Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 392

A query about MRU

Christina asks on Twitter:

@tylercowen neat! #loyalreaderrequest: a post about how you all think about which courses to add?

The first prerequisite is that the teacher be interested in the material and familiar with current debates.  A second issue is that it be readily teachable on-line, though I don’t think it is yet clear which segments of economics fit this bill.  My suspicion is that extreme narrative material (economic history, history of economic thought) or purely technical material (“what are the mechanics of covered interest parity?”) will do best here, but that is unproven to say the least.  (If that is right, why quality of coverage should be non-monotonic in degree of narrative is an interesting question.)  Third, we would like to cover most courses and most fundamentals of economics, in due time, so in part these are issues of sequencing rather than either/or issues of coverage or not.

We will have many more videos coming up today, and in addition to the four new classes we are working on some forthcoming classes too.  When using the new MRU page, you can go through the menus.  Alternatively, I use visual fields differently than do most people, so I find it easiest to scroll down the page to the “All Videos” section and simply view the entire menu of choice.  Up to you.

Assorted links

1. Austerity wine markets in everything.

2. Will Wilkinson blogs other stuff; “defamiliarization.”

3. It is legal to buy a tank and indeed there are “tank brokers.”  (Will there be a profession using tanks to discipline errant NYC nannies?)

4. The bottom line dilemma facing the Republican Party.  (Whoops, correct link here.)  And Matt on sequestration, and Josh Barro on sequestration.

6. Some kind of weird experiment with rats, caveat emptor.  And are special interests growing weaker?

MRUniversity New Courses!

We have four new courses at MRUniversity and a brand new design! The new courses are

The Euro Crisis, a 90 minute mini-course over 3 weeks.
The Economics of Media, 4 hours over 4 weeks.
The American Housing Finance System, 15 hours running to June taught by Arnold Kling.
Mexico’s Economy, a 4.5 hour course over 4 weeks taught by Robin Grier.

You can find our more about all of the courses at MRUniversity. Lots of new features as well. After registering, for example, you can click the “Follow this Course” button on the main course page and receive weekly email updates on course content, video chats and what other MRU users are up to. We have also made it easy to add material by clicking the “User Contribution” section under the videos. There you can add videos, research, news and opinions related to the video. We’ll feature the best user contributions on our homepage.

Also do check out the new home page and be sure to scroll down to see The List, all of our videos released so far. And remember, all of our videos are freely available for non-commercial use. If you teach economics or related material feel free to assign a video for homework or try flipping the classroom!

Even more courses coming soon!

Finally, a big hat tip to MRU’s web guru and program manager, Roman Hardgrave, who has done a stellar job on the new features and design.

 

 

Watson the Spanish chef

In San Jose, I.B.M. plans to serve the assembled analysts a breakfast pastry devised by Watson, called a “Spanish crescent.” It is a collaboration of Watson’s software and James Briscione, a chef instructor at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan.

I.B.M. researchers have watched and talked to Mr. Briscione as he works, selecting ingredients and building out dishes. Watson has read those notes, 20,000 recipes, data on the chemistry of food ingredients, and measured ratings of flavors people like in categories like “olfactory pleasantness.”

Watson’s assignment has been to come up with recipes that are both novel and taste good. In the case of the breakfast pastry, Watson was told to come up with something inspired by Spanish cuisine, but unusual and healthy. The computer-ordered ingredients include cocoa, saffron, black pepper, almonds and honey — but no butter, Watson’s apparent nod to healthier eating.

Then, Mr. Briscione, working with those ingredients, had to adjust portions and make the pastry.

“If I could have used butter, it would have been a lot easier,” said the chef, who used vegetable oil instead.

Michael Karasick, director of I.B.M.’s Almaden lab, had one of the Spanish crescents for breakfast recently. “Pretty good” was his scientific judgment.

There is more here, including Watson on drug discovery (not just diagnosis) and Watson on complex data analytics.  Fascinating throughout.

The culture that is New York/Los Angeles? (nanny markets in everything)

Dr. Heller, or the Nanny Doctor, as she calls herself (she has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology), is a consultant for an age of anxious parenting, acting as a mediator of sorts for parent and caretaker, at a rate of $200 an hour. She draws from her experiences, both as a mother to two daughters under 3 (she is married to Matt Donnelly, a TV writer), and as a former nanny to clients like the director Stephen Gaghan and his wife, Minnie Mortimer, a fashion designer and socialite.

