1. “Statistical bias along less salient dimensions, such as physical attractiveness, is more likely to go undetected.” 2. The new Austin Vernon solar start-up. 3. Turn your research paper into a music video. 4. European freedom of speech increasingly in danger. …

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is looking into the federal government taking equity stakes in computer chip manufacturers that receive CHIPS Act funding to build factories in the country, two sources said. Expanding on a plan to receive an equity stake in Intel (INTC.O),…

Every day, hungry people arrive at this cafe in Ambikapur, a city in the state of Chhattisgarh in central India, in the hope of getting a hot meal. But they don’t pay for their food with money – instead, they hand…

It has struck me that most recommenders and lovers of choral music and themselves singers (or conductors) of choral music.  It helps a great deal to be right there.  So it occurred to me there are a few reasons why choral…

Alas, and still an underrated economist.

While the rest of Europe bickers over the safety and scope of artificial intelligence, Albania is tapping it to accelerate its EU accession. It’s even mulling an AI-run ministry. Prime Minister Edi Rama mentioned AI last month as a tool to…

This 1103 pp. book reflects a great deal of learning, and it is often interesting to read.  It is well-written.  So virtually everyone can absorb interesting things from it.  In that sense I am happy to recommend it. The book has…

Sub-Saharan Africa’s fertility decline has lagged behind that of other regions. Using large-scale, individual-level data, I provide new evidence on how fertility in sub-Saharan Africa compares with that in East Asia, South Asia, and Latin America by examining differences in fertility…

1. Arlington travel notes, by Henry Oliver. 2. Class and air conditioning in Germany. 3. Nate Silver Department of Yup. 4. The importance of adaptive prompt behavior. 5. Weapons is an excellent movie (trailer at the link).  There are (very) modest…

As societies become richer, and basic needs are satisfied, zero-sum positional contests gain more prominence, while the regular positivesum benefits of markets subside in the background. As long argued by Hirsch, Frank and others, the institutions for managing resource scarcity and…

This recently published paper by Selim Sametoğlu, Dirk H. M. Pelt, and Meike Bartels, is based on a clever idea, namely to look at twin studies to see if heavy social media users have innate tendenciees toward lower social well-being.  Overall…

The people who are really good understand sourcing and how important it is for critical thinking. The education should be focused on helping people recognize and refute bullshit. Step one is the critical thinking necessary to say, “This makes no sense,”…

1. Australia’s great stagnation. 2. Ezra Klein interviews Natasha Sarin (NYT).  She is not only an excellent economist, but she avoids exaggeration, an increasingly rare trait in public discourse. 3. “Researchers at Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and Optosurgical trained SRT-H, a dual-transformer…

At Camp Social, creating chemistry is everything: campers are divided by age, which range from 20s to 60s, into bunks of eight to 10. Each is staffed with a trained counselor who serves as a camp concierge and bonding facilitator—they are…

Jeff Asher: Within a city, within a district, there are times, either by mistake or by intention, that an agency will manipulate a certain type of crime. There are times where things will get underreported. There will be mistakes. There are…

The gap between US companies’ borrowing costs and US Treasury yields has shrunk to its smallest since 1998, after a red-hot rally in global credit markets that investors warn is underplaying threats to the world economy. The cost of borrowing for…

Here is the intro: Over time, I’ve noticed that an unusual number of important films came out in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In this post, I’ll argue that the period from 1958 to 1963 is the artistic peak of…

1. Ten year old Indian girl beats grandmaster in chess. 2. Low birthrates today forecast low house price appreciation in the future. 3. Dubov on working with Magnus (subtitles in English). 4. One hypothesis about the best news in America right…

Potvin’s team dissected and examined the bodies of nearly 500 birds belonging to five common Australian species: the Australian magpie, laughing kookaburra, crested pigeon, rainbow lorikeet, and the scaly breasted lorikeet(…)In addition to identifying the birds’ reproductive organs, researchers also tested…

From a recent paper: Populists are often defined as those who claim that they fill “political representation gaps” -differences between the policymaking by established parties and the “popular will.” Research has largely neglected to what extent this claim is correct. I study…

Here is the link.

