What is America's Creed?
Justice Gorsuch vs. Vice President Vance
Department
Economics.
Policy, markets, and the science of choices.
Lately on the shelf
30 of 1067Tuesday assorted links
1. The economics of personal holding companies, including in the Nordics. 2. Jongkuch Mach is a good name for a very tall basketball player. 3. Can AI predict who will be the most important philosopher in 2046? For economics, the top pick of GPT Pro is Ludwig…
Marked to Model
The Fed's instrument panel has no gauge for fiscal risk.
The Apples and Oranges Tribunal
Suppose that apples sell for more than oranges and Parliament in it’s wisdom decides that, at last, apples and oranges must be compared. Not by shoppers — shoppers are biased, they merely reveal what they are willing to pay — but by a tribunal, which will dete…
The Putinization of the American Military
When poseurs and yes-men run a war
Book Review (3/26): The Political Economy of Rwanda's Rise (by Pritish Behuria)
On developmentalist state-building and its impacts on business-state relations.
Will the Natural Gas Spike Make the Euro Fall?
The lesson from 2022 is that this spike in natural gas is too small to pull the Euro down
When arts meets money: Winning design proposals for future euro banknotes
European Central Bank conducted a contest seeking proposals for future banknotes. The report of the contest is here The 10 shortlisted proposals are here. Really fascinating to read how artists/designers think through what should feature on the currency notes.…
The AEA presidential election
AEA is the American Economics Association, and a new president is needed, here is the candidate and likely winner: PINELOPI (PENNY) KOUJIANOU GOLDBERG, William Nordhaus Professor of Economics and Global Affairs, Yale University. Statement of Purpose: I am hono…
The Confucian fertility paradox
Total fertility rates in East Asia have fallen to levels without historical precedent, even though the region’s Confucian heritage long placed extraordinary emphasis on family continuity and large families. We argue that this “Confucian Fertility Paradox” diss…
Roundup #85: Most policy is also industrial policy
Trump and science; U.S. national debt; Europe and software; America and trains; China and metal refining; Indian women; Murder
The LLM-Generating Machine Underneath the Dining-Room Side-Table Hallucinates Again: MONDAY MAMLMS
The most revealing move was anthropic/claude-opus4:8's own recommended fix: get the LLM out of the loop entirely...
What Being a Digital Nomad Taught Me About the Real World
Reflections on moving from New York to Kyrgyzstan.
Things Have Gone too Far!: LAUGH OF THE DAY
Is it time to start writing for Bari Weiss's Free Press Substack and start denouncing the woke oatmilk hegemony here at UC Berkeley?...
*Liberal Worlds: James Bryce and the Democratic Intellect*
A very good book, here is one excerpt that bears directly on a conversation I was just having: He [Bryce] regretted the low quality of the Indian Civil Service: they were hard-working and motivated by a desire to promote the welfare of the Indian people, but ‘…
Monday assorted links
1. Cameroonian prison with its own record label. 2. Noah on what will AI do for us exactly. 3. The impact of the sewing machine on women. 4. Will GPTVoice boost labor supply? 5. Smart phones in North Korea. 6. SSI update. 7. “There is still time for interested…
Josh Harder on Why America Needs to Build
In this conversation, recorded at the New Liberal Action Summit organized by the Center for New Liberalism in Washington, D.C., Francis Fukuyama interviews Representative Josh Harder about the obstacles to building things in the United States, the importance o…
The Fire This Time
The willful ignorance, it burns
Will Kevin Warsh Make a Mistake?
Markets put a 40 percent probability on a hike this week, which would be a big mistake
Could our preoccupation with mental health be part of the problem?
Could our preoccupation with mental health be part of the problem? In some ways, encouraging people to think and talk more about their mental health is a good thing. There is now less stigma around mental illness, and more people who can benefit from professio…
Understanding Supply Shocks and Their Implications for Monetary Policy
Sarah Hunter, Assistant Governor (Economic) of RBA discusses supply shocks and their impact on monetary policy in this speech: In short, supply or relative price shocks can create a trade-off for monetary policymakers if they are likely to have a persistent im…
History of Bank of North America: How it helped helped the fledgling United States find its financial footing
Matthew Wells writes about history of Bank of North America: Hamilton is credited as the architect of the postrevolutionary U.S. financial system that allowed the country to not just survive but grow and prosper. In 1790 and 1791, he led the effort to charter…
A Teacher Writes to Students Series (73): Hating Politics
A Teacher Writes to Students Series (73): Hating Politics Annavajhula J C Bose, PhD Former Professor, Department of Economics, SRCC, DU Suppose you are afflicted with political disaffection and you are wondering why there is expanded social reproduction of bad…
The Decline in the Transmission of Scientific Ideas
We document that the diffusion of new scientific ideas beyond their field of origin has declined substantially over the past four decades. This contraction is closely linked to increasing specialization in scientific language: research that employs more techni…
Monopoly Round-Up: How to Stop the Enshittification of America
Cheating as a business model exists because Americans can no longer sue big business. A Democratic Congress could fix this problem with one simple law. Plus, a defeat for Paramount-Warner, and more...
The number of homicide victims in India has fallen, but only for men
Our weekly newsletter bringing you one chart about India, and the story behind the data.
In relative terms, maybe children do not cost more than before?
Despite rapid inflation in childcare and tuition prices, the goods-and-services CCI closely tracks adult prices, as these increases are offset by children’s lower exposure to shelter and by slower price growth elsewhere in the child basket. Households devote s…
More on Trotsky and interpretation of Trotsky
A quick reply to Alex Callinicos
Notes on Democracy
1 A few years ago, I was giving some talks in a nondemocratic country.
Further progress in South America
The share of people who are hungry has been decreasing faster in South America than anywhere else in the world. It is down by one-third since 2020, according to a report published on July 21st by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Just 3.5% of p…