Bookmarks (556)

be mebe Marginal Revolutiondaily links postedcommenters debating obscure economic theoriessomeone mentions Baumol’s cost diseasehalf the commenters triggered, half delightedTyler posts cryptic sentence about food trucks“markets in everything” intensifiesrealize you just spent two hours reading about medieval grain pricesmfw economics was the real marginal revolution all along The post GPT 4.5 on this blog appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Zote. Well...

1. A new and thorough Manus report.  And Manus would be a huge liability risk in the United States.  And yup.  And double yup, when will the NYT cover Manus?  And from the Manus founder. 2. Stephen Kotkin on Trump and Ukraine (New Yorker).  So far one of the best pieces this year. 3. Greg […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID. The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States. In consultation with Congress, we intend for […] The post US AID, current status appeared first...

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  Chris is a managing partner at Andreessen-Horowitz, and has recently published Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet.  Here is Chris on Wikipedia.  Here is Chris on Twitter.  Chris has some writings on his home page. So what should I ask him? The post What should I ask Chris Dixon? appeared first...

Published by Liberty Fund, by me, here is the third and final installment.  Excerpt: “Below is a brief and simplified catalog of the major polities described in The Odyssey: • Pylos and Sparta: Visited by Telemachus, superficially seem normal but they seem sadder on reflection and Sparta relies on intoxication to support public order. • Ogygia, or Calypso: An […] The post An Economic Approach to Homer’s Odyssey:...

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Excerpt: COWEN: You grew up in Northwest Territories and also Alberta, so western Canada. How do you think that’s shaped your perspective on economies? CARNEY: Well, the big thing I took from my time in Alberta is just, I mean, it made me a market believer because I’ll give you […] The post Redux, my 2021 Conversation with Mark...

Highly controversial plans to revolutionise Whitehall by introducing performance-related pay, an accelerated exit process for under-performing mandarins and more digitalisation will be announced this week in what ministers say is a programme to “reshape the state” so it can respond to a new “era of insecurity”. The proposed changes, to be announced by Cabinet Office […] The post Will there be a British DOGE?...

1. Ezra Klein essay, adapted from his Abundance book with Derek Thompson (NYT). 2. Ancient transport vehicles, without wheels, in New Mexico. 3. Was Victor Hugo also a great visual artist? (Times of London).  Further links here. 4. It turns out Buffy Sainte-Marie isn’t even Canadian? 5. Is brick making a comeback in urban architecture? […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on...

Early reports are pretty consistent, and they indicate that Manus agentic AI is for real, and ahead of its American counterparts.  I also hear it is still glitchy  Still, it is easy to imagine Chinese agentic AI “getting there” before the American product does.  If so, what does that world look like? The cruder way […] The post The political economy of Manus AI...

1. Salim Furth uses Deep Research. 2. Culture wars in New Zealand. 3. Gdp without g (Bloomberg). 4. “Surprisingly common trait in high agency people is they had heroes and figured out how to meet them all before age 25” Nabeel 5. “We find that Gun Sanctity is highly predictive of different forms of magical […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

1. Manus.  And more.  And Chubby weighs in.  And more Chubby.  Here is Rowan Cheung.  And another report.  Here is background information.  This seems to be some kind of demo?  Here is Manus on Twitter.  Here is their website.  And a new video.  Mind and Hand!  What a day. The post Manus assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsI’m gonna be honest....

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him.  This is Jack Clark the co-founder of Anthropic, rather than Jack Clark the baseball player.  For further background, here is his LinkedIn page.  So what should I ask him? The post What should I ask Jack Clark? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIs Islam right about women? by raywardIn reply to Bob McGrew. More...

Recent evidence indicates that the emergence of stone tool technology occurred before the appearance of the genus Homo1 and may potentially be traced back deep into the primate evolutionary line. Conversely, osseous technologies are apparently exclusive of later hominins from approximately 2 million years ago (Ma), whereas the earliest systematic production of bone tools is currently restricted […] The post Systematic bone tool production at 1.5...

