Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 517

California fact of the day

Data available from the UC Office of the President shows that there were 2.5 faculty members for each senior manager in the UC system in 1993. Now there are as many senior managers as faculty.  Just think: Each professor could have his or her personal senior manager.

And there is this:

A report on administrative growth by the UCLA Faculty Association estimated that UC would have $800 million more each year if senior management had grown at the same rate as the rest of the university since 1997, instead of four times faster.

What could we do with $800 million? That is the total amount of the state funding cuts for 2008-09 and 2009-10, and four times the savings of the employee furloughs. Consider this: UC revenue from student fees has tripled in the last eight years. The ratio of state general fund revenue to student fee revenue in 1997 was 3.6:1. Last year it was 1.9:1. If we used that $800 million to reduce student fees, the ratio would go back to the 1997 value. To put another way, it could pay the educational fees for 100,000 resident undergraduates.

Here is more.  For the pointer I thank David Colquhoun.

Assorted links

1. From the Swiss anti-immigration movement.

2. Caplan on Cowen on government growth.

3. Interfluidity on the UK, and a response from Richard Williamson, who notes the UK has not really started deleveraging, and from him yet some more.

4. Why does the caste system continue to survive in India?

5. Observations on whether or not you should finish books.

Is Africa the next big food trend?

Josh Schonwald says yes:

One night, after reading about sugar-cane drinks and fresh lobster skewers, I started cooking. I made a spicy okra salad, grilled shrimp piri piri and steamed vanilla pudding. The next night, Zanzibari pizzas—chapati stuffed with eggs, meat and spices. Later, I had a Mozambican seafood stew with Senegalese-style jollof rice. I started seeing it.

…As fast-growing African nations become more prosperous, they will develop something that is rare right now—a middle class with disposable time and income. Poverty, hunger, war and sickness are why Africans—from Cameroon to Mozambique to Namibia to Congo—have been unable to develop a baobab-infused vinaigrette.

I very much enjoyed Josh’s new food book The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food, and I can recommend it for its pro-science stance, its interesting speculations, and its excellent reporting.  My prediction, by the way, based on demographics, is that the next big food trend will be more from the Latino cuisines, fused with American ideas to appeal to the (North) American palate.  Chipotle is but one step in this direction.  Sadly, in my view most Americans have room for only a few foreign cuisines in their lives.  Thai and Indian are knocking on the door of Mexican and Chinese (all in their American versions), but I do not see new contenders for that throne.

Thiel’s Law

Thiel’s law: A startup messed up at its foundation cannot be fixed.

That is from the new section of Peter’s lecture notes, recommended of course.  To pose a simple question, how many other people are there in the world you would rather listen to?  Does that not mean Peter is one of the seminal public intellectuals of our time, albeit working through some non-traditional media of communications?

Hat tip goes to The Browser, which by the way is better than The Tatler ever was.

What Americans want

Ask Americans if they are willing to spend more to buy American-made products, and nearly half say they are often willing to do this. But in the latest Economist/YouGov Poll, the country where a product is made trails price, quality, and even convenience, as an important factor in consumer decision-making. The public gives even less importance to a product’s brand, its impact on the environment, or the political leanings of the company that produces it.

Here is more, and for the pointer I thank Bruce Bartlett.  Once again, here is Bruce’s new book on taxation.

Amy Finkelstein wins the John Bates Clark award

Sorry to be late on this one, but here is the AEA take on her contributions, many of which involve health care economics and the study of health insurance.  I am not sure she was considered an obvious front-runner from the beginning, but in my view it is an excellent pick (without intending any slight to the billions who were passed over).  She is trying to understand the real world, and she is showing that policy economics should not have lower status in academia.  Obviously her major areas of study are topical today.

She does, by the way, have several previous mentions on MR and in retrospect she should have more.  Sarah Kliff adds a bit more.

Assorted links

1. Expressive driverless cars.

2. Open letter to Peter Beinart.

3. Burgess reviews a book on Kripke.

4. More Neil Stephenson on innovation.

5. The handstand in the water, and the flip and hoops shot, best is the slow motion take, and finally high wind in Bilbao, do you really need to see the Guggenheim?

Sentences to ponder

And it may be more accurate to say that Vatican City ATMs previously offered a Latin option. According to @johnke, “they removed the Latin option with a software update sometime in late 2010/early 2011″.

Here is more.

More from Richard Williamson on the UK

Right now, unemployment remains at over 8% in the UK while real wages are lower than they were 7 years ago and are continuing to fall. Yes, you read that correctly. Which immediately leads one to ask: on this explanation of a recession as expounded by Karl, how much further do real wages have to fall to eliminate disequilibrium unemployment?

…I am finding the aggregate demand narrative an increasingly unsatisfying explanation of all that is happening in the British economy. Supply-side suffering is suffering too, and I think we need to take very seriously the chance that it is happening.

Here is his follow-up post.  Do note there is no deflationary downward spiral in the UK.  In a funny way, it is some of the more extreme Keynesian views which lead one to the most extreme stagnationist conclusions.  I know, fiscal policy, fiscal policy, fiscal policy.  But it can’t employ everyone forever.  What does the level of real wages need to be?

Alan Ehrenhalt is skeptical about the new Tysons Corner development, as am I

Some bits from his new book:

The original transit plan…was to place the subway line underground.  That didn’t happen….So rail transit will come to Tysons in the form of a seventy-foot-high elevated track along Route 123 [TC: does he mean Route 7?], with disembarking passengers required to go down to the street and then climb back up a bridge to get to the plaza and the towers.  It’s not exactly the best way to signal the presence of an urban village.

…the hardest part…is the grid…retrofitting seventeen hundred acres of suburban asphalt with a network of walkable streets will be an enormous challenge…The plain truth is that nobody has ever done this before — not on the scale that is being called for at Tysons Corner.

…The residential, retail, and office developers had all delayed their plans for the new walkable city,  a casualty of the national bank lending crunch and a glut of suburban office space.  But the county board had just reaffirmed its support for the entire project, residential towers, gridded streets, and all.

Ehrenhalt does suggest that Tysons has a very good chance of succeeding as “retrofitted suburbia,” but not as a “green pedestrian oasis.”

Here is my previous post on the Ehrenhalt book.