Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 84
November 23, 2014
What can you infer from three Russian data points?
THREE times in the last 35 years, Russian military forces have crossed international borders – in Afghanistan in 1979, Georgia in 2008 and the Crimea earlier this year. As Simon Derrick, the currency strategist at BNY Mellon points out, each occasion coincided with a peak in the oil price. And each incursion was followed by a very sharp fall in the price of crude (see chart).
…If the previous episodes are any guide, oil has a fair way to fall.
That is from Buttonwood at The Economist, file under “speculative”…
Sewage Infrastructure
This Vice documentary on sewage in New York is actually quite interesting. I would enjoy the Richard Scarry book.
Hat tip: Connor.
China estimate of the day
…the evidence suggests that China was larger (in terms of purchasing power parity) than any other economy in the world until around 1889, when the US eclipsed it. Now, 125 years later, the rankings have reversed again, following decades of rapid economic development in China.
That is from Jeffrey Sachs, there is more here.
November 22, 2014
Claims about cetaceans (speculative)
…cetacean brain size, relative to body size, increased substantially about thirty-eight mill years ago when the odontocetes evolved from the ancient archaeocetes…
What drove these changes? It does not seem to have been the transition to an aquatic existence itself as that occurred about fifty-five million years ago and brains stayed at roughly the same relatively small size relative to body weigt as the archaeocetes made their gradual entry into the ocean. A better hypothesis is that the increased brain size of the odontocetes thirty-eight million years ago was driven by the evolution of echolocation. The early odontocetes had inner ear bones that were good at picking up high frequency sound, which suggests that they had developed a form of sonar. Lori Marino thinks “that echolocation came on line and then got co-opted for social communicative purposes.” In this scenario, the odontocete brains increased in relative size to deal with the acoustic information itself, as well as, perhaps, a new perceptual system based on the data from the returning echoes. But…the change may have been even more profound: “This may indicate that the large brains of early odontocetes were used, at least partly, for processing this entirely new sensory mode [echolocation] that evolved at the same time as these anatomical changes and perhaps for integrating this new mode into an increasingly complex behavioral ecological system.”
That is from the new and notable The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins, by Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell, previously covered on MR here. And here is my earlier post on the economics of dolphins.
Brazil (China) fact of the day
From 1967 to 1980, Brazil grew at an average annual rate of 5.2 per cent. Few would have predicted, then, that for the next 22 years per capita income would grow at precisely zero.
That is from David Pilling at the FT, who considers China as well. And here is part of the first comment on the article, from Danny Quah:
Success, by definition, means being different from the mean. For economic growth the quantitative implications of such success (or even apparent failure) are laid out in http://blogs.worldbank.org/futuredevelopment/chinese-lessons-singapore-s-epic-regression-mean. Sure China’s continued growth faces manifold obstacles but many of those problems are not insurmountable http://www.boaoreview.com/perspective/2013/1115/296.html
The pointer here is from Helmut Reisen.
The Bill Cosby Collection
It doesn’t sound quite right to still call it that, does it? In any case it is on display at the National Museum of African Art. At least two-thirds of the collection is lame and maybe a third or somewhat less is wonderful. Cosby for instance has excellent works by Jacob Lawrence, Horace Pippin, Minnie Evans, Henry Ossawa Tanner, (and here), Romare Bearden, some amazing quilts and textiles (try here too), and quality African ethnographic pieces. The works by lesser-known creators are mostly sentimental junk with lots of gloppy paint and hackneyed historical themes, or perhaps a maudlin portrait of some kind.
My hypothesis is simple: in any collecting area where price is a sufficient statistic for quality, Cosby did well by paying top dollar, or at least by letting himself be “mined” by his buyer agent, who probably had a financial incentive to pay top dollar. In any area where judgment was required, Cosby chose very poorly.
Here is one review of the show and the surrounding controversy. Here is WaPo coverage. What is the average moral quality of assemblers of art? How should we feel about the collection in the Louvre, the Prado, or for that matter art museums anywhere in Russia? Here is an article on how colleges and universities are responding to their involvement with Cosby.
The African Mosaic show at the African Museum is worth a visit as well. The Washington D.C. art exhibit scene is much worse than it was fifteen years ago, but right now the African Museum is the place to go.
November 21, 2014
The art sale gender pay gap
A Georgia O’Keeffe painting just sold for over $44 million, setting a new record for a painting by a woman; the previous record was for a Joan Mitchell painting auctioned for $11.9 million. A Francis Bacon once auctioned for $142.4 million, and so:
Despite the huge O’Keeffe sale, the cavern between the men’s and women’s records remains yawning. The gender pay gap is something like 84 cents to the dollar. The art sale “record gap” is now about 31 cents to the dollar. Before Thursday, it was 8 cents.
That is by Oliver Roeder, the full article is here.
The Great Zynga Reset
At companies where pampering employees has always been part of the culture, it is hard to stop if business turns sour. Zynga Inc. shares have fallen more than 80% since 2012 as the game maker struggles to find a follow-up hit to “Farmville.” Before going public in 2011, Zynga began serving lunch and dinner daily to its employees, using specialty ingredients like Japanese Kewpie mayonnaise and pinecone syrup.
A spokeswoman for Zynga, based in San Francisco, says the company ended free haircuts for employees earlier this year. She declined to comment further.
As perks get bigger and better, some employees figure they can ask for anything. One worker at Pinterest recently wanted the company to build a zip line to a nearby bar, while an Adobe employee asked the maker of Photoshop and Illustrator design software to buy a Slip ’N Slide for workday use.
The article, which focuses on perks in the workplace, is of interest more generally. For the pointer I thank Samir Varma.
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