" In parts of Helmand Afghan farmers are this year sowing wheat instead of poppy - not because they have suddenly been converted to the argument that producing heroin is not in the national interest.
Market forces have been the deciding factor - with wheat prices doubling in the past year, and the street price of heroin falling, it is now more cost effective to grow wheat.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Afghanistan Swaps Heroin for Wheat
One silver lining in the skyrocketing price of wheat? Afghani farmers are planting wheat instead of poppy.
Recession Probabilities
Mankiw opines on the recession risks:
Once we passed the first quarter, intrade investors had to update the likelihood because before, they had to only get 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth which gave them Q1-Q2, Q2-Q3, or Q3-Q4. Anyone of those would be a winner. Now that Q1 had 0.6 growth (assuming it's not updated down later, which isn't unlikely at all), it's only down to Q2-Q3 or Q3-Q4. Not sure what those probabilities come out to be, but it's the joint probability of each, which of course requires it be updated down after Q1 was positive. That said, I'm still pessimistic, but I knew that contract was way too high. Of course, if this turns out to be the "worst recession since the Great Depression," like everyone's saying, that's not at all crazy to think. But I'm more worried about a sustained slump than I am about a severe temporary shock.
Real gross domestic product increased at an annual rate of 0.6 percent in the first quarter of 2008.I'm too lazy to dig through my old posts, but I always felt like intrade was probably over-estimating the likelihood of a recession. Don't get me wrong, I think we will be in one by mid-year, if we're not in one now, but that's because I define the recession as simply output falling below potential output, and rely mostly on the NBER for the dating. inTrade, though, was using the journalistic shorthand definition of a recession - two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. You can be in a recession and not have negative growth. In fact, the 2000/2001 recession was just such a recession.
Over at intrade, the probability of a recession in 2008 has fallen to 25 percent in the latest trade.
Once we passed the first quarter, intrade investors had to update the likelihood because before, they had to only get 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth which gave them Q1-Q2, Q2-Q3, or Q3-Q4. Anyone of those would be a winner. Now that Q1 had 0.6 growth (assuming it's not updated down later, which isn't unlikely at all), it's only down to Q2-Q3 or Q3-Q4. Not sure what those probabilities come out to be, but it's the joint probability of each, which of course requires it be updated down after Q1 was positive. That said, I'm still pessimistic, but I knew that contract was way too high. Of course, if this turns out to be the "worst recession since the Great Depression," like everyone's saying, that's not at all crazy to think. But I'm more worried about a sustained slump than I am about a severe temporary shock.
Roundup
1. BW explains the global rice crisis.
2. Equador is giving the right to the pursuit of sexual happiness.
3. The day many of us have been waiting for.
4. Long road ahead with the housing market.
5. More Americas political hijinks. This time, Chilean politicians are buying votes with Viagra.
6. Tenured Wheaton English professor apparently fired for getting a divorce.
2. Equador is giving the right to the pursuit of sexual happiness.
3. The day many of us have been waiting for.
4. Long road ahead with the housing market.
5. More Americas political hijinks. This time, Chilean politicians are buying votes with Viagra.
6. Tenured Wheaton English professor apparently fired for getting a divorce.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Moral Panic and Prison Growth
Since presenting a talk a few weeks ago on the "hidden costs of drug prohibition," I've been interested in whether (a) the war on drugs was in fact exogenous (I'm not convinced it was) and (b) whether voters willingly hold to false beliefs about the dangers of drugs which are capitalized on by politicians. In other words, I wanted to know if the growth in the number of prisons and the size of the prison population - driven by the increased prosecution of drug offenses - was a political action taken to capitalize on a brief moral panic that happened in the mid-1980s, and coalescing with Len Bias's death from a cocaine overdose.
In looking around, I found this interesting-looking paper by Ruth Gilmore entitled "Globalisation and US prison growth: from military Keynesianism to post-Keynesian militarism", published in Race & Society, 1999. It's a bit polemical in places, and I'm not finished so I can't give my opinion, but I thought this really was wrong on the face of it.
It's extremely hard to believe Gilmore's argument that drug abuse was declining since the 1970s when in fact crack cocaine - a technological innovation that ultimately led to cheaper forms of cocaine to flood the market, and particularly among low income folks in inner cities - appears by this graph to have "exploded" in the 1980s. You can see the two vertical lines in 1986 and 1988. They correspond to the 1986 and 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Acts. These introduced many things, including mandatory minimum legislation for drug possession and differential (harsher) sentences for crack.
At the least, I think it's hard to make the claim that the building up of prisons - which I'm saying is partly due to these two omnibus bills - was unrelated to underly drug consumption, or that drug consumption was falling. Granted, this paper was written in 1999, and the Fryer, et al. data is from 2006. But, I still think it's absurd on the face of it. I still think writers - and I've been guilty of this in my own writings - are too quick to talk about the war on drugs as though it was merely a federal policy unrelated to underlying crime or drug use. In my mind, I think the two omnibus bills are obviously a response to the growing crack problem, and the accompanying violence and social ills it created. Now, whether the optimal response to such problems is prison expansion is a different matter. But that it was a response? I think that's a no-brainer.
In looking around, I found this interesting-looking paper by Ruth Gilmore entitled "Globalisation and US prison growth: from military Keynesianism to post-Keynesian militarism", published in Race & Society, 1999. It's a bit polemical in places, and I'm not finished so I can't give my opinion, but I thought this really was wrong on the face of it.
Another explanation for the burgeoning prison population is the drug epidemic and the threat to public safety posed by the unrestrained use and trade of illegal substances. Information about the controlling (or most serious) offence2 of prisoners supports the drug explanation: drug commitments to federal and state prison systems surged 975 per cent between 1982 and 1996. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that widening use of drugs in the US in the late 1970s and early 1980s provoked prison expansion. According to this scenario - as news stories, sensational television programmes, popular music and movies and politicians’ anecdotes made abundantly clear - communities, especially poor communities of colour, would be more deeply decimated by addiction, drug dealing and gang violence were it not for the restraining force of prisons. The explanation rests on two assumptions: first, that drug use exploded in the 1980s and, second, that the sometimes violent organisation of city neighbourhoods into gang enclaves was accomplished in order to secure drug markets.First of all, it's neat to see that my own instincts aren't original. Not surprising, of course, but nonetheless interesting. Secondly, though, I think Gilmore's got it wrong here. Notice the one word missing: crack. I just generated the following graph, which is based on the Fryer, et al. crack indices. These data, if I remember correctly, are constructed using factor loading, and are based on a handful of state-level measures of crack cocaine usage, including cocaine-related emergency room visits, cocaine related arrests, and other things along those lines.
In fact, according to the BJS, illegal drug use among all kinds of people throughout the United States declined precipitously, starting in the mid-1970s. Second, although large-scale traffic in legal or illegal goods requires highly organized distribution systems - be they corporations or gangs - not all gangs are in drug trafficking; for example, according to Mike Davis, in Los Angeles, an area of heavy gang and drug concentration, prosecutors in the late 1980s charged only one in four dealers with gang membership.
It's extremely hard to believe Gilmore's argument that drug abuse was declining since the 1970s when in fact crack cocaine - a technological innovation that ultimately led to cheaper forms of cocaine to flood the market, and particularly among low income folks in inner cities - appears by this graph to have "exploded" in the 1980s. You can see the two vertical lines in 1986 and 1988. They correspond to the 1986 and 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Acts. These introduced many things, including mandatory minimum legislation for drug possession and differential (harsher) sentences for crack.
At the least, I think it's hard to make the claim that the building up of prisons - which I'm saying is partly due to these two omnibus bills - was unrelated to underly drug consumption, or that drug consumption was falling. Granted, this paper was written in 1999, and the Fryer, et al. data is from 2006. But, I still think it's absurd on the face of it. I still think writers - and I've been guilty of this in my own writings - are too quick to talk about the war on drugs as though it was merely a federal policy unrelated to underlying crime or drug use. In my mind, I think the two omnibus bills are obviously a response to the growing crack problem, and the accompanying violence and social ills it created. Now, whether the optimal response to such problems is prison expansion is a different matter. But that it was a response? I think that's a no-brainer.
Prayer Stalker
I think Anthony Tibbs is a serious prayer stalker, of the first order.
From: Anthony Tibbs
Date: Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 11:47 PM
To: Nichelle Alderson
I won’t stop praying no matter how mean you are to me. Thats something you can’t change. Go ahead and change your status on your Facebook. Block me from seeing some pictures if you want. Change your msn name if you want.Tell everyone your done with me and your happy and moving on if you want…but you can’t stop me from praying for you to realize that i’m the man for you and that i Love you and i wish we can all be a family again. So i’ll just keep praying
ANTHONY TIBBS
“Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting.”
Ebert's Blogging? Oh hell no.
