Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 427

What is the world’s most valuable media property?

Arguably it is ESPN, which is now valued at about $40 billion:

The reality is that there is not another media property in the world worth as much as ESPN because no media asset delivering content generates close to as much money. Wunderlich pegs the value of the Disney Channel, which is one of the most valuable channels and has the third highest affiliate fees, at $10 billion. It is even uglier in print. The current market value of the New York Times is $1.3 billion. The only media companies in the world worth more than $40 billion are News Corp. ($58 billion) and Comcast ($96 billion). The value of News Corp. is spread out among dozens of media assets, while Comcast derives most of its value from being a cable provider.

Assorted links

1. The Martha Stewart financial empire.

2. Nick’s overly generous thoughts on MRU.

3. Do any of us care about privacy?  A search engine that doesn’t track you.

4. Simon Wren-Lewis response on multiplier and zero lower bound literature.

5. On the new Ray Monk biography of Robert Oppenheimer.

A Pakistani view on the economics of Obama’s reelection

I am not endorsing this political and economic analysis, merely reporting it:

Many Pakistanis fear President Barack Obama’s re-election will mean a surge in America’s unpopular drone campaign, but for those making and selling US flags to burn at protests this could be good news.

Demonstrations against Washington’s programme of missile strikes against suspected al Qaeda and Taliban militants are common in Pakistan, and no protest is complete without a Stars and Stripes being sent up in flames.

Nadeem Shah, the owner of a flag business in Rawalpindi, the twin city of the capital Islamabad, said he expected more drone strikes — and more protests.

“Of course Obama has become stronger now and he will push his policies harder and there will be more drone strikes because he himself is stronger now,” Shah told AFP.

“When the drone strikes increase the protests against these strikes will also increase in Pakistan and it can have an impact on the flags and poster business.” Pakistan’s flag industry enjoyed a boom in September when a US-made anti-Islam film sparked weeks of demonstrations, almost all lit up with “Old Glory” being burned.

In Rawalpindi, US flags start at around 120 rupees ($1.25) but in Shah’s shop 1,500 rupees will get you a three-square-metre number in cloth.

The article is here, and for the pointer I thank A.H.

Arrived in my pile

Mark Harrison, Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease.  Here is a short related piece by the author.

The credibility of the gold standard

There is a new published paper from Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick:

Abstract:

We ask whether developing countries reap credibility gains from submitting policy to a strict monetary rule. We look at the gold standard era, 1880-1914, to test whether adoption of a rule-based monetary framework such as the gold standard increased policy credibility, focusing on sixty independent and colonial borrowers in the London market. We challenge the traditional view that gold standard adherence was a credible commitment mechanism rewarded by financial markets with lower borrowing costs. We demonstrate that for the poor periphery – where policy credibility is a particularly acute problem – the market looked behind “the thin film of gold”.

Here is the published version, and here, here is an earlier version, all with varying degrees of gatedness.

For the pointer I thank Rob Raffety.

The culture that was Russian math departments, part II

There is a newly published paper by George Borjas and Kirk Doran, entitled “The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians”, here is the abstract:

It has been difficult to open up the black box of knowledge production. We use unique international data on the publications, citations, and affiliations of mathematicians to examine the impact of a large, post-1992 influx of Soviet mathematicians on the productivity of their U.S. counterparts. We find a negative productivity effect on those mathematicians whose research overlapped with that of the Soviets. We also document an increased mobility rate (to lower quality institutions and out of active publishing) and a reduced likelihood of producing “home run” papers. Although the total product of the preexisting American mathematicians shrank, the Soviet contribution to American mathematics filled in the gap. However, there is no evidence that the Soviets greatly increased the size of the “mathematics pie.” Finally, we find that there are significant international differences in the productivity effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and these international differences can be explained by both differences in the size of the émigré flow into the various countries and in how connected each country is to the global market for mathematical publications.

The link is here, possibly gated, there are earlier and ungated versions here.

For the pointer I thank Stuart Harty.

The problem with federalism

Accountability doesn’t function so well in an ideological setting.  Here is a Princeton political science job market paper from Steven Rogers:

Theories of political accountability suggest that governing parties and their members should be electorally punished when they perform poorly in office. However, I find little evidence of this type of accountability in state legislatures. State legislative elections are not referendums on state legislators’ own performance but are instead dominated by national politics. Presidential evaluations and the national economy matter much more for state legislators’ elections than state-level economic conditions, state policy outcomes, or voters’ assessments of the legislature. Previous analyses of state legislative elections fail to consider which party controls the state legislature and whether voters know this information. When accounting for these factors, I discover that even when the legislature performs well, misinformed voters mistakenly reward the minority party. Thus, while state legislatures wield considerable policy-making power, elections are ineffective in holding state legislative parties accountable for their own performance and lawmaking.

Hat tip goes to Matt Yglesias on Twitter.

Childhood Autism and Assortative Mating

This paper (pdf) is from Hays Golden, who is currently on the economics job market from Chicago:

Diagnosed rates of autism spectrum disorders have grown tremendously over the last few decades. I find that assortative mating may have meaningfully contributed to the rise. I develop a general model of genes and assortative mating which shows that small changes in sorting could have large impacts on the extremes of genetic distributions. I apply my theory to autism, which I model as the extreme right tail of a genetic formal thinking ability distribution (systemizing). Using large sample data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, I find strong support for theories that autism is connected to systemizing. My mating model shows that increases in the returns to systemizing, particularly for women, can contribute significantly to rising autism rates. I provide evidence that mating on systemizing has actually shifted, and conclude with a rough calculation suggesting that despite the increase in autism, increased sorting on systemizing has been socially beneficial.

This is an important paper, though I would stress the generality of the result; autism and systematizing may or may not be the best applications.  If you are in some way genetically “extreme,” and suddenly better at finding/pairing with similar extremists, the numbers of that type in a population can rise relatively rapidly.  We now have a very clear and useful model of how that works.  One way to interpret this is to believe that the internet will, over time, increase human genetic diversity.

The culture that was Russian math departments

Here is a new paper (pdf) by Tanya Khonanova and Alexey Radul, entitled “Jewish Problems”:

This is a special collection of problems that were given to select applicants during oral entrance exams to the math department of Moscow State University. These problems were designed to prevent Jewish people and other undesirables from getting a passing grade. Among problems that were used by the department to blackball unwanted candidate students, these problems are distinguished by having a simple solution that is difficult to find. Using problems with a simple solution protected the administration from extra complaints and appeals. This collection therefore has mathematical as well as historical value.

For the pointer I thank Rahul R, a loyal MR reader.

Assorted links

1. New results on savings behavior and the very poor.

2. New My Bloody Valentine CD to come.

3. Megan McArdle on whether the GOP can overcome demographic hurdles, and sanity from Kevin Drum.

4. Free archive of 1920s jazz.

5. How Top Chef tricks you.

6. Overview of what is going on with Chinese regime change.