Results for “age of em”
17238 found

Update on seasteading in French Polynesia

by  Tyler Cowen in

From Emma Harris:

But the Seasteading Institute and the new for-profit spin-off, Blue Frontiers, have racked up some real-world achievements in the past year. They signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of French Polynesia in January that lays the groundwork for the construction of their prototype. And they gained momentum from a conference of interested parties in Tahiti in May, which hundreds of people attended. The project’s focus has shifted from building a libertarian oasis to hosting experiments in governance styles and showcasing a smorgasbord of sustainable technologies for, among other things, desalination, renewable energy and floating food-production. The shift has brought some gravitas to the undertaking, and some ecologists have taken interest in the possibilities of full-time floating laboratories.

…The next step in making the island a reality will be the passage of a law defining the ‘special economic zone’ that will cover the synthetic island. Blue Frontiers isn’t asking French Polynesia for any subsidies to build the island, but it is asking for a 0% tax rate, among other regulatory exceptions. It has hired French firm GB2A, based in Paris, to prepare legal research and a set of requests, which Blue Frontiers presented to the government at the end of September. The team hopes to see a bill emerge before the end of the year.

In the meantime, the Seasteading Institute is building excitement and courting potential investors with a series of gatherings. In May, it held talks, networking events and tours in Tahiti. Speakers included Fritch; Tony Hsieh, chief executive of online retailer Zappos in Las Vegas, Nevada; Tua Pittman, a master canoe navigator from the Cook Islands; and engineers, nanotechnologists and a ‘blockchain strategist’, a specialist in the distributed information systems behind cryptocurrencies. The seasteaders hope to use such systems to handle their financials, as well as any scientific data that they generate. But the event wasn’t all work. An announcement for a party on outrigger canoes cheerfully suggested: “Do not wear heels. Bring a swimsuit for an optional moonlight swim.”

On 22–29 October, Blue Frontiers will hold an Insiders Access Week for supporters and potential investors, a mix of tours, discussion and morning yoga with Hencken. Always ambitious, the team hopes to have draft legislation from the Polynesian government by then, and some detailed architectural plans. The goal is to break ground — or rather, sea — in 2018.

In the Nature article there is much, much more.

For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.

The End of Free College in England

by  Tyler Cowen in

It seems to have been a largely pro-education, egalitarian development, at least according to a new research paper by Richard Murphy, Judith Scott-Clayton, and Gillian Wyness:

Despite increasing financial pressures on higher education systems throughout the world, many governments remain resolutely opposed to the introduction of tuition fees, and some countries and states where tuition fees have been long established are now reconsidering free higher education. This paper examines the consequences of charging tuition fees on university quality, enrollments, and equity. To do so, we study the English higher education system which has, in just two decades, moved from a free college system to one in which tuition fees are among the highest in the world. Our findings suggest that England’s shift has resulted in increased funding per head, rising enrollments, and a narrowing of the participation gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students. In contrast to other systems with high tuition fees, the English system is distinct in that its income-contingent loan system keeps university free at the point of entry, and provides students with comparatively generous assistance for living expenses. We conclude that tuition fees, at least in the English case supported their goals of increasing quality, quantity, and equity in higher education.

I have long been of the view that free tuition for U.S. state schools would be an educational disaster.

Thursday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. The long-term effects of slavery on inequality in Brazil.

2. David Geffen criticizes other philanthropists for not supporting his opening renovation gift to the NY Philharmonic (NYT).  Does the new hall really need to cost $500 million or maybe more?  What exactly has gone wrong here?

3. Is it unrealistic to expect undergraduates to think like economists? (McCloskey)

4. An unusual corporate presentation (Japan, SoftBank).  How do you interpret their message overall?  I wish to know.

5. The musical world of birdsong contests.

6. “Really I would not have predicted in 1994 how much of 2017’s financial news would involve the Wu-Tang Clan.“

Who should lead the Federal Reserve?

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:

We do not live under political normalcy, so traditional standards are not enough to guide this choice. In an age of consensus, it might be wise to nominate the candidate who knows the most about monetary policy, or who commands the most respect on Wall Street. Those remain significant factors, but the most important job of the next candidate is to prevent a polarization of opinion within the Fed itself.

I do consider some specific names at the link.

Model this saliva exchange

by  Tyler Cowen in

One of the most blatant violations of the rules against touching saliva among other taboos is described by Dubois…in his [1906] account of one of the “disgusting religious orgies” he so meticulously depicts.  In these orgies, not only do men and women eat meat and drink alcoholic beverages, but they transgress the normal saliva prohibition.  I cannot possibly improve upon Dubois’ vivid word picture: “In this orgy called sakti-puja, the pujari, or sacrificer who is generally a Brahman, first of all tastes the various kinds of meats and liquors himself, then gives the others permission to devour the rest.  Men and women thereupon begin to eat greedily, the same piece of meat passing from mouth to mouth, each person taking a bite until it is finished.  Then they start afresh on another joint, which they gnaw in the same manner, tearing the meat out of each other’s mouths.  When all the meat has been consumed, intoxicating liquors are passed around, every one drinking without repugnance out of the same cup.

That is from the quite interesting Two Tales of Crow and Sparrow: A Freudian Folkloristic Essay on Caste and Untouchability, by Alan Dundes.

The boom continues and indeed broadens

by  Tyler Cowen in

Growth in the all-important US services sector picked up sharply in September, providing further evidence that the recent string of hurricanes that battered swathe of southeastern US is unlikely to have a significant impact on US third quarter growth.

