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Other People’s Blood | Online Only | n+1
Those who praise Volcker like to say he “broke the back” of inflation. Nancy Teeters, the lone dissenter on the Fed Board of Governors, had a different metaphor: “I told them, ‘You are pulling the financial fabric of this country so tight that it’s going to rip. You should understand that once you tear a piece of fabric, it’s very difficult, almost impossible, to put it back together again.” (Teeters, also the first woman on the Fed board, told journalist William Greider that “None of these guys has ever sewn anything in his life.”) Fabric or backbone: both images convey violence. In any case, a price index doesn’t have a spine or a seam; the broken bodies and rent garments of the early 1980s belonged to people. Reagan economic adviser Michael Mussa was nearer the truth when he said that “to establish its credibility, the Federal Reserve had to demonstrate its willingness to spill blood, lots of blood, other people’s blood.”
You want to be the boss. You probably won’t be good at it. — Harvard Gazette
There are only two things that are: One is IQ as measured by the Raven’s Progressive Matrices test, which measures general and fluid intelligence, spatial reasoning, problem-solving, etc. But the one that’s more interesting to me is a measure of what we call economic-decision-making skill, or the ability to allocate resources effectively, that my co-authors and I created in a different paper. We use that very same measure in this experiment, and we found that it is highly predictive of being a good manager.
Evidence of a slowdown is everywhere: Online lodging platform Airbnb Inc. plunged by a record after warning that growth in bookings is decelerating, even in the middle of the peak summer season. European discount carrier Ryanair Holdings Plc went from expecting a modest rise in air fares to warning they’ll be “materially lower” because of thrifty consumers. And travel platform Expedia Group Inc. said Thursday that it’s revising down its annual outlook for a second time this year.
New Fed Paper Finds Surging Home Prices Driven by Demand — Not Supply - Bloomberg
“Fluctuations in housing demand explain much more of the variation in home sales and price growth than do fluctuations in housing supply,” Elliot Anenberg and Daniel Ringo, both Fed board economists, write. “Fluctuations in demand explain essentially all of the variation in home sales, and 80% of the variation in prices, between 2002-2021.”
Acquisition of object-robbing and object/food-bartering behaviours: a culturally maintained token economy in free-ranging long-tailed macaques | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
The token exchange paradigm shows that monkeys and great apes are able to use objects as symbolic tools to request specific food rewards. Such studies provide insights into the cognitive underpinnings of economic behaviour in non-human primates. However, the ecological validity of these laboratory-based experimental situations tends to be limited. Our field research aims to address the need for a more ecologically valid primate model of trading systems in humans. Around the Uluwatu Temple in Bali, Indonesia, a large free-ranging population of long-tailed macaques spontaneously and routinely engage in token-mediated bartering interactions with humans. These interactions occur in two phases: after stealing inedible and more or less valuable objects from humans, the macaques appear to use them as tokens, by returning them to humans in exchange for food. Our field observational and experimental data showed (i) age differences in robbing/bartering success, indicative of experiential learning, and (ii) clear behavioural associations between value-based token possession and quantity or quality of food rewards rejected and accepted by subadult and adult monkeys, suggestive of robbing/bartering payoff maximization and economic decision-making. This population-specific, prevalent, cross-generational, learned and socially influenced practice may be the first example of a culturally maintained token economy in free-ranging animals.
Envy coupled with competition divides society into an upper and lower class, game theoretical study shows -- ScienceDaily
Game theory provides the mathematical tools necessary for the modelling of decision situations with several participants, as in Gros' study. In general, constellations in which the decision strategies of the individual actors mutually influence each other are particularly revealing. The success of the individual depends then not only on his or her own actions, but on others' actions as well, which is typical of both economic and social contexts. Game theory is consequently firmly anchored in the economy. The stability condition of game theory, the "Nash equilibrium," is a concept developed by John Forbes Nash in his dissertation in 1950, using the example of poker players. It states that in equilibrium no player has anything to gain by changing their strategy if the other players do not change theirs either. An individual only tries out new behaviour patterns if there is a potential gain. Since this causal chain also applies to evolutionary processes, the evolutionary and behavioural sciences regularly fall back on game theoretical models, for example when researching animal behaviours such as the migratory flight routes of birds, or their competition for nesting sites.
