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Harvard University said on Monday that it had rejected policy changes requested by the Trump administration, becoming the first university to directly refuse to comply with the administration’s demands and setting up a showdown between the federal government and the nation’s wealthiest university. Other universities have pushed back against the Trump administration’s interference in higher […] The post Harvard says no appeared first on...

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  John might be the smartest person I know about the energy sector and also about philanthropy.  Here is the opening of his Wikipedia entry: John Douglas Arnold (born 1974) is an American philanthropist, former Enron executive, and founder of Arnold Ventures LLC, formerly the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. In 2007, […] The post What should I ask John Arnold?...

1. ADHD diagnosis is a mess (NYT). 2. John Cochrane on tariffs, savings, and investment. 3. More on low productivity growth in construction. 4. Ken Rogoff is now on Substack. 5. DolphinGemma: How Google AI is helping decode dolphin communication. 6. Russian birth rates hit new low. 7. Out of date (a lot will be happening […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

An estimated 80 percent [of U.S: gun shootings] seem to instead be crimes of passion — including rage.  They’re arguments that could be defused but aren’t, then end in tragedy because someone has a gun.  Most violent crimes are the result of human behavior gone temporarily haywire, not premeditated acts for financial benefit. That is […] The post The roots of gun violence appeared...

“Philip Howard here.  I enjoyed your discussion with Jen Pahlka.  Here are a few notes: 1. This current system needs disrupting, but I fear DOGEs indiscriminate cuts are making the status quo look good.    Here’s Peter Drucker, criticizing Gore’s reinventing got:  “patching.  It always fails.  The next step is to rush into downsizing.  Management picks […] The post How to do regulatory reform (from...

Here is one article in Spanish, my favorite novel by him is War of the End of the World.  Aunt Julia and the Scripwriter is a wonderful introduction, and there are many other fine works. The post Muere Mario Vargas Llosa, RIP appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsRIP There are so many novels by him to cherish, but the book ... by RebesFrom...

1. 2013 paper on the economics of a “sudden stop” in lending to the United States.  Not what I think is going on now, but fyi. 2. Richer Swedes are getting healthier more quickly. 3. Incredible AI thread from Steve Jurvetson. 4. Lottery arbitrage? (WSJ) 5. What does a House of Representatives member do all […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on...

Eventually, Smith declared himself a candidate for the White House.  His proposed platform was an awkward conglomeration of popular, though incongruent, principles including restoring the national bank, cutting Congress members’ salaries, annexing Texas, and instituting the gradual abolition of slavery.  Hundreds of Mormon men, including Brigham Young, swarmed the nation campaigning for their prophet to […] The post I never knew Joseph Smith ran...

How does a start-up founder hire a software engineer or a tech worker find a date in 2025? They could share a job posting on LinkedIn, log on to a dating app — or leave a handwritten note in a Waymo. That’s what Influur CEO Alessandra Angelini was thinking when she and Jennifer Lo Chan, […] The post Markets expand to fill empty spaces...

Max writes to me: “Hope you’re doing well. And the craziness in the world hasn’t been affecting you too much. I know I’ve written to you about cash-treasury basis a couple of times over the years. The situation has unfortunately become somewhat more acute and has started to get wider media attention. There are some good accounts […] The post Problems in Treasury markets (from my...

1. New Knausgaard novel coming. 2. Unsecured penguin caused helicopter crash in South Africa. 3. Why does pre-training work? 4. Opinion polling from Poland. 5. Survey measures of the natural rate of interest.  Thread is here. 6. Cass Sunstein reports on the social neuroticism of the Right.  And Balaji is correct. 7. The conservative legal […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

If you are willing to pay $250 or so, you can watch it in The Sphere.  From Wikipedia: Postcard from Earth is a 2023 film directed by Darren Aronofsky, starring Brandon Santana and Zaya Ribeiro. Created specifically to be screened at Sphere in the Las Vegas Valley on the venue’s 160,000 square-foot video screen, the film was shot in an 18K […] The post *Postcard from Earth* appeared first on...

