Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 100

What the Primaries Mean, by Bryan Caplan

Donald Trump has wildly exceeded electoral expectations at every stage of the election.  But betting markets still say he has but a 20% chance of winning the presidency.  Isn't Trump's record of success after success strong evidence that he's far more popular than normal measures suggest?  Most obviously, couldn't there be preference falsification at work on a mass scale?

Maybe, but there's a simpler story.  Trump has an enviable track record in the Republican primaries.  But hardly anyone votes in those primaries!  His victories notwithstanding, most of Trump's victories were backed by less than 10% of registered voters.  These results from late March omit the latest primaries, but still show the big picture.



Of course, the same goes for every primary candidate.  Hillary too has received few actual votes so far.  The key distinction: For well-established candidates, we have prior measures of their national appeal.  Not so for Trump.  Each of his victories has confirmed his unexpectedly strong appeal to politically active Republicans; it's no fluke.  But he's yet to demonstrate appeal to a broader audience, so betting markets remain the smart bet.

Disagree?  I'm happy to bet against Trump at even odds with my usual interface.

(5 COMMENTS)

The End of Doom and Cost-Benefit Methodology, by Bryan Caplan

Like all useful tools, cost-benefit analysis is flawed.  After surveying cost-benefit analyses of global warming and warming abatement, Ron Bailey's The End of Doom turns to methodological objections.  From his section on "How Much to Insure Against Low Probability Catastrophic Warming?":

How much should we pay to prevent the tiny probability of human civilization collapsing?  That is the question at the center of an esoteric debate over the application of cost-benefit analysis to man-mind climate change.  Harvard University economist Martin Weitzman raised the issue by putting forth a Dismal Theorem arguing that some consequences, however unlikely, would be so disastrous that cost-benefit analysis should not apply.

Weitzman contends that the uncertainties surrounding future man-made climate change are so great that there is some nonzero probability that total catastrophe will strike.  Weitzman focuses on equilibrium climate sensitivity... As has been discussed, the IPCC Physical Science report finds that climate sensitivity is likely to be in the range of 1.5�� to 4.5�� C and very unlikely to be greater than 6��C.  But very unlikely is not impossible.

Weitzman spins out scenarios in which there could be a 5 percent chance that global average temperature rises by 10��C (17�� F) by 2200 and a 1 percent chance that it rises by 20��C (34��F)... Surely people should just throw out cost-benefit analysis and pay the necessary trillions to avert this dire possibility, right?

Then again, perhaps Weitzman is premature in declaring the death of cost-benefit analysis.  William Nordhaus certainly thinks so, and he has written a persuasive critique of Weitzman's dismal conclusions...  Weitzman's Dismal Theorem implies that the world would be willing to spend $10 trillion to prevent a one-in-100-billion chance of being hit by an asteroid...

Nordhaus also notes that catastrophic climate change is not the only thing we might worry about.  Other low-probability civilization-destroying risks include "biotechnology, strangelets, runaway computer systems, nuclear proliferation, rogue weeds and bugs, nanotechnology, emerging tropical diseases, alien invaders, asteroids, enslavement by advanced robots, and so on." 

Deja vu.  Bailey's Nordhaus digest continues:

Weitzman's analysis also assumes that humanity will not have the time to learn about any impending catastrophic impacts from global warming.  But midcourse corrections are possible with climate change...

At the end of his critique of Weitzman's Dismal Theorem, Nordhaus investigates what combination of factors would actually produce a real climate catastrophe.  He defines a catastrophic outcome as one in which world per capita consumption declines by at least 50 percent below current levels...

Nordhaus ran a number of scenarios through the Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy (DICE) model... DICE would produce a catastrophic result only if temperature sensitivity was at 10�� C, economic damage occurred rapidly at a tipping point of 3��C, and nobody took any action to prevent the catastrophic chain of events.  Interestingly, even when setting all of the physical and damage parameters to extreme values, humanity still had eighty years to cut emissions by 100 percent in order to avoid disaster.

Bailey closes with a spot-on challenge:

Why has no one ever applied a Dismal Theorem analysis to evaluate the nonzero probability that bad government policy will cause a civilization-wrecking catastrophe?