It's on people. Roger Ebert has a blog. Sweet! Hat-tip to the J. One of his first entries is to talk about how great Joe versus the Volcano was (I also loved it), despite tanking in every possible way (that always struck me as weird, too). He then describes a scary organization called the "Movie Police" who go around enforcing movie rules and arresting those people who violate them. Both Joe, and two new movies at this year's Ebertfest, violate such rules. Here's a list of the violations, and boy are they dandy. I am now googling the definition of the word "mote".
In no particular area, and combining the two movies, these violations involve dust motes, iambic pentameter, deliberately audacious set design, domestic class warfare, smoking, Cuba under Castro, and sex in restaurants. What I appreciate about them is that they don't do what we expect them do do. They break the rules. By this I don't mean they "surprise" us, but they they show us what by all rights should not be showable. They are, in other words, alive.Maybe now that I have access to Ebert's real-time thoughts, I can get over my hero worship of him. I seriously doubt that will happen. I did after all ask my wife if we could name one of our children Ebert. (She turned me down on it, and my previous request, which was to name the poor child Becker). But you never know. Maybe I'll see that he has feet of clay. I hope he updates his on health in realtime. The photograph obscures his jaw a little, so I can't tell if he's had his mandible replaced or not, or whether this is an older photograph. Much love to Roger Ebert, a national treasure, and here's to hoping he makes a full recovery soon.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Grand Theft Auto IV TODAY
Big day in the world of gaming. Tonight at 12:01am, Grand Theft Auto IV is launching. Like with books and movies, video games sales are structured like tournaments where the winner takes a large chunk of the market. Usually you'll see sales of games as dominated by the select few (called "power law distribution"), and the GTA series is one of those lucky few. A highly celebrated game because of its nonlinear storytelling format, it's also one of the easiest targets for that nexus of political calculus, the media and frightened parents. My local newspaper devoted a story to GTA IV that covered the entire front page, and looking around, I think that's not just because I live in a small, conservative city.
I blogged a few weeks ago about the comic book industry, and how it too once was believed to be a plague on society and youth morals. Now it's almost hard to imagine such claims being made. But I think what happens is interesting. The prohibition of some commodity, whether it's an illicit drug, a comic book, or a video game, follows certain patterns of mass frenzy, rational ignorance, and political responses that take such frenzy seriously in order to capture moderate voters.
I'm currently working on a project that will hopefully make a contribution to our understanding of whether there is a causal effect of violent video games and violence more generally. After all, since the early 1990s, crime rates have only fallen as violent video games have increased in number and severity, but that is not evidence of causality, only correlation. So my project will attempt to isolate short-run effects of violent video game exposure on subsequent "real life violence." Too bad the paper won't be ready for another year, at least. It would've been perfect to have it come out in time for some big violent game event, like GTA IV.
I blogged a few weeks ago about the comic book industry, and how it too once was believed to be a plague on society and youth morals. Now it's almost hard to imagine such claims being made. But I think what happens is interesting. The prohibition of some commodity, whether it's an illicit drug, a comic book, or a video game, follows certain patterns of mass frenzy, rational ignorance, and political responses that take such frenzy seriously in order to capture moderate voters.
I'm currently working on a project that will hopefully make a contribution to our understanding of whether there is a causal effect of violent video games and violence more generally. After all, since the early 1990s, crime rates have only fallen as violent video games have increased in number and severity, but that is not evidence of causality, only correlation. So my project will attempt to isolate short-run effects of violent video game exposure on subsequent "real life violence." Too bad the paper won't be ready for another year, at least. It would've been perfect to have it come out in time for some big violent game event, like GTA IV.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Salvador (2 out of 2)
I've decided to drop my old, standard ratings and just go with my wine ratings system, which is only three rankings: 2 (loved it), 1 (eh), and 0 (no). So I give Salvador a 2. As I've drank too much Cellar No 8 wine, I can't give it a decent review. I will just say it was powerful. I mean this in the best possible sense, but Oliver Stone is the greatest propagandist filmmaker to ever make popular films. I do not know what happened in El Salvador, so I can't judge the historical veracity of the movie, but this awoke in me such a deep fire for human rights that I spent 20 minutes rationalizing that a libertarian conviction can be no more than a belief in human dignity and justice. There are the other things - like the ambiguous but obviously crucial idea, "rule of law," and the utility of markets to organize society. But Stone's movie made me think that if I were to only be for human rights, then that would be a lot. I won't say the movie is "great," though it is. I will just say it hurt and it was powerfully effective. I give it a 2 under the new rating system.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Advice for Graduate Students
Tyler Cowen does it again. How does he manage to put down in three simple bulleted points everything a person needs to get through a PhD program in economics? I'm positive this is general wisdom, and not just specific to economics. Heck, it's probably general to everything, and not just academics. But boy is it ever true for economics.
For #3, I knew I had found the right mentor when one day we spent 3 hours in his office talking about Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, and arguing over whether 1939 was a better year for movies than 1999 (I said 1999, but he likes Casablanca more than The Matrix or Office Space. He can be forgiven for that, I finally decided). Ultimately, I got got excellent letters too because of #3. I knew far too many people who chose people as chairs who were the so-called experts in their fields, only to get terrorized or destroyed during the dissertation process. The sheer number of students who were ABD at year six only to quit (!) and walk away boggles the mind, but in most cases, it's because #3 was not followed.
My regret from graduate school was that I didn't follow #2 at all. I wanted to, strangely enough, but was actively discouraged from doing so by other students or faculty. I came from a humanities background, and as a literature major, it was the understanding that #2 guided how you progressed through the program. It didn't matter if in the end it didn't make anything remotely resembling a coherent, linear story because you took medieval literature and the class on Spanish lesbian writers. You knew that the medievalist was an inspiration and the Spanish lesbian class was going to change your life forever. So we had this guy who was a monetary economist, and I actually came here to study with him, even though I abhorred the very notion of doing something in money. I hated macroeconomics, for instance, and was a worshipper of Gary Becker who made it a point not to study things that typical economists studied - like money! So I didn't. Instead I took IO which was a waste of a year of my life, and public finance, in which I didn't learn a damn thing.
Maybe I'm just wired differently. I can easily see someone who is very pragmatic saying, "Yes, but there are methods and whatnot in this or that field that you'll need," and okay, sure, I see that. I would for instance tell everyone all day that they should make econometrics a secondary field, because in reality, econometrics is a hard subject to teach yourself. YOu need the stress and pressure of tests and problem sets, otherwise no one in their right mind will derive the estimator of some maximum likelihood procedure, or work out the asymptotic properties of this or that. And you do need that in today's world, because 9 times out of 10, you'll be an applied person. Still, I think your goal with school is to learn things - have your eyes opened, and your mind expanded. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that had I taken the money sequence with this guy, I'd be a better person for it.
I think you can still do these things as an assistant professor - follow all these things, in fact, but in different ways. Choosing co-authors is much like choosing a chairman. It may not at all be about choosing someone who is James Heckman, Nobel Laureate and master econometrician. It may be to choose, again, the guy or girl with whom you can talk about economics, or movies, or whatever. Someone who doesn't so intimidate you, for instance, that you can't learn or do anything on the project.
My advice here is simple:I can safely say that I did #1 and #3 perfectly. That is, for #1, I had a very good job market paper (though now I think it's crap, but whatever - at the time I was stupider, so didn't know it was as unconvincing as I now think it is), and excellent letters of recommendation. I didn't have any publications, though. And my fields were all over the place: the field sequence I actually took was Econometrics, Public Finance and Industrial Organization, wherein I tested for Econometrics (failed the first time, passed the second). On my actual CV, though, I put my fields as Labor, Health, Applied Micro, and Law and Economics! Never took a health course, and only took one labor field course. But man did I ever learn from that labor course. Everything I am and do is bound up in that one course, and I learned zero (I wish I was lying) from the other three field courses I took.
1. To potential academic employers you are defined by your job market paper, your letters of recommendation, and by your publications, if you have any. Your formal "fields" aren't that important, nor are your classes per se.
2. Pick classes to learn skills and choose your classes on the quality of the professor, not on the topic per se. A quick classroom visit often reveals this quality within thirty seconds.
3. Pick a mentor that you, on a personal basis, relate to very well. This is of extreme importance. If he or she doesn't like you, all is lost.
For #3, I knew I had found the right mentor when one day we spent 3 hours in his office talking about Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, and arguing over whether 1939 was a better year for movies than 1999 (I said 1999, but he likes Casablanca more than The Matrix or Office Space. He can be forgiven for that, I finally decided). Ultimately, I got got excellent letters too because of #3. I knew far too many people who chose people as chairs who were the so-called experts in their fields, only to get terrorized or destroyed during the dissertation process. The sheer number of students who were ABD at year six only to quit (!) and walk away boggles the mind, but in most cases, it's because #3 was not followed.
