of its 24 million inhabitants.
Despite the
food shortages high-quality Italian wheat, flour, butter and cheese are
being imported to ensure the perfect pizza is created every time.
"Our
people should be also allowed to enjoy the world-famous food," the
manager of the Pyongyang eatery quoted Kim as saying, according to the
Tokyo-based Choson Sinbo newspaper.
The paper, which is often
seen as a mouthpiece for the communist regime, added the restaurant had
proved to be a major hit after it opened in the capital Pyongyang in
December.
"I've learned through TV and books that pizza and
spaghetti are among the world's famous dishes, but this is the first
time that I've tasted it," Jung Un-Suk, 42, told the newspaper, "They
have unique flavours," she said.
The news that Kim's dream of
making genuine Italian food available in the capital has been realised
comes as North Korea threatens to test-launch a rocket which the US
believes is capable of striking America.
I thank Leonard Monasterio for the pointer.
Betting your views, follow-up
My claims that you are not required to publicly bet your views have received enough denunciations (mostly commentators on other blogs) that I feel it is time to rub some salt into the open wounds.
First, I have nothing against betting one's views and indeed I've done it with Bryan Caplan, though mostly for fun. No one bets his or her views consistently, or that frequently relative to the number of views, so I am simply pointing out that a default of "no betting at all" is an OK point along that spectrum. In fact it is a homage to the idea of division of labor. Nor have I seen the critics publicly revealing their equity and other asset portfolios, the real bets which matter in financial terms.
More generally, we may wish that researchers express "real commitment" to their views. I don't see betting as an essential part of such a commitment portfolio. "Simply being a certain way" when it comes to inquiry is #1 on my list. Having a good and deserved personal reputation for truth-seeking is another. An emphasis on betting, in my view, represents an odd economistic view that commitments should be viewed essentially or primarily in monetary terms. From a variety of other settings (try giving your wife "cash" for Valentine's Day) we know that signaling commitments through money can backfire. Might that be the case here as well?
Doesn't the very offer to bet signal that your view is possibly based on private, not easily verified-in-public information? Doesn't it signal a lack of confidence in the publicly available information itself?
If I think of the scientists who have influenced me most, or done the world the most good, very few of them were practitioners of public betting. Furthermore that correlation is no accident (I would bet that most of them regarded, or would have regarded, the idea skeptically, or as a kind of public relations stunt). You might think that is a market failure of some kind and maybe it is. But in the meantime, if you do have a truly good idea, maybe the best course of action is to mimic the other holders of truly good ideas and that means not betting publicly on your idea.
I'm not suggesting that such a mimicry strategy is best with p = 1.0, only that it gives you one of a number of rationales for not betting at all.
Keynes’s General Theory, chapter ten
The velocity of money can vary, aggregate demand matters, and the multiplier is real. Let's get those preliminaries out of the way. That all said, this is one of the least accurate chapters in Keynes's General Theory. To pull out one key quotation (pp.116-117, in section II):
It follows, therefore, that, if the consumption psychology of the community is such that they will choose to consume e.g., nine-tenths of an increment of income, then the multiplier is 10; and the total employment caused by (e.g.) increased public works will be ten times the primary employment provided by the public works themselves…
AARRRGGHH!
Empirically a typical estimate of a multiplier might be 1.3 or 1.4, not 10, not even in a deep slump. (Valerie Ramey points out that the key issue in estimating a multiplier is to determine when the fiscal innovation actually occurred; this is not easy.) One theoretical problem in generating a high multiplier is this. Say you have a debt-financed increase in government spending. You can get some dollars out of low-velocity pools into high-velocity pools on the first round of redistributing the spending flow. Do not expect complete crowding out and so nominal aggregate demand can increase, thus boosting output and employment. But the second and third round effects of the redistributed money are usually a wash and the boost to velocity dwindles. Why should it stay in a high-velocity sector of the economy?
It is common in the GT that Keynes confuses marginal and average effects and, for all of his explicit talk about average and marginal in this chapter, he is making one version of that error again. Rothbard and Hazlitt are not in general reliable critics of Keynes, but
they do have a good reductio (see chapter XI) on crude interpretations of the multiplier and that is what Keynes is serving up here. You can't just take a partial derivative of an accounting identity and call the result a causal relationship.
In addition to velocity/spending effects, there are also multiplier effects through real production. The most insightful analysis of supply-side multipliers comes from the work of W.H. Hutt.
The multiplier is a legitimate concept but often it is overestimated in its import. This chapter in Keynes is a step backwards from Richard Kahn, the father of the multiplier concept.
Here is one critique of Keynes on the multiplier.
Don't forget Alex's comments on fiscal policy and velocity.
The information architecture of Kindle 2.0
Chris F. Masse alerts me to this very interesting article. Excerpt:
Letting customers read a book's initial pages for free is a great
Kindle innovation and makes good use of the digital medium's ability to
dissolve the print requirement to bundle chapters. (Thus, this is a better-than-reality
feature.) The innovation will no doubt sell more books – particularly
for fiction, where people will want to see what happens next once
they're gripped by a story. In fact, for mystery novels, Amazon could
probably give away the first 90% for free and charge the entire fee
just for the last chapter.
The article is interesting throughout on a variety of Kindle-related topics. The author agrees with my basic claim that the Kindle favors plot-driven fiction over complex non-fiction or for that matter postmodern fiction. Referring back and forth across sections is a no-no, so goodbye Pale Fire.
Assorted links
1. Malaria and African economic development, via Chris Masse.
2. Lengthy profile of Larry Summers, from TNR, interesting and has new material.
3. Via Chug, markets in everything: topless coffee shop in Maine. And, via Matt, a topless doughnut shop, same state.
4. Update on Massachusetts health care; interesting throughout. Can they really do away with fee for service? ""Really controlling costs requires just stopping spending,” said Stuart H. Altman, a professor of health policy at Brandeis University." The Obama administration would be wise to keep those words in mind.
