~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (564)

1. One report on car-free Tempe, AZ. 2. Speculative new claims about human evolution. 3. Is dark energy evolving? And from WaPo — the universe might stop expanding, big if true. 4. Indian painting sets new auction record at $13.7 million. 5. Update on Ukrainian defenses and drones. 6. Understanding solar energy. 7. Claude can […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

The Economist reports that China is now the second largest producer of new pharmaceuticals, after the United States. China has long been known for churning out generic drugs, supplying raw ingredients and managing clinical trials for the pharmaceutical world. But its drugmakers are now also at the cutting edge, producing innovative medicines that are cheaper […] The post China’s Medicines are Saving American Lives...

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with her.  Here is Wikipedia: Helen Ruth Castor FRSL (born 4 August 1968) is a British historian of the medieval and Tudor period and a BBC broadcaster. She taught history at the University of Cambridge and is the author of books including Blood and Roses (2004) and She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth (2010). Programmes she […] The post What should I ask Helen Castor?...

This was in 1994, right after the Aristide regime was restored by Clinton.  I had traveled a good deal by that time, mostly in North America, Europe, and southeast Asia.  But I had never been anywhere truly dangerous.  It seemed impossible to visit such places.  It is not that I did any serious risk calculation, […] The post My first trip to Haiti appeared...

New podcast series on Latin American political economy, with Rasheed Griffith and Diego Sánchez de la Cruz, all in English. The post Why Spain’s transition to democracy remains controversial appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Phillip Hinton. Ur saying ur Truman Capote, and ... by EqantukIn reply to Horhe. Where Spain didn't luck out is when ... by BobIt's not a...

1. Nowrasteh and Bourne on DOGE. 2. “The paradox of India: Punjab is over 60% vegetarian, but Tandoori chicken and butter chicken are its most popular dishes outside the state. Tamil Nadu is less than 1% vegetarian, but its “pure veg” idly, dosa, sambhar, pongal, etc are its most popular dishes outside the state.”  Link […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

Right now, DOGE is treating efficiency as a simple cost-cutting exercise. But science isn’t a procurement process; it’s an investment portfolio. If a venture capital firm measured efficiency purely by how little money it spent, rather than by the returns it generated, it wouldn’t last long. We invest in scientific research because we want returns […] The post Caleb Watney on risk and science...

Ezra is getting plenty of coverage for his very good and very on the mark new book with Derek Thompson, Abundance.  So far it is a huge hit after only a few days.  I figured this conversation would be most interesting, and add the most value, if I tried to push him further from a […] The post My excellent Conversation with Ezra Klein...

The chronometer, one of the greatest inventions of the modern era, allowed for the first time for the precise measurement of longitude at sea. We examine the impact of this innovation on navigation and urbanization. Our identification strategy leverages the fact that the navigational benefits provided by the chronometer varied across different sea regions depending […] The post The importance of the chronometer appeared...

1. James Damore update (Free Press). 2. AIs rationalize too. 3. Survey of new developments in regional and urban economics. 4. Survey on the macroeconomic costs of climate change. 5. A technical look at bottlenecks to AI adoption. 6. Drones will carry loads for sherpas up Mount Everest (NYT). The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Hazel...

We use matched employer-employee data to study where Americans live in relation to employer worksites. Mean distance from employee home to employer worksite rose from 15 miles in 2019 to 26 miles in 2023. Twelve percent of employees hired after March 2020 live at least fifty miles from their employers in 2023, triple the pre-pandemic […] The post The New Geography of Labor Markets...

From DeepSeek: **Marginal Revolution** – the *Wirtschaftswunder* (economic miracle) of blogs, where Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok dissect the *Zeitgeist* (spirit of the age) through the lens of economics, culture, and *Hintergedanken* (ulterior motives). Founded in 2003, it’s a *Schnellimbiss* (fast-food joint) for ideas: bite-sized posts on everything from pandemic policy to why cilantro tastes […] The post “Explain to me the blog Marginal...

You know, the one from yesterday suggesting that tighter building restrictions have not led to higher real estate prices, at least not in the cross-sectional data?  My sense is that it could be true, but we should not overestimate its import.  In most circumstances, economists should focus on output, not prices per se.  Let’s say […] The post What do I think of the...

1. New David Beckworth newsletter on macroeconomics. 2. Early prediction markets on papal succession. 3. Clifford Winston on DOGE as a wake-up call. 4. Project to preserve on-line text in stone? 5. Incomplete markets in everything, “Mason: the Musical”? 6. Institute for Progress action plan for AI. 7. Did business metrics break the university? The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION....

The annual Public Choice Outreach Conference is a crash course in public choice. The conference is designed for undergraduates and graduates in a wide variety of fields. It’s entirely free. Indeed scholarships are available! The conference will be held Friday May 30-Sunday June 1, 2025, near Washington, DC in Arlington, VA. Lots of great speakers. […] The post Public Choice Outreach Conference! appeared first...

How can I not link to a new Sam Peltzman piece on such a topic?  Here goes: Since 1972, the General Social Survey has periodically asked whether people are happy with Yes, Maybe or No type answers. Here I use a net “happiness” measure, which is percentage Yes less percentage No with Maybe treated as […] The post The Anatomy of Marital Happiness appeared...

Last year the agency provided $266.7m in grants to libraries, museums and related institutions across the country and its territories. Those grants ranged widely in value and purpose, such as $343,521 to support an internship and fellowship programme at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico or $10,350 for the Art Museum of Eastern Idaho […] The post The Institute for Museum and Library...

The standard view of housing markets holds that the flexibility of local housing supply–shaped by factors like geography and regulation–strongly affects the response of house prices, house quantities and population to rising housing demand. However, from 2000 to 2020, we find that higher income growth predicts the same growth in house prices, housing quantity, and […] The post NIMBY contrarianism appeared first on Marginal...

1. Does generative AI support the MAGA aesthetic style? (NYT) 2. Would you rather have married young? 3. Possible improvements in teen mental health? 4. LLMs produce funnier memes than the average human, though not as funny as the top humans. 5. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is another good Zambian movie, here is the […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

As late as the 1980s it was widely believed that babies do not feel pain. You might think that this was an absurd thing to believe given that babies cry and exhibit all the features of pain and pain avoidance. Yet, for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, the straightforward sensory evidence was dismissed […] The post What Did We Learn From Torturing...

I could not get the emojis to reproduce in legible form, you can see them on the original tweet. Here goes: The Less Wrong/Singularity/AI Risk movement started in the 2000s by Yudkowsky and others, which I was an early adherent to, is wrong about all of its core claims around AI risk. It’s important to […] The post Roko on AI risk appeared first...

Dogs can’t talk, but their body language speaks volumes. Many dogs will bow when they want to play, for instance, or lick their lips and avert their gaze when nervous or afraid. But people aren’t always good at interpreting such cues — or even noticing them, a new study suggests. In the study, the researchers presented […] The post How well do humans understand dogs?...

1. A hyper-curiosity theory of ADHD. 2. The religious are more skeptical about the moral character of scientists. 3. “Magpies and Crows Are Using “Anti-Bird Spikes” to Make Their Nests.” 4. Clampdown on DeepSeek? 5. Most externalitlies problems are solved by technology, not coordination. 6. “Their new report also highlights the increasing use of drones […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on...

Highly speculative, but I found this of interest: This article explores the hypothesis that modern East Asian populations inherited and maintained extensive psychosocial adaptations to arctic environments from ancestral Ancient Northern East Asian populations, which inhabited arctic and subarctic Northeast Eurasia around the Last Glacial Maximum period of the Late Pleistocene, prior to back migrating southwards into East Asia in […] The post Arctic Instincts? The Late Pleistocene Arctic...