That is the topic of my recent essay for The Free Press.  Excerpt: Ideologically, the English 17th century was weird above all else. Millenarianism blossomed, and the occult and witchcraft became stronger obsessions. This was an age of religious and economic upheaval; King James I even wrote a book partly about witches called Daemonologie. The greater […] The post Parallels between our current time and...

The National Institutes of Health told employees Thursday it was rolling back directives from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to probe worker productivity and limit purchases and travel on company cards, according to messages obtained by POLITICO. It’s a possible sign that the agency’s recently confirmed director, Jay Bhattacharya, is willing to break with […] The post It seems DOGE is dwindling? appeared...

1. Website on distinguished Indian economists. 2. The science of making coffee stronger. 3. How Dean Ball works. 4. David Salle and AI painting. 5. The culture that is the North Bergen (NJ) police department. 6. New Helen Dewitt novel. 7. “Micro-retirement”? (NYT) The post Friday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Ai. That’s not exactly true. Higher agitation...

Every year, American tourists pour billions of dollars into France, wandering the Louvre, sipping overpriced espresso in Montmartre, and snapping selfies along the Seine—while far fewer French tourists bother making the reverse pilgrimage to admire, say, Disney World. The result? A massive tourism deficit. On paper, this reflects wealth differentials and revealed preferences – Americans, […] The post America’s Tourism Deficit: How the French...

Tariffs don’t just alter trade flows — they redirect resources and reshape industrial structures. If Trump’s goal was to curb China’s technological progress, he would keep tariffs low on the bulk of Chinese exports to the US, locking the country into low-margin basic manufacturing. He would encourage high-tech exports to China, making sure that progress […] The post Claims about China appeared first on...

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary: Jennifer Pahlka believes America’s bureaucratic dysfunction is deeply rooted in outdated processes and misaligned incentives. As the founder of Code for America and co-founder of the United States Digital Service, she has witnessed firsthand how government struggles to adapt to the digital age, […] The post My Conversation with the excellent Jennifer...

So much education, so little human capital: According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) statistical database, Russians age 25 and older averaged 12.4 years of schooling circa 2019—almost the same as for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Europe, which averaged 12.6 years. While some Western European countries—Germany, Iceland, Switzerland, and the UK—reported […] The post The Russian paradox appeared first on...

1. NCAA antitrust update. 2. Boulez at 100 (NYT). 3. Scott Sumner on the unfolding disaster. 4. Middle-Aged Man Trading Cards Go Viral in Rural Japan Town. 5. Using LLMs to ascertain what actually leads to an autism diagnosis. 6. Data on how university students use Claude. 7. James Meek on Greenland. The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply...

There is some evidence that the White House used AI to come up with a quick and dirty (and incorrect) formula to correlate tariff rates with trade deficits. I have no problem with using AI, I think they just didn’t go far enough. The White House should have asked the AI a question like this: […] The post AI on Tariffs appeared first on...

Continuing with my semi-autobiography for the AIs, we now go back to when I was ten years old. One day I felt terribly sick, really just awful, as if my innards were on fire.  Fortunately my father insisted I go to the doctor, and it turned out my appendix was bursting and infected.  I was […] The post My early history as a chess...

1. Homeostatic AI progress. 2. Matt Huang profile. 3. Did 19th century tariffs make America rich? 4. AI toward the end of more Tom and Jerry. 5. Eleven-year-old Oklahoma boy can perfectly imitate fifty different birds.  “He says the most difficult bird to emulate is the barn swallow, but he can imitate anything from a […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

The new FDA report from Joe Lonsdale and team is impressive. It has a lot of new material, is rich in specifics and bold in vision. Here are just a few of the recommendation which caught my eye: From the prosaic: GMP is not necessary if you are not manufacturing: In the U.S., anyone running […] The post A Blueprint for FDA Reform appeared...

A big chunk of it is coming from the health care sector.  Information and communications are not growing in productivity as rapidly as before, and Britain has done less well boosting productivity with tech and also in oil and gas extraction.  Here is the thread, here is the underlying study from the Resolution Foundation.  This […] The post Britain’s productivity problem appeared first on...