I fear climate activists will dismiss Bailey's challenge as a debating trick.  But I see no way around it.

P.S. Anything important Bailey's treatment misses on methodological objection to cost-benefit analysis?  If so, please share contrary sources in the comments.

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Global Warming, Cost-Benefit Analysis, and The End of Doom, by Bryan Caplan

I learned Austrian economics over a year before I started learning regular economics.  The Austrians taught me to stonewall all cost-benefit analysis with methodological objections.  It took me years to see the emptiness of their approach.  Cost-benefit analysis is imperfect, but so is every performance measure.  We learn a lot more about policy effectiveness if we carefully measure costs and benefits, then reflect on potentially serious flaws, than if we refuse to play the cost-benefit game.

Partly as a result of this experience, I am deeply suspicious when the proponents of any policy dodge requests for cost-benefit analysis.  I know cost-benefit analysis isn't everything.  But if I request estimates of net benefits, and you respond with methodological scolding, I hold it against you.  Indeed, I summarily reduce my estimate of the net benefits of your policy proposal.  After all, if cost-benefit analysis were on your side, you'd probably answer my question instead of questioning my question.  Case in point: I asked Yoram Bauman, author of The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change , to "review the point estimates and confidence intervals" for cost-benefit studies of global warming.  Instead of satisfying my curiosity, he alluded to four methodological problems with cost-benefit analysis.  This heightened my suspicion that cost-benefit analysis views climate inaction much more favorably than mainstream thinkers allow.

In sharp contrast, Ron Bailey's new The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century , gave me just what I wanted: A readable summary of cost-benefit estimates.  Highlights from the section on "How Much Will Global Warming Cost?":

The IPCC reports offer cost estimates for both adaptation and mitigation.  The 2014 Adaptation report reckons, assuming that the world takes no steps to deal with climate change, that "global annual economic losses for additional temperature increases of around 2��C are between 0.2 and 2.0 percent of income."  The report adds, "Losses are more likely than not to be greater, rather than smaller, than this range."

In a 2010 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences article, Yale economist William Nordhaus assumed that humanity does nothing to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  Nordhaus uses an integrated assessment model that combines the scientific and socioeconomic aspects of climate change to assess policy options for climate change control.  His RICE-2010 integrated assessment model found that "of the estimated damages in the uncontrolled (baseline) case, those damages in 2095 are $12 trillion, or 2.8% of global output, for a global temperature increase of 3.4�� above 1900 levels."  

Followup work:

In his 2013 book The Climate Casino... Nordhaus notes that a survey of studies that try to estimate the aggregated damages that climate change might inflict at 2.5�� comes in at an average of about 1.5 percent of global output.  The highest climate damage estimate Nordhaus cites is a 5 percent reduction in income.  The much criticized 2006 Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change suggested that the business-as-usual path of economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions could even reduce future incomes by as a much as 20 percent.

[...]

The IPCC Mitigation report notes that the optimal scenario that it sketches out for keeping greenhouse gas concentrations below 450 ppm would cut future incomes by 2100 by between 3 and 11 percent... [P]rojected IPCC income losses that would result from doing nothing to adapt to climate change appear to be roughly comparable to the losses in income that would occur following efforts to slow climate change.  In other words, it appears that doing nothing about climate change now will cost future generations about the same as doing something now.

Is Bailey's literature review accurate?  If not, please name an equally responsive but higher-quality review.

(3 COMMENTS)

Two Alienated Questions, by Bryan Caplan

I am deeply alienated from the society in which I live.  I regard our policies as criminal, and politicians of both major sides as evil people.  My assessment of our society's opinion leaders is similar, though milder and less categorical.

Many thoughtful people I know regard my rejection of our society as childish.  Rather than defend myself, I have two questions for all such people.

1. In what actually existing societies would my alienation be morally justified?  Nazi Germany, I hope.  North Korea, I trust.  How about Saudi Arabia?  Putin's Russia?  Napoleonic France?  The antebellum South?   

2. Look at your answers to Question #1.  Now ask yourself: If I grew up in a society in which, by my own account, alienation would be morally justified, would I in fact be appropriately alienated?  In how many such cases would I at least inwardly damn my damnable society?  And in how many cases would I take the path of least resistance, accepting the status quo as morally tolerable or even laudable?