Even in an envy-induced class society there is no incentive for an individual to change his or her strategy, according to Gros. It is therefore Nash stable. In the divided envy society there is a marked difference in income between the upper and lower class which is the same for all members of each social class. Typical for the members of the lower class is, according to Gros, that they spend their time on a series of different activities, something game theory terms a "mixed strategy." Members of the upper class, however, concentrate on a single task, i.e., they pursue a "pure strategy." It is also striking that the upper class can choose between various options while the lower class only has access to a single mixed strategy. "The upper class is therefore individualistic, while agents in the lower class are lost in the crowd, so to speak," the physicist sums up.
Prizes for sobriety: As Washington meth use rises, this treatment is one of few that works | The Seattle Times
Here’s how the treatment works: You come in a few times a week, complete a urine test, and if it’s negative, you draw for a prize — at a trial McDonell is running in Wallingford, there are “small” prizes like shampoo or a toothbrush, “big” prizes like a coffeemaker, or rare “jumbo” prizes like a DVD player. The longer you’re sober, the more draws you get, but if the test comes back positive, the clinician says “see you next time.”
New theory derived from classical physics predicts how economies respond to major disturbances -- ScienceDaily
The concept for the new model is inspired by classical physics: Linear response theory (LRT) explains, for example, how electric or magnetic substances react to strong electrical or magnetic fields. This is known as susceptibility. It can be measured with special devices, but also be mathematically derived from properties of the material. "We show that LRT applies just as well to input-output economics," says Peter Klimek. "Instead of material properties, we use economic networks; instead of electrical resistance, we determine the susceptibility of economies, their response to shocks."
Visualizing economies
To make it intuitively understandable how economies work, scientists at the CSH employ an interactive visualization tool. It will be constantly fed with new data until the final version should represent the whole world economy.
The tool visualizes the various dependencies of countries and production sectors. "Users can change all kinds of parameters and immediately see the effects across countries and sectors," says Stefan Thurner. A preliminary version, showing Trump tariff effects on Europe, can be seen at https://csh.ac.at/ecores/
People who cunningly use cooperation and egoism are 'unbeatable' -- ScienceDaily
However, if one of the players was additionally enticed with a bonus, this player would turn into an extortioner in many cases. Despite the fact that the other player would keep trying to discipline them by refusing cooperation, the extortioner would resist and cooperate even less rather than more frequently over the course of the experiment. Extortioners were also shown to be most successful in the long-term, even in the experiment in which the potential bonus player was not predetermined.
Polarization in Poland: A Warning From Europe - The Atlantic
Unlike Marxism, the Leninist one-party state is not a philosophy. It is a mechanism for holding power. It works because it clearly defines who gets to be the elite—the political elite, the cultural elite, the financial elite. In monarchies such as prerevolutionary France and Russia, the right to rule was granted to the aristocracy, which defined itself by rigid codes of breeding and etiquette. In modern Western democracies, the right to rule is granted, at least in theory, by different forms of competition: campaigning and voting, meritocratic tests that determine access to higher education and the civil service, free markets. Old-fashioned social hierarchies are usually part of the mix, but in modern Britain, America, Germany, France, and until recently Poland, we have assumed that competition is the most just and efficient way to distribute power. The best-run businesses should make the most money. The most appealing and competent politicians should rule. The contests between them should take place on an even playing field, to ensure a fair outcome.
Government has no room to maneuver
the US government is slowly giving up its room for fiscal maneuver. Non-defense discretionary spending made up over 60% of the federal budget in 1962. By 2017, that figure has fallen to 15%, and it’s expected to continue its decline. As that share falls, I wonder how that affects the mindset of legislators, who anticipate diminishing responsibility for allocating funds. In absolute terms, the budget they control is still enormous. But I suspect that it takes away the initiative of US politicians: they can simply let the government go on autopilot, since their predecessors have already committed most available funds. If legislators no longer have room to identify new initiatives for spending, what is there to do except find new things to ban, and then argue with the other side?