Robin Hanson, citing Agnes Callard, asks that question.  He writes: They said (my summary) that we have many standard roles, tools, and scripts to guide practical inquiry, that we have little need to inquire into deep topics, and that social talk is often of short duration, has norms of impracticality and frequent topic changes, is […] The post Why not inquire together more? appeared...

That is my latest piece for The Free Press, here is one excerpt: It is not merely that the policies keep on changing. We are seeing that the policies didn’t have much of a rational basis to begin with. Exactly how were all those threatened tariff rates calculated to begin with? A debate is raging […] The post A contagion of uncertainty appeared first...

1. Various Medicaid budget dilemmas (NYT).  A lot is at stake here, though since there are no major personalities involved, this and related stories is not getting much coverage. 2. New claims about string theory. 3. America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back. 4. Profile of Emily Oster. 5. Rationalism vs. empiricism in the […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

It has become popular in some circles to argue that trade—or, in the more “sophisticated” version, that the dollar’s reserve-currency status—undermines U.S. manufacturing. In reality, there is little support for this claim. Let’s begin with some simple but often overlooked points. The US is a manufacturing powerhouse. We produce $2.5 trillion of value-added in manufacturing […] The post Manufacturing and Trade appeared first on...

Via Basil Halperin.  This is not a question of confusing causation and correlation, if anything it is the protectionists who have such an error in their mind’s eye.  These days the average U.S. service sector job pays more than a manufacturing job. The post Manufacturing share vs. GDP appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to dearieme. I essentially make about $9,000-$13,000 ......

Worth a redux, here is one excerpt: While I try my best to understand the New Right, I am far from being persuaded. One worry I have is about how it initially negative emphasis feeds upon itself. Successful societies are based on trust, including trust in leaders, and the New Right doesn’t offer resources for […] The post My 2022 piece on the New...

We find that only 15.1 percent of the decline in goods-sector employment from 1992 to 2012 stems from U.S. trade deficits; most of the decline is due to differential productivity growth. Here is the full paper by Kehoe, Ruhl, and Steinberg, via Zack Mazlish.  I believe we have covered this issue before. The post Tariff sentences to ponder appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.        ...

Deirdre McCloskey, can you guess which book?  See #197.  I might add the text to that one is remarkably non-salacious, perhaps many readers were somewhat disappointed. Via the excellent CW. The post One economist removed from the Naval library appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.      Related StoriesMy Conversation with the excellent Sheilagh OgilvieFederal Judge Rejects FDA Power GrabAI Discovers New Uses for Old Drugs 

1. How do people perceive international trade? (redux from a few years ago) 2. Mice exhibit first aid behaviors. 3. What we are learning about the geology of northeastern North America.  An interesting piece. 4. Recent ReStud paper on trade imbalances. 5. “Two directors of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society have been accused of “vandalism” […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

The Emerging Scholars Program is a new initiative of the Mercatus Center, aimed at supporting early-career classical-liberal thinkers who are committed to focusing on an original research project that is well-defined, shows strong potential to further classical liberal ends, and is ready to be started or continued. Through the program, Mercatus will hire a full […] The post Mercatus Emerging Scholar initiative appeared first...

Jack Skidmore writes to me, and I will not double indent: “Hello Tyler, As someone who follows AI developments with interest (though I’m not a technical expert), I had an insight about AI safety that might be worth considering. It struck me that we might be overlooking something fundamental about what makes humans special and […] The post Coordination and AI safety (from my...

Here on Spotify.  Here on Apple Music.  Here on YouTube.  Here is my previous post on Matthes and his efforts. The post Nikolaus Matthes finishes The Art of the Fugue appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsI'm all for this, just as I am in favor of architectural ... by FazeI prefer to go farther back ... by mega mikeIn reply to Equestrian. LETS...

1. “15k researchers are working on AGI, in America. We have more people working on AGI then the whole world combined. Be grateful to those researchers putting in 7 day work weeks” Link here. 2. From Glenn: “People still don’t seem to appreciate that official trade figures don’t include the U.S.’ largest “exports” to the […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on...