Poland will look at gaining access to nuclear weapons and also ensure that every man undergoes military training as part of an effort to build a 500,000-strong army to face off the threat from Russia, Prime Minister Donald Tusk told the parliament on Friday. Here is the full article. The post Solve for the equilibrium appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to...

1. Brian Potter analyzes Boom and the attempt to build a successful supersonic aircraft. 2. Balaji on tariffs. 3. Max Tabarrok on AI and the economics job market. 4. 50 thoughts on DOGE, an excellent post. 5. Why people don’t like neighborhood density. 6. Starting to get freaky? 7. Rebuilding Addis? (FT) 8. Jean-Claude Saintilus, […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one bit: The most important factors behind trade balances include savings decisions, fiscal policy, economic growth rates, wealth levels and demographic characteristics such as the age of the population. As economist Joseph Gagnon bluntly put it: “None of the studies found any role for trade barriers.” […] The post Tariffs do not in general help...

I always loved games and card games, and they played a big role in family life.  It was one activity that everyone, including my grandmother, could partake in enthusiastically, and on a more or less equal footing. The big card game was euchre, yes euchre.  It is a trick-taking game with trumps, think of it […] The post Games we played appeared first on...

Denmark’s state-run postal service, PostNord, is to end all letter deliveries at the end of 2025, citing a 90% decline in letter volumes since the start of the century. The decision brings to an end 400 years of the company’s letter service. Denmark’s 1,500 postboxes will start to disappear from the start of June. Transport […] The post Denmark fact of the day appeared...

1. In defense of Gemini. 2. Schelling applied to AI dominance? 3. One account of the Zizian story. 4. Can you induce anxiety in your LLM? 5. Chris Blattman on Deep Research. 6. ESPR summer camp, for 16- to 21-year olds. 7. AI art auction exceeds expectations. The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to The Original D....

An excellent EconTalk episode with Pete Boettke on the socialist calculation debate. I like Boettke on the three Ps. The three Ps–property, prices, and profits and loss. Property incentivizes us. Prices guide us. Profits lure us to new changes and losses discipline us. Today, “incentives matter” is often considered the first lesson of economics. But […] The post Boettke on the Socialist Calculation Debate...

Here is my 68 minutes with David Perell, who is excellent in such settings: Here is David’s Twitter take, here is a short bit on how to use different AI tools.  Here is the transcript.  Self-recommending. The post How AI is changing and will change the world of writing appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         Commentsno comments engaging with the substance of the post,...

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is part of the episode summary: He joins Tyler to discuss why it took scientists so long to accept airborne disease transmission and more, including why 19th-century doctors thought hay fever was a neurosis, why it took so long for the WHO and CDC to acknowledge COVID-19 […] The post My Conversation with Carl Zimmer appeared...

German borrowing costs surged by the most in 17 years on Wednesday, as investors bet on a big boost to the country’s ailing economy from a historic deal to fund investment in the military and infrastructure. The yield on the 10-year Bund surged 0.21 percentage points to 2.69 per cent, its biggest one-day move since […] The post Germany fact of the day appeared...

1. Some new survey results on work from home. 2. Digital doppelgangers. 3. Liu Jiakun wins the Pritzker Prize, photos at the link. 4. The ideology of AI governance.  Can AI rule be interpretable to humans?  Weird stuff, don’t worry I don’t understand it either. 5. Three Wikipedia pages for great economists. 6. Robert Mundell […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

Elon recently re-opened the perennial debate about whether Social Security is a ponzi scheme. Here’s my, lightly edited post from 2011. Elon is in good company calling social security a ponzi scheme. First up is Nobel prize winner Paul Samuelson who wrote: The beauty of social insurance is that it is actuarially unsound. Everyone who reaches […] The post Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme?...