Patents versus Markets
Long ago Jack Hirshleifer pointed out that markets can reward innovative activity even in the absence of patents (H.'s point was actually that markets could over-reward such activity but the point was clear). If an inventor discovers a new source of energy that requires the use of palladium, for example, he can buy palladium futures, announce his discovery and wait for the price of palladium to increase. Of course, this only works if the discovery is credible so betting (contra Tyler) is an important way to test the credibility of a theory (e.g. here and here and of course Hanson's key paper Could Gambling Save Science).
All this is by way of introduction to a new paper in Science, Promoting Intellectual Discovery: Patents Versus Markets (press release here). Bossaerts et al. compare a patent system with a market reward system in an interesting experimental setting. The innovation is the solution to a combinatorial problem called the knapsack problem. In the knapsack problem there are Z items each with a certain value. You must choose which items to put into the knapsack in order to maximize it's value but each item also has a weight and you cannot go over a fixed weight which is set such that you can't carry all the items. The solution to a knapsack problem is not obvious since it's not always best to include the most valuable items. The authors argue that solving the knapsack problem is like combining ideas to create a new innovation. The authors, of course, know the optimal solution to each knapsack problem.
Rewards for creating the innovation are offered in two ways, in the patent method the first person to produce the optimal solution gets the entire reward. In the market system each participant is initially given an equal number of shares in each item. The item-shares trade on a market. After the markets close a $1 dividend is paid to each item-share if the item is in the optimal solution, other shares expire worthless. Thus, the price of the item-shares can be thought of as the probability that the item is in the optimal solution. (i.e. is palladium in the optimal solution to the energy problem? If so, it will have a high price.) Dividends are set such that the total reward is about the same in the two treatments. Proposed solutions were also collected in the market setting although the solutions per se were not the basis of any reward.
Important findings are that the problem was solved just as often in the market setting as in the patent setting. Indeed, in the market setting more people solved the problem on average. There are two possible explanations. First, the winner-take-all nature of the patent system may have deterred some of the weaker participants from exerting effort. Second, and more interesting, is that the prices in the market system did in fact incorporate information about the optimal solution – thus market prices may have given people hints about the optimal solution, much like seeing a partial solution to a jigsaw puzzle.
Problems are that the market system can work only if there are rents to be had from market prices. A new computer chip design, for example, won't change the price of silicon (although even here side-bets may be possible, the inventor knows the manufacturer to whom he sells the invention for example). Also, the price of an input, like palladium, can be influenced by many things other than the innovation so the market system will typically often involve more risk. Still this is an interesting experimental approach to a deep problem.
Thanks to Monique van Hoek for the pointer.
BloggingFrozenHeads.TV with Robin Hanson
You'll find it here. Robin is awesome, as usual, and that is why I am grinning throughout. The topics are (among others):
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Tyler vs. Robin on the merits of cryonics (12:23)
Does fiction weaken your grasp of reality? (06:52)
Are economists evil? (12:10)
How to estimate the value of a person’s life (06:04)
Will prediction markets ever really take off? (08:06)
Has fame made Tyler boring? (02:27)
Addendum: Robin and his readers comment here.
Must you bet your views?
A reader asks:
How about some comments on the refusal by Krugman to bet some of his Nobel money against Mankiw?
Put aside Krugman and Mankiw and let's consider the issue in the abstract. Bryan Caplan believes that scholars should be ashamed if they do not publicly bet their views. In contrast I fear this requirement would become a tax upon ideas. How would you feel about an obligation (if only a moral one) for scholars and commentators to publicly reveal the content of their investment portfolios? Those portfolios are their real bets. Yet I still favor the privacy norm and I should note that Bryan never has (nor need he) revealed his portfolio to others at GMU, much less to the broader public.
Let's say that I, as a prolific blogger, express opinions on hundreds of economic policy topics, often involving either explicit or implicit predictions. Then say that hundreds of people wish to bet with me. Can I not simply turn them all down as a matter of policy and practicality?
If you're wondering, I practice "buy and hold and diversify," with no surprises in the portfolio and a conservative ratio of equity purchases. But those investment decisions don't necessarily reflect my views on any given day. I think it is intellectually legitimate (though perhaps not always prudent) to engage in mental accounting and separate those two spheres of my life. I change my mind lots of times, on many economic issues, but does that mean I have to become an active trader? I hope not and I'm not going to.
On long-run economic growth I'm still an optimist, though I am increasingly uncertain as to how much extant firms will capture those gains. On the short run issue at hand, I am fully with Mankiw, and Megan McArdle, in very much doubting the "rosy scenario" emanating from the Obama budget process.
The economics of prostitution pricing and prostitution bleg
From Allison Schrager, this was striking:
“I only charged $300 when I lived in San Francisco,” Andrea says.
Unlike most industries, escorts can charge higher prices when they are
in greater supply. This is because price is one of the few metrics sex suppliers
can use to convey quality. (In this way it is not unlike the hedge-fund
industry.) There are only about 30 VIPs in San Francisco, but nearly
100 in New York, so Andrea can charge more here. The customer
demographic is also wealthier, and a higher price deters customers from
bargaining, which is considered poor taste.
Alas, I cannot vouch for its accuracy. But in April I am participating in a NYC debate over the morality of prostitution, later to be broadcast on NPR. Notwithstanding my praise for Ross Douthat, I will be defending prostitution (with the Mayflower Madam on my side), against Catherine MacKinnon and others.
My bleg is this: other than Bernard Mandeville, what should I read to prepare? Any and all assistance is appreciated.