Inquiring minds want to know.  And yes, thoughtful people, it does go to credibility.  But don't let that bias your answer!

(5 COMMENTS)

Taxing the Rich: Strange Hope for Liberty, by Bryan Caplan

Scheve and Stasavage's Taxing the Rich: A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and Europe (Princeton University Press, 2016) is a shocking book.  Given the title, I absolutely did not expect it to bolster libertarian morale.  But Taxing the Rich offers libertarians more credible hope for the future than any openly libertarian book published in the 21st century. 

The heart of S&S's unintentionally delightful thesis:

1. Democracies have no inherent tendency to "soak the rich." 

2. Instead, democracies adopt high, progressive taxation in the face of compelling "compensatory" arguments for redistribution.

3. Only major wars of mass mobilization make compensatory arguments compelling.

4. Modern warfare has made majors wars of mass mobilization obsolete.

5. Therefore, tax the rich policies are a thing of the past, at least for developed countries.  They won't be coming back.

Highlights from the key chapter, entitled "The Conscription of Wealth":

The reason wartime governments increased taxes on the rich more than the rest was because war mobilization changed beliefs about tax fairness.  It created an opportunity for new and compelling compensatory arguments that increased support for taxing the rich.  Comparing public tax debates before, during, and immediately after World War I in the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and the United States, we demonstrate that as a result of the war both elites and ordinary people changed the type of fairness arguments they employed when justifying their preferred tax system.

The British case:

Calls for progressive taxation to equalize war sacrifices came in two forms.  The first was simply more progressive income taxation, the "conscription of income," while the second was a capital levy or literally the "conscription of wealth."  These demands came in part from the expected places, such as the Trades Union Congress, which held "that, as the manhood of the nation has been conscripted to resist foreign aggression... this Congress demands that such a proportion of the accumulated wealth of the country shall be immediately conscripted."  However, the arguments were also reflected in publications like the Economist, which had previously opposed high levels of income taxation.  The Economist opposed a capital levy, but it did support "direct taxation heavy enough to amount to rationing of citizens' incomes."  It also explicitly endorsed an article in the Economic Journal by Harvard economist Oliver Sprague entitled, "The Conscription of Income."  In the article Sprague argued: "Conscription of men should logically and equitably be accompanied by something in the nature of conscription of current income above that which is absolutely necessary."  The conscription of income was a clear compensatory policy.  The state was asking the young with lower incomes and less wealth to fight in the war.  Fairness demanded that this sacrifice be compensated with higher taxes on income and wealth.

To back up this claim, S&S catalog all the arguments about income taxation made in the UK Parliament before and during World War I.  Witness the transformation of rhetoric:
 

Taxing the Rich then takes a necessary digression into military history, explaining the rise and fall of mass mobilization as a function of military technology.  Punchline:

The era of the mass army, one where countries have mobilized a substantial fraction of their citizens to fight, was dependent on a specific state of technological development.  As the precision of weapons delivered from the air has increased, it has become unnecessary, and perhaps undesirable, to mobilize a mass army for conflict... Given the nature of enemies that a country like the United States, or other large industrial powers, are likely to face going forward, it seems even more unlikely that mass mobilization will take place.  What does this imply about taxing the rich?  The twentieth-century conditions that created powerful compensatory arguments for taxing the rich are unlikely to be repeated anytime soon.  These conditions were far from accidental; they were driven by long-term trends involving international rivalries and military technology.

Of course, the fact that Scheve and Stasavage thrill me as a libertarian and a pacifist hardly shows they're right.  But they flesh out their big picture with a mass of compelling evidence.  Overall, an outstanding book. 

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Education: Free Matters, by Bryan Caplan

Robin continues our exchange on the origins of educational signaling.  Here's my point-by-point reply, followed by a broader observation.  Robin's in blockquotes; I'm not.

Where Bryan disagrees is
that he sees government as the main agent pushing school. He says it
wasn't individual workers who were unwilling to adopt industrial work habits,
it was government regulators:

[...]

And he says it wasn't
individuals who were eager to send their kids to school, it was government:

[...]

