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January 30, 2013

Frank Hahn has passed away

Here is a short notice, via Peter Boettke.  Here is Wikipedia on Hahn.

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Published on January 30, 2013 04:52

Medical Self Defense

Americans have historically put great weight on the right of self-defense which is one reason why many people support the 2nd Amendment, as the Supreme Court noted explicitly in District of Columbia v. Heller. But what about medical self-defense? John Robertson argues:


A person can buy a handgun for self-defense but cannot pay for an organ donation to save her life because of the National Organ Transplantation Act’s (NOTA) total ban on paying “valuable consideration” for an organ donation. This article analyzes whether the need for an organ transplant, and thus the paid organ donations that might make them possible, falls within the constitutional protection of the life and liberty clauses of the 5th and 14th amendments. If so, government would have to show more than a rational basis to uphold NOTA’s ban on paid donations.


Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has rejected medical self-defense arguments for physician assisted suicide and let stand an appeals court ruling that patients do not have a right to access drugs which have not yet been permitted for sale by the FDA (fyi, I was part of an Amici Curiae brief for this case). Robertson argues, however, that these cases can be distinguished. Physician assisted-suicide doesn’t fall within a long-American tradition necessary to receive due-process rights and organ transplants are not untested or experimental. It’s a good argument although it’s disappointing that the medical self-defense principle must be unjustly delimited.


Hat tip: Law, Economic and Cycling.

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Published on January 30, 2013 04:25

January 29, 2013

Predatory borrowing?

From Luigi Zingales:


In fact, the authors find that more than 6% of mortgage loans misreport the borrower’s occupancy status, while 7% do not disclose second liens.



…The authors provide some interesting evidence in this context. They show, for example, that the misrepresentation is correlated with higher defaults down the line: delinquent payments on misreported loans are more than 60% higher than on loans that are otherwise similar. Thus, the errors do not seem to be random, but purposeful.


What the authors do not find is also interesting. The degree of misrepresentation seems to be unrelated to the incentives provided to the top management and to the quality of risk-management practices inside these firms. In fact, all reputable intermediaries in their sample exhibit a significant degree of misrepresentation. Thus, the problem does not seem to be limited to a few bad apples, but is pervasive.


Here is more, and here are comments from Arnold Kling, who has extensive experience in this area:

 I cannot tell whether the borrowers defrauded the lenders or the lenders defrauded the investors who bought the loans. I always presume that it is the borrower instigating the fraud. However, Zingales says that the bankers should be prosecuted. He makes it sound as if the lenders would record a loan internally as backed by an investment property and report it to investors as an owner-occupied home. That would require a much more complex conspiratorial action on the part of the lender, and until I learn otherwise, I will doubt that it happened.
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Published on January 29, 2013 23:53

Sauce, goose, gander

A panel appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to review taxpayer-subsidized health insurance for retired government workers suggested the city [Chicago] could drop coverage to help erase a financial shortfall…


Phasing out coverage for most retired city workers would leave the bulk of retirees dependent on the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.


Here is more, and for the pointer I thank The Wisdom of Garett Jones.

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Published on January 29, 2013 19:11

The Tang Prize


Taiwanese businessman Samuel Yin has endowed a new science prize that not only gives bigger cash awards than the Nobel Prizes, but supports research as well. Individuals or institutions that have demonstrated what judges deem to be the most creative and influential research will receive about $1.36 million in each of four fields; an additional $341,000 will support recipient-proposed plans for research and talent development in related fields for 5 years. The combined $1.7 million tops the Nobel Prize, which for 2012 was about $1.2 million.


Announced at a press conference today in Taipei, the Tang Prize, named after China’s Tang Dynasty, which Yin admires as a golden age for Chinese civilization, will be awarded biennially for work in sustainable development, biopharmaceutical science, sinology, and rule of law.


Yin, who is endowing the Tang Prize Foundation with about $102 million, hopes “the prize will encourage more research that is beneficial to the world and humankind, promote Chinese culture, and make the world a better place,” according to a press release. Yin made a fortune in real estate, finance, and retail investments, and is worth about $3 billion, according to Forbes magazine. Academia Sinica, which oversees Taiwan’s premier research labs, will be responsible for the nomination and selection process. The first prize announcement is slated for July 2014.


The link is here and for the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.  This goes back to a discussion I have regularly with John Nye.  If you simply put up money — say for a new prize or even for a new university, and try to spend that money well — but don’t court the traditional markers of status per se, how far can you get?

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Published on January 29, 2013 09:34

The new music royalties

I’ve covered this before, but here is another update on a rapidly-evolving story in cultural economics:


Even for an under-the-radar artist like Ms. Keating, who describes her style as “avant cello,” the numbers painted a stark picture of what it is like to be a working musician these days. After her songs had been played more than 1.5 million times on Pandora over six months, she earned $1,652.74. On Spotify, 131,000 plays last year netted just $547.71, or an average of 0.42 cent a play.


Here is more, and you will recall that the streaming services don’t seem to be making money either.

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Published on January 29, 2013 07:19

January 28, 2013

A good start (the auction culture that is France)

The city of Dijon has just sold off half of its prized municipal wine cellar to help fund local social spending – including a bottle of 1999 Burgundy knocked down at auction for €4,800 to a Chinese buyer.


In total, the capital of the Burgundy region raised €151,620 from the “historic sale” of 3,500 bottles that were part of a collection built up since the 1960s, it announced in a statement on Monday.


François Rebsamen, the Socialist mayor who ordered Sunday’s auction, explained: “We have overall a good budget this year, but the social action spending of the city just keeps going up. There are more and more of our co-citizens who are appealing for social aid.”


From the FT, here is more.

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Published on January 28, 2013 21:54

This seems underreported

So I will link to it here:


Israel has admitted for the first time that it has been giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth-control injections, often without their knowledge or consent.


The government had previously denied the practice but the Israeli Health Ministry’s director-general has now ordered gynaecologists to stop administering the drugs. According a report in Haaretz, suspicions were first raised by an investigative journalist, Gal Gabbay, who interviewed more than 30 women from Ethiopia in an attempt to discover why birth rates in the community had fallen dramatically.


I’ve read through a number of alternative accounts and this seems to be true.  If you feel this is in error, however, please do give me another source to check out.

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Published on January 28, 2013 12:32

The culture that is Britain

Please don’t come to Britain – it rains and the jobs are scarce and low-paid. Ministers are considering launching a negative advertising campaign in Bulgaria and Romania to persuade potential immigrants to stay away from the UK.


The plan, which would focus on the downsides of British life, is one of a range of potential measures to stem immigration to Britain next year when curbs imposed on both country’s citizens living and working in the UK will expire.


Here is more, via Paolo Abarcar.  What would you put in such an ad?  As for precedents:


In 2007, Eurostar ran adverts in Belgium for its trains to London depicting a tattooed skinhead urinating into a china teacup.


On the other hand:


…the Home Office launched a guide to Britishness for foreigners who would be citizens which opens with the words: “Britain is a fantastic place to live: a modern thriving society”.

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Published on January 28, 2013 10:56

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