Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 178

How to find good food in Chengdu

1. Many people in Chengdu are experts on the local food scene.  Recruit one of them, but don’t be shocked if they insist on paying for your meal every time.

2. Go downtown to the Crowne Plaza hotel, walk out on the main road to your left, and within two minutes you will see on your left a “TangSong food street” — a covered food court about twenty-five small Sichuan places.  There is a sushi place too but I saw the customers dipping their sushi rolls in hot red chili oil.  It is heartwarming to walk into such a culinary universe.

2b. Within this court my favorite place is labeled “1862 History,” you might spot the small print, in any case the place looks spare and is somewhat larger than the very small venues.

3. MaPo tofu is much finer here, and the black peppers and quality vinegars are to be appreciated.

4. Sichuan chili chicken and Dan Dan noodles are two of my favorite Sichuan dishes back home.  Here they have been good, but actually slightly disappointing relative to expectations.  Don’t obsess over those during your quest.

4b. There are two philosophies of international trade.  In one philosophy, the best dishes are the best dishes and so you should order them at home and also order them abroad in their countries of origin.  In the second philosophy, it is the most exportable dishes which get exported but they are not in general the best dishes period.  When abroad you therefore should try out the dishes you cannot find at home.  For Chengdu at least, this second philosophy is the correct one as Jacob Viner had hinted way back in the mid-1930s.

5. Often the most interesting dishes are the accompanying vegetables.  For instance at a hot pot restaurant I had excellent elongated yam cubes coated in a (slightly sweet) blueberry sauce and stacked ever so perfectly.  It was the ideal offset to the hotness and tingle of the core dishes.  At another restaurant I most enjoyed some simple greens dipped in a sesame soy sauce.  Or try potato or lotus root in hot pot.

6. Unless you go to great lengths to avoid this fate, you will end up eating strange parts of the animal.  You won’t like all of them, but you won’t dislike all of them either.

6b. If you utter “Ma La” with conviction, they will think you are remarkably sophisticated or perhaps even fluent in Chinese.  The populace here seems unaware that some version of real Sichuan food is now reasonably popular in the United States.

7. Many menus have photos, but they show lots of red and are not useful for identifying exactly what you will be eating.  See #6.

8. There are two areas — Jin Li and Wenshu Fang — where old buildings and streets are recreated and you can stroll in a kind of outdoor shopping mall.  Everyone goes to these locales and they are fun.  These neighborhoods are good for finding lots of takeaway Sichuan snacks, including desserts, in a single area, and served in sanitary conditions.  That said, I don’t think these are the very best Sichuan goodies to be had in town, as they are designed explicitly for tourists, albeit food-loving Chinese tourists.

9.   “Chengdu food” and “Sichuan food” are not the same thing.  Sichuan province has more people than France, and Chengdu is simply one large city, and so your favorite Sichuan dish may not be a staple here.  The town also has a fair amount of Tibetan food, though I haven’t tried any.

10. If you leave Chengdu confused as to exactly where and what you ate, you probably had a very good food trip.

Assorted links

1. Martin Feldstein on Piketty.  And Wojciech Kopczuk and Allison Schrager on wealth taxes.  Piketty and survivorship bias.

2. Poland will institute biometric ATMs.

3. The new Peter Thiel book (self-recommending).

4. The record of Andrew Cuomo — worth a ponder.

5. Why don’t octopus arms stick together?

6. Is falling household consumption behind secular stagnation?

Anti-surveillance mask (look for this to be an issue)

The 3D-printed resin mask, made from a 3D scan of Selvaggio’s face and manufactured by ThatsMyFace.com, renders his features and skin tone with surprising realism, though the eyes peeping out from the eye holes do lend a certain creepiness to the look.

…It turns out some states have anti-mask laws. And Selvaggio [the creator of these masks] — whose earlier project You Are Me let others use his social-media profiles — says he’s considered the possibility that anyone wearing his face in public could engage in illegal activity…That being said, I have come to the conclusion that it is worth the risk if it creates public discourse around surveillance practices and how it affects us all.”

The article is here, with excellent photos of the masks.

For the pointer I thank Vic Sarjoo.

*The Fourth Revolution*

That is the new book by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, with the subtitle The Global Race to Reinvent the State.

I very much liked this book.  It is probably the best current manifesto on the proper roles for market and state, intelligent but also accessible to a lay reader.  For me the biggest takeaway was the import of the technological revolutions coming to government, or already arrived, and how countries do not have the luxury of sitting still in response.  Looking forward, quality of government will be an increasingly important competitive factor.  This book is also the single best statement of the thesis that these days government simply is not working very well, and that such an insight is recognized by many voters better than by many intellectuals.  Many of the illustrations of this point come from the state of California.

One interesting feature of this book (not its main point, nor a point the authors are celebrating) is the recurring recognition that democracy has diminished in global status over the last decade.

From the book, here are two facts about China:

In 2012 revenue from land-rights sales made up more than half of local-government tax revenue.

