Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 34

Does playing video games make you smarter?

It’s in an economics journal, so it must be true.   Agne Suziedelyte reports, from Economic Inquiry:

According to the literature, video game playing can improve such cognitive skills as problem solving, abstract reasoning, and spatial logic. I test this hypothesis using the data from the Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The endogeneity of video game playing is addressed by using panel data methods and controlling for an extensive list of child and family characteristics. To address the measurement error in video game playing, I instrument children’s weekday time use with their weekend time use. After taking into account the endogeneity and measurement error, video game playing is found to positively affect children’s problem solving ability. The effect of video game playing on problem solving ability is comparable to the effect of educational activities. (JEL I2, J13, J24)

I wonder how much endogeneity can be overcome in such settings, but if nothing else there is positive selection into video games and perhaps you should not be upset if your child is playing them.

Do any of you see an ungated copy?  The pointer here is from Kevin Lewis.

Monday assorted links

1. Myths about Bitcoin and the block chain.  And a decentralized lie detector.  And faster now! (with lasers).

2. Will Brazil be seeing a resurgent free market movement?

3. The origins of dishonesty.

4. For which major religion is the work ethic strongest?

5. “What was even the point of websites? Were they just weird slow apps with nobody in them?”

6. Fortunately, most of the statues destroyed by ISIS were fakes.

7. Actually confronting the ethics of self-driving vehicles.

8. .

Facts about deserters (Canada irony of the day)

American military commanders rarely seek out deserters and even more rarely punish them.  At the height of the Iraq War, fewer than 5 percent of deserters received a court-martial, and fewer than one percent served prison time.

And:

…the only deserters who have consistently been punished by the American military are those who went to Canada.

The full article, by Wil S. Hylton, is interesting throughout.

Greece tax evasion fact of the day

More than 100% of the self-reported income of Greece’s professional classes is going toward paying off consumer debts.

From Mike Bird, there is more here, via MacroDigest.

The Public Choice Outreach Conference

Please apply and encourage students to apply to the annual Public Choice Outreach Conference!

What is the Public Choice Outreach Conference?

The Public Choice Outreach Conference is a compact lecture series designed as a “crash course” in Public Choice for students planning careers in academia, journalism, law, or public policy.

When and where is the Conference?

The 2015 Conference will be held at the Hyatt Arlington in Rosslyn, Virginia during June 12-14, 2015.

What will I learn?

Students are introduced to the history and basic tools of public choice analysis, such as models of voting and elections, and models of government and legislative organization. Students also learn to apply public choice theory to a wide range of relevant issues.

Who can apply?

Graduate students and advanced undergraduates are eligible to apply. Students majoring in economics, history, international studies, law, philosophy political science, psychology, public administration, religious studies, and sociology have attended past conferences. Advanced degree students with a demonstrated interest in political economy or demonstrated interest in political economy are invited to apply. Applicants unfamiliar with Public Choice are especially encouraged.

More information and application here.

Facts about families

According to Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical agency, the probability of marriage before age 50 has been plummeting for European women and men, while the chance of divorce for those who do marry has been soaring. In Belgium—the birth-land of the scholars who initially detected this Second Transition—the likelihood of a first marriage for a woman of reproductive age is now down to 40%, and the likelihood of divorce is over 50%. This means that in Belgium the odds of getting married and staying married are under one in five. A number of other European countries have similar or even lower odds.

Europe has also seen a surge in “child-free” adults—voluntary childlessness. The proportion of childless 40-something women is one in five for Sweden and Switzerland, and one in four for Italy. In Berlin and in the German city-state of Hamburg, it’s nearly one in three, and rising swiftly. Europe’s most rapidly growing family type is the one-person household: the home not only child-free, but partner- and relative-free as well. In Western Europe, nearly one home in three (32%) is already a one-person unit, while in autonomy-prizing Denmark the number exceeds 45%. The rise of the one-person home coincides with population aging. But it is not primarily driven by the graying of European society, at least thus far: Over twice as many Danes under 65 are living alone as those over 65.

…Given recent trajectories, demographers Miho Iwasawa and Ryuichi Kaneko project that a Japanese woman born in 1990 stands less than even odds of getting married and staying married to age 50.

That is from Nicholas Eberstadt, hat tip goes to Philip Wallach.

The early history of British (free?) trade

Stone Age Britons imported wheat about 8,000 years ago in a surprising sign of sophistication for primitive hunter-gatherers long viewed as isolated from European agriculture, a study showed on Thursday.

British scientists found traces of wheat DNA in a Stone Age site off the south coast of England near the Isle of Wight, giving an unexpected sign of contact between ancient hunter-gatherers and farmers who eventually replaced them.

The wheat DNA was dated to 8,000 years ago, 2,000 years before Stone Age people in mainland Britain started growing cereals and 400 years before farming reached what is now northern Germany or France, they wrote in the journal Science.

“We were surprised to find wheat,” co-author Robin Allaby of the University of Warwick told Reuters of finds at Bouldnor Cliff.

“This is a smoking gun of cultural interaction,” between primitive hunter-gatherers in Britain and farmers in Europe, he said of the findings in the journal Science.

…The find of wheat “will make us re-evaluate the relationships between farmers and hunter-gatherers,” he told Reuters.

There is more here, and the original research is here.  As I’ve said in the past, believing that early trade and globalization were more extensive than is usually believed is one of my “crank views.”

Assorted Sunday links

1. Buy and hold for eighty years.

2. Is this a full-body transplant, or a head transplant?  And what life on Titan might be like.

3. The correct link for meta-IRBs.

4. Orphan tourism may do harm.  And barter markets in everything.  And markets in everything perfectly spherical chicken egg edition.

5. What do we learn from data mining Indian food recipes?

6. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar update.

People, negative nominal interest rates aren’t just for Paco

Euro area negative-yield bond universe expands to $1.9 trillion

How are things in Denmark?  Here is Eva Christensen’s loan:

And then she was told again about her interest rate. It was -0.0172 percent — less than zero. While there would be fees to pay, the bank would also pay interest to her. It was just a little over $1 a month, but still.

Here is Paco.  Here is Bryan Caplan.

Why Leo Strauss is popular in China

Jamil Anderlini reports:

As China’s two-year-old anti-corruption campaign rages on, an article attacking a long-dead Manchu prince from the late 19th century has prompted frenzied speculation over the fate of one of the country’s most powerful Communist party elders.

For centuries Chinese politicians have used abstruse historical allegory to attack rivals without confronting them directly.

So when China’s top anti-corruption authority published an article on Wednesday afternoon detailing the evil deeds of “Prince Qing”, the internet went into overdrive with theories over who the real target could be.

By far the most popular guess is Zeng Qinghong, vice-president of China until 2008, right-hand man to former President Jiang Zemin and one of the most powerful politicians of modern China.

The FT story is here.