My regret from graduate school was that I didn't follow #2 at all. I wanted to, strangely enough, but was actively discouraged from doing so by other students or faculty. I came from a humanities background, and as a literature major, it was the understanding that #2 guided how you progressed through the program. It didn't matter if in the end it didn't make anything remotely resembling a coherent, linear story because you took medieval literature and the class on Spanish lesbian writers. You knew that the medievalist was an inspiration and the Spanish lesbian class was going to change your life forever. So we had this guy who was a monetary economist, and I actually came here to study with him, even though I abhorred the very notion of doing something in money. I hated macroeconomics, for instance, and was a worshipper of Gary Becker who made it a point not to study things that typical economists studied - like money! So I didn't. Instead I took IO which was a waste of a year of my life, and public finance, in which I didn't learn a damn thing.
Maybe I'm just wired differently. I can easily see someone who is very pragmatic saying, "Yes, but there are methods and whatnot in this or that field that you'll need," and okay, sure, I see that. I would for instance tell everyone all day that they should make econometrics a secondary field, because in reality, econometrics is a hard subject to teach yourself. YOu need the stress and pressure of tests and problem sets, otherwise no one in their right mind will derive the estimator of some maximum likelihood procedure, or work out the asymptotic properties of this or that. And you do need that in today's world, because 9 times out of 10, you'll be an applied person. Still, I think your goal with school is to learn things - have your eyes opened, and your mind expanded. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that had I taken the money sequence with this guy, I'd be a better person for it.
I think you can still do these things as an assistant professor - follow all these things, in fact, but in different ways. Choosing co-authors is much like choosing a chairman. It may not at all be about choosing someone who is James Heckman, Nobel Laureate and master econometrician. It may be to choose, again, the guy or girl with whom you can talk about economics, or movies, or whatever. Someone who doesn't so intimidate you, for instance, that you can't learn or do anything on the project.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Mariah Carey-Jay Z Remix
It's no secret that I'm a huge Mariah Carey fan. Or rather, let me set the record straight, I'm a huge Emancipation of Mimi fan. I bet if I looked at iTunes, I've listened to that sucker 100 times. I rode my bike to and from school for all of 2005-2006, and everyday I think I played that damn album on my iPod. I'm not too interested in getting the new lamely-titled E=MC2 (but of course, that's like poetry compared to The Emancipation of Mimi, so don't judge a Mariah Carey album by its cover). I may pick it up, but I probably won't. Having said that, if it sounded like this Jay Z remix, I would definitely get it. Shout out to the Queen of Media for bringing it to my attention. I just wish I knew how to embed those pink radio songs onto here, but that's a Perez thing I guess.
Drug War Heresies Post #3
One more post and I'm done. Under the heading "Weighing the Alternatives," MacCoun and Reuter write, "[h]ow should the consequences of these regime changes be assessed? Such assessment is not simply a matter of adding up the gains and losses for three reasons." I'll skip to the second reason.
Of course, it's also true that the men imprisoned may have already been people who weren't going to vote. Imprisonment has selected on men who are of low quality generally, measured in terms of education. The imprisonment risk selects upon Blacks males, who are young, and who don't have substantive education achievement (ie, high school dropouts). Those tend to be less likely to vote, so maybe one can overstate the magnitude of the shift. Nonetheless, it is a constraint for erecting change.
2. The advantages and disadvantages of regime changes will be unevenly distributed across segments of society. Changes that promise substantial reduction in illegal sales confer large net benefits on urban minority communities that suffer so much from black markets and their accompanying crime and disorder, even if the changes may also increase the level of drug use and addiction in those communities. For the middle class, the benefits of eliminating the black market may look very small in comparison to the costs of increased risk of drug involvement of other family members, particularly adolescent children.I said something to this effect last week in my talk on the "hidden costs of drug prohibition." I noted that there were various things in place which made moving from our current regime difficult. For one, there are the unseen costs, which one can document. But two, there's the fact that enforcement has driven up prison populations and therefore disenfranchised voters who incur most of the costs associated with enforcement - like urban Blacks. In states where ex-cons cannot vote, this means a shift - most likely towards White, middle class - in the median voter and thus an enhanced preference for the current policy of zero tolerance. White middle class voters do not have to witness or endure the social costs created through extensive black markets and their accompanying violent ways, which are necessary ways of doing business in that context. And insofar as it deters usage, even marginally, it has the appearance of working and therefore acceptable.
Of course, it's also true that the men imprisoned may have already been people who weren't going to vote. Imprisonment has selected on men who are of low quality generally, measured in terms of education. The imprisonment risk selects upon Blacks males, who are young, and who don't have substantive education achievement (ie, high school dropouts). Those tend to be less likely to vote, so maybe one can overstate the magnitude of the shift. Nonetheless, it is a constraint for erecting change.
Drug War Heresies Post #2
From the MacCoun and Reuter book I'm reading. Under the section Prospects for Change:
"American policy seems paralyzed; on the basis of a false dichotomy between two extremes - a Bennett-style War on Drrugs and a libertarian free market - more moderate alternatives to the status quo are either buried or crushed by the political mainstream. This is largely traceable to a sweeping but unreflective allegiance to "prevalence reduction" - the notion that the only defensible goal for drug policy is to reduce the number of users, hopefully to zero. Two other strategies seem equally important for rational drug control: quantity reduction (reducing the quantity consumed by those who won't quit using drugs) and harm reduction (reducing the harmful consequences of drug use when it occurs). There are tradeoffs among these strategies, but they are less severe than the ones implied by the sweeping cliche "would send the wrong message." An examination of the political psychology of attitudes toward drugs helps to explain the quagmire; it also suggests reasons why the public could shift views rapidly and unexpectedly."I've definitely contributed to the problem - historically, I've only talked in terms of legalization. But, some of my own research highlighted the disease outbreaks associated with the crack epidemic, and I realized that social harm increased with drug use - particularly if it reached an epidemic proportion, where the network effects are strongest. Since then, I've been trying to find the right middle ground, and I think this book is helpful towards that.
Digg is in the Heart
This is not quite what it's like at my office, but close enough.
Digg Dubb: Groove Is In The Heart from Trammell on Vimeo.
Digg Dubb: Groove Is In The Heart from Trammell on Vimeo.
Thoma Shows Will Wassup
Mark Thoma (channeled via Brad DeLong) shows George Will wassup. Seriously, though - it's almost like Will really has no idea why we even have a Federal Reserve. I suppose it doesn't help me to be impartial that I teach macro from Bernanke's own textbook, in which I learn that the Great Depression was caused by an inept Federal Reserve (and of course, Bernanke's basing that on Friedman and Scwartz). But Will seems completely oblivious of traditional theories of the business cycle, and of monetary and fiscal policy, when he makes points like these.
Mortgage Crisis Spillovers: Education
Brad DeLong reports that banks may be scaling down their student loan lending in response to the massive writedowns happening in the financial markets due to the subprime mortgage securitization. A bill was passed in the last couple of days, sponsored by Kennedy (Kennedy's been impressive during all this), that would effectively make, wait for it, the Department of Education (!) the lender of last resort. Wow.
I didn't see that coming, but yes of course. This is a credit crunch. And now we see not just cyclical pressure on output through aggregate demand - falling housing prices and falling stock prices due to the massive writedowns representing a shock to autonomous spending and a leftward shift in aggregate demand - but now even a potential blow to potential output as well via a reduction in the capital stock accumulation (both human capital and other forms) caused by the break down in these financial intermediaries. Good grief. I just taught my students about Japan's "Lost Decade" yesterday, which bears remarkable similarities to our problems. Surely we're not embarking on one ourselves, are we?
I didn't see that coming, but yes of course. This is a credit crunch. And now we see not just cyclical pressure on output through aggregate demand - falling housing prices and falling stock prices due to the massive writedowns representing a shock to autonomous spending and a leftward shift in aggregate demand - but now even a potential blow to potential output as well via a reduction in the capital stock accumulation (both human capital and other forms) caused by the break down in these financial intermediaries. Good grief. I just taught my students about Japan's "Lost Decade" yesterday, which bears remarkable similarities to our problems. Surely we're not embarking on one ourselves, are we?
Tyler Knows It's Too High
One of Tyler Cowen's anti-American sentiments is the same as mine: that our prisons have too many men in it. He also notes in #2 that problems of race relations are bad in America, and underestimated. If you asked him, I'm sure he'd agree that these two are related.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Clone Wars Trailer Leaked
This trailer for the upcoming Clone Wars movie was leaked so smoke em if you got em. That's what we used to say when I was a member of the Rebel Alliance, anyway. This video might be gone tomorrow, in other words, so watch it now.
There's some serious Star Wars fervor in my house. Case in point. Six year old objects to the Star Wars comic book he bought a month ago because of the lack of "killing" in it. I hear you little man. Judging from the above trailer, that has probably been rectified.