This makes it sound like I think government is ramming education down the throats of a hostile populace.  But I'm saying something utterly different: Governments push education because they want to be popular.  The average citizen croons to the music of lavish public funding for education.  But due to Social Desirability Bias, there's a chasm between how governments spend the public's dollars and how individuals would spend their private dollars. 

But these just don't
match the history I've read. For example, In the US there was a lots of other
school funding before government took over:

The school system remained
largely private and unorganized until the 1840s. Public schools were always
under local control, with no federal role, and little state role.
The 1840
census indicated that of the 3.68 million children between the ages of five and
fifteen, about 55% attended primary schools and academies. (more)

Local, state, and federal government all sound like government to me.  All three strive for popularity, and hence deliver policies that sound good even if they work poorly.  Inter-governmental competition restrains state and local governments, but only weakly, because they're all non-profits.

In any case, even if there were zero government subsidies in the 1840s, I've never claimed signaling was the whole story of education.  I can easily believe modernization raised the value of literary and numeracy, and I can easily believe literacy and numeracy are easier to learn in school than on the job.  What puzzles me is (a) all the impractical coursework that accompanies literacy and numeracy, and (b) the fact that the labor market rewards both kinds of coursework.

On typical worker
reluctance to follow orders, see Greg Clark's classic "Why
Isn't the Whole World Developed? Lessons from the Cotton Mills":

Moser, an American visitor
to India in the 1920s, is even more adamant about the refusal of Indian workers
to tend as many machines as they could "... it was apparent that they could
easily have taken care of more, but they won't ... They cannot be persuaded by
any exhortation, ambition, or the opportunity to increase their earnings." In
1928 attempts by management to increase the number of machines per worker led
to the great Bombay mill strike. Similar stories crop up in Europe and Latin
America.

The key problem: As I've said before, I'm happy to admit formal schooling teaches kids to submit.  But so does formal employment.  The workers Clark describes sound like they have little experience with either.  So this passage is an exceedingly poor argument for the socialization advantages of school over work.

Broader point: Robin has repeatedly criticized socially wasteful spending on both education and medicine.  But he's reluctant to assign governments much blame for the waste.  Why?  I've known Robin for almost twenty years, and still can't fathom the source of his reticence.  Consider these simple points:

1. We've got plenty of estimates of demand elasticity for both education and medicine.  Both imply that reducing the price of education and medicine to zero sharply increases quantity demanded. 

2. And what do governments do?  They strive to give education and medicine to broad segments of the population, free of charge. 

3. This hardly means education and medicine would vanish without government subsidies.  But there's overwhelming reason to think cutting the subsidies would lead to much lower consumption of both.  Indeed, without the subsidies it's entirely possible that remaining spending would no longer be socially wasteful.

I must have asked Robin this before, but I'll ask him again: Which of these three points, if any, do you reject?

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The Diction of Social Desirability Bias, by Bryan Caplan

"Sorry, I can't come to your party."  This common excuse is almost always literally false.  You're working?  Unless your boss chains you to your desk, you can come to the party.  You're in Paris, and the party's in DC tomorrow?  If you can beg, borrow, or steal airfare, you can come to the party.  The same goes for most social uses of the word "can't" - everything from "We can't be together" to "I can't help myself."

Why say, "I can't" when the truth is "It's too costly for me" or "I don't feel like it"?  Because "I can't" sounds better.  It insinuates, "The only reason I'm not doing X is because I lack the ability to do X.  Otherwise I would totally do it."  "It's too costly for me" and "I don't feel like it" are insulting by comparison.  Both blurt, "X simply isn't my top priority.  Get used to it."  In short, the way we use the word "can't" is a clear-cut case of Social Desirability Bias: our all-too-human propensity to lie when the truth sounds bad.

The literally-false "can't" is hardly alone.  Social Desirability Bias permeates our diction - i.e., the specific words we choose to use.  Consider the following expressions:

1. "I'll do my best."  Unless you devote 100% of your resources to success, you haven't really done your best, have you?  But it sure sounds nice.  The same goes for "We're doing everything in our power," "I'll stop at nothing," and the like.

