~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (552)

FarmProgress: With a closed herd and all his heifers artificially inseminated — no outside bulls needed — Nathan Brearley was confident his 500-cow dairy farm in Portland, Mich., would be spared from the avian flu strain that’s affecting dairies. He was wrong. Nearly six months later after an infection on his farm, milk production still […] The post Avian Flu is Bad for Cows...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: Then there is the money. European and South Korean infrastructure companies, for example, tend to be much less expensive than US firms. The Buy American Act often prevents them from bidding on US contracts. And when the federal government is spending more […] The post Why “Buy American” is not such...

We report a large-scale examination of behavioral attenuation: due to information-processing constraints, the elasticity of people’s decisions with respect to economic fundamentals is generally too small. We implement more than 30 experiments, 20 of which were crowd-sourced from leading experts. These experiments cover a broad range of economic decisions, from choice and valuation to belief […] The post Behavioral attenuation appeared first on Marginal...

1. “Estimates from that model imply that a targeted voucher program would have a marginal value of public funds (MVPF) of at least 3.” 2. Peter Jay, RIP (the avid reader will recall that Peter has a cameo appearance in GOAT). 3. Cosmos Ventures, a bit like EV but for AI. 4. Sam Altman on […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

Alex and I have started this, and today is the premiere of the first episode.  Here is the audio, video, and transcript, as with CWT (which by the way will continue as usual).  This episode covers the breakdown of monetary policy in the 1970s, and Alex and I have recorded a series of other episodes […] The post Marginal Revolution Podcast, my excellent conversations...

Courtesy of MRU here are two new econ-practice games on negative externalities and positive externalities. Great for students. But don’t forget that if you are not careful regulation can often lead to Unintended Consequences (a fun choose your adventure story!) All of these resources are free for any teacher of economics but, of course, they […] The post Unintended Consequences appeared first on Marginal...

A production efficiency perspective naturally leads to the prescription that more productive individuals should work more than less productive individuals. Yet, systematic differences in actual hours worked across high- and low-wage individuals are barely noticeable. We highlight that the insurance available to households is an important determinant behind this fact. Using a dynamic heterogeneous-agent model […] The post The value of better insurance appeared...

Exceed the speed limit in one of the 27 European Union countries, and you may get some pushback from your vehicle. As of July, new cars sold in the EU must include a speed- warning device that alerts drivers if they exceed the posted limit. At a minimum, vehicles must include acoustic or haptic speed […] The post Auto paternalism advances appeared first on...

For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers. They attend services more often and are more likely to identify as religious. “We’ve never seen it before,” Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, said of the flip. Among Generation Z […] The post USA religion fact of the day...

1. “Gatwick train cancelled after squirrels board and ‘refuse to leave’.“ 2. Fredric Jameson, RIP. 3. Second-tallest building in Canada to be demolished. 4. In praise of Armenia. 5. Making eggs without ovaries? 6. A Muslim charter city enclave, inside Tirana, Albania? (NYT)  I don’t understand the story, I thought Albania was pretty tolerant already? […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

Yes, my colleague Jim Bennett, also a friend and supporter over the decades.  Jim retired not long ago, due to health issues, and now the worst has come to pass. As a researcher, Jim was remarkably well-published, including in top journals, and he never stopped working and trying to improve his output.  He was best […] The post James Bennett, RIP appeared first on...

This paper reports results from the first nationally representative U.S. survey of generative AI adoption at work and at home. In August 2024, 39 percent of the U.S. population age 18-64 used generative AI. More than 24 percent of workers used it at least once in the week prior to being surveyed, and nearly one […] The post The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI...

Section 321 of the 1930 Tariff Act allows up to $800 in imports per person per day to enter the US duty-free and with minimal customs requirements. Fueled by rising direct-to-consumer trade, these “de minimis” shipments have exploded yet are not recorded in Census trade data. Who benefits from this type of trade, and what […] The post The Value of De Minimis Imports...

Roy argues that culture in the sense we have understood it is being inexorably eroded. It’s not, as some of his countrymen believe, that one culture is being replaced by another – say, Christianity by Islam. It’s that all culture is being hollowed out by technology, data, globalisation, bureaucracy, and consumerist individualism. Local cultures, in the sense […] The post Ian Leslie on Olivier Roy and...

Most strategic improvements in sports have been in the direction of increasing variance and living with the (better EV) results: Baseball: more extra base hits, no more bunting. Football: more passing game, going for it on 4th. Golf: driver ball speed increases. Bball: 3 pointer… Tennis: bigger serves/groundstrokes. Snooker: cannoning the pack to extend breaks. […] The post True, false, or uncertain? appeared first...

Look at #4 on this list: Via Nabeel, source here.  And this year India won gold in the men’s and also women’s chess Olympiad, and is favored in December to have Gukesh winning the world championship.  By the way, the performance rating of Gukesh at #3 is barely behind Carlsen at #2, at least for […] The post 54 years old…. appeared first on...

1. Gukesh 8/9 on Board 1 at the chess Olympiad.  I am told Alekhine did 9-0 in 1930, but against much weaker competition. 2. Migrants from developing countries have higher than average incomes. 3. Different features of cognitive achievement and what ages they peak at. 4. David Schmidtz on dining with Nozick (I can endorse […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on...

The puzzle was that, despite M1 growth in excess of 5 percent during 1970 and 10 percent during the first half of 1971, the engine still continued to sputter.  At the June 1971 meeting of the FOMC, the Fed’s chief economist admitted bafflement.  “Why is it that the very high recent growth rates of money…fail […] The post Sometimes people are just wrong appeared...

I was thinking about the unrealized cap gains tax after Taylor Swift’s endorsement today and I think I see a new problem distinct from those you and Alex have raised so far. Maybe someone else has pointed this out, but I figured I’d write out the logic and see what you think. I think there […] The post IP and unrealized capital gains (from...

1. Facts about Oregon: “Only 13% of PWUD were aware that all drugs had been decriminalized.” 2. Ghana is back to decent gdp growth (Bloomberg). 3. Honduran Supreme Court moves against ZEDEs. 4. The Antartica ozone hole seems on a path to full recovery? 5. Trade theorist Victor Norman has passed away. The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn...

The full title of this paper is “Pervasive findings of directional selection realize the promise of ancient DNA to elucidate human adaptation.”  It truly has an all-star cast of authors, including David Reich and Eric S. Lander, and also numerous others at top schools.  I did read through this paper, but understood it only in […] The post How has human DNA evolved? appeared...

Forthcoming in the JEL: Deep learning provides powerful methods to impute structured information from large-scale, unstructured text and image datasets. For example, economists might wish to detect the presence of economic activity in satellite images, or to measure the topics or entities mentioned in social media, the congressional record, or firm filings. This review introduces […] The post Deep Learning for Economists appeared first...

Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK […] The post Facts about Britain appeared first on...

However, following the start of PhD studies, the use of psychiatric medication among PhD students increases substantially. This upward trend continues throughout the course of PhD studies, with estimates showing a 40 percent increase by the fifth year compared to pre-PhD levels. After the fifth year, which represents the average duration of PhD studies in […] The post Sweden fact of the day appeared...