~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (560)

1. What was feudalism? 2. Technicolor is finally being wound down. 3. Atlantic profile of Aella (salacious text, otherwise safe for work). 4. Show notes from Curt Jaimungal.  And his Substack on physics. 5. Ed Leamer, RIP. 6. The budget package passed by the House. 7. Outmigration predicts AfD support pretty well (NYT).  It is […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

We study the link between exposure to anger and performance, something that to our knowledge has not been studied before.  We exploit the US version of the nationally syndicated television cooking competition MasterChef and collect data on every instance in which judges objectively demonstrate anger to individual participants in each of the episodes in ten […] The post Method in the Madness? appeared first...

An intriguing but speculative hypothesis: We document, in the past decade, a reversal in the trend of increasing wage inequality and declining labor mobility patterns across occupations. This is despite a rapid increase in technological progress and increase in technical skills demanded as evident in online job advertisements. We argue that rapid technological progress over […] The post Are different jobs becoming more alike?...

I have been thinking a lot about this. Have been experimenting like a madman for two months A few unhinged thoughts: – It’s a huge advantage to have a past body of work and style in terms of fine-tuning and training. It can help you understand your own style and keep evolving that over time […] The post Paul Millerd on AI and writing...

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  I loved his forthcoming book John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs.  Ian has done other things too, but for the time being those don’t matter.  This will be a Beatles episode, and also an episode about artistic collaboration. So what should I ask him? The post What should I ask Ian Leslie? appeared...

Waymo factory in Phoenix, AZ. 2000 cars and counting. Hat tip: Brian Potter. The post It’s Happening! appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Phil S.. This is a sojern, a German ode. This ... by EquineIn reply to RAD. There's something wrong, if the cost of the ... by Mark BahnerIn reply to Geopolitical Bill. If even just half of Americans...

1. Ethan Mollick on the new Claude.  Here is Nabeel’s review.  Here is Chubby. 2. New movie about Leibniz? 3. Government by LLM? 4. More on the legality of the NIH indirect cost changes. 5. Therapists are trying to keep AIs out of their markets (NYT). 6. Short presentation on the new Microsoft chip. 7. […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

Partisans are divided on policing policy, which may affect officer behavior. We merge rosters from 99 of the 100 largest local U.S. agencies—over one third of local law enforcement agents nationwide—with voter files to study police partisanship. Police skew more Republican than their jurisdictions, with notable exceptions. Using fine-grained data in Chicago and Houston, we […] The post Do Republican policemen differ from the...

1969 was a big year for me.  Most of all, we left Fall River and moved back to New Jersey, but this time to Bergen rather than Hudson County — Billy Joel comments.  I’ll cover Bergen County another time, here were three other developments of import in my seven-year-old life in 1969: 1. The United […] The post 1969 appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION....

Let’s dive into the latest evidence on how the roughly one million Syrian migrants are faring in Germany, focusing on employment, crime rates, and any other relevant data that sheds light on their integration. As of today, February 24, 2025, the picture is a mix of progress and challenges, shaped by economic realities, social dynamics, […] The post Grok 3 on the Syrians in...

1. Prophets of the Marginal Revolution (POTMR). 2. The best Texas barbecue is increasingly urban (New Yorker). 3. Good, appreciative Hilary Leichter NYT review of the Solvej Balle series.  These are a definite recommend from me. 4. Which Germans supported AfD?  That alone should show you they are not the good guys. 5. Who are the […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

Here is a report on some alignment research by computer scientists. It’s instructive not only for the results but even more for the process, the authors’ reasoning, and their subjective understanding of their work. Claude has been trained to avoid providing harmful responses—put more simply, Claude has preferences and it dislikes generating harmful content. Gleenblatt […] The post The Strange, Strange World of Alignment...

There is a new and excellent paper by Vincent Armentano, Paul Niehaus, and Tom Vogl on this topic.  Here is one paragraph (not from the abstract): We also see no cases in which changes in transfers (from public and private sources) played a dominant role. Among households that exited poverty, the share of income they […] The post How poverty fell appeared first on...

1. Julian Gough and Jim O’Shaughnessy podcast, with transcript.  Do we live in an evolved universe? 2. Tickets for Edge Esmerelda 2025. 3. Will Trump squander his vibe shift? (NYT) 4. Top Ferrari now goes for $3.7 million (WSJ).  And the company is doing very well. 5. From Lawrence: “you can now use Deep Research […] The post Sunday assorted links and non-links appeared...

The information environment is so soiled right now, it is especially difficult to assess such matters.  And I, like many others, am upset about the rhetoric and methods that have been applied from the American side.  Nonetheless I think this may be a better deal than its current press indicates.  Let me note a few […] The post The Ukraine peace deal appeared first...

Jon Klick finds that when courts in CA surprisingly invalidated a set of DEI laws, the market value of firms subject to those laws increased: California mandated that firms headquartered in the state include women (SB 826) and underrepresented minorities (AB 979) on their corporate boards. These laws, passed in 2018 and 2020 respectively, were […] The post Mandated Board Diversity Reduces Firm Value...

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  If you don’t already know, Any Austin is a huge YouTube star.  Grok 3 gave me this summary: Any Austin is a cerebral and innovative YouTube creator whose channel, boasting over 650,000 subscribers, transcends conventional gaming content to explore esoteric, often whimsical intersections of video games […] The post What should I ask Any Austin?...

I’ve already covered much of this in my podcast with Dwarkesh, but I thought it would be useful to write it all out in one place.  I’ll assume you already know the current state of the debate.  Here goes: 1. Due to the Baumol-Bowen cost disease, less productive sectors tend to become a larger share […] The post Why I think AI take-off is...

Senior U.S. Officials, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, are reporting that the United States and Ukraine are on the verge of signing an “Improved” Mineral Deal and Partnership. According to the New York Times, who has read the Document, the Deal calls for Ukraine to relinquish Half of its Revenues from Natural Resources, including […] The post Markets in everything? appeared first on...

1. Does frequent monitoring decrease perceptions of progress? 2. Who believes in astrology, or not? 3. How do Korean and American mock juries differ? 4. Do East Asians enjoy chatbots more? 5. Is copyright reform necessary for national security purposes? 6. Henry Farrell on the Silicon Valley canon (Bloomberg). 7. Basic gold in Fort Knox […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

As a longtime critic of the FDA, you might expect me to support firing FDA employees—not so! My focus has always been on reducing approval time and costs to speed drugs to patients and increase the number of new drugs. Cutting staff is more likely to slow approvals and raise costs. To be fair, we’re […] The post Hire Don’t Fire at the FDA...

I remain happy to provoke my readers: The United States ranks low among peer countries on the ratio of teacher spending to per capita GDP. Is this (in)efficient? Using a spatial equilibrium model we show that spending on schools is efficient if an increase in school spending funded through local taxes would leave house prices […] The post Does the United States Spend Enough...

By Caleb Maresca: This paper analyzes how expectations of Transformative AI (TAI) affect current economic behavior by introducing a novel mechanism where automation redirects labor income from workers to those controlling AI systems, with the share of automated labor controlled by each household depending on their wealth at the time of invention. Using a modified […] The post Strategic Wealth Accumulation Under Transformative AI...

Available in twenty-six languages: It is available on standard podcast sites as well. Curt lists the following as topics we covered: – Tariffs and US-Canada trade relations – Canada becoming the 51st state – Trump administration’s tactics with Canada – Economic philosophy vs. pure economics – University/academic life benefits – Grant system problems and bureaucracy […] The post My podcast with Curt Jaimungal appeared...