~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (168)

I agree with Tyler, that the FTC ban on non-competes is overly broad and not tailored to fields where the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. Additionally, the FTC’s authority to enact this rule, rather than Congress, is questionable. Nevertheless, I don’t think banning non-competes is without merit. The reason is not the standard Twitter-econ view that […] The post The Prisoner’s Dilemma of Non-Competes appeared...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, basically you should charge them fees rather than discourage them through other means>  Here is one excerpt: By this reasoning, the Japanese decision to raise bullet train prices for tourists is exactly the right approach. In the meantime, the Japanese government, which faces high pension costs, […] The post What is the proper policy toward...

In an excellent, deep-dive Alice Evans looks at patriarchy in Egypt using pictures drawn from four thousand years of history. Here are three examples. A wealthy woman, shown at right circa 116 CE. Unveiled, immodest, looking out at the world. A person to be reckoned with. After the Arab conquests, pictures of people in general […] The post Four Thousand Years of Egyptian Women...

Dobbs, of course, was the Supreme Court decision saying that the constitution does not provide a right to abortion, thus leading to restrictions on abortion in many states. The pictures is from The Economist, the original paper is here. The post Tying the Knot appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Mark Bahner. Cool. You play “Most National ... by mikeInThe716In reply...

That is the new Daron Acemoglu paper, and he is skeptical about its overall economic effects.  Here is part of the abstract: Using existing estimates on exposure to AI and productivity improvements at the task level, these macroeconomic effects appear nontrivial but modest—no more than a 0.71% increase in total factor productivity over 10 years. […] The post “The Simple Macroeconomics of AI” appeared...

Two economists from the Harvard Growth Lab (Shah and Sturzenegger) estimate that the average transport costs for those who are employed in South Africa is equal to 57% of net wages when time to commute is accounted for. Here is the whole John McDermott tweet storm, in part that is the spatial legacy from the […] The post South Africa fact of the day...

When I post about the skyrocketing price of housing and the need to build, commentators (include some of the most astute commentators on MR), will sometimes object by pointing to the increasing and historically high number of houses per capita. They question how this aligns with rising prices and wave vaguely towards factors like monopoly […] The post Why a Housing Shortage Exists Despite...

Sometimes I feel like focusing on policies that only affect growth rates by a few tenths of a percentage point feels small. But then I remind myself that the difference between the United States and Argentina over the last 120 years was 0.5 percentage point. pic.twitter.com/Pd6SIg1FwS — Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) April 17, 2024 The post Economic growth sentences to ponder, Argentina fact of the...

President Biden has made a big deal of simplifying fees: The FTC is proposing a rule that…would ban businesses from charging hidden and misleading fees and require them to show the full price up front. The rule would also require companies disclose up front whether fees are refundable. This would mean no more surprise resort fees […] The post Why is the Biden Administration Against...

That is the subject of my latest Bloomberg column.  Here is one excerpt: The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises is having a moment, especially in Latin America. Argentine President Javier Milei admires Mises, and he has adopted some Misesian ideas, such as the notion that “the middle of the road leads to socialism.” Milei used to be an academic […] The post The Ludwig von Mises comeback appeared...

FT: When it launched its fully automated stores four years ago, Germany’s regional supermarket chain Tegut billed the experiment as a window into the future of shopping. But the Fulda-based retailer has since been embroiled in a legal fight over a centuries-old principle enshrined in the German constitution: Sunday rest. Be they robotic or staffed […] The post The Culture that is Germany appeared...

In my 2011 book, Launching the Innovation Renaissance, I wrote: At times, teacher pay in the United States seems more like something from Soviet-era Russia than 21st-century America. Wages for teachers are low, egalitarian and not based on performance. We pay physical education teachers about the same as math teachers despite the fact that math […] The post Pay For Performance Increases Performance (Water...

These topics seem underexplored to me: Montesquieu Economics in the Talmud Rise of econometrics in the 19th century The Irish economists, including Cairnes and Longfield The last 50 years of economics are in general very poorly covered Works in any foreign language you might read Chinese economic thought Economic thought in India The funding of […] The post History of economic thought paper ideas...

I’ve long been an advocate of increasing the use of incentives in organ procurement for transplant; either with financial incentives or with rules such as no-give, no-take which prioritize former potential organ donors on the organ recipient list. What I and many reformers failed to realize, however, is that the current monopolized system is so […] The post UNOS Kills appeared first on Marginal...

In this paper, we introduce TimeGPT, the first foundation model for time series, capable of generating accurate predictions for diverse datasets not seen during training. We evaluate our pre-trained model against established statistical, machine learning, and deep learning methods, demonstrating that TimeGPT zero-shot inference excels in performance, efficiency, and simplicity. Our study provides compelling evidence […] The post TimeGPT-1 appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION....

An excellent piece, here is one excerpt I enjoyed in particular: Cowen reads the John Maynard Keynes of The General Theory “as writing about an economy where uncertainty was much higher than usual, investment was highly unstable, fiscal policy was unable to fill in the gap, there was a risk or even reality of a downward spiral […] The post Robert Whaples reviews *GOAT* appeared first...

At the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte’s final battle, more than 10,000 men and as many horses were killed in a single day. Yet today, archaeologists often struggle to find physical evidence of the dead from that bloody time period. Plowing and construction are usually the culprits behind missing historical remains, but they can’t […] The post The $20 bill gets picked up,...

Yes, India is doing well but the picture could be much better: During Modi’s tenure, GFCF [gross fixed capital formation] as a percentage of GDP declined and has remained low until the post-pandemic recovery. In fact the highest level of GFCF as a percentage of GDP during the first nine years of Modi’s leadership is […] The post Modi and investment appeared first on...

Congratulations!  Here is the AEA announcement and summary of his work. The post Philipp Strack wins the J.B. Clark award appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsTalking of prize winners Peter Higgs has died. by deariemeIn reply to rayward. Ah Bonn, the most rigorous math ... by DaveIn reply to dearieme. The only correct way of spell it is ... by JamalIn reply to...

It’s long been argued that the means of production influence social, cultural and psychological processes. Rice farming, for example, requires complex irrigation systems under communal management and intense, coordinated labor. Thus, it has been argued that successful rice farming communities tend to develop people with collectivist orientations, and cultural ways of thinking that emphasize group […] The post Cultivating Minds: The Psychological Consequences of...

Jon Hartley is one I know, here is the abstract: This study pushes our understanding of research reliability by reproducing and replicating claims from 110 papers in leading economic and political science journals. The analysis involves computational reproducibility checks and robustness assessments. It reveals several patterns. First, we uncover a high rate of fully computationally […] The post 350+ coauthors study reproducibility in economics...

Collaborations in economics across genders increased (12.5% increase of women coauthors per 100 men-authored papers) after #MeToo . But senior researchers reduced their new collaborations with junior women by 33% per 100 senior-authored papers. https://t.co/zIxDF2Hukx pic.twitter.com/2YplnMTFoy — Florian Ederer (@florianederer) April 7, 2024 The post Economists do it with models? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         Comments“And 2004-2020 is a long time horizon during...

One MR reader, Luca Piron, writes to me:  I found myself puzzled by a thought you expressed during your interview with Professor Haidt. In particular, from my understanding you suggested that in the near future AI will be able to sum up the content a user may want to see into a digest, so that they can […] The post A simple model of AI and...

NYTimes: Treasury officials say that they fear that elevated Chinese production targets are causing its firms to produce far more electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels than global markets can absorb, driving prices lower and disrupting production around the world. They fear that these spillovers will hurt businesses that are planning investments in the United […] The post Your Subsidies are Undercutting My Subsidies!...