~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (570)

We study China’s export growth to the United States from 1950–2008, using a structural model to disentangle the effects of past tariff changes from the effects of changes in expectations of future tariffs. We find that the effects of China’s 1980 Normal Trade Relations (NTR) grant lasted past its 2001 accession to the World Trade […] The post Letting China into the WTO was...

By Ray C. Fair, an important contribution: This paper examines the history of U.S. infrastructure since 1929 and in the process reports an interesting fact about the U.S. economy.Infrastructure stock as a percent of GDP began a steady decline around 1970, and thegovernment budget deficit became positive and large at roughly the same time.  The infrastructure pattern in […] The post U.S. Infrastructure: 1929-2023 appeared first on...

Or are they tariff threats instead?  Still bad!  From the FT: Donald Trump has said he will hit the EU with tariffs, adding the bloc to a list of targets including Canada and Mexico and bringing the US to the brink of new trade wars with its biggest trading partners. The US president acknowledged that […] The post The new tariffs are bad appeared...

Perhaps he imbibed a dose of Garett Jones?: Even people who expect human-level AI soon are still seriously underestimating how different the world will look when we have it. Most people are anchoring on how smart they expect individual models to be. (i.e. they’re asking themselves “What would the world be like if everyone had […] The post The wisdom of Dwarkesh appeared first...

1. The Wandering Minstrel (Irish song). 2. My 2008 post on Sarah Palin.  A bit too much ahead of its time, but directionally correct. 3. AI models as historians.  And how to have a career after o3 drops.  And low-hanging fruit in inference-time scaling. 4. Is there a murder gang of Sith vegans? Are they […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

By Amy Sall.  I love this picture book, or should I say photo book?  Most of it is reproductions of photographs from the “golden age” of African photography, with profiles of each major photographer, plus a section on cinema as well. One very good way to find “a picture book for you” is to visit […] The post *The African Gaze: Photography, Cinema and...

From Wikipedia: Chris Arnade…is an American photographer and writer. He worked for 20 years as a bond trader on Wall Street; in 2011, he started documenting the lives of poor people and their drug addictions and commenting on the state of the society of the United States. He did this through photographs posted on social media and articles in various media… […] The post What should I ask Chris Arnade?...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column.  Here is part of the argument: TikTok was briefly shut down earlier this month, and the site faces an uncertain legal future. America’s internet youth started to look elsewhere — and where did they choose? They flocked to a Chinese video site called RedNote, also known as Xiaohongshu, […] The post How did China’s internet become so...

We compare present-day regions that were advanced by Roman culture with those that remained outside of Roman influence. Even when accounting for more recent historical factors, we find that regions developed by Roman civilization show more adaptive personality patterns (Big Five) and better health and psychological well-being today. Results from a spatial regression discontinuity design […] The post The culture that is German (Roman)...

1. Malthusian migrations: the French diaspora is relatively small because the French had their fertility transition earlier. 2. About 31% of Bitcoin is potentially vulnerable to quantum computing attacks?  Here is the associated project. 3. New way to visit an art museum, using o1. 4. New observations on India and America. 5. “The prison admission […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

What would happen to drug development if the FDA lost its authority to prohibit new drugs? Would research and development boom and lives be saved? Or would R&D decline and lives be lost to a flood of unsafe and ineffective drugs? Or perhaps R&D would decline as demand for new drugs faltered due to public […] The post FDA Deregulation of E-Cigarettes Saved Lives...

I had not known of this passage, which I am packaging with its introduction from Gavan Tredoux: John Maynard Keynes has the undeserved reputation of a critic of the USSR. Few know that he reviewed Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s mendacious tome The Soviet Union: a New Civilization (1935/1937/1943) fawningly. Perhaps the most embarrassing thing Keynes […] The post Keynes on the Soviet Union appeared...

I must admit, though, that the thing that scared me most about HudZah was that he seemed to be living in a different technological universe than I was. If the previous generation were digital natives, HudZah was an AI native. HudZah enjoys reading the old-fashioned way, but he now finds that he gets more out […] The post The forward march of computer use,...

…for people in various stages and situations of life.  You will find the discussion here. The post Chris Barber asks me to give AI-related advice appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to H. “and everyone else will be relegated to ... by Todd KIn reply to mento. But with exceptions like the fast ... by Todd KIn reply to Ted Craig. These...

1. Was RCA the tech stock of the 1920s? 2. Measuring the skill of individual soccer players. 3. Electric “autos” for India. 4. Chinese views on DeepSeek.  And Chinese music AI, Yue, the model song.  And Chinese robot dance.  And a poem from R1.  And R1 wants more mood affiliation from Yglesias. 5. The AI […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

Antimicrobial resistance is a growing problem. Peptides, short sequences of amino acids, are nature’s first defense against bacteria. Research on antimicrobial peptides is promising but such research could be much more productive if combined with machine learning on big data. But collecting, collating and organizing big data is a public good and underprovided. Current peptide […] The post It’s Time to Build the Peptidome!...

No, as I argue in my latest Bloomberg column.  This one is basic economics: The simpler point is this: If large financial firms can buy your home, you are better off. You will have more money to retire on, and presumably selling your home will be easier and quicker, removing what for many homeowners is […] The post Is it a problem if Wall...

We want to know if AGI is coming. Chow, Halperin, and Mazlish have a paper called “Transformative AI, Existential Risk, and Real Interest Rates” arguing that, if we believe the markets, it is not coming for some time. The reasoning is simple. If we expect to consume much more in the future, and people engage […] The post Will transformative AI raise interest rates?...

1. How fiscally progressive are state governments? 2. Update on the quest to abolish parking minimums (NYT). 3. When are tariffs the optimal industrial policy? 4. Interview with the CEO behind DeepSeek. 5. Executive Order tracker. 6. “Our findings indicate that, on average, a large minimum wage increase results in a 4.6 percent increase in […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

A brilliant critique of AI, and a great read: In 1582, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II commissioned a clockwork automaton of St. George. The saint could raise his sword, nod gravely, and even bleed—a trick involving ox bladder and red wine—before collapsing in pious ecstasy. The machine was a marvel, but Rudolf’s courtiers recoiled. […] The post The Interface as Infernal Contract appeared...

A shortage of electricians means that those willing to endure long shifts and live on remote sites can potentially earn up to A$200,000 (US$124,000) a year — double the national average salary and not far off the average MP salary. “It’s a cup half full/half empty life. You do 12-hour shifts, there’s the heat, the […] The post Future unemployment will be (mostly) voluntary...

…Rwanda is still poorer than most African countries due to being less urbanized than most African nations (Rwanda is 82% rural compared to Sub Saharan Africa’s 57% average). Rwanda’s donor aid adds up to ~75% of Rwanda’s government spending, which is roughly $1B. The average Rwandan makes $1K a year ($3300 at purchasing power parity). At purchasing power parity, […] The post Facts about Rwanda appeared first on...

From Naveen: So much talk of “AI safety” and too little in the way of practical questions like these that are going to be important in the near future. Should law enforcement be able to subpoena AI  assistants about your information? For example, I use the free GPT-3.5/4 version and it already has a lot […] The post Questions about LLMs (from my email)...

1. Is DeepSeek-R1 a good writer? 2. Dominic Cummings reading list. 3. Modern novels by country, a superb and thorough website. 4. Joe Boyd world music playlist. 5. Various observations on hardware and current AI trends.  A good piece. 6. Chamath, on the implications of DeepSeek. 7. Acemoglu on liberalism (NYT). The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply...