Marginal Revolution

Saturday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION 1. Baby names banned in Mexico? 2. Blind hearing tests for audiophiles. 3. AI models and the Coase conjecture. 4. Stopping unwanted audio recordings. 5. Swedish shootings continue to plummet. 6. The dangers of diplomatic parties in Iran.

Saturday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION

The Hidden Cost of Hard-to-Fire Labor Laws: Why European Firms Don't Take Risks - Marginal REVOLUTION In our textbook, Modern Principles, Tyler and I write: Imagine how difficult it would be to get a date if every date required marriage? In the same way, it’s more difficult to find a job when every job requires a long-term commitment from the employer. In two new excellent pieces, Brian Albrecht and Pieter Garicano […]

The Hidden Cost of Hard-to-Fire Labor Laws: Why European Firms Don't Take Risks - Marginal REVOLUTION

The Vietnam War and racial integration - Marginal REVOLUTION The Vietnam draft conscripted hundreds of thousands of young Americans into an integrated military. I combine near-random draft lottery variation with administrative voter data to study the long-run racial integration effects of coerced national service. Black and Native American veterans became more likely to marry white spouses, identify as Republicans, and live in more-integrated neighborhoods. […]

The Vietnam War and racial integration - Marginal REVOLUTION

A simple way to improve your thought and conclusions - Marginal REVOLUTION Take some policy, action, or person whom you regard as morally questionable and indeed is morally questionable.  That same policy, action, or person does some bad things, bad in conquentialist terms I now mean.  Practically bad, utilitarian bad. The odds are that you overrate the badness of those consequences by some considerable degree. Even very […]

A simple way to improve your thought and conclusions - Marginal REVOLUTION

The actual helicopter drop? - Marginal REVOLUTION When Milton Friedman pondered what would happen if a helicopter dropped $1,000 from the sky, he likely never imagined that one day a military cargo plane would scatter millions of dollars into one of Bolivia’s largest cities. But while the Nobel Prize-winning economist worried about the inflation that an influx of cash could generate, the impact in […]

The actual helicopter drop? - Marginal REVOLUTION

Friday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION 1. Special tribute issue on James C. Scott. 2. Gauti Eggertsson: “I now find myself replicating papers and experimenting with frontier methods in an evening or a few days using Claude Code. That would have taken weeks before — which in practice meant I wouldn’t have done it at all.”  And yet his vision is […]

Friday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION

Immigration, innovation, and growth - Marginal REVOLUTION We propose a novel identification strategy to isolate exogenous immigration shocks across US counties, by interacting quasi-random variations in the composition of ancestry across counties with the contemporaneous inflow of migrants from different countries. We show a positive causal impact of immigration on local innovation and wages at the five-year horizon. The positive dynamic impact […]

Immigration, innovation, and growth - Marginal REVOLUTION

My podcast with Nebular - Marginal REVOLUTION We’ve just published the video on YouTube, X, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. We also published some extended show notes and the transcript on Substack. I thought they did an excellent job here, and lots of fresh material.  We start with the fertility crisis: Murphy: We’ve always had a majority young society, and in our lifetime, we’ll have this transition to majority old society. […]

My podcast with Nebular - Marginal REVOLUTION

Democracy continues - Marginal REVOLUTION Here is a link.

Democracy continues - Marginal REVOLUTION

Thursday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION 1. Profile of Stewart Brand. 2. The economics of context engineering. 3. Claims about contract differences. 4. Finnish education quality possibly has declined? 5. What did prehistoric Europeans eat? 6. Roon on future warfare.

Thursday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION

Claude on NY's Senate Bill S7263 - Marginal REVOLUTION A NY State Senate proposed bill (Senate Bill S7263) would prohibit a chatbot to give substantive responses; information, or advice or take any action which, if taken by a natural person, would constitute unauthorized practice or unauthorized use of a professional title as a crime in relation to professions who licensure is governed by the […]

Claude on NY's Senate Bill S7263 - Marginal REVOLUTION

With Craig Newmark, at the 92nd St. Y - Marginal REVOLUTION April 14, register here. And what would you suggest I ask him for this Conversations with Tyler?

With Craig Newmark, at the 92nd St. Y - Marginal REVOLUTION

My Conversation with the excellent Henry Oliver - Marginal REVOLUTION Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  In the first half of the episode we discuss Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, and then move on to other topics.  Here is the episode summary: Henry Oliver is the preeminent literary critic for non-literary nerds. His Substack, The Common Reader, has thousands of subscribers drawn in by Henry’s conviction […]

My Conversation with the excellent Henry Oliver - Marginal REVOLUTION

Wednesday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION 1. Singaporeans to receive free premium AI subscriptions from second half of 2026. 2. “In a secular world, equality is a last attempt to offer some dignity to the weak.” 3. Tech media are dwindling. 4. Mr. Beast, banker (NYT). 5. Chimpanzees are fascinated by crystals (NYT). 6. “Blue states have long rejected school vouchers […]

Wednesday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION

*The Infinity Machine* - Marginal REVOLUTION The author is Sebastian Mallaby and the subtitle is Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence.  A very good and enjoyable book.

*The Infinity Machine* - Marginal REVOLUTION

Are universities running down their endowments? - Marginal REVOLUTION US university endowments have recorded their fastest spending growth since the global financial crisis as federal funding cuts and rising operating costs squeeze campus budgets. A study of 657 institutions by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (Nacubo) with Commonfund showed their endowment withdrawals rose 11 per cent year on year in […]

Are universities running down their endowments? - Marginal REVOLUTION

The value of good high schools - Marginal REVOLUTION Improving education and labor market outcomes for low-income students is critical for advancing socioeconomic mobility in the United States. We use longitudinal data on five cohorts of 9th grade students to explore how Massachusetts public high schools affect the longer-term outcomes of students, with a special focus on students from low-income families. Using detailed administrative […]

The value of good high schools - Marginal REVOLUTION

A simple model of AI governance - Marginal REVOLUTION I trust private companies with strong AI more than I trust the government, regardless of which administration is in power.  Yet if the federal government feels it has no say or no control, it will lunge and take over the whole thing.  We thus want sustainble methods of perpetual interference that a) are actually somewhat […]

A simple model of AI governance - Marginal REVOLUTION

Tuesday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION 1. Legal basis for the Pentagon’s designation? 2. Cowen’s Third Law. 3. “But what is true is that this should not be much of a surprise considering the constant rhetoric over the past few years has been that AI is a power like no other. It’s like nukes, but times a thousand. We need regulation. […]

Tuesday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION

Banned in California - Marginal REVOLUTION California cannot permit the construction of a smartphone factory, an electric car plant, or a Navy destroyer shipyard. Not won’t — can’t. The regulatory environment makes it effectively impossible to build new semiconductor fabs, automotive paint shops, battery gigafactories, or steel foundries. Tesla didn’t put its Gigafactory in Nevada out of affection for Reno. General […]

Banned in California - Marginal REVOLUTION

*Sirāt* - Marginal REVOLUTION I thought this was one of the five or six best movies of the millennium so far, comparable in quality to say Uncle Boonmee or Winter Sleep.  The soundtrack is one of the very best, ever.  The production is joint Spanish and French.  The story starts with a Spanish father looking for his lost (grown) […]

*Sirāt* - Marginal REVOLUTION

Deflating macroeconomics? - Marginal REVOLUTION We use long-run annual cross-country data for 10 macroeconomic variables to evaluate the long-horizon forecast distributions of six forecasting models. The variables we use range from ones having little serial correlation to ones having persistence consistent with unit roots. Our forecasting models include simple time series models and frequency domain models developed in Müller and […]

Deflating macroeconomics? - Marginal REVOLUTION

Monday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION 1. Claims about drones. 2. Just say no to the monopsony model. 3. Your dose of John Cochrane. 4. More on the recent climate change estimate.  It seems the paper should not have been published? 5. “During their lives, centenarians rarely get sick.“

Monday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION

What the recent dust-up means for AI regulation - Marginal REVOLUTION From my new Free Press column, I see these as the most important facts: Congress has not passed explicit regulation of AI foundation models, and an executive order from President Trump limited regulation at the state level. But do not think that laissez-faire reigns. In addition to existing (largely pre-AI) laws, which lay out general principles of […]

What the recent dust-up means for AI regulation - Marginal REVOLUTION

Chaos and Misallocation under Price Controls - Marginal REVOLUTION My latest paper, Chaos and Misallocation under Price Controls, (with Brian Albrecht and Mark Whitmeyer) has a new take on price controls: Price controls kill the incentive for arbitrage. We prove a Chaos Theorem: under a binding price ceiling, suppliers are indifferent across destinations, so arbitrarily small cost differences can determine the entire allocation. The […]

Chaos and Misallocation under Price Controls - Marginal REVOLUTION

Brazil is underrated - Marginal REVOLUTION Numerous nations in the Middle East are being pulled into the current conflict and have received missile attacks from Iran.  I believe the proper Bayesian update is that Brazil is underrated. The country has plenty of water, and lots of capacity to grow its own food.  It is an agricultural powerhouse.  It is developing more […]

Brazil is underrated - Marginal REVOLUTION

One view of Iranian strategy - Marginal REVOLUTION Some observations and comments on Trump and Israel’s war on Iran: 1. Tehran is not looking for a ceasefire and has rejected outreach from Trump. The reason is that they believe they committed a mistake by agreeing to the ceasefire in June – it only enabled the US and Israel to restock and remobilize to […]

One view of Iranian strategy - Marginal REVOLUTION

Sunday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION 1. “Model this.” 2. UAE to cover expenses for affected travelers.  And “emergency visas” are issued on the spot. 3. Abbas Amanat, Iran: A Modern History is for me (by far) the best general history of the country.  I like the cover too. 4. From two weeks ago: “Perhaps there is a new “Trump doctrine,” […]

Sunday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION

What should I ask Katja Hoyer? - Marginal REVOLUTION Yes I will be doing a Conversation with her.  She is the author of a forthcoming book on Weimar, namely Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe.  Note that much of the book considers the city of Weimar, mostly in Nazi times, and not just the Weimar era.  She also has published Beyond the Wall: […]

What should I ask Katja Hoyer? - Marginal REVOLUTION

New results on the economic costs of climate change - Marginal REVOLUTION I promised you I would be tracking this issue, and so here is a major development.  From the QJE by Adrien Bilal and Diego R Känzig:: This paper estimates that the macroeconomic damages from climate change are an order of magnitude larger than previously thought. Exploiting natural global temperature variability, we find that 1○C warming reduces world […]

New results on the economic costs of climate change - Marginal REVOLUTION