Bookmarks (1775)

You are going to be running to the refrigerator for snacks anyway, so why not make the most of it?  Pickles are cool, fresh, delicious, and just the right size for snacking.  At the same time, they are not too delicious, and they are pretty good for you, more so than say chips or candy.  […] The post Pickles are underrated appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. “As of Wednesday, women and men in Panama are under different quarantine schedules.” 2. Banerjee and Duflo give their take. 3. On the decline of “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”  (I myself prefer “Cloudy,” among many other S&G songs.) 4. Does financial stress spur entrepreneurship? 5. “We find that firms that had more connections on […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

I wrote earlier that “recovered individuals have a kind of superpower and would be highly desirable workers.” Antibody tests will soon be able to identify these workers and that will help to reopen the economy because not only can these workers go back to work relatively safely they can also work relatively safely with those […] The post Immunity Passes Must Be Combined With Variolation appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

You’ve previously publicized the clever solution to the Corona-crisis of “stopping time.”  As others have pointed out, a drawback is that we can’t stop time for everyone.  In particular, we need essential services to continue. Separately, there is a significant case for hazard pay.  In principle we could let the market sort this out.  But in […] The post Stopping time plus hazard pay? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

From internet comments I’ve seen some confusion on the suppress then “test, trace, isolate” strategy. The “flattening the curve” metaphor suggested that lockdown was all about spreading infections over time to keep the medical system operational. But more importantly, the purpose of lockdown is to reduce the infection rate, R, below 1. A virus needs […] The post The Strategy: Suppress then Test, Trace, Isolate appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Dear [redacted], The strategy chosen by Sweden is of course discussed, but I would still say that there is a broad consensus across the political spectrum viewing the strategy, at least so far, as being wise. I think this can be explained by at least the following five factors: 1. The high horizontal trust and […] The post Nils Karlson on the Swedish strategy (from an email forwarded to me) appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

“Anyone repeating lines like “the Trump administration has failed” is spreading an Orwellian lie. There is no “Trump administration.” There is an elected showman and his cronies, fronting for an unaccountable permanent government. The celebrities are neither in charge of the bureaucrats, nor deserve to be. Anyone can be excused for thinking either team is […] The post Sentences to ponder, Mencius Moldbug coronavirus edition appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

In autumn 1830, Pushkin was confined by a cholera outbreak to the village of Boldino, his father’s remote country estate in southeastern Russia. Desperate to return to Moscow to marry, he wrote to his fiancée: “There are five quarantine zones between here and Moscow, and I would have to spend fourteen days in each. Do […] The post That was then, this is now — Pushkin under lockdown appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. Is the RMB in decline? 2. Free app to report how you feel and thus generate data. 3. “I, basketball hoop” — It took Steph Curry five hours to assemble the hoop he bought (WSJ).  By the way, when they reboot the playoffs, can they arbitrarily insert the now healthier, re-formed Warriors and also […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

In The Defense Production Act I argued that the DPA was neither especially useful or necessary and would probably be misused. In Sicken Thy Neighbor Trade Policy I argued that exports bans were a bad idea. So, of course, Donald Trump has used the DPA to ban 3M from exporting masks to Canada. “We hit […] The post Trump Stops Masks from Going to Canada appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Bill Gates, who warned us–The Next Outbreak, We’re not ready–is getting ready for a vaccine, in fact for seven of them. Business Insider: Gates said he was picking the top seven vaccine candidates and building manufacturing capacity for them. “Even though we’ll end up picking at most two of them, we’re going to fund factories […] The post Thank You Bill Gates appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Let us assume that you, for reasons of choice or necessity, are spending time in close quarters with another person.  You are then less inclined to visit corona-dangerous locations.  In part you are altruistic toward the other person, and in part for selfish reasons you do not wish to lower the common standard of care.  […] The post Tethered pairs and locational extremes appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

This is from a very able and perceptive correspondent: World 1.0 World 2.0 110 successive months of job growth 10 million jobless claims in 2 weeks 10 year bull market across sectors Winners and losers with extreme outcome inequality Full employment 30% unemployment Base rate thinking First principles thinking Physical Digital Office by default Remote […] The post World 2.0 — “There are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen” appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

We derive a measure of firm-level regulatory costs from the text of corporate earnings calls. We then use this measure to study the effect of regulation on companies’ operating fundamentals and cost of capital. We find that higher regulatory cost results in slower sales growth, an effect which is mitigated for large firms. Furthermore, we […] The post Measuring the Cost of Regulation: A Text-Based Approach appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. Scott Alexander reviews Toby Ord’s The Precipice, about existential risk. 2. Pooled testing in Germany. 3. A critique of the Paycheck Protection Program — it might help already stable restaurants the most.  See also this tweet storm. 4. Should we pivot to a service trade agenda? 5. Full paper assessing health care capacity in […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Data-analytics company Palantir Technologies Inc. is in talks to provide software to governments across Europe to battle the spread of Covid-19 and make strained health-care systems more efficient, a person familiar with the matter said. The software company is in discussions with authorities in France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the person said, asking not to […] The post That was then, this is now: Palantir privacy edition appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Do we have evidence that hospitalization of COVID19 patients is actually saving significant numbers of lives? I’ve now seen multiple studies suggesting that up to 80 or 90 percent of patients who end up on ventilators ultimately die.  At this point, I guess there’s no way to know if the other 10 percent would have lived […] The post How many lives is hospitalization saving in the pandemic? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

WWII is viewed as the quintessential example of fiscal stimulus and exerts an outsized influence on fiscal multiplier estimates, but the wartime economy was highly unusual. I use newly-digitized contract data to construct a state-level panel on U.S. spending in WWII. I estimate a relative fiscal multiplier of 0.25, implying an aggregate multiplier of roughly […] The post The fiscal multiplier during World War II appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.