And:

The Beijing-based Unirule Institute of Economics argues that, when you allow for all the hidden subsidies such as free land, the average real return on equity for state-owned companies between 2001 and 2009 was -1.47 percent.

Definitely recommended.

From the comments

Here is Brett on Piketty:

I’m surprised to see so few critiques of Piketty on the grounds that higher wealth and income inequality won’t necessarily lead to oligarchical politics and the capture of the economy by rentiers. I’m a bit skeptical myself of his interpretation of 19th century politics – at the same time we had the Belle Epoque, there was increasing working class political power in the UK (particularly with reforms in the 1830s and 1860s), the lead-up to the near-complete loss of political power in the House of Lords in 1911, the rise of income taxes in both the UK and France, greater social mobility, broader modernization and consumer culture, and so forth. You see some pushback from Larry Bartels and the like pointing to research showing policymaking following the preferences of the rich and organized, but they don’t provide much information about whether this has changed with increasing income and wealth inequality – the rich and organized interest groups may have just always had a disproportionate interest on policymaking, even during the Postwar Period.

Morgan Kelly, in his review (via John O’Brien), serves up a related point:

If Piketty’s story about slow growth leading inevitably to rising inequality and the power of the rich is true, then we expect that inequality would have risen sharply during the 19th century when growth in industrialised economies was less than 1 per cent per year. In fact the longstanding research of Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson on English inequality (which Piketty, incredibly, fails to cite) finds inequality was fairly constant, albeit high, until about 1870, and then appears to have fallen somewhat until 1913.

What is the economic future of literature?

Could it be as an add-on to higher-margin, branded carry-away commercial products?  Here is one new development:

Starting Thursday…bags and cups in Chipotle’s stores will be adorned with original text by Foer, Malcolm Gladwell, Toni Morrison, George Saunders, and Vanity Fair contributing editor Michael Lewis.  Foer says, ”Chipotle refrained from meddling in the editorial process for the duration of the initiative, which the burrito chain has branded Cultivating Thought. “I selected the writers, and insofar as there was any editing, I did it,” Foer said. “I tried to put together a somewhat eclectic group, in terms of styles. I wanted some that were essayistic, some fiction, some things that were funny, and somewhat thought provoking.”

You can read more here, via @ArikSharon.

The Americanization of China?

Former NBA star Yao Ming is being sued by Beijing resident Feng Changshun for endorsing a health food product that Feng said misleads consumers, in one of the first consumer rights cases involving a celebrity since a new protection law was enacted in March.

Feng is suing Baxsun Pharmacy, a retail chain in Beijing, for exaggerating the benefits of its fish oil capsules.

Yao, a spokesman for the product, is also being sued. Beijing’s Xicheng district court has confirmed that it will hear the case.

Feng said he is seeking 500 yuan ($80.10) in compensation from the retail chain and 0.01 yuan from Yao Ming.

“(The lawsuit) is symbolic. I want (Yao Ming) to admit to infringements of my rights,” he said.

You can read more here.

Assorted links

1. Excellent Michael Lewis review of Tim Geithner.

2. “Wipe out annoying people on MR blog.”  Beta version.

3. How well can we teach character anyway?

4. How better financial engineering can help us improve the fight against cancer.

5. Three time bombs in Chinese real estate (this excellent FT blog post goes well beyond the usual observations).

6. More on Medicaid vs. private insurance.

China Fact of the Day

In the course of making the case that China’s property bubble is popping the FT notes:

In just two years, from 2011 to 2012, China produced more cement than the US did in the entire 20th century, according to historical data from the US Geological Survey and China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

Is globalization bypassing New Zealand?

Bryce Wilkinson and Khyaati Acharya write:

A report in 2012 by The New Zealand Initiative drew attention to New Zealand’s seventh position among 57 countries for having the most restrictive FDI regulatory regime. This was largely due to New Zealand’s economy-wide screening regime and the broad definition of ‘sensitive’ land. Treasury has confirmed that there is credible anecdotal evidence that New Zealand’s regime is having a chilling effect on inwards FDI investment, but the materiality of this effect is an open question. It is doubtful that the damaging Crafar farms case would have triggered regulatory barriers in other Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions or comparable Asian countries.

New Zealand’s Overseas Investment Act further detracts from the country’s ‘open for business’ image by starkly asserting that it is a privilege for foreigners to be allowed to own or control sensitive New Zealand assets. This is in stark contrast to the explicitly welcoming approach widely taken elsewhere.

Statistics show that New Zealand has largely missed out on the expansion of global FDI since the mid-1990s. Both inwards and outwards stocks of FDI peaked as a percentage of GDP more than a decade ago in New Zealand, while world stocks continued their upwards climb. Between 2000 and 2011, New Zealand’s rank on UNCTAD’s FDI attraction index slumped from 73rd in the world to 146th. Hong Kong and Singapore have been in the top five throughout this period.

The longer study (pdf) covers many other points.  And here are further writings by Bryce Wilkinson on New Zealand.