Many people think they understand why domestic prices rise with tariffs–domestic producers take advantage of reduced competition to jack up prices and increase their profits. The explanation seems cynical and sophisticated and its not entirely wrong but it misses deeper truths. Moreover, this “explanation” makes people think that an appropriate response to domestic firms raising […] The post Why Do Domestic Prices Rise With...

By Martin Gould, here is one excerpt: Halting plans for a large, polluting factory farm feels like a clear win — no ammonia-laden air burning residents’ lungs, no waste runoff contaminating local drinking water, and seemingly fewer animals suffering in industrial confinement. But that last assumption deserves scrutiny. What protects one community might actually condemn […] The post Five insights from farm animal economics...

Russia’s stock market has suffered its worst week in more than two years in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs and a drop in global oil prices. The market capitalization of companies listed on the Moscow Exchange (MOEX) fell by 2 trillion rubles ($23.7 billion) over just two days, sliding from 55.04 trillion rubles ($651.8 billion) […] The post Russia facts of the day appeared...

Now for my own view. I think trying to reshore some manufacturing and decouple more from China makes sense from a national security standpoint, even if it costs something to G.D.P. and the stock market. Using revenue from such a limited, China-focused tariff regime to pay down the deficit seems entirely reasonable. I am more […] The post Common sense from Ross Douthat appeared...

1. AI protection against epilepsy? 2. “Well the latest DeepSeek is very satisfying from an humanities perspective. The trick to generalize RL is replacing scalar grades with… source criticism (qualitative principles and critiques).”  Link here. 3. Redrawing India’s electoral map (FT). 4. Build with Tract, an EV project that failed. 5. “How do you individualize […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

People sometimes dismiss basic economic reasoning, “that’s just Econ 101!” yet most policymakers couldn’t pass the exam. Here’s an apropos bit from our excellent textbook, Modern Principles of Economics. Do you shop at Giant, Safeway, or the Piggly Wiggly? If you do, you run a trade deficit with those stores. That is, you buy more […] The post In Defense of Econ 101 appeared...

In my recent post on my Freiburg year abroad, I mentioned that my first time leaving the country was a trip to England.  Somehow I was accepted into a multi-week economics course at Oxford.  Of course it was not the real Oxford, just some program for foreigners held on Oxford campus. I didn’t much care […] The post My 1979 trip to Oxford and...

Thinly capitalized hedge funds’ growing role in the enormous and rapidly expanding market for U.S. Treasury securities poses a clear and present danger to financial stability that warrants a new approach from the Federal Reserve during times of extreme market stress, suggests a paper discussed at the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA) conference on […] The post Treasury market dysfunction and the role...

1. When did horse welfare peak?  Recently? 2. One Rhodes Scholar discusses how she judges applications.  The lessons there are not what she thinks. 3. Do smoking bans lead to more drinking? 4. Do colluding firms innovate more? 5. Does beauty promote risk-taking? (speculative) 6. Working in the reference department of a public library. 7. […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

We introduce a novel measure of CEO depression by applying machine learning models that analyze vocal acoustic features from CEOs’ conference call recordings. Our research was preregistered via the Journal of Accounting Research‘s registration-based editorial process. In this study, we validate this measure and examine associated factors. We find that greater firm risk is positively associated […] The post Using machine learning to measure CEO...

There is an enormous and growing discussion on AI alignment, but very little on capitalizing AIs, and what effects that might have.  By capitalizing AIs, I mean simply requiring them to hold some wealth, in whichever form they might care about, so they have proverbial “skin in the game” (can we still call it that?). […] The post Alignment vs. capitalization appeared first on...

Let us hope.  Via Ben Klutsey. The post Some modest Congressional rebellion against Trump tariffs? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Pillow Lasers. Biden had one of the slimmest ... by SureIn reply to Luka. Your sentences don't sound very patriotic ... by Noah RocksIn reply to j mct. The problem with the strategy of ... by SureIn reply to Pillow...