~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (545)

From the excellent Katherine Dee, here is just one excerpt: TikTok sketch comedy is in the same lineage of theater. It invites a suspension of disbelief from the audience, creators often play multiple characters, rapidly switching between roles with nothing more than a change in voice, facial expression, or camera angle. And importantly, it’s funny. When […] The post The case why culture is not...

1. Bitcoin documentary on HBO.  Claims they will unmask Satoshi. 2. GPT Canvas, for writing and research writing, interactive.  And more here. 3. Inaugural World Bank Business Ready report (successor to the Doing Business which ended in 2021 over political rigging) is now out.  Hungary, Estonia, and Singapore take the top spots. 4. More Scott […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

Kotkin’s most prominent book project is his three-volume biography of Joseph Stalin: The first two volumes have been published as Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (2014) and Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 (2017), and the third volume remains to be published. Here is more from Wikipedia, of course he is an expert on the Soviet Union and also Russia more […] The post What should I ask Stephen Kotkin?...

Question: An economist once said that the fiscal theory of the price level was true, or became more true, as governments approached insolvency. But otherwise it is not true. Can you reconstruct analytically why the economist might have held this view? The economist’s view hinges on the relationship between a government’s fiscal position and the […] The post Ask ChatGPT o1-preview, fiscal theory of...

1. How does low fertility affect economic growth?  Podcast with Alice Evans and Jesús Fernández-Villaverde. 2. Kalshi’s court victory (bravo!). 3. Do oncologists understand Adam Smith? 4. Why is the speed of light so fast? 5. Films recommended in CWT. 6. Paul Milgrom update. 7. The Great Forgetting, dockworker strike edition. The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         Comments)))) Hot...

In Disentangling the Effects of the 2018-2019 Tariffs on a Globally Connected U.S. Manufacturing Sector (forthcoming) Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce of the Federal Reserve Board write: The unprecedented increase in tariffs imposed by the United States against its major trading partners in 2018-2019 has brought renewed attention to the economic effects of tariffs. While […] The post Tariffs Hurt Manufacturing appeared first on...

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary: Kyla Scanlon has made it her personal mission to bring economics education to a larger audience through social media. She publishes daily content across TikTok, YouTube, Substack, LinkedIn and more, explaining what is happening in the economy and why it is happening. Tyler […] The post My Conversation with the excellent Kyla...

Since 2000, pharmaceuticals for common psychiatric conditions aged out of patent protection. After generic entry, supply increases as more sellers enter the market, leading to lower prices – about 80-85% less! Cheaper prescriptions and more treatment are the stated goal of policies to improve affordability. …Drug prices definitely fell during this period. For the SSRI sertraline, consumer cost per month dropped from ~35 dollars in […] The post Incentives matter, the demand curve slopes...

Doctors were given cases to diagnose, with half getting GPT-4 access to help. The control group got 73% right & the GPT-4 group 77%. No big difference. But GPT-4 alone got 92%. The doctors didn’t want to listen to the AI. Here is more from Ethan Mollick.  And now the tweet is reposted with (minor) […] The post Model this appeared first on Marginal...

1. Listen to it order 400 strawberries. 2. Does studying philosophy make you a more rigorous thinker? 3. What the populists do not know about tariffs.  From two experts who understand trade theory. 4. Claims. 5. “Zoos around the world have occasionally used a little dye, or just brazenness, to pass off one animal as […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

Here’s the latest video from Marginal Revolution University. It covers negative externalities–drawing, of course, from the most innovative and interesting principles of economics textbook, Modern Principles of Economics. MRU videos are free for anyone’s use anytime, anywhere and don’t forget there are also two new econ-practice games on negative externalities and positive externalities and a fun choose […] The post New MRU Video! Negative Externalities appeared...

It is titled ARPAS, FROs, and Fast Grants, Oh My!  The host is the excellent Tammy Winter, and the other guests are Patrick Hsu and Adam Marblestone, plus yours truly. Here is the link, with transcript.  Excerpt: Tyler Cowen: In virtually all institutions, we should be taking more chances on quite young people, giving them […] The post Podcast on science policy appeared first...

