~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (566)

1. New Knausgaard novel coming. 2. Unsecured penguin caused helicopter crash in South Africa. 3. Why does pre-training work? 4. Opinion polling from Poland. 5. Survey measures of the natural rate of interest.  Thread is here. 6. Cass Sunstein reports on the social neuroticism of the Right.  And Balaji is correct. 7. The conservative legal […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

If you are willing to pay $250 or so, you can watch it in The Sphere.  From Wikipedia: Postcard from Earth is a 2023 film directed by Darren Aronofsky, starring Brandon Santana and Zaya Ribeiro. Created specifically to be screened at Sphere in the Las Vegas Valley on the venue’s 160,000 square-foot video screen, the film was shot in an 18K […] The post *Postcard from Earth* appeared first on...

That is the topic of my recent essay for The Free Press.  Excerpt: Ideologically, the English 17th century was weird above all else. Millenarianism blossomed, and the occult and witchcraft became stronger obsessions. This was an age of religious and economic upheaval; King James I even wrote a book partly about witches called Daemonologie. The greater […] The post Parallels between our current time and...

The National Institutes of Health told employees Thursday it was rolling back directives from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to probe worker productivity and limit purchases and travel on company cards, according to messages obtained by POLITICO. It’s a possible sign that the agency’s recently confirmed director, Jay Bhattacharya, is willing to break with […] The post It seems DOGE is dwindling? appeared...

1. Website on distinguished Indian economists. 2. The science of making coffee stronger. 3. How Dean Ball works. 4. David Salle and AI painting. 5. The culture that is the North Bergen (NJ) police department. 6. New Helen Dewitt novel. 7. “Micro-retirement”? (NYT) The post Friday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Ai. That’s not exactly true. Higher agitation...

Every year, American tourists pour billions of dollars into France, wandering the Louvre, sipping overpriced espresso in Montmartre, and snapping selfies along the Seine—while far fewer French tourists bother making the reverse pilgrimage to admire, say, Disney World. The result? A massive tourism deficit. On paper, this reflects wealth differentials and revealed preferences – Americans, […] The post America’s Tourism Deficit: How the French...

Tariffs don’t just alter trade flows — they redirect resources and reshape industrial structures. If Trump’s goal was to curb China’s technological progress, he would keep tariffs low on the bulk of Chinese exports to the US, locking the country into low-margin basic manufacturing. He would encourage high-tech exports to China, making sure that progress […] The post Claims about China appeared first on...

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary: Jennifer Pahlka believes America’s bureaucratic dysfunction is deeply rooted in outdated processes and misaligned incentives. As the founder of Code for America and co-founder of the United States Digital Service, she has witnessed firsthand how government struggles to adapt to the digital age, […] The post My Conversation with the excellent Jennifer...

So much education, so little human capital: According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) statistical database, Russians age 25 and older averaged 12.4 years of schooling circa 2019—almost the same as for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Europe, which averaged 12.6 years. While some Western European countries—Germany, Iceland, Switzerland, and the UK—reported […] The post The Russian paradox appeared first on...

1. NCAA antitrust update. 2. Boulez at 100 (NYT). 3. Scott Sumner on the unfolding disaster. 4. Middle-Aged Man Trading Cards Go Viral in Rural Japan Town. 5. Using LLMs to ascertain what actually leads to an autism diagnosis. 6. Data on how university students use Claude. 7. James Meek on Greenland. The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply...

There is some evidence that the White House used AI to come up with a quick and dirty (and incorrect) formula to correlate tariff rates with trade deficits. I have no problem with using AI, I think they just didn’t go far enough. The White House should have asked the AI a question like this: […] The post AI on Tariffs appeared first on...

Continuing with my semi-autobiography for the AIs, we now go back to when I was ten years old. One day I felt terribly sick, really just awful, as if my innards were on fire.  Fortunately my father insisted I go to the doctor, and it turned out my appendix was bursting and infected.  I was […] The post My early history as a chess...

1. Homeostatic AI progress. 2. Matt Huang profile. 3. Did 19th century tariffs make America rich? 4. AI toward the end of more Tom and Jerry. 5. Eleven-year-old Oklahoma boy can perfectly imitate fifty different birds.  “He says the most difficult bird to emulate is the barn swallow, but he can imitate anything from a […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

The new FDA report from Joe Lonsdale and team is impressive. It has a lot of new material, is rich in specifics and bold in vision. Here are just a few of the recommendation which caught my eye: From the prosaic: GMP is not necessary if you are not manufacturing: In the U.S., anyone running […] The post A Blueprint for FDA Reform appeared...

A big chunk of it is coming from the health care sector.  Information and communications are not growing in productivity as rapidly as before, and Britain has done less well boosting productivity with tech and also in oil and gas extraction.  Here is the thread, here is the underlying study from the Resolution Foundation.  This […] The post Britain’s productivity problem appeared first on...

Robin Hanson, citing Agnes Callard, asks that question.  He writes: They said (my summary) that we have many standard roles, tools, and scripts to guide practical inquiry, that we have little need to inquire into deep topics, and that social talk is often of short duration, has norms of impracticality and frequent topic changes, is […] The post Why not inquire together more? appeared...

That is my latest piece for The Free Press, here is one excerpt: It is not merely that the policies keep on changing. We are seeing that the policies didn’t have much of a rational basis to begin with. Exactly how were all those threatened tariff rates calculated to begin with? A debate is raging […] The post A contagion of uncertainty appeared first...

1. Various Medicaid budget dilemmas (NYT).  A lot is at stake here, though since there are no major personalities involved, this and related stories is not getting much coverage. 2. New claims about string theory. 3. America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back. 4. Profile of Emily Oster. 5. Rationalism vs. empiricism in the […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

It has become popular in some circles to argue that trade—or, in the more “sophisticated” version, that the dollar’s reserve-currency status—undermines U.S. manufacturing. In reality, there is little support for this claim. Let’s begin with some simple but often overlooked points. The US is a manufacturing powerhouse. We produce $2.5 trillion of value-added in manufacturing […] The post Manufacturing and Trade appeared first on...

Via Basil Halperin.  This is not a question of confusing causation and correlation, if anything it is the protectionists who have such an error in their mind’s eye.  These days the average U.S. service sector job pays more than a manufacturing job. The post Manufacturing share vs. GDP appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to dearieme. I essentially make about $9,000-$13,000 ......

Worth a redux, here is one excerpt: While I try my best to understand the New Right, I am far from being persuaded. One worry I have is about how it initially negative emphasis feeds upon itself. Successful societies are based on trust, including trust in leaders, and the New Right doesn’t offer resources for […] The post My 2022 piece on the New...

We find that only 15.1 percent of the decline in goods-sector employment from 1992 to 2012 stems from U.S. trade deficits; most of the decline is due to differential productivity growth. Here is the full paper by Kehoe, Ruhl, and Steinberg, via Zack Mazlish.  I believe we have covered this issue before. The post Tariff sentences to ponder appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.        ...

Deirdre McCloskey, can you guess which book?  See #197.  I might add the text to that one is remarkably non-salacious, perhaps many readers were somewhat disappointed. Via the excellent CW. The post One economist removed from the Naval library appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.      Related StoriesMy Conversation with the excellent Sheilagh OgilvieFederal Judge Rejects FDA Power GrabAI Discovers New Uses for Old Drugs 

1. How do people perceive international trade? (redux from a few years ago) 2. Mice exhibit first aid behaviors. 3. What we are learning about the geology of northeastern North America.  An interesting piece. 4. Recent ReStud paper on trade imbalances. 5. “Two directors of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society have been accused of “vandalism” […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...