Of relevance to some recent debates: We have four main findings: First, measuring “economic income” as currently-taxed income plus new unrealized gains, the income tax base captures 60% of economic income of the top 1% of wealth-holders (and 71% adjusting for inflation) and the vast majority of income for lower wealth groups. Second, adjusting for […] The post The Role of Unrealized Gains and...

IMO this is one of the more compelling “disaster” scenarios — not that AI goes haywire because it hates humanity, but that it acquires power by being effective and winning trust — and then, that there is a cohort of humans that fear this expansion of trust and control, and those humans find themselves at odds with the nebulously part-human-part-AI […] The post Should OneQuadrillionOwls be worried? appeared first...

1. Perplexity, Deutsche Telekom, and an AI smartphone. 2. GPT 4.5 and Bishop Berkeley! 3. Stocks vs. flows, blah blah blah you still can compare two numbers. 4. “That men once stood before the Rokeby Venus and gawped means nothing to us.” 5. GDP forecasts getting worse. 6. Australian who blood saved the lives of 2.4 […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

Robert Higgs coined the term regime uncertainty to illustrate the challenge faced by business under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, when a flurry of unpredictable legislation such as the expansive and often unclear mandates of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), attempts at court packing, abrupt tax increases, and shifting labor policies, meant businesses couldn’t reliably […] The post Regime Uncertainty appeared first on Marginal...

From a new piece by Daniel Schwarcz, et.al., here is part of the abstract: This article examines two emerging AI innovations that may mitigate these lingering issues: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), which grounds AI-powered analysis in legal sources, and AI reasoning models, which structure complex reasoning before generating output. We conducted the first randomized controlled […] The post New results on AI and lawyer...

Here is a new paper from Doron Shiffer-Sebba, I found this most amusing but yes tragic too: How do wealthy families preserve their fortunes across generations? A historic peak in wealth inequality in the United States has inspired research on how economic elites benefit from markets, tax rates, and legal entities. However, the ongoing practices […] The post How Bureaucratic Practices Preserve Elite Multigenerational...

Thanks to a very generous donor, we now will be starting a Taiwan cohort in Emergent Ventures.  If you are in Taiwan, or know anyone in Taiwan who might be a good choice, of course consider applying or recommending as such.  Thank you! The post Emergent Ventures, Taiwan cohort appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to ×. Jiminy Crickett, Loess-stuffed diet! I've...

Highlights from the article: The coach’s gender has a sizable and significant effect on the team’s risk-taking, a finding that is robust to an instrumental variable approach. Women’s teams with a male head coach make risky attempts 6 percentage points more often than women’s teams with a female head coach. The difference is persistent within […] The post Male coaches increase the risk-taking of...

1. Increased (Platform) Competition Reduces (Seller) Competition. 2. GPT 4.5 on Bernard Williams.  It is quite funny on the AI skeptics, I might add. 3. AI bookmarks.  And AI-generated sheet music for classical music.  And the Luddites they ain’t. 4. 2005 redux, my idea of how to clean up the house. 5. I never knew […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

Stripe’s Annual Letter is eminently quotable and insightful. As a payments company, Stripe has a unique data on the entire business landscape. But who else about the Collison brothers would cite the O-ring model in their annual report? Businesses on Stripe generated $1.4 trillion in total payment volume in 2024, up 38% from the prior […] The post Stripe’s Annual Letter appeared first on...

1. Eric Topol, Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity.  Longevity research goes mainstream!  Very clearly written, well argued, and focused on the science.  I cannot pretend to evaluate the details of the material, but this seems a step ahead of the other, typically less serious books on the same topic. 2. Daniel Dain, A […] The post What I’ve been reading appeared first...

1. A guy who doesn’t understand Paul Verhoeven. 2. Context is that which is scarce, AI edition.  And the most rapid change in human communication ever.  And the power of DeepSeek? Big if true. 3. “…male students are averse to majors with more female faculty but prefer those with more female students…” 4. Partial liberation […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on...

