~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (545)

Unmol Sharma, Ontario, for work on purple sulfur bacteria to make hydrogen. Andrew Gau, Stanford, robotics for the science lab. James Edward Dillard, Atlanta area, AI and local reporting. Jim Larsen, Farmington, New Mexico, energy, geothermal energy, and Indonesia, Mohit Deepak Agarwal, Stanford, LLMs and ancient texts, through Perseus. Rohit Krishnan, San Francisco, to run […] The post Emergent Ventures 36th cohort appeared first...

1. Intertemporal empathy decline. 2. When do LLMs harm educational outcomes? 3. “Data from the Current Employment Statistics survey suggests that average hourly pay in manufacturing relative to the rest of the private sector has been falling for decades, and in May 2018 finally sank below. Among production workers the premium vanished in September 2006.”  […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

There is a new paper on that topic by Daniel Winkler, Nils Wlömert, and Jura Liaukonyte. Here is the abstract: This paper investigates how the consumption of an artist’s creative work is impacted when there’s a movement to “cancel” the artist on social media due to their misconduct. Unlike product brands, human brands are particularly vulnerable to reputation […] The post How do musical artists end up...

1. Anna Bogutskaya, Feeding the Monster: Why Horror Has a Hold on Us.  A fun read about the importance of horror movies in contemporary culture, and a lament that we underrate them. 2. Daniel Tammet, Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum.  This is probably the best book of profiles of high-achieving autistics, with the […] The post What I’ve been reading appeared first...

Capital: Critique of Political Economy, volume 1.  Translated by Paul Reitter, published by Princeton, promises to be an event.  Just arrived on my doorstep. And here is my post, from twenty years ago, on what is valid in Marx. The post The new Karl Marx translation appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Josh Lemer. Wayback link: ... by Josh LemerBrad Delong's...

1. Which books, papers, and blogs are in the Bayesian canon? 2. “All fields, EXCEPT FOR ECONOMICS, exhibit a low and decreasing concentration, which suggests a trend toward decentralized knowledge production.”  Link here. 3. David Perell interviews Ben Thompson. 4. Boudreaux and McKenzie on price controls (WSJ).  And most climate policies are ineffective in cutting […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

Except for the tank tops, this could be a bunch of professionals on a boisterous equity trading floor. In fact, it’s a cohort of 15- to 18-year-old students at a two-day free seminar getting a taste of high finance. The session ended with a simulation in which they each ran fictitious $20 million portfolios for […] The post Yes, strong talent is getting younger...

American history is much more about rapid and cheap transport than about extremes of population density.  Even New York, our densest major city by far, became dense relatively late in American history.  To this day, the United States is not extremely dense, not say by European or East Asian standards. But in American history, themes […] The post Mobility vs. density in American history...

The title is Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs.  This is a difficult book to review.  For instance, it has passages like the following: In one particular instance, a senior CIA official and his wife had a terrifying UAP experience in the backyard of their own home.  When they awoke lying on the ground […] The post The new Elizondo book appeared first...

1. India Canada Naveen fact of the day. 2. New announcements on tax hikes supported by Harris.  Most of these plans are not serious, and now is a good time to see who is a Democrat first, and an economist second.  And vice versa.  Here is some relevant commentary. 3. “An examination of two decades […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

At the Democratic National Convention former President Obama came out strongly in favor of  housing deregulation saying “we need to build more homes and clear away some of the outdated laws and regulations that make it harder to build homes”. Robert Kwasny asks on X, “What are the intellectual roots of present-day YIMBYism?” Looking at […] The post The Intellectual Roots of YIMBYism appeared...

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary: In his second appearance, Nate Silver joins the show to cover the intersections of predictions, politics, and poker with Tyler. They tackle how coin flips solve status quo bias, gambling’s origins in divination, what kinds of betting Nate would ban, why he’s been […] The post My excellent Conversation with Nate Silver...

In no other OECD country do workers spend less time on the job. With labour input shrinking by some 1 per cent a year, labour productivity would need to rise by an equal amount for the economy to stand still. Unfortunately, productivity increases per hour worked have stood well below 1 per cent in recent […] The post Germany analysis of the day appeared...

1. Zvi on the revised version of SB 1047.  And Dean Ball on the same. 2. Transcript of Greg Mankiw with Jon Hartley. 3. New FOIA release. 4. Ireland as literary powerhouse. 5. The world’s largest renewable and storage project.  Australia to Singapore is some umbilical cord… 6. Uber drivers in Kenya are trying to […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

An excellent essay by John Cochrane: Uber surge pricing was an important lesson to me. I loved it. I could always get a car if I really needed one, and I could see how much extra I was paying and decide if I didn’t need it. I was grateful that Uber let me pay other […] The post Moms Against Price Gouging appeared first...

I’ve been using one for a few months now, since I had to replace a kaput computer in Stockholm on short notice.  Mostly it is fine.  But why do they make it so hard to use the “@” sign?  You have to press Control and Alt together and then tap the key for 2.  Do […] The post The Swedish keyboard appeared first on...

By Yaroslav Hrytsak, I found this to be one of the very best overviews of Ukrainian history and certainly the most conceptual.  This passage concerns the 1914-1945 period and the frequency of change: In Lviv — eight [the nature of the regime changed eight times].  In Kyiv, the government changed hands eleven times and at […] The post *Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation*...

…the country’s migration minister is celebrating the fact Sweden has “negative net immigration”, with more people thought to be leaving the country than entering for the first time in more than half a century. “The number of asylum applications is heading towards a historically low level, asylum-related residence permits continue to decrease and for the first time […] The post Sweden fact of the day appeared...

1. Parts of the contemporary art market are collapsing in price (NYT). 2. Redux of my 2010 post on how public intellectuals can extend their shelf lives. 3. How do central banks control inflation? 4. Good observations on lead exposure, IQ, and crime. 5. Home state bias limits labor mobility. 6. A Reddit thread on […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

CEO compensation at large firms is high, especially in comparison to average worker wages, sparking debates over income inequality. Critics argue that such pay packages are unfair and disproportionate to actual company performance. Proponents contend that high pay reflects productivity and is necessary to attract scarce top talent to large firms. Let’s go to the […] The post Why Top CEOs Earn Big Paychecks...

Total family subsidy spending exceeds 5 per cent of GDP, or more than double what Hungary spends on defence… From a record low of 1.23 children per woman in 2011, the country’s fertility rate rose to 1.59 in 2020, but in recent years it has levelled off to about 1.5. In the first half of this […] The post Hungary fact of the day appeared...

This Patrick Collison list is descriptive, not normative: The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce Seeing Like a State The Dream Machine The Sovereign Individual The Beginning of Infinity Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman Softwar Ashlee Vance’s Elon biography The Mythical Man-Month Mindstorms Masters of Doom Skunk Works Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Thinking in Systems […] The post Which books and blogs are in...

1. Sports betting hurts individual savings of the bettors. 2. “Tim Walz is the first person on either the top or bottom half of a Democratic presidential ticket since 1980 who didn’t attend law school. That is 20 individuals across 10 elections over 40 years who pursued a JD or LLB.”  Link here. 3. Ben […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

Before the sparse audience, he vowed to run the city of Cheyenne exclusively with an AI bot he calls “VIC” for “Virtual Integrated Citizen.” …Standing behind a lectern with a sign that read “AI FOR MAYOR,” he gave a brief PowerPoint presentation on the history of AI. Then he stepped aside to give the floor […] The post I would love to see this...