~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (578)

1. How Rickover built the US Navy. 2. My interview with Reason magazine. 3. The importance of stablecoins to the US Treasury market. 4. Another measure of how automatable your job is.  And tweet thread. 5. New AI and economics model from Epoch: Twitter thread: https://x.com/EpochAIResearch/status/1902802037752111569 Interactive playground: https://epoch.ai/gate Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.04941 6. More on Liu Jiakun, Pritzker winner.  […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

We analyze the impact of wind turbines on house prices, distinguishing between effects of proximity and shadow flicker from rotor blades covering the sun. By utilizing data from 2.4 million house transactions and 6,878 wind turbines in Denmark, we can control for house fixed effects in our estimation. Our results suggest strong negative impacts on […] The post Wind turbines lower Danish real estate...

To Dr. Damrosch, who has studied academic culture at colleges, the current turmoil was vaguely reminiscent of a 1940s episode at the school now known as Iowa State University. The school’s economics department — in a paper on economic policy for wartime food production — had proposed replacing butter with margarine, said Dr. Damrosch. The […] The post Some history of higher education appeared...

A tour guide is raking in the cash by carrying fatigued females up a mountain. Xiao Chen, 26, who works at Mount Tai in Shandong Province, China, accompanies tourists on their trek to the peak – but many of his female clients often want to be carried up the last 1,000 steps. He starts by […] The post Those new service sector jobs, China...

1. One report on car-free Tempe, AZ. 2. Speculative new claims about human evolution. 3. Is dark energy evolving? And from WaPo — the universe might stop expanding, big if true. 4. Indian painting sets new auction record at $13.7 million. 5. Update on Ukrainian defenses and drones. 6. Understanding solar energy. 7. Claude can […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

The Economist reports that China is now the second largest producer of new pharmaceuticals, after the United States. China has long been known for churning out generic drugs, supplying raw ingredients and managing clinical trials for the pharmaceutical world. But its drugmakers are now also at the cutting edge, producing innovative medicines that are cheaper […] The post China’s Medicines are Saving American Lives...

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with her.  Here is Wikipedia: Helen Ruth Castor FRSL (born 4 August 1968) is a British historian of the medieval and Tudor period and a BBC broadcaster. She taught history at the University of Cambridge and is the author of books including Blood and Roses (2004) and She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth (2010). Programmes she […] The post What should I ask Helen Castor?...

This was in 1994, right after the Aristide regime was restored by Clinton.  I had traveled a good deal by that time, mostly in North America, Europe, and southeast Asia.  But I had never been anywhere truly dangerous.  It seemed impossible to visit such places.  It is not that I did any serious risk calculation, […] The post My first trip to Haiti appeared...

New podcast series on Latin American political economy, with Rasheed Griffith and Diego Sánchez de la Cruz, all in English. The post Why Spain’s transition to democracy remains controversial appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Phillip Hinton. Ur saying ur Truman Capote, and ... by EqantukIn reply to Horhe. Where Spain didn't luck out is when ... by BobIt's not a...

1. Nowrasteh and Bourne on DOGE. 2. “The paradox of India: Punjab is over 60% vegetarian, but Tandoori chicken and butter chicken are its most popular dishes outside the state. Tamil Nadu is less than 1% vegetarian, but its “pure veg” idly, dosa, sambhar, pongal, etc are its most popular dishes outside the state.”  Link […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

Right now, DOGE is treating efficiency as a simple cost-cutting exercise. But science isn’t a procurement process; it’s an investment portfolio. If a venture capital firm measured efficiency purely by how little money it spent, rather than by the returns it generated, it wouldn’t last long. We invest in scientific research because we want returns […] The post Caleb Watney on risk and science...

Ezra is getting plenty of coverage for his very good and very on the mark new book with Derek Thompson, Abundance.  So far it is a huge hit after only a few days.  I figured this conversation would be most interesting, and add the most value, if I tried to push him further from a […] The post My excellent Conversation with Ezra Klein...