Volume 21, Number 2, September 2024 In this issue: Academic Productivity after the CEA: Gordon Tullock wrote that government economists found capable of “firefighting” are assigned to do more of it, “with the result that the higher ranks of government economists aren’t able to read.” Here, Richard Burkhauser, Kevin Corinth, and Casey Mulligan offer themselves as […] The post Econ Journal Watch, new issue appeared...

1. “Montana Man Sentenced for Federal Wildlife Trafficking Charges as Part of Yearslong Effort to Create Giant Hybrid Sheep for Captive Hunting.“ 2. Dikembe Mutombo, RIP (NYT). 3. Rick Rubin asked me to make for him a Spotify playlist of some of my favorite classical performances.  Quite subjective and arbitrary. 4. How are “Top Five” […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

Migrants incarcerated for homicide are considered “non-detained” by ICE when they are in state or federal prisons. When ICE uses the term “non-detained,” they mean not currently detained by ICE. In other words, the migrant murderers included in the letter are overwhelmingly in prison serving their sentences. After they serve their sentences, the government transfers them […] The post There are not 13,099 Illegal Immigrant...

From the results: Facial traits are the primary driver of subject perceptions of leadership ability, and those perceptions successfully predict promotional success later in the cadets’ careers. When selecting for leadership potential based on police cadet photographs, respondents predict correct promotional choices at levels well above chance as measured by an AUC score of .70. […] The post Predicting future promotions from police cadets’...

This is less news to the private sector traders on the frontier, but the idea now has reached academia and the NBER working paper series: We introduce artificial intelligence pricing theory (AIPT). In contrast with the APT’s foundational assumption of a low dimensional factor structure in returns, the AIPT conjectures that returns are driven by […] The post The dominance of large factor models...

Campaign-finance reports reveal that Republicans overwhelmingly outspend Democrats at every major steakhouse in the city… At the Capital Grille, Republicans have outspent Democrats nearly 13 to 1 so far this election cycle. That is from Jessica Sidman.  Here is the full and interesting article., and an excerpt: Longtime Capital Grille regular David Safavian remembers the […] The post The culture that is Washington, D.C....

I appear on his show, he describes it as follows: Tyler Cowen: No Such Thing As Talent Decline Plus AI Religions, National Security, The Conservative Vibe Shift, and Future Institutions   Here is the link. The post My podcast with Brian Chau appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Crusader. Abolition of slavery in the British ... by dearieme“When I see him...

1. Richard Butler, Australian hero. 2. Is signaling too cheap these days? 3. Ross Barkan on Caro on Moses (NYT). 4. Shortly, in Britain, all chickens must be registered by law. 5. “A parent’s enlistment in the Army increases their children’s military service propensity by between 58% and 110%.” 6. Kyrgyzstan (Germany) fact of the […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

India has some of the worst air pollution in the world. India regulates pollution but it uses a command and control approach with criminal penalties, a system in tension with enforcement given low-state capacity. The result has been widespread corruption, inefficiency, and poor enforcement of pollution controls. In a very important paper, Greenstone, Pande, Ryan […] The post Reducing Pollution in India with a...

A zoo in Finland has agreed with Chinese authorities to return two loaned giant pandas to China more than eight years ahead of schedule because they have become too expensive for the facility to maintain amid declining visitors. The private Ähtäri Zoo in central Finland some 330 kilometers (205 miles) north of Helsinki said Wednesday […] The post Carrying costs > liquidity premium, and...

A fascinating movie, far more interesting than most of the slop they send your way.  And it is visually stunning, with an excellent cast to boot. One is never quite sure how to feel about what is shown on the screen, but one side of forces here are pro-growth, pro-billionaire, pro-YIMBY, and pro-science.  The film […] The post *Megalopolis* (only modest spoilers) appeared first...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed a controversial artificial-intelligence safety bill that pitted some of the biggest tech companies against prominent scientists who developed the technology. The Democrat decided to reject the measure because it applies only to the biggest and most expensive AI models and leaves others unregulated, according to a person with knowledge of his thinking. Smaller models could […] The post Newsome vetoes AI bill appeared first...