What I'm really psyched about the new movie is many-fold, if I can invent a word for a moment here. First of all, the focus on the stormtrooper platoons. Some of the cooler stories in the Clone Wars cartoon series on Cartoon Network were the stormtrooper platoon ones, and I see that they're continuing that forward here. Second of all, the Huts. That's cool, because the Huts are basically the Corleones of the Star Wars universe, which is cool automatically, but I think the Empire gets old as a singular enemy so I'm ready for something new. And finally, I'm digging the animation on the jedi lightsaber duels. Way better than the movies. The way they effortlessly swing the sabers in these trailers has me really excited. I will admit that I don't understand the whole padawan system, though. I thought Anakin was Obi's padawan, even into Revenge of the Sith, yet Anakin's apparently got his own padawan in this new movie. That she doesn't show up in Revenge of the Sith probably says all we need to know about what will happen to her, too.
There's some serious Star Wars fervor in my house. Case in point. Six year old objects to the Star Wars comic book he bought a month ago because of the lack of "killing" in it. I hear you little man. Judging from the above trailer, that has probably been rectified.
What I'm really psyched about the new movie is many-fold, if I can invent a word for a moment here. First of all, the focus on the stormtrooper platoons. Some of the cooler stories in the Clone Wars cartoon series on Cartoon Network were the stormtrooper platoon ones, and I see that they're continuing that forward here. Second of all, the Huts. That's cool, because the Huts are basically the Corleones of the Star Wars universe, which is cool automatically, but I think the Empire gets old as a singular enemy so I'm ready for something new. And finally, I'm digging the animation on the jedi lightsaber duels. Way better than the movies. The way they effortlessly swing the sabers in these trailers has me really excited. I will admit that I don't understand the whole padawan system, though. I thought Anakin was Obi's padawan, even into Revenge of the Sith, yet Anakin's apparently got his own padawan in this new movie. That she doesn't show up in Revenge of the Sith probably says all we need to know about what will happen to her, too.
Wassup!
Senator Clinton is up, that's wassup. According to Perez, she took PA down like a mofo. Yet according to intrade, Obama is still clocking in at around 82% chance of getting the Democratic ticket. So either I'm going to be pissed at intrade for being totally stupid and full of thin market externalities because people are too selfish to selfishly bet on these things, or PA really wasn't that big of a deal in the first place. Either way, Perez. Love ya.
Ideology Paper
Saw this interesting sounding article in my mailbox just now. Entitle "Ideology," and written by Roland Bénabou at Princeton. Abstract reads:
I develop a model of ideologies as collectively sustained (yet individually rational) distortions in beliefs concerning the proper scope of governments versus markets. In processing and interpreting signals of the efficacy of public and market provision of education, health insurance, pensions, etc., individuals optimally trade off the value of remaining hopeful about their future prospects (or their children's) versus the costs of misinformed decisions. Because these future outcomes also depend on whether other citizens respond to unpleasant facts with realism or denial, endogenous social cognitions emerge. Thus, an equilibrium in which people acknowledge the limitations of interventionism coexists with one in which they remain obstinately blind to them, embracing a statist ideology and voting for an excessively large government. Conversely, an equilibrium associated with appropriate public responses to market failures coexists with one dominated by a laissez-faire ideology and blind faith in the invisible hand. With public-sector capital, this interplay of beliefs and institutions leads to history-dependent dynamics. The model also explains why societies find it desirable to set up constitutional protections for dissenting views, even when ex-post everyone would prefer to ignore unwelcome news.I'm skimming through it, and it's pretty interesting. I doubt I'll read the whole thing but this quote was interesting, too.
Caplan (2007) presents extensive evidence of “anti-market bias”: distrust of the profit motive, unfairness of price allocations, perception of competition as a rigged, negative-sum game, desire to protect existing jobs against technological change and especially foreign competition, etc. His explanation is that voters derive consumption value from beliefs, and since holding incorrect ones is of little personal consequence because each vote has a negligible chance of mattering, they freely indulge in a number of exogenous “feel-good” biases. ... First, why (or when) should anti-market beliefs and blind faith in public bureaucracies make voters “feel better” than anti-state beliefs and blind faith in the invisible hand?This was also kind of funny, but interesting.
To analyze these issues, one needs to explicitly model both the economic and the psychological costs and benefits of different worldviews, and in particular how they depend endogenously on the current or anticipated politico-economic environment.
Drug War Heresies Post #1
From Robert J. MacCoun and Peter Reuter's book Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Vices, Times, & Places:
U.S. policy remains frozen in a punitive mode. Illicit drugs are perceived primarily as a crime problem rather than as a public health problem. The appropriate response then is seen as tough punishment and that has been the dominant element of policy since 1980."
Monday, April 21, 2008
Thoughts on Viral Videos and Optimal Punishment
Ever since star wars kid phenomenon, it's been clear that Internet technology has the potential both good and bad memes. Both good and bad memes may be characterized as externalities. The popularity of Charlie Bit Me! is an example of a viral video that as of today has over 20 million pageviews, not to mention the numerous response videos which themselves have million of pageviews.
Recently, a new viral video made the cover of People magazine. Six cheerleadering high school girls trapped a seventh girl at their house and beat her up on tape. I can't find the original youtube, but I suspect it was hugely popular for it to make People's cover. The girls were charged with a string of offenses, including kidnapping, which had a maximum punishment of life in prison.
I've been wondering this for a while, but what is the right response for intentionally harmful viral videos? First of all, to the defense of makers of viral videos. They do not control what becomes viral. They may intentionally be trying to humiliate someone, but they cannot by themselves make people watch the videos. Nevertheless, viral videos cause from what I can see tremendous damage to victims. Both of these points have to do with the probability function that characterize the distribution of viral videos. I can't prove this, but I suspect that like websites in general, viral videos are distributed by a power law function. This is another way of saying that they are unpredictable, partly because a small portion of all videos end up becoming viral. But, when they do become viral, their effect is huge. Here's an example of a power law distribution from a study done by a police department working with social services:
With the ubiquity of mobile phone video cameras, and distribution sites like youtube being so efficient, the cost of producing a harmful video has fallen to almost nothing. Setting high penalties could be effective at raising the expected cost of making these potentially viral videos. Even though the probability of making a viral video is statistically at zero (if it follows something like a power law distribution), a high enough penalty will make the expected cost positive. But that necessarily means that when one of these viral videos are brought to law, it will receive a seemingly draconian punishment that will feel harsh beyond words. This falls right out of Gary Becker's seminal economics of crime paper, though: Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach. In that paper, the supply of offenses to the market is a function of `price' wherein price is itself a combination of the probability of arrest and the penalty conditional on arrest/conviction. If probability is low, because of scarce resources, then to deter, penalties must be high, and vice versa. The optimal punishment for viral videos is, I suspect, analogous to this problem, requiring the setting of very high penalties to offset the way in which the power law makes probabilities of success on the creation of viral videos astronomically low.
Recently, a new viral video made the cover of People magazine. Six cheerleadering high school girls trapped a seventh girl at their house and beat her up on tape. I can't find the original youtube, but I suspect it was hugely popular for it to make People's cover. The girls were charged with a string of offenses, including kidnapping, which had a maximum punishment of life in prison.
I've been wondering this for a while, but what is the right response for intentionally harmful viral videos? First of all, to the defense of makers of viral videos. They do not control what becomes viral. They may intentionally be trying to humiliate someone, but they cannot by themselves make people watch the videos. Nevertheless, viral videos cause from what I can see tremendous damage to victims. Both of these points have to do with the probability function that characterize the distribution of viral videos. I can't prove this, but I suspect that like websites in general, viral videos are distributed by a power law function. This is another way of saying that they are unpredictable, partly because a small portion of all videos end up becoming viral. But, when they do become viral, their effect is huge. Here's an example of a power law distribution from a study done by a police department working with social services:
DEPT.OF SOCIAL SERVICES about solutions to problems like homelessness, violent police officers and high-polluting cars. All three problems follow a power-law distribution when plotted statistically on a graph… Writer tells about Murray Barr, a homeless alcoholic man in Reno, Nevada. Two local police officers, Steve Johns and Patrick O'Bryan, tracked chronic inebriates for six months and found that just one of them ran up a bill of a hundred thousand dollars at a single hospital.My question is what is the appropriate punishment for viral videos ex ante? That is, how should we compensate victims? If you think that the damages to the victim grows with the size of the viewings, then very quickly the exponential growth in the video's popularity will mean damages will grow in proportion to the number of viewings. That means that it may be optimal to set fines equal to some scale of the phenomenon. If having the video viewed publicly creates harm of $1 per viewing, then already the girls probably owe the victim $1-2 million, and it provides an incentive for perpetrators to work hard to get the video offline as soon as possible.