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  David recently published Saudi Arabia: A Modern History, a very good and useful book.  He has numerous other books on Wahhabism, the history of the Gulf region, and also Syria.  Currently he…

MATTHEWS: What was the debate about import substitution like at this point, in the late 1950s/early 1960s? KRUEGER: The whole profession believed in import substitution. Almost without question. Even Gottfried Haberler, in his lectures in 1959, said that, of course, infant…

Here is a new NBER working paper: As geopolitical tensions intensify, great powers often turn to trade policy to influence international alignment. We examine the optimal design of tariffs in a world where large countries care not only about economic welfare…

JLL estimates $170bn of assets will require construction lending or permanent financing this year. Between now and 2029, however, global spending on data centres will hit almost $3tn, according to Morgan Stanley analysts. Of that, just $1.4tn is forecast to come…

The University of Chicago has now borrowed $6.3 billion, more than 70 percent of the value of its endowment. The cost of servicing its debt is now 85 percent of the value of all undergraduate tuition. (This is not normal. No…

In this paper, we use ChatGPT outages to provide early evidence on whether investors rely on generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to perform professional tasks and the associated impact on stock price informativeness. We document a significant decline in stock trading volume…

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is part of the episode summary: Tyler and Nate dive into expected utility theory and random Nash equilibria in poker, whether Silver’s tell-reading abilities transfer to real-world situations like NBA games, why academic…

Here is YouTube, here is Spotify.  Yonatan is a very smart venture capitalist.  About 34 minutes, recommended!

A key reason for the global financial cycle, as outlined by Hélène Rey, is that many firms and financial institutions in developing countries borrow heavily in U.S. dollars while their revenues, assets, and cash flows are denominated in local currency. When…

The author is Philip K. Howard and the subtitle is How to Revive the Spirit of America.  The book is short, to the point, in the “abundance + state capacity” genre.  Excerpt, noting I will not double indent: “Three major changes…

We find that decreases in Michelin stars improve consumer review ratings…The analysis of review content further shows that a loss in Michelin stars leads consumers to become less focused on value and become less demanding regarding service. Here is the paper. …

1. Bells ringing before Vespers. 2. Sensible comments on AI. 3. At least thirty-three crypto kidnappings this year? 4. University presidents arguing with each other. 5. Some reasons why DC has been getting worse, of course add Work from Home (which…

Done with Liberty Fund, I very much enjoyed chatting with him.  Here is the link.  Here is their episode summary: Tyler Cowen joins Mitch Daniels to explore AI’s promise, economic threats from debt and regulation, and the need for bold, intelligent…

A common theme in the vast literature on climate change is the estimation of models using historical data to make predictions many decades into the future. Although there is a large and growing number of these types of studies, researchers rarely…

Anya Singh, Hawthorne, CA/YC, to help protect IP. Patrick Murphy, Limerick, travel grant. Daryna Hrybchuk, 18, Lviv, general career support. Ari Shtein, Ann Arbor, Michigan/Yale, 17, general career support. Vadzim Rayinchick, Belarus/SF, “Confessions”. Garret Thomas Molloy, Dublin/Stanford, travel and study grant.…

We implement five different tests of whether grand juries, which are drawn from a representative cross-section of the public, discriminate against Black defendants when deciding to prosecute felony cases. Three tests exploit that while jurors do not directly observe defendant race,…

R&D investment has grown robustly, yet aggregate productivity growth has stagnated. Is this because “ideas are getting harder to find”? This paper uses micro-data from the US Census Bureau to explore the relationship between R&D and productivity in the manufacturing sector…

The author is Samuel Scheffler, and the subtitle is The Mysteries of Time and the Goods of Attachment.  He is one of America’s leading philosophers, and proves it once again here. Much of this book is devoted to arguing against Derek…

We estimate transitory and permanent import tariff shocks in the United States over the postwar period. We find that transitory tariff increases are neither inflationary nor contractionary, and are not associated with monetary tightening. In contrast, permanent tariff increases trigger a…

A BEST CASE SCENARIO FOR AI? The Doomer narratives were wrong. Predicated on a “rapid take-off” to AGI, they predicted that the leading AI model would use its intelligence to self-improve, leaving others in the dust, and quickly achieving a godlike…

You will see termite mounds, baobab trees, and open skies. The major city is Tamale, the third largest urban settlement in the country.  The town is manageable and traffic is not intense.  At night it is quiet.  The “main street” is…

1. Was it emigration that ended the British empire? 2. Thiel fellowship data. 3. A kind of Jevons Paradox for AI pricing and usage. 4. Redux of Patrick Collison interviewing me in 2017. 5. “Dynastic composers are between 14 and 21…

Yes, I will be having another Conversation with him.  Much of it will focus on Steven’s forthcoming book When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows…Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. Here by the way is my previous…

Here is the transcript and also the link to the audio.  Forty five minutes or so.  Here is the YouTube.  We discuss much more than Bach, full of fresh material, plus Evan knows a lot and prepares, definitely recommended.  There are…