Results for “YouTube”
1346 found

Tim Harford on long-distance relationships

by  Tyler Cowen in

In today’s FT:

Economist Tyler Cowen, a professor at George Mason University, has
pointed out that the Alchian-Allen theorem applies to any long-distance
relationship.

The theorem, briefly, implies that
Australians drink higher-quality Californian wine than Californians,
and vice-versa, because it is only worth the transportation costs for
the most expensive wine.  Similarly, there is no point in travelling to
see your boyfriend for a take-away Indian meal and an evening in front
of the telly.  To justify the trip’s fixed costs, you will require
champagne, sparkling conversation and energetic sex.  Insist on it.

Meanwhile,
optimal-experimentation theory suggests that at this tender stage of
life you are highly likely to meet someone even better.  Socialise a lot
while your boyfriend is not around.

Here is Trudie on that same topic.  By the way, here are two clips from Tim’s BBC Econ TV show, on YouTube.

Trudie on kids and career

by  Tyler Cowen in

Trudie can think of a few approaches:

1. Practice major life shifts, so you get used to regret and thus can bear it more easily.  In other words, try to make the costs of regret smaller. 

2. Hire eminent psychotherapists to administer electric shocks every time you feel regret.  Try to make the costs of regret higher, so that you won’t regret so much.

3. Drink yourself senseless after making life commitments.  Attack your memory.

4. Have so many kids there will be no time or energy for regret.  One should suffice.

5. Hire someone to force the choice upon you, whether by posting a bond with a friendly blogger or approaching the Russian Mafia.  Or, once you get pregnant, do something unpardonable and post it on YouTube, being sure to alert your blogger enemies.

6. Realize that you value control more than any of these options for overcoming regret, so live with the regret and enjoy that sense of control for all it is worth.

7. Get over #6 by studying Leibniz, Holbach, and other determinists.

Trudie believes that Tyler is good at managing regret.  Surely we shouldn’t just let regret manage us.  But what is best to do?

Why don’t redistributionists like big band music?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Gabriel Rossman writes to me:

A few days ago there was a discussion on this blog about the book Conservatize Me and more broadly, about taste and politics.  Many of the questions can be answered systematically since in 1993 the General Social Survey included a list of questions about musical taste.  The simplest question to ask is how different types of music correlate with ideology (polviews).  Generally speaking, the stereotypes hold up.  Country is correlated with the right whereas classical, rap, rock music, and heavy metal are all correlated with the left.  Opinions about folk music aren’t correlated with politics.  Note though that even the strongest correlations are relatively weak (r<0.20) so there are plenty of liberals out there listening to country and no shortage of conservative rap fans.

Another way to look at it is to break politics into two dimensions.  Let’s treat whether the government should reduce income differences (eqwith) as a measure of economic attitudes.  Folk, classical, and big band music are very unpopular with redistributionists.  (I guess nobody dreamt about Joe Hill the night before the survey).  Rap, metal, and blues are popular with redistributionists.  Country, rock, and bluegrass aren’t correlated with fiscal attitudes.  For social attitudes, let’s use opinion of sex before marriage (premarsx).  Folk, country, classical, bluegrass, and big band fans tend to disapprove of fornication, whereas rap, rock, metal, and blues fans think it’s fine.  (If you substitute gay sex for premarital sex the pattern is the same, except for rap fans who tend to oppose it).  I experimented with looking for distinctively "libertarian" taste patterns but couldn’t find any.

This is all back of the envelope stuff.  A more sophisticated analysis would use factor analysis on dozens of attitudinal questions and find corresponding patterns in them.

You can find the 1993 GSS at Princeton’s Cultural Policy and Arts National Data Archive.  http://www.cpanda.org/codebookDB/sdalite.jsp?id=a00006.  There’s a self-explanatory web engine that allows you to compare any two variables.  (Want to know how many opera fans have been in fist fights?  Or how people who have paid for sex feel about nuclear power? Now is your chance.)  More advanced users can download the full dataset in SPSS, ASCII, or CSV and do whatever they want with it.

Gabriel Rossman is very smart.  Here is his home page.  Here is a summary of his dissertation.  Here is an abstract of his paper on the Dixie Chicks and where they received less play time.  Here is his paper on "Who Picks the Hits on Radio"? 

Addendum: Here is Benny Goodman on YouTube.  Here is Stan Kenton.  Here is Count Basie.  I could give you more.

Where does Wal-Mart put new stores?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Wal-Mart has an incentive to keep its stores close to each other so it
can economize on shipping. For example, to make this simple, just think
about a delivery truck: If Wal-Mart stores are relatively close
together, one truck can make numerous shipments; however, if the stores
are spread out, you wouldn’t have that benefit. So, I think that the
main thing Wal-Mart is getting by having a dense network of stores is
to facilitate the logistics of deliveries.

There are other benefits, too. Opening new stores near existing stores
makes it easier to transfer experienced managers and other personnel to
the new stores. The company routinely emphasizes the importance of
instilling in its workers the “Wal-Mart culture.” It would be hard to
do this from scratch, opening up a new store 500 miles from any
existing stores.

…Wal-Mart waited to get to the plum locations until it could build out
its store network to reach them. It never gave up on density.                   

The placement of Wal-Mart stores has followed a spatial diffusion model.  K-Mart, in contrast, scattered its stores across the country.  Here is more.  Here is a video showing the spread of Wal-Mart, well worth watching and short.  It is the best single lesson in economic geography you will receive.  Thanks to http://kottke.org for the pointer.

Indoor free throws — a paradox of exercise

by  Tyler Cowen in

Outdoors I am a mediocre free throw shooter.  I hit 50 percent.  Indoors I hit about 70 percent.  This is close to the NBA average, and divided by my hourly wage it would put me at number one in the league.  How can this difference be?  Virginia is not that windy.  My outdoor free throw shooting is best when dusk is approaching, and the air is hot, thick, and still.  (I also feel I play tennis much better indoors, although that is harder to measure.)  The Great Outdoors are wonderful, but it is disturbing when the basketball clunks on the rim.  Each time I wonder what other life tasks I might perform much better, if only for some simple change in framing.   

Addendum: Forget free throws, here are videos of NBA dunks from the recent slam-dunk contest, courtesy of http://kottke.org.  My percentage there is the same, indoors or outdoors.