~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (545)

For the first time in decades, public health data shows a sudden and hopeful drop in drug overdose deaths across the U.S. “This is exciting,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, head of the National Institute On Drug Abuse [NIDA], the federal laboratory charged with studying addiction. “This looks real. This looks very, very real.” National surveys […] The post USA fact of the day appeared...

How costly is inflation to workers? Answers to this question have focused on the path of real wages during inflationary periods. We argue that workers must take costly actions (“conflict”) to have nominal wages catch up with inflation, meaning there are welfare costs even if real wages do not fall as inflation rises. We study […] The post Why do workers dislike inflation? appeared...

1. Stanford remote work conference will be held in person. 2. What the other people say too. 3. What is bottlenecking progress in chemistry? 4. Prizes for submitting difficult questions for AIs. 5. Can AI improve health care pricing? 6. Some new and important YIMBY vs. NIMBY results, using AI, by Arpit Gupta and co-authors. […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

Fusion energy is currently facing many of the same opportunities and challenges as the biotechnology industry of the 1970s: exciting scientific and engineering breakthroughs that could change the course of human history, with sufficient public and private funding, more effective business models, and appropriate regulatory oversight. A number of lessons can be learned from the […] The post What Fusion Energy Can Learn From...

Here is the link, in Portuguese, here is part of a Claude translation: We, the undersigned, wish to express our deep concern about the ongoing attacks by Big Tech companies and their allies against Brazil’s digital sovereignty. The Brazilian judiciary’s dispute with Elon Musk is just the latest example of a broader effort to restrict […] The post Scholars in support of the Moraes...

Moderated by Bari Weiss, here it is.  I teamed with Katherine Mangu-Ward, vs. David Leonhardt and Bhaskar Sunkara. The post Ungated audio of my American dream debate appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIMHO David Leonhardt and Bhaskar Sunkara get many of the signs ... by FloccinaIn reply to Hamu Nashi. Ad hominems are lame lmao by TomWinTejasIn reply to Sounds dire. Did I...

When Mexicans arrive at voting booths next year to elect their judges for the first time, they face a unique and daunting task. In the capital Mexico City, voters will have to choose judges for more than 150 positions, including on the Supreme Court, from a list of 1,000 candidates that most people have never […] The post Mexico political challenge of the day...

1. “About 27% of firms using AI report replacing worker tasks, but only about 5% experience employment change due to AI use.” 2. Who is the greatest British novelist of all time?  You get to vote, too. 3. How far can Irvine (CA) go? 4. How and why drug traffickers are infiltrating Costa Rica (NYT). […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

A major sign of Chinese economic malaise: In 2018, 51,302 new startups were founded in China. Last year, that number dropped to 1,202. Here is one link, leading to others.  Here is an attempt to talk down the relevance of those numbers.  I would mention that initially there were far too many Chinese start-ups, in […] The post China estimate and debate of the...

Recent research finds that most people want lower housing prices but, contrary to expert consensus, do not believe that more supply would lower prices. This study tests the effects of four informational interventions on Americans’ beliefs about housing markets and associated policy preferences and political actions (writing to state lawmakers). Several of the interventions significantly […] The post How to persuade to YIMBY? appeared...

By Eric Pichet, here is the abstract: Despite attempts to ‘unwind’ the Impôt de Solidarité sur la Fortune (‘Solidarity Wealth Tax,’ the French wealth tax) during the last legislature (2002-2007), ISF yields had soared by 2006, jumping from €2.5 billion in 2002 to €3.6 billion. Analysis of the economic consequences of this ISF wealth tax […] The post The Economic Consequences of the French...

I do not in general trust such methods, but the conclusions are not unwelcome to me: I provide new empirical estimates of the effect of state capacity on economic development across countries over the period 1960–2022. Specifically, I construct a comprehensive state capacity index based on six different dimensions of effective state institutions available in […] The post State capacity and economic development appeared...