2. "We have no choice."  Unless there is literally only one thing you are capable of doing, you have a choice.  So why claim otherwise?  Probably because you're doing something that seems wrong, and you don't feel like justifying your action as the lesser evil.  The same goes for "We were forced to do it" and "I simply have to do this."

3. "Nothing is more important to me, but..."  If nothing is more important, you will sacrifice everything else you have to get and keep X.  So unless you've given your all for X, you're overstating it's importance.  As Social Desirability Bias predicts, X is generally something high-minded: God, country, and family top the list.  "I'll pay any price for X" and "You can't put a price on X" work the same way.

4. "X is unacceptable."  People are capable of accepting almost anything; where there's life, there's hope.  But they'd like much much more.  People who put the "unacceptable" label on an unfavorable deal are covertly bargaining.  Why?  Because it's less confrontational to plead, "I'd take your offer if I could.  But my hands are tied" than "Show me the money!"

The diction of Social Desirability Bias fits neatly with my skeptical take on addiction - and mental illness generally.  To my ears, "I can't stop drinking" directly parallels "I can't come to your party."  Of course you can refrain from drinking alcoholic beverages.  And of course you can attend my party.  But if you declare, "I'd rather stay home and drink alone," you sound bad and listeners get mad.

In Moliere's The Misanthrope , Philinte insists,

In certain cases it would be uncouth,
And most absurd to speak the naked truth;
With all respect for your exalted notions,
It's often best to veil one's true emotions.
Wouldn't the social fabric come undone
If we were wholly frank with everyone?

Philinte's right as far as he goes, but he misses a deeper issue.  When we let Social Desirability Bias rule our diction, there's a grave danger our literally false words will corrupt our thinking as well.  Indeed, such corruption is all around us.



(2 COMMENTS)

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Behavioral Public Choice, by Bryan Caplan

Public choice (also known as political economy) is applying economics to politics.  Behavioral economics is applying psychology to economics.  What happens when you do both at the same time, creating a "behavioral public choice"?  Gary Lucas and Slavisa Tasic's "Behavioral Public Choice and the Law" (West Virginia Law Review, 2015) provides an amazingly careful, comprehensive, and entertaining review of the literature.  Intro (with voluminous footnotes omitted):

Behavioral public choice is both an extension of and a reaction to
behavioral economics and its counterpart in legal scholarship, behavioral law
and economics. Psychologists and behavioral economists have documented
imperfections in human reasoning, including mental limitations and cognitive
and emotional biases. Their research challenges the rational actor model of
conventional economics, especially the idea that individuals acting in a free
market can make optimal decisions without the government's assistance.
Behavioral economists and legal scholars in the behavioral law and economics
movement have used this research to justify paternalistic government
interventions, including cigarette taxes and consumer protection laws, that are
intended to save people from their own irrational choices. Because of their focus on market participants and paternalism, most behavioral economists and
behavioral law and economics scholars ignore the possibility that irrationality
also increases the risk of government failure." Behavioral public choice
addresses that oversight by extending the findings of behavioral economics to
the political realm.


A key insight of behavioral public choice is that people have less
incentive to behave rationally in their capacity as political actors than in their
capacity as market actors. Elections are rarely decided by a single vote, so
voters have little reason to take them seriously. Moreover, the voters,
politicians, and bureaucrats who participate in the political process know that
the costs and benefits of their decisions fall largely upon others. So these
political actors have less at stake than consumers, investors, and other market
participants who make decisions that primarily affect themselves.


Because political actors have little incentive to behave rationally,
irrationality is common in politics, and it has a substantial negative effect on
the law.

One fun section among many:

I. Opportunity Cost Neglect: Ignoring Implicit Tradeoffs


Some scholars are skeptical of certain government interventions on the
grounds that they are ineffective, excessively costly, and inimical to economic
growth. But opinion research shows that the public enthusiastically embraces
government spending, tax expenditures, and regulation. Moreover, affection
for government is not limited to liberals and Democrats. Conservatives and
Republicans also express strong support for government as long as researchers
ask them about specific programs rather than asking about government in
abstract or general terms.


