~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (560)

Tirthankar Roy and K. Ravi Raman, Kerala: 1956 to the Present.  Short, nonetheless the best book I have read on why Kerala is (somewhat) special in the Indian context.  Stresses Kerala as part of a larger set of positive South Indian developments.  Overpriced though at $40, given the short length. Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: […] The post What I’ve been reading appeared first...

South Korea in 2024 saw 242,334 babies born, marking the first increase in the annual figure since 2015, as the country struggles to improve its plummeting birth rate that is among the worst in the world. The official figure for childbirths rose by 7,295 from 235,039 in 2023, a 3.1 percent increase, according to the […] The post South Korea fact of the day...

In a justified resurgence of interest in the topic, The Telegraph covers the Rotherham scandals.  Liz Truss has spoken up too.  This is not a welcome issue for Starmer, to say the least.  No matter what you think he did/did not do wrong in this matter, he cannot come out ahead.  One implication is that […] The post Updates appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION....

In the comments to my post, India has Too Few Tourists, many people worried about the food, the touts and the poverty. Many of these comments are mistaken or apply only if you are traveling to India on the cheap as an adolescent backpacker (nothing wrong with that but I suspect the MR audience is […] The post How to Visit India for Normies...

1. How much of content are advertisers reluctant to be next to? (WSJ) 2. An intellectual’s travel guide to Madrid. 3. Plans to live under the ocean. 4. Top (architectural) hotels of 2024. 5. Cliff Asness, allocator. 6. Having read The Faerie Queene. 7. Greenland Prime Minister declares an interest in independence. The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn...

Consumption of red wine in France has fallen by about 90 per cent since the 1970s, according to Conseil Interprofessionnel du vin de Bordeaux (CIVB), an industry association. Total wine consumption, spanning reds, whites and rosés, is down more than 80 per cent in France since 1945, according to survey data from Nielsen, and the […] The post France fact of the day appeared...

1. Facts about Sudan. 2. Does Romeo love Juliet? 3. Scott Sumner movie reviews, plus Scott confirms that Solenoid is a classic. 4. “So if you’re nostalgic, as Trump and many of his supporters are, for the old days when the U.S. economy was dominated by heavy industry, you should know that it was Reagan, […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

He was one of the fathers of “happiness economics,” here is a NYT obituary.  Via John Chamberlin. The post Richard A. Easterlin, RIP appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to It's like India. Don't poo in the loo! by Tyler CowenIn reply to ShatGPT. Is that the sound of a mood being ... by rsm“happiness economics” is bullshit by ShatGPTIn reply to...

In 2017, I wrote an article on India’s underperformance in tourism: India is one of the most desirable tourist destinations in the world. Thirty-five [now 43, AT!] UNESCO World Heritage sites–among them the Taj Mahal, one of the “New Seven Wonders of the World”—attract a global audience. India’s many food, dance and religious cultures are […] The post India has Too Few Tourists appeared...

Here goes: Ex po st, the Manhattan audience swung thirty (!) points in my favor, compared to the pre-debate poll.  This was a fun event for me. The post My 92nd St. Y debate with Robert Kuttner on income inequality appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsThis debate made me wonder whether the underlying issues, that ... by EmceeIn reply to BC. I agree...

The subtitle is New Estimates of Productivity Growth in England from 1250 to 1870, and the authors are Paul Bouscasse, Emi Nakamura, and Jón Steinsson.  Abstract: We estimate productivity growth in England from 1250 to 1870. Real wages over this period were heavily influenced by plague-induced swings in the population. Our estimates account for these […] The post When did sustained economic growth begin?...

Today we launched our second Asimov Press book…The book’s theme is “technology,” and so we encoded a complete copy of the book into DNA, and are making those DNA copies available to consumers for the first time. We worked with three companies (CATALOG, Plasmidsaurus, and Imagene) to make 1,000 copies of the DNA and package them […] The post Asimov Press has a new kind...