A reader requests that in the comments, but it is exactly the kind of topic I can tire of.  Nonetheless I will jot down a few quick pointers on how I think about it: 1. Downweight almost every opinion you read on Twitter, instead check the Ukrainian bond market.  If need be, query with Grok […] The post “What do I think of the...

This paper reports results from a survey experiment comparing the effect of (the same) opinions expressed by visibly senior, female versus male experts. Members of the public were asked for their opinion on topical issues and shown the opinion of either a named male or a named female economist, all professors at leading US universities. […] The post Do female experts face an authority...

1. I feel that writing about the topic will make me stupider. 2. I believe that you reading more about the topic will make you stupider. 3. I believe that performative outrage usually brings low or negative returns.  Matt Yglesias has had some good writing on this lately. 4. I don’t have anything to add […] The post Some reasons why I do not...

This paper examines the effects of the Big Five personality traits on labor market outcomes and gender wage gaps using a job search and bargaining model with parameters that vary at the individual level. The analysis, based on German panel data, reveals that both cognitive and noncognitive traits significantly influence wages and employment outcomes. Higher […] The post Personality traits and gender gaps appeared...

1. The $19 strawberry. 2. Writing for the AI is paying off. 3. You’ve quoted Gerhard Richter as saying that a good picture “takes away our certainty,” and suggested (Philip Guston) that doing so enables us to “begin to see the push and pull of impulse, recanting, and reconfiguration that constitute painting and, by extension, life itself.” From […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

After years of decline, the Christian population in the United States has been stable for several years, a shift fueled in part by young adults, according to a major new survey from the Pew Research Center. And the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans, which had grown steadily for years, has also leveled off. Here is […] The post USA fact of the day appeared...

I believe you can get through the gate by registering.  A very good and accurate piece, first-rate photos as well, including of Spinoza too, here is the link.  Here is one excerpt: I asked Cowen – it is the kind of question you come to ask him – what were the criteria for a perfect […] The post The Economist 1843 magazine does a...

1. Insightful Bob McGrew tweet on GPT 4.5.  And Andrej.  My remark from a group chat: “I am more positive on 4.5 than almost anyone else I have read. I view it as a model that attempts to improve on the dimension of aesthetics only. As we know from Kant’s third Critique, that is about […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: As usual, however, the devil is in the details. There is a good chance Trump’s proposal could work out well — and a chance it could severely damage the nation. One worry is selection effects. The $5 million fee means the program […] The post A $5 million gold card for...

I do broadly align with utilitarian/consequentialist ideas, and I particularly like the formulation Richard Y Chappell calls Beneficentrism, which is simply the claim that one very important thing in life is to try to help others, including those who are very different or distant from ourselves. I think that in that formulation, you address in one […] The post Matt Yglesias on morality appeared first...

Street lighting is often believed to influence street crime, but most prior studies have examined small-scale interventions in limited areas. The effect of large-scale lighting enhancements on public safety remains uncertain. This study evaluates the impact of Philadelphia’s citywide rollout of enhanced street lighting, which began in August 2023. Over 10 months, 34,374 streetlights were […] The post Can Enhanced Street Lighting Improve Public...

In Leningrad’s embrace, midwinter’s chill, A prodigy was born with iron will. The chessboard’s call, a siren to his mind, Young Boris Spassky left his peers behind. A crown he claimed in nineteen sixty-nine, Against Petrosian’s force, his star did shine. Yet Reykjavik’s cold winds would soon conspire, With Fischer’s challenge, stoking global fire. The […] The post Boris Spassky, RIP appeared first on...

This paper examines the spatial and temporal dynamics of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption in the United States, leveraging county-level data on AI-related job postings from 2014 to 2023. We document significant variation in AI intensity across counties with tech hubs like Santa Clara, CA, leading in adoption, but rapid growth occurring in unexpected, suburban, and […] The post The uneven spread of AI appeared...