The Institute for Supply Management’s non-manufacturing gauge came in at 59.8 last month – the highest reading since August 2005. It is a sharp leg up from the reading of 55.3 recorded in August and easily trounced expectations for it to dip to 55.1.

Readings above 50 point to expansion, while those below indicate contraction.

The services sector, which includes professional services, healthcare and other non-manufacturing industries, makes up about 80 per cent of US gross domestic product.

The report comes just days after another ISM survey showed US manufacturing activity grew at its fastest pace in more than 13 years in September and reinforces the view in the market that US economic recovery remains on course for the second half of the year.

That is from Pan Kwan Yuk at the FT, file under “The Show So Far.”

Baseball fact of the day

by  Tyler Cowen

Statistics showing precisely when starting pitchers become less effective have prompted teams to remove them from games earlier than before. That has increased one of the biggest drags on pace of play: pitching changes. Regular-season games this year saw an average of 8.4 pitchers used between both teams, an all-time high. That’s up from 5.8 pitchers a game 30 years ago.

This to me seems deadly:

Games this season saw an average gap of 3 minutes, 48 seconds between balls in play, an all-time high.

And the average game is now three hours, five minutes long.

That is from a WSJ article, by Brian Costa and Jared Diamond, about how the quants are slowing down the game of baseball.

Hat tip goes to Cliff Asness.

The lava shock and the benefits of moving house (who’s complacent?)

by  Tyler Cowen in

This paper from last year somehow I neglected to blog, here is the abstract:

We exploit a volcanic “experiment” to study the costs and benefits of geographic mobility. We show that moving costs (broadly defined) are very large and labor therefore does not flow to locations where it earns the highest returns. In our experiment, a third of the houses in a town were covered by lava. People living in these houses where much more likely to move away permanently. For those younger than 25 years old who were induced to move, the “lava shock” dramatically raised lifetime earnings and education. Yet, the benefits of moving were very unequally distributed within the family: Those older than 25 (the parents) were made slightly worse off by the shock. The large gains from moving for the young are surprising in light of the fact that the town affected by our volcanic experiment was (and is) a relatively high income town. We interpret our findings as evidence of the importance of comparative advantage: the gains to moving may be very large for those badly matched to the location they happened to be born in, even if differences in average income are small.

That is from an NBER paper by Emi Nakamura, Jósef Sigurdsson, and Jón Steinsson.  There will someday be a Puerto Rican version of this study.

What should I ask Sujatha Gidla?

by  Tyler Cowen in

She is the author of the new and superb Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India.  I will be interviewing her later in the month, with a podcast and transcript forthcoming, no public event.  Here is her Macmillan bio:

Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable in Andhra Pradesh, India. She studied physics at the Regional Engineering College, Warangal. The author of Ants Among the Elephants, her writing has appeared in The Oxford India Anthology of Telugu Dalit Writing. She lives in New York and works as a conductor on the subway.

Here is BBC coverage of her work.  Here is the NYT review of her book.  Here are further links about her.  The Economist wrote: “Ants Among Elephants is an arresting, affecting and ultimately enlightening memoir. It is quite possibly the most striking work of non-fiction set in India since Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, and heralds the arrival of a formidable new writer.”

So what should I ask her?

The Productivity Slowdown and the Declining Labor Share

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the title of a new NBER paper from Gene M. Grossman, Elhanan Helpman, Ezra Oberfield, and Thomas Sampson.  It is a very simple hypothesis, but they do show it can explain much of the observed decline in labor’s share:

We explore the possibility that a global productivity slowdown is responsible for the widespread decline in the labor share of national income. In a neoclassical growth model with endogenous human capital accumulation a la Ben Porath (1967) and capital-skill complementarity a la Grossman et al. (2017), the steady-state labor share is positively correlated with the rates of capital-augmenting and labor-augmenting technological progress. We calibrate the key parameters describing the balanced growth path to U.S. data for the early postwar period and find that a one percentage point slowdown in the growth rate of per capita income can account for between one half and all of the observed decline in the U.S. labor share.

In other words, the decreased bargaining power of labor, or for that matter globalization, are not necessarily playing major roles.  Here is yet another (ungated) version of the paper.

The economic cost of contact sports

by  Tyler Cowen in

By Ray C. Fair and Christopher Champa (pdf), here is the abstract:

Injury rates in twelve U.S. men’s collegiate sports are examined in this paper. The twelve sports ranked by overall injury rate are wrestling, football, ice hockey, soccer, basketball, lacrosse, tennis, baseball, indoor track, cross country, outdoor track, and swimming. The first six sports will be called “contact” sports, and the next five will be called “non-contact.” Swimming is treated separately because it has many fewer injuries. Injury rates in the contact sports are considerably higher than they are in the non-contact sports and they are on average more severe. Estimates are presented of the injury savings that would result if the contact sports were changed to have injury rates similar to the rates in the non-contact sports. The estimated savings are 49,600 fewer injuries per year and 5,990 fewer injury years per year. The estimated dollar value of these savings is between about 0.5 and 1.5 billion per year. About half of this is from football. Section 7 speculates on how the contact sports might be changed to have their injury rates be similar to those in the non-contact sports.

Here is NYT coverage of the piece, and an excerpt:

When he goes to Stanford football games, he [Roger Noll] said, one of the things he notices is the television production people on the sideline walking around with parabolic microphones.

“I’ve asked them why they do that,” he said. “They are catering to their audience. The audience wants to hear heads crack.”

A bit like how they soup up Planet Earth II with all kinds of phony noises for the animal movement.