~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (46)

At $US15,000, BYD’s new Qin EV is already being touted as a “Corolla killer”, as the world’s second largest EV maker continues to disrupt the global auto market. Launched earlier this week in China, the all-electric Qin Plus has five variants priced between 109,800 RMB to ($A23,300) to 139,800 RMB ($A29,700). The Qin Plus comes with […] The post Solve for the equilibrium? appeared first...

Here is Fareed’s home page, here is Wikipedia: Fareed Rafiq Zakaria…is an Indian-American journalist, political commentator, and author. He is the host of CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria GPS and writes a weekly paid column for The Washington Post. He has been a columnist for Newsweek, editor of Newsweek International, and an editor at large of Time. He was managing editor of Foreign Affairs at age 28, briefly […] The post What should I ask Fareed Zakaria?...

Egypt has agreed to a $35bn deal with the United Arab Emirates to develop the town of Ras el-Hekma town on its northwestern coast, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced on Friday after weeks of speculations. Madbouly said at a news conference, which was attended by Egyptian and Emirati officials, that Egypt will receive an advance amount of $15bn […] The post Why don’t nations buy and sell...

Here is my episode with @patrickc We discuss: – what it takes to process $1 trillion/year– how to build multi-decade APIs, companies, and relationships– what's next for Stripe (increasing the GDP of the internet is an open ended task, and the Collison brothers are just… pic.twitter.com/Wx52cJI9Ve — Dwarkesh Patel (@dwarkesh_sp) February 21, 2024 The post Dwarkesh Patel with Patrick Collison appeared first on Marginal...

After the discovery of oil in the mid-1990s, per capita income soared and catapulted the country into the club of high income countries (it peaked at over $35,000). Meanwhile, living standards stagnated at deplorable levels — from education attainment, to infant mortality rates, to poverty rates, and more. Primary school enrollment has declined since peaking in […] The post Equatorial Guinea facts of the day...

I have been following only snippets of the debate over whether Biden should step down as the Democratic nominee, for instance here Josh Marshall responds to Ezra Klein (NYT).  Most of all, I am struck by how little faith some of the commentators have in democratic processes.  Let’s consider a few possible arguments why Biden […] The post Well-functioning democracy for neither me nor...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column: The worldwide dominance of US equities is increasingly obvious. Of the top 10 components of the MSCI global stocks index — which itself now consists of about 70% US stocks — eight are US technology companies. The S&P 500 has breached the 5,000 level. On most days, Apple or Microsoft alone is […] The post U.S. equity market dominance appeared first...

The dating site Tinder reports that, in 2023, 41 percent of Gen Z users were open to or seeking non-monogamous relationships, and 26 percent were open to ‘hierarchical polyamory’. Here is the link.  On the AI side, from the London Times: What all my AI girlfriends have in common is that they foster pseudo-intimacy at […] The post Average is Over, love and romance...

But in the case of Madrid, the last 25 years have been a clear move towards higher degree of tax competitiveness, smart regulation, and an overall liberal policy in the economic sense. And then our society is fairly open and tolerant and recognized to be what we would broadly described as a free society, an […] The post How did Madrid become the capital...

“We will continue to do what we can as a company to solve the low birth issue,” Lee Joong-keun, the chairman of Booyoung Group, a Seoul-based construction company, said last week after awarding a total $5.25 million to his employees for 70 babies born since 2021. Both male and female employees at Booyoung are eligible […] The post Markets in everything, Korean opening bid...

I don’t usually blog on “candidate topics,”or “Trump topics,” but a friend of mine asked me to cover this.  As you probably know, Trump threatened to let NATO countries that failed to meet the two percent of gdp defense budget obligation fend for themselves against Putin (video here, with Canadian commentary).  Trump even said he […] The post Trump’s threat to let Putin invade...

Governments around the world are intensifying scrutiny on the building of data centres over fears that their huge energy usage is putting excessive pressure on national climate targets and electricity grids. Ireland, Germany, Singapore and China as well as a US county and Amsterdam in the Netherlands have introduced restrictions on new data centres in […] The post Be long energy infrastructure, find the...

Shanhong Luo, a professor at Fayetteville State University, studies the factors behind attraction between romantic partners, including the norms that govern relationships. In a paper published in 2023 in Psychological Reports, a peer-reviewed journal, Dr. Luo and a team of researchers surveyed 552 heterosexual college students in Wilmington, N.C., and asked them whether they expected men or […] The post Sticky norms appeared first on Marginal...

But Bukele copycats and those who believe his model can be replicated far and wide overlook a key point: The conditions that allowed him to wipe out El Salvador’s gangs are unlikely to jointly appear elsewhere in Latin America. El Salvador’s gangs were unique, and far from the most formidable criminal organizations in the entire […] The post Is El Salvador special? appeared first...

Maybe so: Milei’s austerity is biting hard in La Rioja, an olive and wine region home to 384,000 people — out of a population of 46mn — where intense heat pushes many businesses to take a siesta from 1 to 6pm. Almost 75 per cent of the province’s budget comes from redistributed taxes collected by […] The post Will the Argentina province of La...

An average of 18 people a year reportedly drown in the city’s canals: often men, late at night, falling to their deaths while apparently taking a “wild wee”. Last week, councillors demanded answers to questions on water safety, prompted by the death of Sam van Grondelle, a 29-year-old Amsterdammer who disappeared in October and whose […] The post Amsterdam urban engineering appeared first on...

It is heresy to say this, but I don’t think many people will be listening to the music of Jelly Roll Morton in the future.  It feels “too archived” and less vital than say Haydn, much less Mozart or Beethoven. So many people are defending Luka on Twitter, but he doesn’t do much to make […] The post Non-random splat appeared first on Marginal...

No, but they did get him some votes there: We study the economic and political consequences of the 2018-2019 trade war between the United States, China and other US trade partners at the detailed geographic level, exploiting measures of local exposure to US import tariffs, foreign retaliatory tariffs, and US compensation programs. The trade-war has […] The post Did the Trump tariffs help the...

Published in the journal Conflict and Health last April, the report suggests that the world’s deadliest humanitarian crisis in 2022 was not in Afghanistan, Ukraine, or other places featured regularly in the news — but in CAR. The Central African Republic has neither reliable birth and death registries nor regular censuses. To figure out how […] The post Central African Republic estimate of the...

That is the focus of my latest Bloomberg column, 2x the normal length.  I cannot cover all the points, but here is one excerpt: The larger theme is becoming evident: AI will radically disrupt power relations in society. AI may severely limit, for instance, the status and earnings of the so-called “wordcel” class. It will […] The post What are the actual dangers of...

I won’t double indent, but this is not by me, though I agree with it: “I agree with your read re Argentina’s history of fiscal stability. From this paper (unclear if the data is accurate), here is Argentina’s deficit from 1960 to 2016 or so: [See Figure 3 here] Notice 2003-2009 is the only time […] The post Quick tour of Argentina’s fiscal deficit...

I give him a 30-40% chance, which is perhaps generous because I am rooting for him.  Bryan Caplan, who is more optimistic, offers some analysis and estimates that Milei needs to close a fiscal gap of about five percent of gdp. I have two major worries.  First, if Milei approaches fiscal success, the opposing parties […] The post Will Milei succeed in Argentina? appeared...