With the ubiquity of mobile phone video cameras, and distribution sites like youtube being so efficient, the cost of producing a harmful video has fallen to almost nothing. Setting high penalties could be effective at raising the expected cost of making these potentially viral videos. Even though the probability of making a viral video is statistically at zero (if it follows something like a power law distribution), a high enough penalty will make the expected cost positive. But that necessarily means that when one of these viral videos are brought to law, it will receive a seemingly draconian punishment that will feel harsh beyond words. This falls right out of Gary Becker's seminal economics of crime paper, though: Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach. In that paper, the supply of offenses to the market is a function of `price' wherein price is itself a combination of the probability of arrest and the penalty conditional on arrest/conviction. If probability is low, because of scarce resources, then to deter, penalties must be high, and vice versa. The optimal punishment for viral videos is, I suspect, analogous to this problem, requiring the setting of very high penalties to offset the way in which the power law makes probabilities of success on the creation of viral videos astronomically low.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Is Google Recession-Proof?
The NYT posts the largest loss in history while Google's growth remained strong, most likely being the cause of their shares to rise the most since the IPO.
In a year, we'll know whether Google - and Internet search more generally - is recession-proof. It certainly has the makings of being so. After all, recessions cause people to become unemployed, meaning at the least they're at home. And what are they doing? Probably using Google to search for jobs, as well as to to engage in other forms of consumption.
That newspapers would suffer but Internet content thrive also says more about the income elasticity of demand and how it differs for those two things. The NYT is a dollar for Mon-Sat, and over five dollars on Sunday, and if you're out of a job, that's one of the things you'll likely cut back on. And this is even moreso the case in today's environment, where print media competes directly with online content which is mostly free. One will only reduce their use of the Internet during a recession if one discontinues their Internet service because of unemployment. But working against that effect is an opposite effect wherein Internet content might increase during a recession. For instance, one wonders whether blog posts in aggregate are pro-cyclical, and if so, then that would reinforce the substitution effect between print and online media. Because after all, the people unemployed now - many of them were blogging as a part-time gig. But now they have more free-time, and while they're searching, they're also producing more online content, so we might even see the quality and quantity of posts to go up during the recessions months. In which case, there would be even more attractive content available and competing therefore with print media like the NYT. All of which helps Google.
In a year, we'll know whether Google - and Internet search more generally - is recession-proof. It certainly has the makings of being so. After all, recessions cause people to become unemployed, meaning at the least they're at home. And what are they doing? Probably using Google to search for jobs, as well as to to engage in other forms of consumption.
That newspapers would suffer but Internet content thrive also says more about the income elasticity of demand and how it differs for those two things. The NYT is a dollar for Mon-Sat, and over five dollars on Sunday, and if you're out of a job, that's one of the things you'll likely cut back on. And this is even moreso the case in today's environment, where print media competes directly with online content which is mostly free. One will only reduce their use of the Internet during a recession if one discontinues their Internet service because of unemployment. But working against that effect is an opposite effect wherein Internet content might increase during a recession. For instance, one wonders whether blog posts in aggregate are pro-cyclical, and if so, then that would reinforce the substitution effect between print and online media. Because after all, the people unemployed now - many of them were blogging as a part-time gig. But now they have more free-time, and while they're searching, they're also producing more online content, so we might even see the quality and quantity of posts to go up during the recessions months. In which case, there would be even more attractive content available and competing therefore with print media like the NYT. All of which helps Google.
Decriminalization of Marijuana
Barney Frank is calling it the "Make Room for Real Criminals Crime Bill", and co-sponsors include Ron Paul.
“I think it is poor law enforcement to keep on the books legislation that establishes as a crime something which in fact society does not seriously wish to prosecute. In my view, having federal law enforcement agents engaged in the prosecution of people who are personally using marijuana is a waste of scarce resources better used for serious crimes. In fact, this type of prosecution often meets with public disapproval. The most frequent recent examples have been federal prosecutions of individuals using marijuana for medical purposes in states that have voted – usually by public referenda – to allow such use. Because current federal law has been interpreted as superseding state law in this area, most states that have made medical use of marijuana legal have been unable to actually implement their laws.Spoken like a true economist.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Batman Rules
Batman is my favorite superhero. So when I saw this hater's video, I got a little peeved. But then this guy put the fella in his place:
BMHL1 (5 days ago)Amen to that brother.
This is so gay. Batman could kick Sups ass any day. Granted he can't fly but neither can half the JLU.
I swear, people are always trying to find a way to make that damn alien bastard look better than he is.
Blegged?
Saw this on Freakonomics
Last week I blegged, seeking information for the next edition of The Yale Book of Quotations, about Bill Gates’s undoubtedly apocryphal quotation, “640K ought to be enough for anybody.” Today I continue with legendary computer sayings.My only question is this: is blegged the past tense of blog? Why isn't it just blogged, then?
Loury and Faith
I had read that Loury was a converted Christian, but this article suggests otherwise:
"It was also around this time that Loury repudiated his religious beliefs. He had many long, searching conversations about his growing doubt with his Christian mentors and friends. He found it increasingly difficult to reconcile his religious beliefs with his faith in rationality and science. But the breaking point came with the death of a bright young woman who had worked as an administrative assistant in his office at Boston University. It had taken her into her thirties to finish college, and she was now pursuing her dream to go to law school. She'd had a wildly successful first year at BU's law school and had made law review when she died, suddenly, of a freak heart infection.I'd love to talk more with Loury about this. I wish he could have read Wolterstorff's Lament for a Son when that event happened. I agree that death is not merely God's work. It's demonic - a plague, pure evil. But without a God, it's not even that. It's nothing. And his strong belief in reason and science becomes nothing too.
"I'm devastated by the tragedy of this young woman's death," Loury says, describing his feelings at the time. "Don't tell me that this is God's work and he knows better than me. You're just fooling yourself. You're afraid to look down in the abyss." He is still haunted by the image of the young woman's mother, at the funeral, smiling because God must have loved her daughter so much to take her away. "And basically I haven't been back to church since. There was no going back from that."
War on Drugs Talk and Glen Loury
Yesterday, I gave a well-received talk on the hidden costs of drug prohibition. I focused primarily on the legislative evolution, so to speak, of drug offense laws, and the development of a focused policy response towards rising drug consumption - the so-called "war on drugs" in other words. I think I did a good job linking the development of a drug policy that emphasized enforcement efforts, as well as a coordination of resources towards that end (such as with the establishment of the DEA in 1973), and the tendency of prosecutors and judges to "crowd" prisons. Because of the non-exclusive nature of these resources, prisons tend to experience classic "tragedy of the commons" with overcrowding and deteriorating quality of the prisons themselves. Having then taking the audience through the massive expansion of the prison complex system over the 1980s and 1990s, I discussed in detail the consequence of the expansion in terms of overall marriage markets for Blacks - which is the subject of my research. Afterwards, someone sent me this article by Glen Loury entitled "A Nation of Jailers", and I realized that I had been channeling a lot of Loury's recent public writings on the prison system without realizing it. I actually haven't read anything by Loury, but what I know of him, I've always wanted to know more about him. This talk (see below) was good.
Uploaded on authorSTREAM by Margot
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
iPod Touch phone
I'm totally going to get an iPod Touch now. You can make a phone out of it! A VOIP thingamig. Sweet.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
What DOES Divorce Do Anyway?
I haven't read the empirical literature on the economics of divorce very closely, but I get the distinct impression that we're not really sure empirically what effect it has. First, Gruber found that unilateral divorce hurt the children in the longrun. But then Wolfers cast some of this into doubt. Another interesting paper by Mark Hoekstra at Pitt finds essentially the same thing using the decision to discontinue divorce proceedings as a way of identifying the effect of divorce (or in his case staying together) on child outcomes. Not a perfect study, as probably the decision to remain together is endogenous, and I suspect the two are really not controls for one another, but it's pretty clever too even if imperfect. Now I see this new paper in a forthcoming JHR that looks at how marriage breakup affects earnings of divorced women and it finds the support for the classic result that divorce is actually bad for the women. Over at Freakonomics, Wolfers goes into a lot of detail about the paper, which is going to require so much effort on my part that I will almost certainly never read it. All this to say, the empirical economics of divorce is hot, active, and I think in need of a few good (wo)men. Wolfers and Stevenson have pushed hard to have their alternative perspective on divorce get an equal footing in the debate, and I think have been overwhelmingly successful at showing some of the benefits of divorce - such as lowering spousal homicides and suicides (didn't see that coming when I first read the paper! Now I totally believe it). Marriage and divorce are still very important and active areas within the economics of the family.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Sweet Break Dancing
Okay, it's not Clinton HS Attache, but damn it's close. Easily the best break dancing I've ever seen, on a Hannah Montana youtube cover of a Madonna song? Yes, I realize that sentence is confusing. Still, check it out.
Dignification
Bush will be sorely missed as a President. Whereas it's entirely possible to imagine a video of this kind with Hilary Clinton, it's impossible for me to imagine it with Obama Barack. I'm not sure we're so far past the race issues to mock and laugh at a Black President, regardless of his accomplishments.
World's Longest Dunk
Those crazy Japanese. I have to give it to them for their strange game shows and events. (And yes, I know it's only weird because I'm lost in translation, so to speak). Here's the world's longest dunk. Sure, technically the guy is using a trampoline, which deserves more than just an asterik but it's still pretty awesome. He's bouncing, I bet, at least 3 stories at the highest point. I got a little nauseous watching him. How he managed to turn all that vertical bounce into horizontal energy was awesome, even putting aside the actual slam dunk. He's flying horizontally, and that can't be easy to do.
