~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (547)

1. De Soto got his wish in Haiti. 2. Do fewer people want to stand out in public? 3. Lyman Stone on TFR. 4. Arguments against labor unions. 5. Germany ponders its lack of medal success. 6. The Nordstream pipeline destruction story. 7. Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life, now available […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

The Economist has a good piece on India’s cities. Mumbai has done a great job in recent years at building more infrastructure but infrastructure alone is not enough: …An overly prescriptive, 2,200-page National Building Code and a surfeit of local rules prevent developers from making optimal use of pricey urban land. Mumbai has some of […] The post India’s Cities appeared first on Marginal...

One of the grand challenges of artificial general intelligence is developing agents capable of conducting scientific research and discovering new knowledge. While frontier models have already been used as aids to human scientists, e.g. for brainstorming ideas, writing code, or prediction tasks, they still conduct only a small part of the scientific process. This paper […] The post Okie-dokie, solve for the equilibrium appeared...

Does the Alchian and Allen theorem apply as much to shipping the tourists as it does to shipping the goods? [notice how little context is in that prompt] The Alchian and Allen theorem, often summarized by the phrase “shipping the good apples out,” postulates that when a fixed cost (such as shipping) is added to […] The post The new version of GPT-4 does...

1. Good news on the fertility front. 2. Failed markets in everything, Joseph Goebbels edition (NYT). 3. That was then, this is now. 4. Do land use regulations limit construction productivity? 5. Why does Ozempic help with so many maladies? 6. Does capitalism make you lonely? 7. Common sense from Richard Ngo on AI safety. The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal...

Installing air conditioning in Switzerland is often subject to rules set at the cantonal level. Geneva is the strictest canton. To qualify, a home owner must prove they have a legitimate need, for example, by producing a medical certificate, and install systems that capture some of the heat emissions and condensation produced. Other cantons require […] The post Why doesn’t Switzerland have more air...

I was very pleased to appear on Safegraph CEO Auren Hoffman’s World of DAAS podcast. We covered lots of material including this (lightly edited) bit on China. Auren Hoffman (23:06.518): Now, you’ve thought a lot about things like reshoring, building manufacturing capacity. How do you think we could be thinking about that differently? Alex (23:24.058) […] The post Tabarrok on China: World of DAAS...

We investigate the relationship between physical attractiveness and the time people devote to video/computer gaming. Average American teenagers spend 2.6% of their waking hours gaming, while for adults this figure is 2.7%. Using the American Add Health Study, we show that adults who are better-looking have more close friends. Arguably, gaming is costlier for them, […] The post Video games and looks appeared first...

Post and selection by Shruti Rajagopalan: Lakshay Taneja is an innovator and entrepreneur with a background in blockchain and AI. He received an EV grant to develop his project aiming to harness ocean and tidal energy to generate electricity. Madhulash K. Babu is a 24-year-old entrepreneur and electronics engineer and the founder of Edodwaja. He […] The post Emergent Ventures India, eighth cohort appeared...

Exchange-rate models fit very well for the U.S. dollar in the 21st century. A “standard” model that includes real interest rates and a measure of expected inflation for the U.S. and the foreign country, the U.S. comprehensive trade balance, and measures of global risk and liquidity demand is well-supported in the data for the U.S. […] The post Finally, exchange rate models seem to...

1. A summary of Lemin Wu, I am not sure how good it is.  Here are MR posts on Lemin Wu. 2. Where is Kursk going? And more on Kursk. 3. “China didn’t steal your job. The Sunbelt did.” 4. “Eat more beans.” (NYT) 5. Mass deportation and orphans. 6. Liquid water found on Mars. The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal...

Teamwork has become more important in recent decades. We show that larger teams generate an unintended side effect: individuals who finish their PhD when the average team in their field is larger have worse career prospects. Our analysis combines data on career outcomes from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients with publication data that measures team […] The post Beware research in large teams appeared...

That is the (very good) title they gave my recent Bloomberg column.  Should Europe have more air conditioning?  Basically yes.  Here is one excerpt: Some 90% of the US has air conditioning, according to one estimate, compared to only 19% for Europe. Worldwide, the US, China and Japan account for about two-thirds of all air conditioning… […] The post Europeans deserve to be as cool...

Adjusting for inflation, President Biden is one of the lowest-paid Presidents in American history. See the first and last figures in this analysis from 2012. This source’s figures are all in 2012 dollars, and there’s been 39% cumulative inflation since then, while the President’s nominal salary has stayed fixed at $400,000/year (nominal). So Bill Clinton’s average […] The post The pay of Presidents (from my...

1. Live caption glasses let the deaf see conversations.  And use ChatGPT to estimate true male height. 2. Claims about claims, this guy says it’s happening. 3. Karpathy on RLHF. 4. Pro-progress will win when it wins women. 5. How you would do in various Olympic sports, a ranking.  And Olympic performance per capita. The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION....

In July 1946, 20-year-old Helen Hutchison walked into the Vanderbilt University prenatal clinic in Nashville, Tennessee. Helen found herself pregnant after her husband had returned from combat in World War II. The pregnancy, however, had not been easy. During her visit to the clinic Helen’s doctor handed her a small drink. “What is it?” she […] The post US Human Experimentation Without Consent or...

Some 40 per cent of the biggest US manufacturing investments announced in the first year of Joe Biden’s flagship industrial and climate policies have been delayed or paused, according to a Financial Times investigation. The US president’s Inflation Reduction Act and Chips and Science Act offered more than $400bn in tax credits, loans and grants […] The post IRA manufacturing delays appeared first on...

1. August Strindberg, The People of Hemsö.  Hardly anyone (non-Swedish?) reads this classic novel any more, but it holds up as one of the more compelling creations of its time.  Direct and compelling.  Swedish people on an island, but will this marriage work?  Why has it so faded from our attentions?  I’ve long loved Strindberg, […] The post What I’ve been reading, or not...

1. Simon Kuper on how to read a riot (FT). 2. “Did a furniture carver in Crouch End crack the code to early human writing?” (FT) 3. Mackenzie Hawkins on how the Chips Act is going (Bloomberg). 4. “Our findings indicate that a surviving [Chinese] revolutionary makes his birth county significantly more likely to receive […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on...

For the United States, might it be a suburb of Columbus, Ohio?  Or perhaps Knoxville, Tennessee, which is not too far from the country’s population center? Those locales are relatively generic, and not too much of any single region, or perhaps they straddle regions.  They represent life in the United States as a whole, unlike […] The post The most typical place in each...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, and here is one excerpt: What do the numbers show? A new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City offers some important keys toward an answer. Start with the good news, or what appears to be the good news. Post-legalization, incomes in legalizing states grew by […] The post New data on marijuana legalization appeared...

“We are increasing surveillance, in part to increase security, but also to prevent hired Swedish child soldiers who come to Copenhagen to carry out tasks in connection with gang conflicts,” he added. Hummelgaard revealed on Thursday that there had been 25 incidents since April where Danish criminal gangs had hired what he called “child soldiers” […] The post Schengen eroding, child legal arbitrage markets...

1. A weak LLM, but you can manipulate it in various ways.  There will be more of this. 2. Economics Themed Comedy Show in NYC this Wednesday (8/14) at 7pm. 3. “We found that people with more consistent grocery shopping habits are more likely to pay their credit card bills on time. These are people […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

When I travel abroad, I will often get recommendations of where to eat, what to do and what to read and watch from Sam Mendelsohn. Not just a few sentences, as if from a travel guide, but pages of unique and original material. I often have time to pick only one or two recommended items […] The post Sam Mendelsohn’s Travel Blog appeared first...