Nonetheless, opinion research also reveals that support for many
government programs declines (often substantially) when researchers draw
attention to the programs' opportunity costs. The opportunity cost of a
government program consists of the private and public goods that society must
forgo to make that program possible. Opinion research suggests that unless
explicitly prompted to consider these costs, the public often ignores them. Opportunity cost neglect is consistent with the finding that decision makers
focus on salient situational elements and irrationally ignore implicit
information. The benefits of many government programs are obvious, but their
opportunity costs are often implicit and therefore easy to overlook...

[...]

Widespread neglect of the opportunity costs of government programs
has several implications. First, it artificially increases the demand for direct
spending, tax expenditures, and regulation above the level that voters would
otherwise support. In particular, opportunity cost neglect helps explain chronic
budget deficits. Voters express strong support for government spending, but at
the same time, they are also unwilling to pay for it. Second, opportunity cost
neglect results in a misallocation of government funds. Specifically, opinion
research suggests that the federal government spends more on the military and
less on other programs than it would if voters were cognizant of the tradeoffs
involved. Finally, opportunity cost neglect affects the government's choice of
policy instruments. Voters are attracted to policies that conceal tradeoffs. This
explains why voters generally prefer tax expenditures to similar direct spending
programs. It also explains why, despite economists' objections, voters prefer
to address global warming through command-and-control regulations, which
conceal the opportunity costs of environmental protection, rather than a carbon
tax, which would make those costs more salient.

Read the whole thing.

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Against Trolling, by Bryan Caplan

I never troll; my sincerity is controversial enough.  In particular, I never (a) misrepresent my actual views, or (b) try to inspire negative emotions for their own sake.  There is nothing transgressive in my heart.  While I often expect my writings to upset readers, I always hope to convince everyone - or, failing that, to launch a friendly conversation.  Indeed, my dream is a secular universal reconciliation - an intellectual climate where every participant is relentlessly fair-minded and good-humored.

Now you could say that "trolling" is a loaded word.  We can debate whether someone is "trolling," but not whether trolling itself is bad.  Strangely, though, several people have praised trolling to my face.  Their arguments were poorly developed, but seemed to amount to:

1. In the world of modern media, trolling is the most effective way to promote unpopular truths.

2. Trolling is fun for the trolls.

The first pro-trolling argument is dubious at best.  If you want to spread unpopular truth X, you generally need to defend X, not a caricature of X.  True, trolling is a good way to get attention and promote in-group solidarity.  But it also alienates people who don't initially agree with you.  People who want to spread unpopular truths need to overcome the audience's hostility, not court it. 

The second pro-tolling argument is probably true as far as it goes.  But you can say the same about every sadistic pastime.  And when someone confesses, "I enjoy hurting people," our reaction is normally to shun the speaker, not conclude that hurting people is good.

Of course, the weakness of these arguments doesn't show trolling is bad.  What is the case against trolling?  Most obviously, trolling hinders the search for truth.  The main mechanisms:

1.  Opportunity cost.  Trolling diverts intellectual resources from the construction of compelling arguments to the elicitation of negative emotions.

2. The argument tax.  Even sincere intellectual argument is discouraging.  Carefully listening to people we disagree with requires intense effort.  So does designing intellectually sound arguments to persuade people who don't already agree.  And the payoff for all this mental effort is usually zero: Most conversations end in a stalemate, where everyone sticks with his initial belief.  So what do trolls do?  Willfully make the process even more emotionally taxing than it already is.

3. The lemons problem.  Trolls know what they're doing, but rarely admit it.  It's up to their victims to spot the trolls.  This information asymmetry yields a classic adverse selection problem.  The fact that the person you're arguing with might be a troll makes sincere people more reluctant to argue.  As these sincere people exit the conversation, the troll-to-population ratio rises.  This in turn leads more sincere people to drop out, sparking a downward spiral in argumentative quality.

What is the combined effect of all three mechanisms?  I can only speculate, but it's easy to believe the search for truth would be 10% faster if trolling vanished forever.

To be honest, though, the main reason I don't troll is straight-up Puritanism.  Consequences aside, there are strong moral presumptions against insincerity and sadism.  Unless the social benefits of insincerity and sadism clearly and heavily outweigh the social costs, you simply shouldn't do them.