Atonement (4 stars out of 4 stars)
And no, I didn't steal that rating from Ebert. I will say that in terms of pure enjoyment, the movie ranks lower than that. I will never see it again, for instance. It's tragic to the nth degree. Three main characters, and the central violation that occurs - which is so seemingly small and gigantic at the same time - causes irreparable wounds. Which makes you wonder, in the end, just what kind of atonement can realistically occur to make up for this sin? The only atonement offered up, that I could see, is the ending to the book that someone writes about the entire situation - an entirely invented ending, one in which there's a degree of happiness that is experienced for the couple who are hopelessly devoted to and in love with one another. That ending, in other words, appears to be the only atonement made for what happened that one evening so many years ago - when everyone's lives were destroyed by a lie.
But I found that shallow, and I honestly cannot believe that the writer, played wonderfully and beautifully by an older Vanessa Redgrave (she almost stole the entire movie with her monologue to the camera, even though I think that was just about the only lines she had the entire film), at all felt that she had atoned for anything by writing a book in which the characters experienced happiness, instead of the tragedy they experienced in life. It reminded me of the mythos in literature, among novelists, like Joyce or Yeats, who sometimes acted as though by writing they could achieve immortality. James Joyce, in particular, seemed to believe something like that in writing Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake.
There's no real satisfaction, no atonement, to be had in knowing that you will be remembered by other people who themselves will one day die. You could see the pain and disbelief on Vanessa Redgrave's aged face as she explained why she did that; it didn't work. It was all she could offer, because she couldn't undo what she had done, but that offering was impossible. I viewed the movie as saying there was no atonement possible that we could provide to really pay for our sins - that our best offerings, and let's face it maybe if Shakespeare wrote a sonnet immortalizing how wonderful a person you are, it might be really nice even if he horribly abused you in life, are just laughable when placed beside our misdeeds. In that sense, it was almost as though the movie was a tragic telling of the force and weight of our crimes against a holy God.
The other thing I continually thought of watching the movie was Thomas Hardy's novels - particularly Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D'Ubervilles. One of the things I think of with those two books is how Hardy would use as a plot device purely random events to motivate an excruciatingly tragic story in which a person of great potential for happiness is basically "picked" randomly to live a ruinous life. There's truth in that. I can't help it - even though I'm a Calvinist by disposition, I nonetheless believe in randomness. God's sovereignity works out in history through the secondary causes of a random data generating process. I suppose this is what is meant by the phrase, "God distributes the errors." Had you not taken that turn, the car wouldn't have hit you, and you wouldn't have lost everyone so dear to you. That it is held up by a sovereign, loving God, and a belief in the resurrection, the immortality of the soul, and God's covenantal signs and promises, like baptism, I couldn't go on. I couldn't even dare to cross the street without that superstructure beneath and around me. I would shake with the horror of the vacuum of death that threatens to dispose of everything dear to me. Nevertheless, the movie was one of those kinds of stories - an incorrect interpretation of events leading to a chain of actions that ultimately destroy - and I mean destroy - one's entire life and the lives of those most precious to you. The horror of it!
I am reminded of a discussion in college once where I told the teacher that the book we had read, something by Richard Wright, was painful and important and thought-provoking, but that I didn't feel comfortable saying that I liked it, or even that it was good. I feel the same about this movie. You should see it, but maybe just once, and never again.
Update: Interesting. The wikipedia article interprets the movie somewhat differently than me. For instance, the article (a) says Lola was genuinely raped, whereas I was certain it was consensual. For instance, Lola immediately begins apologizing to the sister when she is discovered (as the man she is with runs away). But then secondly, earlier in the day, I was pretty sure that she had had sex with the man (who was much older than her, as Lola is portrayed as maybe 12-13 herself). When Lola says the twins have given her Indian burns on her arm, I was pretty sure she was looking for an alibi for the rough sexual encounter she had had with the man earlier (he also indicates that she had been rough with her by pointing to a cut on his face). Maybe it was rape, but it's not hard to make the case that it was actually a secret, taboo sexual discretion on his part, in which she was complicit. The other difference is (b) that the article suggests the sister had a genuine misunderstanding, whereas I saw it as a combination of suppression of key details due to heart-ache, youth, a fanciful imagination, and hysterics. That she continually thinks Robi is violent and a potential rapist. I, on the other hand, saw the sister in a state of heart-ache and confusion because she was in love with the older Robi (she was a fanciful 12-13 year old, and he a college graduate). Maybe the novel and the film differ in these respects, as it's based on an Ian McEwan novel. The article does agree with my interpretation as to what the precise act of atonement is, though: "The novel is, therefore, her atonement for the naïve but destructive acts of a 13-year-old child, which she has always regretted." But, I am standing by my claim that the film presents this offering in an ambiguous, even futile, way.
But I found that shallow, and I honestly cannot believe that the writer, played wonderfully and beautifully by an older Vanessa Redgrave (she almost stole the entire movie with her monologue to the camera, even though I think that was just about the only lines she had the entire film), at all felt that she had atoned for anything by writing a book in which the characters experienced happiness, instead of the tragedy they experienced in life. It reminded me of the mythos in literature, among novelists, like Joyce or Yeats, who sometimes acted as though by writing they could achieve immortality. James Joyce, in particular, seemed to believe something like that in writing Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake.
There's no real satisfaction, no atonement, to be had in knowing that you will be remembered by other people who themselves will one day die. You could see the pain and disbelief on Vanessa Redgrave's aged face as she explained why she did that; it didn't work. It was all she could offer, because she couldn't undo what she had done, but that offering was impossible. I viewed the movie as saying there was no atonement possible that we could provide to really pay for our sins - that our best offerings, and let's face it maybe if Shakespeare wrote a sonnet immortalizing how wonderful a person you are, it might be really nice even if he horribly abused you in life, are just laughable when placed beside our misdeeds. In that sense, it was almost as though the movie was a tragic telling of the force and weight of our crimes against a holy God.
The other thing I continually thought of watching the movie was Thomas Hardy's novels - particularly Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D'Ubervilles. One of the things I think of with those two books is how Hardy would use as a plot device purely random events to motivate an excruciatingly tragic story in which a person of great potential for happiness is basically "picked" randomly to live a ruinous life. There's truth in that. I can't help it - even though I'm a Calvinist by disposition, I nonetheless believe in randomness. God's sovereignity works out in history through the secondary causes of a random data generating process. I suppose this is what is meant by the phrase, "God distributes the errors." Had you not taken that turn, the car wouldn't have hit you, and you wouldn't have lost everyone so dear to you. That it is held up by a sovereign, loving God, and a belief in the resurrection, the immortality of the soul, and God's covenantal signs and promises, like baptism, I couldn't go on. I couldn't even dare to cross the street without that superstructure beneath and around me. I would shake with the horror of the vacuum of death that threatens to dispose of everything dear to me. Nevertheless, the movie was one of those kinds of stories - an incorrect interpretation of events leading to a chain of actions that ultimately destroy - and I mean destroy - one's entire life and the lives of those most precious to you. The horror of it!
I am reminded of a discussion in college once where I told the teacher that the book we had read, something by Richard Wright, was painful and important and thought-provoking, but that I didn't feel comfortable saying that I liked it, or even that it was good. I feel the same about this movie. You should see it, but maybe just once, and never again.
Update: Interesting. The wikipedia article interprets the movie somewhat differently than me. For instance, the article (a) says Lola was genuinely raped, whereas I was certain it was consensual. For instance, Lola immediately begins apologizing to the sister when she is discovered (as the man she is with runs away). But then secondly, earlier in the day, I was pretty sure that she had had sex with the man (who was much older than her, as Lola is portrayed as maybe 12-13 herself). When Lola says the twins have given her Indian burns on her arm, I was pretty sure she was looking for an alibi for the rough sexual encounter she had had with the man earlier (he also indicates that she had been rough with her by pointing to a cut on his face). Maybe it was rape, but it's not hard to make the case that it was actually a secret, taboo sexual discretion on his part, in which she was complicit. The other difference is (b) that the article suggests the sister had a genuine misunderstanding, whereas I saw it as a combination of suppression of key details due to heart-ache, youth, a fanciful imagination, and hysterics. That she continually thinks Robi is violent and a potential rapist. I, on the other hand, saw the sister in a state of heart-ache and confusion because she was in love with the older Robi (she was a fanciful 12-13 year old, and he a college graduate). Maybe the novel and the film differ in these respects, as it's based on an Ian McEwan novel. The article does agree with my interpretation as to what the precise act of atonement is, though: "The novel is, therefore, her atonement for the naïve but destructive acts of a 13-year-old child, which she has always regretted." But, I am standing by my claim that the film presents this offering in an ambiguous, even futile, way.
