~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (569)

If you have ideas for cutting regulations, the US government wants to hear from you! This could be important. Provide details on the exact regulation in the CFR. The post Deregulation suggestions appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Kevin Postlewaite. There's value in knowing which ... by TWBCStop the AMA from having any say in the supply of doctors. It's ......

This occurred in Knoxville, you can watch it here.  Lots of fun, and p.s. I am more of a free trader than he is.  We did have some disagreements. The post My debate with Dani Rodrik about tariffs and free trade appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Olivia Turnbull. Olivia, you need to step up your ... by MikePI was surprised...

“The Effect of Deactivating Facebook and Instagram on Users’ Emotional State” — by Hunt Alcott, et.al. We estimate the effect of social media deactivation on users’ emotional state in two large randomized experiments before the 2020 U.S. election. People who deactivated Facebook for the six weeks before the election reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement […] The post Is this a lot or a...

This short note shows that accounting for capital adjustment is critical when analyzing the long-run effects of trade wars on real wages and consumption. The reason is that trade wars increase the relative price between investment goods and labor by taxing imported investment goods and their inputs. This price shift depresses capital demand, shrinks the […] The post Long-Run Effects of Trade Wars appeared...

1. I find this illustrative, and also very, very naive.  Here is a related query.  I think this crowd is bad at modeling social systems and macro systems more generally.  That is an intrinsically thing to do, but I would keep that in mind when reading “rationalist” analyses. 2. Yale sells $6 billion of its […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

My latest paper, Pandemic Preparation Without Romance, has just appeared at Public Choice. Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic, despite its unprecedented scale, mirrored previous disasters in its predictable missteps in preparedness and response. Rather than blaming individual actors or assuming better leadership would have prevented disaster, I examine how standard political incentives—myopic voters, bureaucratic gridlock, and […] The post Pandemic Preparation Without Romance appeared first...

Here is the thread, here is the paper: Relatively flat US output growth versus rising numbers of US researchers is often interpreted as evidence that “ideas are getting harder to find.” We build a new 46-year panel tracking the universe of U.S. firms’ patenting to investigate the micro underpinnings of this claim, separately examining the […] The post “Growth is getting harder to find,...

The United Arab Emirates aims to use AI to help write new legislation and review and amend existing laws, in the Gulf state’s most radical attempt to harness a technology into which it has poured billions. The plan for what state media called “AI-driven regulation” goes further than anything seen elsewhere, AI researchers said, while […] The post It’s happening, UAE edition appeared first...

It was a week long, in Hartford, CT, sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies.  The four faculty were: Robert Nozick Israel Kirzner John Gray Ronald Max Hartwell Those were the only faculty, for one week — pretty amazing!  Libertarianism and classical liberalism quite simply had much higher intellectual status in those days.  You could […] The post The 1982 IHS seminar I attended...

1. The Druid critique of progress (check out the guy’s bio). 2. Have researchers discovered (created?) a new colour? 3. “Our results robustly point towards a decrease in annual growth rates of approximately two percentage points during the first decade after implementing socialism.” 4. How are Chinese robots doing in races with humans? (WSJ) 5. The […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on...

Germany, Italy, Poland and Sweden are among the nations the U.S. Department of Agriculture approached to address the shortage brought on by a bird flu outbreak, according to European industry groups. But supplying Americans with eggs would be complicated for foreign producers — but not because of political tensions over the myriad import tariffs President […] The post Our non-eggcellent regulations appeared first on...

At the same time I started reading economics, at age 13, I also was reading philosophy.  I lived in Hillsdale, New Jersey, but River Vale had a better public library for those topics, so I would ride my bike there periodically and take out books (I also learned about Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis by […] The post My history with philosophy appeared first...

Mexico [is]…the current hub of AI server manufacturing. Of the servers imported by the U.S.—including AI and non-AI servers—about 70% come from Mexico, according to a report by Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs. More of this, please.  Here is the full WSJ piece, via the excellent Kevin Lewis. The post Mexico fact of the day appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to...

Not exactly my views, but well worth reading as a whole.  Here is one excerpt: …much of this extinction will seem voluntary. In a normal evolutionary bottleneck, the goal is surviving some immediate physical threat — a plague or famine, an earthquake, flood or meteor strike. The bottleneck of the digital age is different: The […] The post The Ross Douthat manifesto? appeared first...

A recent survey, commissioned by the Bible Society and conducted by YouGov, showed 16 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 in England and Wales said they attended church at least monthly, significantly up from 4 per cent in 2018. Here is more from the FT.  Addendum: The above quotation from the FT is slightly misleading.  Both […] The post England and Wales fact of the...

1. How tariffs affect trade deficits. 2. How many “ghost branches” of humanity are there? 3. There is actual humor in this NYT piece on the pro-natalism movement.  “With” or “at,” you can debate, but not all readers will align with the NYT perspective.  Bryan has the best line.  The correction is funny too.  I […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

Individual construction tasks have, on average, not gotten cheaper since at least the 1950s. Bricks haven’t gotten cheaper since the mid-19th century, despite massive improvements in brickmaking technology. Construction has a reputation for being slow to innovate, but innovations seem to spread in construction at roughly similar rates to other industries, like car manufacturing or agriculture. Single family […] The post Brian Potter on what he has...

From a Czech newspaper: Recruitment of new recruits in Russia is skyrocketing. With the prospect of a ceasefire, they want to ‘jump on the last train’ The number of Russians who have decided to join the army has multiplied in recent weeks. Regardless of their health, recruitment centres are taking anyone who expresses an interest. […] The post Intertemporal substitution (from my email) appeared...

1. Pluto vs. Australia. 2. Moose migration: the television culture that isSweden. 3. October Progress conference in Berkeley. 4. James Meek on Greenland. 5. Can you give “LSD” to your LLM? 6. “People In Iceland Are Collecting Baby Puffins In The Streets And Throwing Them Back Into The Ocean.” The post Friday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Kieran....

The Kanye West and Jay-Z song “No Church in the Wild,” for instance, sampled a single instrumental line from a failed solo album recorded in the late 1970s by the Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera; the licensing proceeds provided Mr. Manzanera with “the biggest payday he had in the course of his entire career.” Or […] The post Music compensation fact of the day...

“S.F. auto glass shops suffering as car break-ins drop” Here is the San Francisco Chronicle link, via Air Genius Gary Leff. The post Bastiat’s revenge appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Biggles f’Tang. Google is now paying $300 to ... by Kaitlin RushIn reply to Flex. JOIN US Everybody can earn 250/h Dollar + ... by Ana SellersIn reply to Flex....

1. Florian Illies, The Magic of Silence: Caspar David Friedrich’s Journey Through Time.  An excellent book, usually I am allergic to art history books that attempt to charm, but this one works.  Excerpt: “A question posed to the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk: ‘What makes the Monk by the Seashore so unprecedented?’ His answer: “It is the […] The post What I’ve been reading appeared first...

By Roger Chickering, this is so far the best book I have read this year, and I knew that within the first fifty pages (or less).  It is everything one could want from a book on this very important country and time period.  Likely I will report more on it as I read more, for […] The post *The German Empire, 1871-1918* appeared first...

1. Jerome Powell on stablecoins. 2. Hollis Robbins on o3 and higher education. 3. Google has started hiring for “post-AGI research.”  If you want one, here is a straightforward definition of AGI.  I believe o3 passes that test, including for the one hour of human labor mark.  I hear lots of complaining, but I don’t […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...