P.S. The game Are You Are Werewolf? (perhaps better known as Mafia) puts two secret "werewolf" players against thirteen innocent villagers.  Every turn, the secret werewolves select a victim to eat.  Then the whole village (including the secret werewolves) votes to hang a suspected werewolf.  When I play this game, I have an iron rule: Immediately convict anyone who breathes the words, "I'm the werewolf."  My reasoning: Even if the person isn't the werewolf, he's helping the werewolves by sowing confusion.  I treat anyone who says, "I'm a troll" the same way.  If you say you're a troll, I believe you and we have nothing further to discuss.

(6 COMMENTS)

My Complete Bet Inventory: 2016 Edition, by Bryan Caplan

With the kind volunteer assistance of Dan Osborne, here is an updated list of all my EconLog bets.  All omissions are my fault; if you catch any, please email me.  Here goes:

1. "I've bet my $200 to Walter's $1 that Ron Paul will not be
the next U.S. president." (here) Date (bet
made and/or publicized): 07/11/07.  Status: closed, Caplan won.

2. "If France, Germany, and Italy remain on the Euro as of
December 31, 2010, Rabkin owes me $20.  Otherwise, I owe him $20." (here) Date:
01/22/07.  Status: closed, Caplan won.

3. "If the Director of the OMB's 2013 report says that a
shortfall exists [in the repayment of TARP], I win.  Otherwise, I
lose.  The stakes: I will make up to five $100 bets at even odds." (here)  Date: 10/07/08. Status: closed, Caplan won.

4. "If the official initially reported U.S. monthly
unemployment rate falls below 8.0% for any month between now and June, 2015, I
win $100.  Otherwise, Mish wins $100." (here)  Date: 03/21/10. Status: closed, Caplan won.

5. "At any point between now and January 2016, if there is a
year/year increase in seasonally adjusted CPI that is at least 10%, then you
[Bryan Caplan] pay me at that time $100.  If we get to January 2016, and
there has not been any 12-month stretch in which the above happened, then I
[Bob Murphy] pay you $100 at that time." (here) Date:
12/14/09. Status: closed, Caplan won.

6. "I predict that Republicans will regain control of at
least one branch of the federal government at some point between now and
January 20, 2017 (two inaugurations from now).  So Arnold, how about a
$100 bet at even odds? [bet accepted]" (here) Date:
05/19/09. Status: closed, Caplan won.

7. "I will bet $100, even odds, that the U.S. price of gas
(including taxes) in the first week of January, 2018 will be $3.00 or less in
2008 dollars." (here) Date:
01/01/08.  Status: open.

8. "If the total number of deaths in France from riots and
terrorism is less than 500 between May 28, 2008 and May 28, 2018, Franck owes
me $50.  If the total number is 500 or more, I owe him $50." (here) Date:
05/28/08. Status: open.

9. "The stake is $US100 and the agreed criterion is that, for
Bryan to win, the average Eurostat harmonised unemployment rate for the EU-15
over the period 2009-2018 inclusive should exceed that for the US by at least
1.5 percentage points." (here) Date:
05/28/09. Status: open.

10. "If any current EU member with a population over 10
million people in 2007 [Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain, Poland, Romania,
Netherlands, Greece, Portugal, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and Hungary]
officially withdraws from the EU before January 1, 2020, I will pay you
$100.  Otherwise, you owe me $100." (here) Date:
04/26/08. Status: open.

11. "I bet at even odds that 10 years from now, the fraction of
American 18-24 year-olds enrolled in traditional four-year colleges will be no
more than 10% (not 10 percentage-points!) lower than it is today." (here) Date:
10/24/2011. Status: open.

12. "If India's (Total Fertility Rate in 2032 + Total Fertility
Rate in 2033)/2 
Otherwise, he pays me $3." (here)
Date: 05/17/2013. Status: closed, Caplan won.

 14. "10:1 that U.S. unemployment will never fall below 5% during
the next twenty years.  If the rate falls below 5% before September 1,
2033, he immediately owes me $10.  Otherwise, I owe him $1 on September 1,
2033." (here) Date: 09/24/2013. Status: closed, Caplan won.

15." You're betting avg(2015-2029)-avg(2000-2014)

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