Michael Scott Wishes They Would've Invented This Sooner
Cowen discusses the discovery of an oral contraceptive for men. He thinks there's some kind of signaling potential in this thing. But I'm dubious. How do you signal you've taken the male pill? I suspect in marriages or cohabitation, where monitoring costs are lower, then yeah, I could see this being enforced. But in mating markets, I doubt anyone can credibly signal they're on the pill. Women take the pill not to protect the men, but to protect themselves because they incur most of the costs of an unintended pregnancy. I suspect that Cowen's signalling story is really just cheap talk. That said, as always, I suspect that if we can reduce the risks of pregnancy, either through lowering the costs of abortion or by making it technically possible to have sex at lower risk of pregnancy, then we'll see more sex in equilibrium, and probably more sexually transmitted diseases. That's just another way or saying birth control technology not only reduces births but also has the unintended effect of increasing sexual activity among the treated.
Teen Sex Education
I'm working on something that had me looking up papers on sex education and I came across this article. The following quote made me think about something I'd not thought of before:
"The White House is pouring money into programs that tell teens to just say no to sex. Most experts say the programs don't work -- except to enrich the religious right."Why politically support faith-based programs if they aren't anymore effective than secular ones (and in the case of abstinence, the evidence is weak that they work at all)? It might make sense if they are meant to reward one's political base - a kind of rent-seeking by religious organizations?
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Foreign Policy and Suicide Terrorism
It is a popular argument among libertarians - suicide attacks and terrorism are endogenous to foreign occupation. The USS Cole was attacked, the logic goes, because it was there - no one comes here and blows up our ships in our docks. I've always thought the logic was very compelling, but a few years ago when I fully transformed into a cynic who requires evidence for my beliefs, I started to wonder if it was actually empirically true. Did variation in foreign occupation cause variation in suicide terrorism? Now, a new forthcoming paper in the American Political Science Review (which is a journal that may or may not be great) argues that the evidence for this is weak. Here's the criticism in a nutshell:
In short, they argue, the problem is this. To know whether X causes suicide terrorism, we need to know how the propensity to use suicide terrorism varies with X. That is, we not only need data on when suicide terrorism occurs, we need data on when suicide terrorism does not occur — i.e., when groups choose other tactics besides suicide terrorism. Analyzing only instances when suicide terrorism occurred is not sufficient.
Friday, April 11, 2008
California to Tax Beer
California is considering an excise tax that could generate $2 billion in revenue. From everything I've read about the social costs of alcohol consumption (see here), this sounds like a potentially good thing (of course, the devil's in the details) for both the health of their state and the health of their beleaguered economy.
Hard Eight (3.5 out of 4 stars)
Why do I even bother ranking movies, when in the end I will always just restate Ebert's ranking? Is it because I happen to agree with Ebert on movies most of the time? I tell myself it's because he and I have the same preferences, but then sometimes I just find him so damn persuasive.
Nevertheless, when I saw Hard Eight on his "overlooked DVD of the week", I thought I'd post it up here again. It was Paul Thomas Anderson's first film, and if you listen to the director's commentary on Boogie Nights, you get the sense it was a nightmare from start to finish. The movie was originally entitled Sydney, named after the Philip Baker Hall character, but the studio made him change the name. They also had much more control over the editing of the film than PTA himself, and I think that that is why he was in the end so discouraged about how the movie came out.
Nevertheless, I have always thought it was a gem. It reads like a short story by Joyce at times. It's story is not a particularly universal story, but it is a focused character sketch of a few people whose lives are hurt and who need one another, and one man who is so ravaged by guilt that he goes to great lengths to redeem himself, but in the end finds he cannot get the blood stains off him. In that sense, I guess, it is a universal story. You see in this first movie many of the themes that he would develop later in his more mature films like Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love. For instance, like the brokenness caused by broken families, and the guilt which we cannot erase no matter what we do. The longing for redemption - something or someone to take the guilt away, and the frustrating inability to get the stains out.
It stars Philip Baker Hall as an old gambler who finds down on his luck John C. Reilly and takes him under his wing in order to teach him out to be a gambler in Nevada. Mostly, the lessons focus on small-time things - how to get free meals and free room and board with a little money and some social engineering at the casinos, for instance. It's not quite "con" - it's more about knowing how the system works so you can rise above the wretchedness of going bust in Vegas. It also stars Samuel Jackson and Gwyneth Paltrow, both of whom are phenomenal.
Nevertheless, when I saw Hard Eight on his "overlooked DVD of the week", I thought I'd post it up here again. It was Paul Thomas Anderson's first film, and if you listen to the director's commentary on Boogie Nights, you get the sense it was a nightmare from start to finish. The movie was originally entitled Sydney, named after the Philip Baker Hall character, but the studio made him change the name. They also had much more control over the editing of the film than PTA himself, and I think that that is why he was in the end so discouraged about how the movie came out.
Nevertheless, I have always thought it was a gem. It reads like a short story by Joyce at times. It's story is not a particularly universal story, but it is a focused character sketch of a few people whose lives are hurt and who need one another, and one man who is so ravaged by guilt that he goes to great lengths to redeem himself, but in the end finds he cannot get the blood stains off him. In that sense, I guess, it is a universal story. You see in this first movie many of the themes that he would develop later in his more mature films like Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love. For instance, like the brokenness caused by broken families, and the guilt which we cannot erase no matter what we do. The longing for redemption - something or someone to take the guilt away, and the frustrating inability to get the stains out.
It stars Philip Baker Hall as an old gambler who finds down on his luck John C. Reilly and takes him under his wing in order to teach him out to be a gambler in Nevada. Mostly, the lessons focus on small-time things - how to get free meals and free room and board with a little money and some social engineering at the casinos, for instance. It's not quite "con" - it's more about knowing how the system works so you can rise above the wretchedness of going bust in Vegas. It also stars Samuel Jackson and Gwyneth Paltrow, both of whom are phenomenal.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Google Weblogs
Just saw this April's Fool Day joke for the first time advertising Google's new weblog service. Here's what it will have:
# Don’t limit yourself to “reverse chronological” publishing. Our advanced Google algorithms put your best content at the top of your blog. Even if your later work goes downhill your previous posts will still shine.Oh ho ho ho. That's a riot. I'm already tired of the Google April's fool day tradition. I'll take stodgy old IBM with their crisp white, humorless shirts from now on.
# No more template languages to mess with or sidebars to get right. Our advanced Google algorithms automatically populate your blog’s sidebar with the most relevant possible content.
# Stop worrying about your PageRank or your search engine optimization. Post directly into Google search results for maximum visibility.
# Save your readers time and effort. We’ll automatically extract the most relevant sentence from your post for the index page, along with any necessary ellipsis. We'll also put some words in bold!
# Your blog’s header will stay fresh with new images from our team of artists, each and every anniversary of a scientific achievement.
# Unsure of what to post about? Just click “I’m Feeling Lucky” and we’ll “take care” of the rest!
Regional Propagation of Business Cycles
Jim Hamilton at econbrowser has put up some interesting gifs that show contagion effects within US states of the business cycles. It's interesting to see the 1985 business cycle caused by a fall in oil prices, which led to both an expansion in most states, but a recession in the oil-producing states, like Texas. That recession, interestingly, then seems to spread to the surrounding states, presumably through inter-state commerce.
One good thing about teaching macro; I actually am interested in the business cycle. More as an observer than an active researcher, though if I could ever get to work with someone on a cycle study, I would jump at the chance. I think it'd be the next best way for me to improve my understanding.
One good thing about teaching macro; I actually am interested in the business cycle. More as an observer than an active researcher, though if I could ever get to work with someone on a cycle study, I would jump at the chance. I think it'd be the next best way for me to improve my understanding.
Berkeley econ skit
The berkeley skits were particularly awesome this year. This Kanye-inspired one was my favorite. The best part is when Paul Ruud and the other guy (whom I don't recognize) shoot the robots with laser beams from their guitars. I also particularly identified with the theme of this song. (hattip to mankiw)
Stronger from ticoneva on Vimeo.
Stronger from ticoneva on Vimeo.
Why Men Rape
HBO is airing this week a new documentary entitled The Greatest Silence, which is a documentary of the gang rapists in the Congo. The filmmaker is Lisa Jackson who was herself the victim of a gang rape in Washington, DC and she decided to go into the Congo and interview men who identified themselves as gang rapists. Once she spread the word she was looking for these men, she had no trouble finding them - they wanted to tell her their side of the story. Here are some quotes :
"We were just abiding by the conditions of our magic potion. We had to rape women to make it work, and to beat the enemy."
"If she says no, I must take her by force. If she is strong, I'll call some of my friends to help me. All this is happening because of the war. We would live a normal life and treat women naturally if there was no war."
"It's hard to keep record of the number of women that I've raped. The thing to keep in mind is the fact that we have stayed too long in the bush, and that induced us to rape. You know how things are in combat zones. We rape as we advance from village to village."