1. Disequilibrium play in tennis. 2. Tax cuts are expansionary even at the zero lower bound. 3. Art museum openings in 2025. 4. Teaching data analytics with generative AI. 5. Mercatus ideas for DOGE. 6. The two states without Chick-Fil-A.  And why. 7. Life without stars? Stellar, not celebrities. 8. Abba appreciation. 9. Very good […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

Excellent clip from longer interview.   The post Marc Andreessen on Atlas Shrugged appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION. Click the icon below to watch.         CommentsIn reply to Stephen Wiley. This site contains midnight-drone ... by Wiley JamokaIn reply to Kekius Imitatorius. Would be, if guys like ... by Suikek 420In reply to Bob. Tyler was trying to con him, get him to ......

Yes, I will be having a Conversation with him.  Here is Wikipedia on Carl: Carl Zimmer (born 1966) is a popular science writer, blogger, columnist, and journalist who specializes in the topics of evolution, parasites, and heredity. The author of many books, he contributes science essays to publications such as The New York Times, Discover, and National Geographic. He is a fellow at Yale University‘s Morse College and adjunct professor of […] The post What should I ask Carl Zimmer?...

This paper investigates the effect of media coverage on immigration attitudes. It combines data on immigration coverage in French television with individual panel data from 2013 to 2017 that records respondents’ preferred television channel and attitudes toward immigration. The analysis focuses on within-individual variations over time, addressing ideological self-selection into channels. We find that increased […] The post Covering immigration is a mixed bag...

But Butcher relies on old-fashioned detective work and his 10-year-old working cocker spaniel. Together, the pair have recovered hundreds of pets. “I could work every single day of the week and every weekend there’s so much demand right across the board,” he said. “I probably get about on average 15 emails or calls just on […] The post Those new service sector jobs, Ace...

Here is the audio and transcript, here is the episode summary: Tyler and I spoke about view quakes from fiction, Proust, Bleak House, the uses of fiction for economists, the problems with historical fiction, about about drama in interviews, which classics are less read, why Jane Austen is so interesting today, Patrick Collison, Lord of the Rings… but […] The post My Shakespeare and literature podcast with...

1. The peso in Argentina is now overvalued (FT). 2. “More than 40 percent of South ­Koreans below the age of forty have stopped dating. The Korea ­Development Institute reports that, in 2020, more than 52 percent of South Koreans in their twenties preferred a childless marriage, up from about 30 percent in 2015. More […] The post New Year’s Day assorted links appeared...

This corridor of conflict stretches across approximately 4,000 miles and encompasses about 10% of the total land mass of sub-Saharan Africa, an area that has doubled in just three years and today is about 10 times the size of the U.K., according to an analysis by political risk consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft… Africa is now […] The post Africa facts of the day appeared...

Usually I am reluctant to criticize or even write about the recently departed, but perhaps for former Presidents there is greater latitude to do so. I never loved Jimmy Carter, and I saw plenty of him on TV and read about his administration on a daily basis in The New York Times. I fully appreciate […] The post Some Jimmy Carter observations from the...

This article is about the neural conundrum behind the slowness of human behavior. The information throughput of a human being is about 10 bits/s. In comparison, our sensory systems gather data at ~10^9 bits/s. The stark contrast between these numbers remains unexplained and touches on fundamental aspects of brain function: What neural substrate sets this […] The post The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why...

1. Gary Marcus and Miles Brundage bet on AI.  And the Manifold odds.  And Samuel Butler’s Darwin Among the Machines. 2. Addiction predictions for 2025.  Includes GLP-1 predictions. 3. My podcast with Kevin Gentry on leadership and taking big chances and how much you can do. 4. “These results suggest that speech about committing murder […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

I remain stunned at how poorly we are responding to the threat from H5N1. Our poor response to COVID was regrettable but perhaps understandable given the US hadn’t faced a major pandemic in decades. Having been through COVID, however, you would think that we would be primed. But no. Instead of acting aggressively to stop […] The post The Cows in the Coal Mine...