Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 601

Murakami's *1Q84*

That's the new Haruki Murakami book, due out in the U.S. in late October.  It's over one thousand pages and it was published originally in three parts.  My view of Murakami is that his later works are good but not special, and that his masterpieces are the early novels and also his non-fiction chronicle of the Tokyo gas attacks, Underground.  My favorite is Hard Boiled Wonderland the End of the World, which also should appeal to science fiction fans.

IQ84 has been a smash hit in Japan and the never-easy-to-please Germans very much like it too.  Here are other foreign reviews.  I have read the first 130 pages and believe it may well be his masterpiece.  It starts off with two dual stories, with what are recognizably Murakami-esque characters, but I won't say more than that.

Murakami's *IQ84*

That's the new Haruki Murakami book, due out in the U.S. in late October.  It's about one thousand pages and it was published originally in three parts.  My view of Murakami is that his later works are good but not special, and that his masterpieces are the early novels and also his non-fiction chronicle of the Tokyo gas attacks, Underground.  My favorite is Hard Boiled Wonderland the End of the World, which also should appeal to science fiction fans.

IQ84 has been a smash hit in Japan and the never-easy-to-please Germans very much like it too.  Here are other foreign reviews.  I have read the first 130 pages and believe it may well be his masterpiece.  It starts off with two dual stories, with what are recognizably Murakami-esque characters, but I won't say more than that.

Why does college cost so much?

David Leonhardt serves up a dialogue with Robert B. Archibald, and also David H. Feldman.  Archibald starts by citing the cost disease and also the heavy use of skilled labor in the sector.  I don't think they get to the heart of the matter, as there is no mention of entry barriers, whether legal, cultural, or economic.  The price of higher education is rising -- rapidly -- and yet a) individual universities do not have strong incentives to take in larger classes, and b) it is hard to start a new, good college or university.  The key question is how much a) and b) are remediable in the longer run and if so then there is some chance that the current structure of higher education is a bubble of sorts. 

I never see the authors utter the sentence: "There are plenty wanna-bee professors discarded on the compost heap of academic history."  Yet the best discard should not be much worse, and may even be better, than the marginally accepted professor.  Such a large pool of surplus labor would play a significant role in an economic analysis of virtually any other sector.

When it comes to solving the access problem, the word which pops up is "financial aid," not "increased competition."  Why might that be?

Matt Yglesias once had a good post on how innovation in higher education may come through the proliferation of cheaper and "inferior" alternatives; more on that here.

Assorted links

1. Prepare for health care ping pong.

2. Car insurance in Rio fell over 15 percent in price, in 2010 (Portuguese link, 37 percent in some cases).

3. Godless conservatives.

4. French commentary on TGS.

5. Which proposition is this story evidence for?

6. Ten Christian names which are not commonly used.

7. High-speed in rail in China may not be totally safe.

*How Measurement led to the Modern World*

That's the very good subtitle, the less interesting title is The Institutional Revolution, and it is a book manuscript by Douglas W. Allen.  Someone sent it to me in the mail.  The bottom line:

Once fundamental measurement problems were solved -- involving time, distance, weights, and power, among others -- it became possible to cheaply measure worker performance, input and output quality, and the role of nature, in areas of life that were unheard of before.  This ability to cheaply measure ushered in the world of modern institutions.

Pre-modern customs, in contrast, were all about dealing with trust, the need for direct supervision, and facing up to the enormous risks posed by nature.  The astute reader will note the influence of Yoram Barzel, one of the most underrated economists.

When will this book come out?

Bahrain no fact of the day

Bahrain's security forces are the backbone of the Al Khalifa regime, now facing unprecedented unrest after overnight shootings. But large numbers of their personnel are recruited from other countries, including Jordan, Pakistan and Yemen.

Tanks and troops from Saudi Arabia were also reported to have been deployed in support of Bahraini forces.

Precise numbers are a closely guarded secret...

Here is more, yet no numbers.  The implied prediction is that they are willing to shoot.

Sticky Budgets

It's not just prices and wages that are sticky, budgets are too. The Council on Foreign Relations points out that U.S. nominal defense budgets hardly ever fall. To get falling budgets as a percent of GDP (let alone falling real budgets) it helps to have inflation or real growth.

All hail (with a little public choice added in), Akerlof, Dickens and Perry.

Assorted links

1. Randian perspective on TGS.  And from SeekingAlpha.

2. Via Chris F. Masse, Arabs like Wikileaks.

3. Is lacrosse without helmets safer?

4. Do we opt for irrational war anyway?

5. Bizarre planned cities.

6. ZMP worker in Indian sumo wrestling.  And other ZMP workers, apparently.

7. Arnold Kling's Othello career.

8. The culture that is Yemen.

9. The gains from eliminating cafeteria trays.

How do most people split the rent?

I receive this question from readers fairly often, but I don't usually have much of an answer, or for that matter much experience (when I roomed with Daniel Klein, he and I split the rent evenly).  Now there is an interesting study.  There are 42 datapoints and definitely some selection bias, but it's better than anything else I've seen.  It examines for instance whether people first pick rooms and then set the prices, or first set the prices and then pick the rooms, or draw from a hat.  It measures which factors most affect the rent splitting, with "No door" and "Private shower" coming in first and second respectively.  The factor of importance for an apartment with the biggest standard deviation is size of the common area.  In the survey, personal space is what people are willing to pay the most extra for.  Opinions about the importance of windows have a high variance.

Here is their rent calculator, based on the above study.

Markets in everything the future of kung fu?

Today, however, temple officials seem more interested in building the Shaolin brand than in restoring its soul. Over the past decade Shi Yongxin, the 45-year-old abbot, has built an international business empire—including touring kung fu troupes, film and TV projects, an online store selling Shaolin-brand tea and soap—and franchised Shaolin temples abroad, including one planned in Australia that will be attached to a golf resort. Furthermore, many of the men manning the temple's numerous cash registers—men with shaved heads and wearing monks' robes—admit they're not monks but employees paid to look the part.

Over tea in his office at the temple, Yongxin calmly makes the case that all of these efforts further Buddhism.

As for some of the traditional styles, perhaps Baumol's cost disease is operating:

"There are no high kicks or acrobatics," he says. Such moves create vulnerable openings. "Shaolin kung fu is designed for combat, not to entertain audiences. It is hard to convince boys to spend many years learning something that won't make them wealthy or famous." He seems drained by the thought. "I worry that is how the traditional styles will be lost."

Here is much more, and for the pointer I thank The Browser.