~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (547)

Market efficiency is a central issue in asset pricing and investment management, but while the level of efficiency is often debated, changes in that level are relatively absent from the discussion. I argue that over the past 30+ years markets have become less informationally efficient in the relative pricing of common stocks, particularly over medium […] The post The Less-Efficient Market Hypothesis appeared first...

1. FT lunch with Eugene Fama. 2. Alexa will be powered by Claude.  And ChatGPT goes to church? 3. In praise of reading reference books. 4. AI analyzes interviewing styles, in this case with CWT with Nate Silver. 5. Five productive years from Stephen Wolfram. 6. The microfoundations of Long Covid. 7. New documentary on […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

I am pleased and also honored to have been sent an advance copy of The Daylight Computer. It performs functions similar to those of an iPad and a Kindle, but with improvements. My first surprise is that I proved capable of operating the thing.  It requires no expertise above and beyond what you need to […] The post The Daylight Computer appeared first on...

Neo, and the Norwegian Century? (It’s happening)  And more here.  And yet more. It’s not just Magnus Carlsen, people! The post Neo, and the Norwegian Century appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsThank god I’m 67 years old and can take comfort in knowing ... by Non-cylonLoading/unloading the dishwasher is annoying, but not really ... by DeservingPorcupineIn reply to Crikey. I realize it's Norwegian,...

1. NYC is starting a crackdown to ensure payment of bus fares (NYT). 2. Steve Silberman, RIP. 3. 100 million token context window? 4. Egypt sending troops to Somalia? 5. “Japan plans cash incentive for women to marry and leave Tokyo.”  I think they will find it hard to achieve the desired ends here. 6. […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

September 16, 7-8.30, 2-190: “Is Capitalism Defensible?”, with Tyler Cowen (GMU Economics), and Alexander Gourevitch (Brown Political Science). Please register here. Here is the link. The post Capitalism debate at MIT appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsHasn't one of the weak points of market capitalism been with ... by Economics at the MarginIn reply to rsm. I note that you completely ignore the first ... by DinwarIn reply to...

In 2022, Mpox, a viral disease endemic to parts of Africa and primarily transmitted through close contact—especially sexual contact between men—spread to developed countries, including the United States. The U.S. saw over 30,000 cases and approximately 58 deaths. Despite two available vaccines there was not nearly enough supply to vaccinate even the high-risk populations. Fortunately, […] The post Mpox Vaccines Stuck in Limbo: WHO...

The differences between the most and least productive companies can be startlingly high. By one estimate, in the US alone the most productive firms in a sector can be more than two to four times more cost-effective than the least productive ones. Given the size of those discrepancies, any expansion of trade or innovation that makes […] The post It is wonderful to put inefficient...

As divisive as the political rhetoric is, the policy divide between the two parties seems more narrow today than any time in recent memory. Bipartisan bills in immigration, energy permitting, and the child tax credit have been negotiated and waiting for political window to reopen. Foreign aid and military spending bills both passed in past […] The post John Arnold on economic polarization appeared...

“Hi Tyler, i have big news about the debate over social media harming teens. So much of it hangs on the claim that the evidence is just correlational, not causal. Zach Rausch and I show that this is not true; the experiments DO show causation, very clearly and consistently. Here are my 2 tweets about the post: https://x.com/JonHaidt/status/1829163166066205168 […] The post Jon Haidt on causality (from my...

1. How AI will impact back office support in the Philippines (Bloomberg). 2. Toward a theory of (Finnish) woke.  Not directly related to sauna activity. 3. Immigrant cooks as anthropologists. 4. How NYC’s Park Avenue used to look, and maybe will once again. 5. A left market anarchist canon. 6. David Pilling on Benin and […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

From Sergio Correia, Stephan Luck, and Emil Verner: Why do banks fail? We create a panel covering most commercial banks from 1865 through 2023 to study the history of failing banks in the United States. Failing banks are characterized by rising asset losses, deteriorating solvency, and an increasing reliance on expensive non-core funding. Commonalities across […] The post Failing Banks appeared first on Marginal...

Not so much it seems: Research on the causal effects of online advertising on consumer welfare is limited due to challenges in running large-scale field experiments and tracking effects over extended periods. We analyze a long-running field experiment of online advertising in which a random 0.5% subset of all users are assigned to a group […] The post Do consumers hate on-line ads? appeared...

Much of the value of writing done recently or now is simply to get stuff into LLMs. I would, in fact, pay money to ensure Gwern.net is in training corpuses, and I upload source code to Github, heavy with documentation, rationale, and examples, in order to make LLMs more customized to my use-cases. For the […] The post The wisdom of Gwern, why should...

I think that I am one of the few federal bureaucrats who openly engage in the comment section here. I have worked in two different federal agencies. At one agency, I was a rule writer. That is I worked with a team to develop regulations and then I wrote the proposed and final rules to […] The post From the comments (on regulation) appeared...

1. Can we inherit our way into higher fertility?  Maybe not. 2. Paul Romer offers you tech support. 3. Alexander Kobrin’s volume one of his Beethoven piano sonata cycle is at the very top of the quality distribution. 4. All sorts of new cancer drugs and treatments are in the works (FT), p.s. supply is […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

A great piece in the NYTimes on the history and future of factory produced buildings: But the most remarkable difference between the United States and Sweden is regulatory. Building codes in the U.S. try to make buildings safe by prescribing exactly what materials must be used and how (a prescriptive code). In Sweden, the government […] The post Prescriptive versus Performance Codes appeared first...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column.  Here is one key part of the argument: There are numerous theories as to why [the Great Stagnation started in the early 1970s]: oil price shocks, more stringent government regulations, an increased emphasis on environmental protection over economic growth, and the collapse of the Bretton Woods […] The post Was the Great Stagnation originally a...

Introduction. Your analysis produces a statistically insignificant estimate. Is it because the effect is negligibly different from zero? Or because your research design does not have sufficient power to achieve statistical significance? Alternatively, you read that “The median statistical power [in empirical economics] is 18%, or less” (Ioannidis et al., 2017) and you wonder if the […] The post From Reed and Logchies appeared first...

1. Something, something, French politics, I don’t understand either the equilibrium or the procedure.  Does anybody? 2. Kevin Sherwin is an amazing guitarist, and yet no one has heard of him. 3. Bioy Casares on Borges, translated into English, at least in part, you can now pre-order.  One of the great Spanish-language books, hitherto unavailable […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

I found this Joseph Heath post very informative. In essence, Marx was about exploitation but when no theory of exploitation without gaping holes could be developed, the analytical Marxists shifted to egalitarianism ala Rawls. Back when I was an undergraduate, during the final years of the cold war, by far the most exciting thing going […] The post Rawls Killed Marx appeared first on...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, just to clarify context for the newbies I think more than half of all current regulations are a net negative.  Anywhere, here are some of the problems: Consider the relatively straightforward idea, popular in some Republican circles, of firing large numbers of federal bureaucrats. There would be immediate […] The post Why massive deregulation is very difficult...

Bucking his central planning instincts, Obama embraced a surprisingly laissez-faire approach to space flight that angered political allies and opponents alike. In doing so, however, he tapped a reservoir of ingenuity and innovation that has ushered in a new age of space flight and exploration… In her forthcoming book Bureaucrats and Billionaires, former NASA deputy administrator […] The post Obama’s space legacy? appeared first on...

Via James Hohman. The post U.S: central city population as a % of metropolitan area appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to David. More like, “it’s too congested because ... by AndrewIn reply to Patito. Here's today's Chicago Sun-Times article ... by EngineerHow bad will this chart look over the next several decades as ... by NickIn reply to Mr_B. Right you...