“I remember her solving a conflict with the kids, who were 5 and 6,” Ms. Mortimer said. “She had them calm down and use their ‘I’ statements. Our little girl said, ‘I don’t feel safe when you throw a Lego at my head.’ Our boy said, ‘I feel that throwing a Lego at your head is the only way to get your attention.’ She treated them with such respect and dignity.”

The article is here.  For the pointer I thank @DanielMoerner.

Jeffrey Sachs on Obama and discretionary spending

…the surprising truth is that from the start of his presidency Mr Obama has planned a steep decrease in discretionary spending as a share of national income.

Each year he has put a budget on the table. Each year that budget has called for a sharp decline in discretionary spending as a share of gross domestic product in 2012 and later years. His rhetoric about increasing public investments in America’s future has always been contrary to the budgets he has presented, though most of his supporters have been unaware of this contradiction.

The administration is now vigorously blaming the Republicans for the pending cuts. Yet the level of spending for fiscal year 2013 under the sequestration will be nearly the same as Mr Obama called for in the draft budget he presented in mid-2012. In fact, so deep were the proposed cuts in discretionary spending that the budget narrative made the surprising point that the president’s plan would “bring domestic discretionary spending to its lowest level as a share of the economy since the Eisenhower administration”.

Here is more.

Assorted links

1. Fish conformism, and one fish rebel (photos).

2. Thomas Edison State College, a results-only approach.

3. Marie Gryphon Newhouse has a new blog on think tank ethics.

4. Leading economists vote on raising the minimum wage.

5. Shadow banking in China.

6. How well was ARRA funding allocated?  By the way, here is another reason why citizens get frustrated and support methods such as the sequester.

Questions that are rarely asked

If companies are just “sitting on cash,” doesn’t that mean the “procurement multiplier” should be low? Or can you have it both ways?

That is from me on Twitter.

The smell test for an academic paper

As recently as the 1990s, you could pick up an academic paper in economics and by examining the techniques, the citations, how clearly the model was explained, and so on, you could arrive pretty quickly at a decent sense of how good a paper it was.

Today there are still many evidently bad papers, but also many more papers where “the bodies” are buried much more deeply.  There are many more credible “contender papers” where the mistakes and limitations are far from transparent and yet the paper is totally wrong or misguided.  For instance, it is easier to “produce” a novel and striking result with falsified privately-built data than with publicly available macro data, which already have been studied to death and do not yield new secrets easily if at all.

One implied prediction is that a small number of absolute frauds will do quite well professionally.  Another prediction is that having close (and reputable) associates to vouch for you will go up in value.  (How reliable a method of certification is that in fact?)  It may be harder for some outsiders to rise to the top, given the greater difficulty of those outsiders in obtaining credible personal certification.  What would you think of a new paper from Belarus, or how about Changchun, which appeared to overturn all previous results?

What else can we expect?

I do not think we are ready for an academic world where our smell test does not work very well.

Binyamin Applebaum on the sequester and government spending

It is a very good piece, and here are the parts citing me:

“People focus on the upfront cost and they don’t think through the whole timeline,” said Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University and an occasional contributor to the Sunday Business section of The New York Times. “You have to cut spending within the next 10 years anyway. It may be time to take some lumps.”

Of course there is a contrasting attitude that we can and will do this instead in the time of a rip-roaring recovery.  And:

 “It is cutting some of the best spending that government does,” Professor Cowen said of the cuts that would fall on the domestic side of the ledger. He said Congress should focus instead on cuts to military spending, farm subsidies and health care programs like Medicare that he regarded as ripe for reductions.

He said that military contractors and personnel might be able to find new jobs with relative ease, because unemployment rates are fairly low for well-educated workers; it is those with less education who are struggling most.

Of course the piece presents some other opinions as well.  It’s also worth noting that in 2008-2009 I argued repeatedly that fiscal stimulus should have concentrated more directly on propping up state and local expenditures, and that many of the other projects, such as high-speed rail, were a waste and would only temporarily boost employment if that.  In retrospect I believe that advice is holding up quite well.