Anthropic’s economic team, including Anton Korinek and Chad Jones, have a valuable new paper, Economic Scenarios for Transformative AI. They make their assumptions explicit and provide a scenario explorer that lets you change them. How capable will AI become? How quickly will firms adopt it? Will it augment workers or automate their tasks? You can…
UK productivity rose at almost twice the pace previously estimated in the decade after the 2008 global financial crisis, according to new official figures that make Britain look much less of an international outlier. Output per hour worked, the main measure of labour productivity, grew by an average of 1.3 per cent per year between…
Nikole Hannah-Jones famously sent her child to a predominantly black/lower-income public school in New York City. Now her child says she shouldn’t have been used as political fodder. The essay makes for hard reading and I acknowledge NHJ’s courage in writing about her mistakes and the cost to her child. The piece is raw and…
Until about 10 years ago, I often wrote positive columns about Canadian policy. I praised our northern neighbors for spending restraint, corporate tax reform, bank bailout policy, regulatory budgeting, the tax treatment of saving, and private air traffic control. Unfortunately, Canada then became more statist under Pierre Trudeau Justin Trudeau (understandable mistake on my part). And I […]
There are many arguments put forward for why trade should be restricted. In my ECONS102 class last week, as part of our topic on international trade and globalisation we covered five of the most common, each of which has a little story that goes along with it:The jobs argument: Trade with other countries will lower…
In my ECONS101 class, we have a topic that is devoted to understanding pricing and business strategies that deviate from the ideal ‘marginal revenue equal to marginal cost’ approach to pricing for firms with market power. In particular, I focus part of the topic on firms that price below the short-run profit-maximising price for strategic…
Back in June, the Commerce Commission ruled on the case of a proposed merger between three commercial rafting operators in Rotorua. As the New Zealand Herald reported (in August):The Commerce Commission has approved the merger of Rotorua’s three commercial rafting operators, much to the pleasant surprise of those behind the bid.The ruling, finalised in June, came…
Last year, I reported how all of these buses had been mothballed because of a lack of hydrogen supply in Aberdeen. Presumably the eco-nutters thought it came out of thin air! The post Aberdeen hydrogen bus fleet sold for just 6% of original public investment appeared first on Watts Up With That?.
This paper examines the conventional view that redistribution is central to the democratization process using data from stock markets. Consistent with this view, democratizations have a large, negative impact on asset valuations driven by a rise in redistribution risk. Across 90 countries over 200 years, risk premia are substantially elevated— similar in magnitude to financial…
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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