1. Markets in church real estate.  You can expect their business to grow. 2. Not Quite Past.  For instance, make your own Delftware using AI.  Here is further information. 3. Smart goose deterrent system. 4. Tracking SEC inquiries using geolocation data. 5. Metformin investigations (speculative). 6. Does alcohol regulation boost the populist Right? 7. China […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

Good op-ed from Arthur Herman and Aparna Pande: [H]ow America approaches its relations with India — the world’s largest democracy, its most populous nation and very soon its third-largest economy — may determine the balance of global power for the 21st century…As the U.S. looks for a strong strategic partner to contain China’s current hegemonic […] The post India and the US appeared first...

What if an LLM read all my writing, listened to all my podcast appearances, and perhaps even to some of my private or semi-private conversations, and then placed hundreds of micro-bets for me, updating them as my own thinking evolved? What if LLMs did this for everyone who cares about AI, or any other topic? […] The post Dean Ball on AI and prediction...

Did you worry about the 2020 fall in U.S. fertility?  Well, ponder this: Birth rates in Canada and the USA declined sharply in March 2020 and deviated from historical trends. This decline was absent in similarly developed European countries. We argue that the selective decline was driven by incoming individuals, who would have travelled from abroad […] The post Are “anchor babies” underrated? appeared first...

1. A new mode of national defense for Europe? 2. AI creating a ten-minute podcast on how to practice thinking.  Some good advice in there! 3. Robert Moses, The Power Broker, finally coming to eBook September 16. 4. John Stossel on election prediction markets. 5. Why is fiction no longer interested in financial complexity (FT). The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on Marginal...

Surprised to learn that the US is below the OECD average for out of pocket health care spending as a fraction of per capita consumption, with virtually the same % as Canada. That is Jason Abaluck, via the wisdom of Garett Jones. The post USA fact of the day appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Pshrnk. What number would you consider...

As late as the 1990s, food in Haiti probably was the best in the Caribbean, and it certainly was regarded as such.  There were fancy French-Caribbean fusion restaurants in Petitionville with amazing seafood, and there was high quality street and diner-level food in Port-au-Prince.  Lambi (conch) was consistently the best I ever have had, and […] The post What is Haitian food like in...

1. Is there a rationale for natural monopoly regulation in AI services? 2. Three mistakes in the moral mathematics of existential risk.  I don’t agree with everything in there, but quite an interesting piece, forthcoming in Ethics by David Thorstad. 3. Claims about o1. 4. Good article about Haitians settling in Alabama. 5. The Zvi […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

I knew Civil War (now streaming on HBO/Max) was going to be good when just a minute or so in you see an explosion in the distance and only later do you hear the sound wave. [Mild spoilers may follow.] Shortly after, we meet war journalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst in a standout performance). I thought, […] The post Civil War appeared first on Marginal...

This paper examines the impact of the emergence of the “gig economy” on the broader labor market by exploiting the staggered introduction of the ridesharing service Uber to American Cities between 2013 and 2018. Using difference-in-differences methods, Callaway and Sant’Anna’s doubly robust difference-in-differences estimator, Chaisemartin and D’Haultoeuille’s time-corrected Wald estimator, and Abadie et al’s synthetic control method, I […] The post The economics of ride-sharing appeared first...

Andrew Cedotal writes me: This issue came up with the post where someone claimed that N% of Americans were active OnlyFans content creators, here it is again! For software services, total accounts ever created is a vanity metric. It’s not used by serious operators or investors of consumer-tech companies (the fact that it shows up in public […] The post “four percent of humanity subscribes to...

A Free Press Debate. “Tyler Cowen, Katherine Mangu-Ward, David Leonhardt, and Bhaskar Sunkara duke it out over the state of the economy.”  Here is the video, for Free Press subscribers only.  A splendid time was had by all. The post Is the American dream alive and well? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to joan. The Fed says Real Median Personal Income...