The chronometer, one of the greatest inventions of the modern era, allowed for the first time for the precise measurement of longitude at sea. We examine the impact of this innovation on navigation and urbanization. Our identification strategy leverages the fact that the navigational benefits provided by the chronometer varied across different sea regions depending […] The post The importance of the chronometer appeared...

1. James Damore update (Free Press). 2. AIs rationalize too. 3. Survey of new developments in regional and urban economics. 4. Survey on the macroeconomic costs of climate change. 5. A technical look at bottlenecks to AI adoption. 6. Drones will carry loads for sherpas up Mount Everest (NYT). The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Hazel...

We use matched employer-employee data to study where Americans live in relation to employer worksites. Mean distance from employee home to employer worksite rose from 15 miles in 2019 to 26 miles in 2023. Twelve percent of employees hired after March 2020 live at least fifty miles from their employers in 2023, triple the pre-pandemic […] The post The New Geography of Labor Markets...

From DeepSeek: **Marginal Revolution** – the *Wirtschaftswunder* (economic miracle) of blogs, where Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok dissect the *Zeitgeist* (spirit of the age) through the lens of economics, culture, and *Hintergedanken* (ulterior motives). Founded in 2003, it’s a *Schnellimbiss* (fast-food joint) for ideas: bite-sized posts on everything from pandemic policy to why cilantro tastes […] The post “Explain to me the blog Marginal...

You know, the one from yesterday suggesting that tighter building restrictions have not led to higher real estate prices, at least not in the cross-sectional data?  My sense is that it could be true, but we should not overestimate its import.  In most circumstances, economists should focus on output, not prices per se.  Let’s say […] The post What do I think of the...

1. New David Beckworth newsletter on macroeconomics. 2. Early prediction markets on papal succession. 3. Clifford Winston on DOGE as a wake-up call. 4. Project to preserve on-line text in stone? 5. Incomplete markets in everything, “Mason: the Musical”? 6. Institute for Progress action plan for AI. 7. Did business metrics break the university? The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION....

The annual Public Choice Outreach Conference is a crash course in public choice. The conference is designed for undergraduates and graduates in a wide variety of fields. It’s entirely free. Indeed scholarships are available! The conference will be held Friday May 30-Sunday June 1, 2025, near Washington, DC in Arlington, VA. Lots of great speakers. […] The post Public Choice Outreach Conference! appeared first...

How can I not link to a new Sam Peltzman piece on such a topic?  Here goes: Since 1972, the General Social Survey has periodically asked whether people are happy with Yes, Maybe or No type answers. Here I use a net “happiness” measure, which is percentage Yes less percentage No with Maybe treated as […] The post The Anatomy of Marital Happiness appeared...

Last year the agency provided $266.7m in grants to libraries, museums and related institutions across the country and its territories. Those grants ranged widely in value and purpose, such as $343,521 to support an internship and fellowship programme at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico or $10,350 for the Art Museum of Eastern Idaho […] The post The Institute for Museum and Library...

The standard view of housing markets holds that the flexibility of local housing supply–shaped by factors like geography and regulation–strongly affects the response of house prices, house quantities and population to rising housing demand. However, from 2000 to 2020, we find that higher income growth predicts the same growth in house prices, housing quantity, and […] The post NIMBY contrarianism appeared first on Marginal...

1. Does generative AI support the MAGA aesthetic style? (NYT) 2. Would you rather have married young? 3. Possible improvements in teen mental health? 4. LLMs produce funnier memes than the average human, though not as funny as the top humans. 5. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is another good Zambian movie, here is the […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

As late as the 1980s it was widely believed that babies do not feel pain. You might think that this was an absurd thing to believe given that babies cry and exhibit all the features of pain and pain avoidance. Yet, for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, the straightforward sensory evidence was dismissed […] The post What Did We Learn From Torturing...