A new report on social cohesion was released on Thursday. The survey results in it are far from boring or inconsequential. Amongst screeds of important data, two big numbers stand out: 28% of New Zealanders are now in what the report calls the “alienated” camp of politics, and 44% of New Zealanders think the political […]
Tweet… is from this recent post at Marginal Revolution by my colleague Alex Tabarrok: The trade accounts are among the most pernicious statistics ever collected. The post Bonus Quotation of the Day… appeared first on Cafe Hayek.
Two weeks ago, we complained to Sky News editors about an April 11 interview with Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon by presenter Yalda Hakim,… The post Sky News issues on-air correction about Lebanon death toll appeared first on CAMERA UK.
Tweet… is from page 125 of Thomas Sowell’s 1999 book, Barbarians Inside the Gates: Ironically, both affirmative action and the argument for genetic inferiority of blacks use the same logic. They assume that statistical results not explainable by obvious gross differences must be explainable by the underlying factor they prefer to believe in. DBx: Indeed.…
Everyone knows the Luddites smashed looms. What is less appreciated is that the loom was the first serious programmable device — the direct ancestor of the computer. Thus, the Luddites weren’t just the first to resist automation. They were the first to attack AI. The Jacquard loom, introduced in France circa 1805, used a chain…
Tweet… is from page 815 of Richard Nelson’s and Richard Langlois’s February 1983 Science paper titled “Industrial Innovation Policy: Lessons from American History”: A quick reading of the case studies is enough to dash any supposition that technological change is somehow a cleanly plannable activity. In fact, it is an activity characterized as much by…
TweetOn page 13 of their 2017 brief in support of “green industrial policy,” Tilman Altenburg and Dani Rodrik write: However, it should be noted that consumers do not respond perfectly to price signals. Even when new products exist that are better in many ways and cheaper, many consumers stick to the bad old alternatives because…
In the 1990s, Americans used to work much more than non-Americans. Nowadays, about half of the gap in hours worked has reversed. To evaluate the convergence of working hours, we develop a tractable model of labor supply enriched with multiple sources of heterogeneity across individuals, an extensive margin of participation, multi-member households, and an elaborate…
Elbe Day, observed on April 25, commemorates a pivotal moment near the close of World War II in Europe when American and Soviet forces met along the Elbe River in Germany in 1945. This encounter represented far more than a tactical milestone; it symbolized the collapse of Nazi Germany and the temporary unity of two […]
As I noted in a post last week, firms are increasingly selling subscriptions rather than products because consumer inertia can make them substantially more profitable. Once a customer starts a subscription, they tend not to cancel the subscription as soon as they should, simply because it requires some thought and attention (as well as a…
For as long as there has been recorded music, there have been attempts to copy, share, and distribute it without paying for it. Music piracy is often painted as a villain in the story of the modern music industry—accused of draining billions in revenue, shuttering record stores, and crippling artist careers. But is that the […]
Part 2 of 2 on a damning new paper that takes on the top-down climate-economics literature — “The empirically inscrutable climate-economy relationship”
The trade accounts are among the most pernicious statistics ever collected. It’s long been remarked, for example, that merely by calling something a “deficit” it seems bad even though a current account deficit is matched by a financial account surplus. Put that issue aside, however, because the real problems are much deeper. The international accounts…
Tweet… is from page 150 of Columbia University economics professor Arvind Panagariya’s brilliant 2019 book, Free Trade and Prosperity: In India, Bihar is the poorest state and Kerala one of the richest. Going by the Gini coefficient, Bihar is among the states with the least inequality and Kerala among those with the highest inequality. If…
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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