Wednesday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION

1. A catalog of past AI predictions. 2. Jasmine Sun on why people do not want data centers.  And Jasmine Sun on Ezra Klein, on data centers (NYT). 3. A bot running an SF retail boutique? (NYT) 4. Elise Cawley, RIP. 5. On the NYC grocery store plan. 6. New credit card gives you tokens […]

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Dominant Assurance Contract aka Refund Bonus Explainer - Marginal REVOLUTION

I created the dominant assurance contract aka the refund bonus mechanism in 1998–it’s a mechanism capable of producing some types of public goods privately–in recent years working with Tim Cason and Robertas Zubrickas I’ve put refund bonuses to the test in lab experiments and they work! I’ve written an accessible Refund Bonus Explainer that covers […]

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Is this why China finds it so hard to inflate producer prices? - Marginal REVOLUTION

This paper investigates why China’s recurrent credit expansions have coincided with persistently weak inflation. We argue that this pattern reflects the country’s production-oriented monetary regime. At the aggregate level, faster monetary-financial expansion temporarily raises PPI inflation but depresses it over longer horizons. At the sectoral level, liability growth among listed industrial firms is followed by […]

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Victor Niederhoffer, RIP - Marginal REVOLUTION

In addition to his well-known public roles, he worked very hard to help and befriend me when I was younger.  Here are the Google searches for Victor.  Less well known about Victor is that he had one of the world’s best collections of private letters.  He also once gave me a very nice small painting […]

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The Value of Behavioral Policies - Marginal REVOLUTION

Behavioral interventions have become central to modern public policy, but their empirical promise remains contested because estimated treatment effects often appear small. We argue that a policy response is economically meaningful only relative to the response generated by alternative policies. We assemble more than 1,200 estimates from over 600 studies comparing “nudges” and traditional price […]

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Estimating the Economic Value of Zoning Reform - Marginal REVOLUTION

We estimate the economic value of zoning reform in São Paulo, which altered maximum permitted construction along transportation corridors. Developers increased filings for multifamily construction in blocks affected by the reform, leading to more housing supply and lower housing prices in neighborhoods that allow more densification. Our equilibrium model of housing markets estimates an aggregate […]

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Tuesday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION

1. Selecting innovation funding mechanisms. 2. Helen Andrews on race. 3. Famous radio station goes all-automated. 4. On Stefanie Stantcheva. 5. ChinaTalk submission hiring contest. 6. New Hamilton faculty at University of Florida, 21 of them. 7. Battery in your backyard? (WSJ) 8. How Americans are talking to Claude about politics.

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The economics of H-1B immigration - Marginal REVOLUTION

We study the effects of H-1B immigration on U.S. industries that employ H-1B workers and their trading partners. Using a novel cross-industry design and the 1999–2003 expansion of the H-1B visa cap for identification, we find that H-1B exposure raised incomes for natives and pre-existing immigrants, with gains concentrated in non-STEM occupations. Income gains propagate […]

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Emergent Ventures winners, 57th cohort - Marginal REVOLUTION

Oisin O’Gorman, 15, Dublin, misinformation and fakes. Karsen Lee Wahal, Stanford, is AI killing the web?, and measuring media slant. Davy Deng, with Claire Wang (previous winner), whole brain emulation, MIT. Enej Grmek, 16, Ljubljana, privacy. Vladimir Shmelev, Ukraine, Ukrainian children for relief trips to Montenegro. Nik Verma, Chicago, a legal framework for AI agents. […]

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How does the market regard stablecoins? - Marginal REVOLUTION

We study the demand for safety and liquidity in the crypto ecosystem. We do so under a framework in which a representative investor allocates liquidity across stablecoin deposits in lending pools and traditional safe assets (e.g., MMF shares). Our model delivers three main predictions: (i) the stablecoin deposit premium co-moves with the Treasury premium when […]

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Monday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION

1. A new simulation argument? 2. PC on aesthetics. 3. An interview with Yiyang Zhuge. 4. The truth and aesthetics of going to church? 5. Some forms of math cope? And a different view. 6. At the demolition derby.

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What should I ask Nick Bostrom? - Marginal REVOLUTION

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him.  So what should I ask? If you need them, here are various Bostrom links.

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On infinite ethics - Marginal REVOLUTION

Infinite numbers have long troubled utilitarian ethicists: if the universe is boundless, then there is infinite positive utility and infinite negative utility, and we can’t even define our current state, let alone affect it. Oxford philosopher Toby Ord proposes a solution: use hyperreal numbers, a mathematical construct in which infinite sums behave more like finite ones (for example, […]

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*Rome's Age of Revolution* - Marginal REVOLUTION

The author is Tim Whitmarsh and the subtitle is Augustus, Empire and the Making of Christianity.  This is the most important book on the history of Christianity I have read in a long time, and it is also an important work in Roman history.  Yet also fun and extremely readable.  Excerpt: The story I have […]

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Sunday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION

1. The inverseminar, someone else presents your paper. 2. The rise of million-dollar companies with just one employee (WSJ). 3. The political party itself is a big driver of polarization. 4. Gita Gopinath is making sense. 5. GPT Pro (not Astra) on what “Astra” means. 6. David Perell art history game. 7. New model of […]

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On the Acemoglu-Autor et.al. fertility result - Marginal REVOLUTION

Here is criticism from Revana Sharffuddin.  Here is criticism from JFV.

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Taiwan fact of the day - Marginal REVOLUTION

[Annualized] 14% GDP growth in the first half of 2026

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Mexico (Taiwan) fact of the day - Marginal REVOLUTION

Mexico has quietly become a cornerstone of the AI boom, providing 40 per cent of US imports this year of the computer servers that are widely used in the data centres powering artificial intelligence. Taiwanese manufacturers are rapidly expanding factories in Mexico to assemble servers, which are now the country’s top US export, overtaking autos […]

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Rothko show in Florence - Marginal REVOLUTION

In Museo San Marco there is an ancillary exhibit, placing some smaller, lighter colored Rothkos next to their Fra Angelico frescoes.  Those rooms bowled me over, as for one thing they show how much Rothko was a religious painter at heart. I also was struck by the high proportion of Chinese visitors at this show, […]

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Saturday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION

1. What do consultants get paid for? 2. Ugly architecture creates coalitions against development. 3. London is (modestly) degentrifying. 4. Is the “no forward guidance” approach failing? (FT) 5. Chinese interview with Christopher Nolan. 6. “social media use and school grades are unrelated for adolescents…meta-analytic evidence is not in support of dramatic claims relating social […]

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More math breakthroughs from GPT models - Marginal REVOLUTION

The cost of generating the proofs for all 10 of these breakthroughs combined was under $2,000 at Sol API prices. We’re excited to see what scientists and researchers are able to create with our upcoming Astra models! That is from Noam Brown, at the link you will find his list of the ten breakthroughs.  Here […]

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Immigration and Macroeconomic Outcomes in OECD Countries - Marginal REVOLUTION

OECD countries experienced declining native population growth and rising net immigration over 1990-2024. We compile a new dataset of net immigration rates to OECD countries from all origins and show that most of the increase came from non-OECD countries and was predominantly high-skilled. Push factors, network effects, and policy indices explain little of the large […]

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Emergent Ventures India, 18th cohort - Marginal REVOLUTION

Adithyan Madhu, 14, an independent researcher, received his grant to study early writing systems, applying computational linguistics, pattern analysis, and structural methods to the Indus Valley script. Aparajeet Shadangi, 17, received his grant to explore conceptual approaches to cosmic expansion and dark energy while continuing his formal academic preparation in cosmology. Kevin Gibson, a student […]

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*Redefining Global Health in the 21st Century* - Marginal REVOLUTION

While donor-driven programs undoubtedly saved millions of lives, they also created unintended distortions in national health priorities.  Many governments in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia actually scaled back domestic health investments, as donor program filled key gaps in HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, and infectious disease control.  In some cases, domestic health budgets shrank […]

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Friday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION

1. Tokenizing the value from compute? 2. Will they ruin the look of Dulles airport? 3. Pathways into homelessness. 4. Defensible valuations for AI companies. 5. Further reasons why very rapid economic growth is very difficult to achieve. 6. Over 20,000 precolonial earthworks in the Southwest Amazonia.

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An unprecedented weapon? - Marginal REVOLUTION

I wonder if England had a “pause” movement back then: Trebuchets reached the peak of their development in medieval times, probably the most famous example being Edward I’s massive machine, Warwolf.  This terrifying device was over sixty feet (18 meters) high and was capable of throwing a three-hundred-pound (140-kilogram) rock several hundred years, projecting some […]

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The wisdom of Eli Dourado - Marginal REVOLUTION

How do “international efforts” work? Unlike most of the signatories of the letter, I have been a State Department advisor and have participated in multiple treaty negotiations. I have also been a member of technical committees for UN technical agencies. The international sector is unbelievably dysfunctional. Every single treaty or international agreement is an opportunity […]

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The Anatomy of Cyber Risk - Marginal REVOLUTION

This paper uses computational linguistics to introduce a novel measure of firm-level cyber risk exposure based on the quarterly earnings calls of listed firms. Our measure covers more than 14,000 firms from over 90 countries between 2003 and 2025. The measure is validated using human auditors and a large language model. We show that cyber […]

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Thursday assorted links - Marginal REVOLUTION

1. Joshua Rothman on lookism. 2. Young adults are using AI to manage their social media feeds (WSJ). 3. What predicts an NBA Achilles tear? 4. LLM data set on changing cultural trends over the centuries. 5. Xi’an Famous Foods is coming to Clarendon. 6. If a German expressionist movie director had filmed a silent […]

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The Endangered Species Act Reduces Housing - Marginal REVOLUTION

Max Tabarrok’s paper on the Endangered Species Act and housing (WP) has just been published in the Journal of Public Economics! It’s a clever paper: Max observed that the moment an animal is put on the endangered species list, developers face enhanced compliance costs and liability risk. But what’s important for an empirical economist is […]

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