Monday, April 7, 2008
Steal This Quote
I'm ripping this one off from Matt's facebook page. Fresh Ideas for a Tired Crusade
If it takes a churchgoing guidebook writer who spent his college years as a member of the marching band to call for an end to a tired war, so be it. The cheerleaders and architects of harsh drug laws — from Rush Limbaugh, who promised to take random drugs tests after admitting his addiction to pain pills, to the former drug czar Bill Bennett, who had a multimillion-dollar gambling habit — have been exposed as moral frauds.See, it's articles like this that get me all ra-ra drug legalization. Then I have to go back and bury my head in the voluminous literature on the social ills associated with drug abuse to reconsider. Still, I think the right answer is not drug legalization. The right answer is drug control. But I'm just not sure it should emphasize law enforcement and incarceration to the degree that it does. Prevention and treatment were, amazingly enough, the main thrust of Nixon's administration (which started the so-called "war on drugs"), but apparently the creation of some new ways of scheduling the drugs, combined with the creation of a single drug enforcement agency, eventually led to politicians capturing the war for political gains. This is at least the hypothesis I'm working with: did politicians capture these early, relatively beneficial attempts at drug control? The building of prisons is an easy way, I'm hearing, to win votes. Whether they are as cost-effective at reducing drug consumption related harms as prevention and treatment methods - which are more delayed and less visible - is another matter completely. This quote by Nixon is awesome to by the way:
"You know, when people think about drugs, they're just disgusted by it. They want to lock them up and throw away the key. But it's more compelx than that." - Richard Nixon, told to his aide Bud Krogh during a helicopter flight over New York City.And even more exciting quote, though, was this one by Obama Barack:
“I’m not interested in legalizing drugs. What I am interested in is putting more of an emphasis on the public health approach to drugs and less on incarceration.”
Violent Games and Crime Correlations
Saw this on Digg.com, and it reminded me of something I recently read in Anderson, et al.'s book on violent video game effects.
"The old Logic 101 principles regarding the establishment of a factor as being a necessary and sufficient cause of an effect simply don't apply to most modern science (Anderson & Bushman, 2002c). We know that smoking tobacco causes an increase in the likelihood that one will contract lung cancer, but not everyone who smokes gets cancer, and some who don't smoke do get lung cancer. The probabilistic nature of modern science is largely due to the fact that multiple causal factors are involved in most medical, psychological, and behavioral phenomena. And for this reason, the old necessary and sufficient rules simply do not apply. Thus, every time people argue that violent video games can't be considered causes of aggression because they have played such games and haven't killed anyone is committing a major reasoning error, applying the 'sufficient' rule to a multiple cause phenomena. A similarly invalid argument is that the reduction in U.S. homicide rates during the 1990s - while violent video games were becoming more prevalent - proves that violent video games can't cause increases in aggression. This argument assumes either that violence is not caused by multiple factors, or that those factors are unchanging over time. Neither assumption is true (consider, for example, changes in overall incarceration rates, federal gun registration laws, drug use patterns, age distribution of the population, poverty rates, employment patterns, war), rendering the argument so weak as to be embarassing.Though I did get tired of how combative and dismissive the Anderson, et al. book is in places, I think this is a very good point made. Most of Anderson's work has been in the laboratory, which allowed him the freedom to isolate the media exposure mechanism from the numerous other factors that cause aggression in young people. Moving such a project from the lab to the real world is the next step, but his point about multi-causality and the need to separate correlation from causality cannot be overstated. Tell that to the 1,541 others who have voted to digg this picture, though.
Comic Books Kill?
It's common to hear that video games can lead to aggression in children, even murderous violence (just check out Anderson, Gentile and Buckley's recent review of the literature on video game effects to get a sense of the plausibility of this). But did you know that for the first half of the 20th century, it was comic books that were believed to be a plague on children's minds and morals? I'm looking forward to reading David Hajdu's new book, Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America. Slate also has a review of the book here, and a brief discussion of the censorship goals of the time.
It's easy, I think, to be immediately dismissive of things like the damaging effects of media, but reading Anderson, et al's book, I was struck by the gargantuan amounts of evidence from laboratory experiments of violent media causing aggression in children. The tests are usually not very realistic. For one, they are in labs, and not tests of people in their natural environment. So one does wonder whether what is observed in the lab necessarily carries over in the real world. But two, let's say that violent video games does lead to aggression, but that in the course of a lengthy video game playing episode, the child satisfies that demand for violence by killing more people on screen. This is called the "catharsis" theory, and Anderson, et al. find very little evidence for it in the lab, but negative associations between violent media and violent outcomes have been found. Nevertheless, the sheer amount of scientific evidence for a causal link between media and violence in children is not something one can simply ignore or toss aside with pithy remarks. And so one wonders whether there was something to these earlier periods in American history where regulations were experimented with to limit children exposure to primitive violent media. After all, that is basically what this is about - the comic book is simply a predating of the video game experience, and insofar as there is a causal effect of media violence on child aggression, it's sensible to attempt to regulate it. I would much prefer that than outright prohibition, after all. Still, I wonder just how closely the real-world effects of these regulations have been studied. I'm not 100% convinced by the laboratory tests at this point.
It's easy, I think, to be immediately dismissive of things like the damaging effects of media, but reading Anderson, et al's book, I was struck by the gargantuan amounts of evidence from laboratory experiments of violent media causing aggression in children. The tests are usually not very realistic. For one, they are in labs, and not tests of people in their natural environment. So one does wonder whether what is observed in the lab necessarily carries over in the real world. But two, let's say that violent video games does lead to aggression, but that in the course of a lengthy video game playing episode, the child satisfies that demand for violence by killing more people on screen. This is called the "catharsis" theory, and Anderson, et al. find very little evidence for it in the lab, but negative associations between violent media and violent outcomes have been found. Nevertheless, the sheer amount of scientific evidence for a causal link between media and violence in children is not something one can simply ignore or toss aside with pithy remarks. And so one wonders whether there was something to these earlier periods in American history where regulations were experimented with to limit children exposure to primitive violent media. After all, that is basically what this is about - the comic book is simply a predating of the video game experience, and insofar as there is a causal effect of media violence on child aggression, it's sensible to attempt to regulate it. I would much prefer that than outright prohibition, after all. Still, I wonder just how closely the real-world effects of these regulations have been studied. I'm not 100% convinced by the laboratory tests at this point.
DeLong's Keynesian Cure
Brad DeLong explains the situation in a way my students and me can understand:
The world economy, as John Maynard Keynes put it 75 years ago, is developing magneto trouble. What it needs is a push – more aggregate demand. In the US, the weak dollar will be a powerful boost to net exports, and thus to aggregate demand. But, from the perspective of the world as a whole, net exports are a zero-sum game. So we will have to rely on other sources of aggregate demand.
The first source is the government. Fiscal prudence is as important as ever over the medium and long term. But for the next three years, governments should lower taxes – especially for the poor, who are most likely to spend – and spend more.
The second source is private investment. The world’s central banks are already cutting interest rates on safe assets, and will cut them more as the proximity and magnitude of the likely global slump becomes clear.
But low interest rates are entirely compatible with stagnation or depression if risk premia remain large – as the world learned in the 1930’s, and as Japan relearned in the 1990’s. The most challenging task for governments is to boost the private sector’s effective risk-bearing capacity so that businesses have access to capital on terms that tempt them to expand.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Creepy Girl
Creepy Girl is exactly what the title says. She follows your cursor with her eyes in a generally creepy way. When you let the cursor hang there for a second, she really creeps you out by doing a great Gollum impression too.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Get Well Soon Roger!
I'm sending love and positive vibes to Roger Ebert who recently had another surgery for his cancer. He is cancer-free, but has still not regained the ability speak. I'm not sure whether he had his mandible replaced or not, though. Last I had heard, he was without a mandible and looked very ragged. Here's hoping and praying that this prince can get rest and some peace. God bless Chaz, his wife, who by all accounts is his support right now. His optimism and attitude are very positive, but I worry nonetheless.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Griping
I love it when the student comes to class having never read the chapter, and having not gone over his or her notes from the previous class, and then blames the professor for the material being confused, disrupting class in the meantime. I'm going to implement a Pigouvian tax for everytime a student does this, since their disruptions impose costs on every single person in the room. I am not the first to notice this of course:
Classroom education has public good aspects. The technology is such that when one student disrupts the class, learning is reduced for all other students. A disruption model of educational production is presented. It is shown that optimal class size is larger for better-behaved students, which helps explain why it is difficult to find class size effects in the data. Additionally, the role of discipline is analyzed and applied to differences in performance of Catholic and public schools. An empirical framework is discussed where the importance of sorting students, teacher quality, and other factors can be assessed.from Edward Lazear's 2001 Quarterly Journal of Economics article, "Educational Production."
Debunking the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory
I hope this finally puts this tired theory to rest.
9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says
9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says
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