~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (545)

The differences between the most and least productive companies can be startlingly high. By one estimate, in the US alone the most productive firms in a sector can be more than two to four times more cost-effective than the least productive ones. Given the size of those discrepancies, any expansion of trade or innovation that makes […] The post It is wonderful to put inefficient...

As divisive as the political rhetoric is, the policy divide between the two parties seems more narrow today than any time in recent memory. Bipartisan bills in immigration, energy permitting, and the child tax credit have been negotiated and waiting for political window to reopen. Foreign aid and military spending bills both passed in past […] The post John Arnold on economic polarization appeared...

“Hi Tyler, i have big news about the debate over social media harming teens. So much of it hangs on the claim that the evidence is just correlational, not causal. Zach Rausch and I show that this is not true; the experiments DO show causation, very clearly and consistently. Here are my 2 tweets about the post: https://x.com/JonHaidt/status/1829163166066205168 […] The post Jon Haidt on causality (from my...

1. How AI will impact back office support in the Philippines (Bloomberg). 2. Toward a theory of (Finnish) woke.  Not directly related to sauna activity. 3. Immigrant cooks as anthropologists. 4. How NYC’s Park Avenue used to look, and maybe will once again. 5. A left market anarchist canon. 6. David Pilling on Benin and […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

From Sergio Correia, Stephan Luck, and Emil Verner: Why do banks fail? We create a panel covering most commercial banks from 1865 through 2023 to study the history of failing banks in the United States. Failing banks are characterized by rising asset losses, deteriorating solvency, and an increasing reliance on expensive non-core funding. Commonalities across […] The post Failing Banks appeared first on Marginal...

Not so much it seems: Research on the causal effects of online advertising on consumer welfare is limited due to challenges in running large-scale field experiments and tracking effects over extended periods. We analyze a long-running field experiment of online advertising in which a random 0.5% subset of all users are assigned to a group […] The post Do consumers hate on-line ads? appeared...

Much of the value of writing done recently or now is simply to get stuff into LLMs. I would, in fact, pay money to ensure Gwern.net is in training corpuses, and I upload source code to Github, heavy with documentation, rationale, and examples, in order to make LLMs more customized to my use-cases. For the […] The post The wisdom of Gwern, why should...

I think that I am one of the few federal bureaucrats who openly engage in the comment section here. I have worked in two different federal agencies. At one agency, I was a rule writer. That is I worked with a team to develop regulations and then I wrote the proposed and final rules to […] The post From the comments (on regulation) appeared...

1. Can we inherit our way into higher fertility?  Maybe not. 2. Paul Romer offers you tech support. 3. Alexander Kobrin’s volume one of his Beethoven piano sonata cycle is at the very top of the quality distribution. 4. All sorts of new cancer drugs and treatments are in the works (FT), p.s. supply is […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

A great piece in the NYTimes on the history and future of factory produced buildings: But the most remarkable difference between the United States and Sweden is regulatory. Building codes in the U.S. try to make buildings safe by prescribing exactly what materials must be used and how (a prescriptive code). In Sweden, the government […] The post Prescriptive versus Performance Codes appeared first...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column.  Here is one key part of the argument: There are numerous theories as to why [the Great Stagnation started in the early 1970s]: oil price shocks, more stringent government regulations, an increased emphasis on environmental protection over economic growth, and the collapse of the Bretton Woods […] The post Was the Great Stagnation originally a...

Introduction. Your analysis produces a statistically insignificant estimate. Is it because the effect is negligibly different from zero? Or because your research design does not have sufficient power to achieve statistical significance? Alternatively, you read that “The median statistical power [in empirical economics] is 18%, or less” (Ioannidis et al., 2017) and you wonder if the […] The post From Reed and Logchies appeared first...

1. Something, something, French politics, I don’t understand either the equilibrium or the procedure.  Does anybody? 2. Kevin Sherwin is an amazing guitarist, and yet no one has heard of him. 3. Bioy Casares on Borges, translated into English, at least in part, you can now pre-order.  One of the great Spanish-language books, hitherto unavailable […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

I found this Joseph Heath post very informative. In essence, Marx was about exploitation but when no theory of exploitation without gaping holes could be developed, the analytical Marxists shifted to egalitarianism ala Rawls. Back when I was an undergraduate, during the final years of the cold war, by far the most exciting thing going […] The post Rawls Killed Marx appeared first on...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, just to clarify context for the newbies I think more than half of all current regulations are a net negative.  Anywhere, here are some of the problems: Consider the relatively straightforward idea, popular in some Republican circles, of firing large numbers of federal bureaucrats. There would be immediate […] The post Why massive deregulation is very difficult...

Bucking his central planning instincts, Obama embraced a surprisingly laissez-faire approach to space flight that angered political allies and opponents alike. In doing so, however, he tapped a reservoir of ingenuity and innovation that has ushered in a new age of space flight and exploration… In her forthcoming book Bureaucrats and Billionaires, former NASA deputy administrator […] The post Obama’s space legacy? appeared first on...

Via James Hohman. The post U.S: central city population as a % of metropolitan area appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to David. More like, “it’s too congested because ... by AndrewIn reply to Patito. Here's today's Chicago Sun-Times article ... by EngineerHow bad will this chart look over the next several decades as ... by NickIn reply to Mr_B. Right you...

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him. Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist and assistant professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. He is a columnist for The Guardian and his writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Atlantic, among other publications. […] The post What should I ask Musa al-Gharbi?...

1. This DVD/Blu-Ray of Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt is one of the best performances I have seen, ever. 2. Houston is turning its back on bicycles. 3. Ethiopia vs. Somalia? (NYT)  And Juleanna Glover on where Republican donations go (NYT). 4. “However, since most crypto investors owe little in crypto-related taxes, enforcement strategies need to […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

This paper studies the long-run effects of slavery and restrictive Jim Crow institutions on Black Americans’ economic outcomes. We track individual-level census records of each Black family from 1850 to 1940, and extend our analysis to neighborhood-level outcomes in 2000 and surname-based outcomes in 2023. We show that Black families whose ancestors were enslaved until […] The post Jim Crow and Black Economic Progress...

I have noticed repeatedly, over the course of many restaurant visits, that my servers want to take away my plates, my glasses, my cutlery, and indeed almost anything else — before I really want to give it up. The ratio of “they want to take it away too soon” to “they take it away too […] The post Why do the servers always want...

1. Crafting AI-complementary skills. 2. Rhino vs. elephant.  And they work for less than minimum wage. 3. Some evidence that wage disclosure leads to wage suppression. 4. Lotte Lenya singing Weill’s Alabama Song. 5. High-tech ice packs for the summer heat (WSJ). 6. The new tech arms race. 7. Chicago School of Economics canon.  And […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on...

I asked Claude to read my post, Go for the Gold! on using inequality in the NFL and NBA to get a different perspective on income inequality. I then asked Claude, “Which are the best comments showing they understood the op-ed and responded in a productive and reasonable way either critically or positively?” And following […] The post Claude Reviews You! appeared first on...

That is from Elad Gil. The post The falling cost of tokens appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Ignorant. A token is a word, of input or ... by JimSorry for the dumb question, but what’s a “token” in this ... by IgnorantI've no doubt there were many who in March 2023 believed that ... by NeuroticIn reply to rayward. Jesus...