America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning
The debt coming due, along with America’s over-stored suburbs and the continued gains of online shopping, has all the makings of a disaster. The spillover will likely flow far and wide across the U.S. economy. There will be displaced low-income workers, shrinking local tax bases and investor losses on stocks, bonds and real estate. If today is considered a retail apocalypse, then what’s coming next could truly be scary.
The Running Bubble Has Popped. (You Couldn’t Hear It in New York.) - The New York Times
“Back when you could enter a road race for $10 and you could enter a marathon for $25, the sport really had no appeal or very little appeal for for-profit businesses,” Stewart said. “But then we moved into an era where people would pay $85 for a half and $135 for a marathon. That’s when you really had all the for-profit groups, and it just transformed the model.”
Stewart specifically cited the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon race series, which put a heavy focus on the social experience of running events and charged high prices for it. (Fees for races in its 2017 Las Vegas race series are $79.99 for the 5K up to $179.99 for the marathon.)
Penny-wise, pound-foolish decisions explained by neurons' firing: Spending decisions influenced by adaptation in neural circuits -- ScienceDaily
The researchers discovered that the neurons' firing rates reset between the two sessions. In the first session the maximum firing rate corresponded to the option of two drops of juice, and in the second it corresponded to 10 drops of juice. In other words, the same change in how rapidly the neuron fired corresponded to a fine distinction in value when the range was narrow, and a coarse distinction when the range was broad.
"As we adapt to large values, we lose some ability to consider smaller values," Padoa-Schioppa said. "This is why salesmen try so hard to sell you upgrades when you're buying a car. Spending $100 to add on a radio seems like no big deal if you're already spending $20,000 on a car. But if you already have a car and you are thinking of spending $100 for a radio, suddenly it seems like a lot. They know that people don't come back and buy the radio later."
Civil, the blockchain-based journalism marketplace, is building its first batch of publications » Nieman Journalism Lab
Built on top of blockchain (the same technology that underpins bitcoin), Civil promises to use the technology to build decentralized marketplaces for readers and journalists to work together to fund coverage of topics that interest them, or for those in the public interest. Readers will support reporters using “CVL” tokens, Civil’s cryptocurrency, giving them a speculative stake in the currency that will — hopefully — increase in value as more people buy in over time. This, Civil, hopes will encourage more people to invest in the marketplaces, creating a self-sustaining system that will help fund more reporting.
America is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People
majority of the low-wage sector is white, with blacks and Latinos making up the other part, but politicians learned to talk as if the low-wage sector is mostly black because it allowed them to appeal to racial prejudice, which is useful in maintaining support for the structure of the dual economy — and hurting everyone in the low-wage sector. Temin notes that “the desire to preserve the inferior status of blacks has motivated policies against all members of the low-wage sector.”
Whole life
to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
"Exploration personality type" for beers, breads, coffees, toilet papers, washing detergents and yogurts
"If people show a particular shopping pattern for one product type, they tended to show it for the others as well," says lead author Dr Peter Riefer, who conducted the study for his PhD at UCL and now works at dunnhumby. "This suggests that people have individual 'exploration personalities' when they shop, which is really remarkable given how different the six products were. Over a timescale of many years, the rate at which people explore is remarkably stable -- people are always exploring at about the same rate. What we find is that within that stability there are these trends in exploration and exploitation."
Alt takes on unemployment
Yes, true: there are approximately seven million more Americans in poverty now than when Obama was elected. On the other hand, the economy under Obama has gained about seven times as many jobs as it did under Bush; even given the financial meltdown, the unemployment rate has dropped to just below the historical average. But, yes: the poverty rate is up by 1.6 percentage points since 2008. Then again the number of Americans in poverty fell by nearly 1.2 million between 2012 and 2013. However, true: the proportion of people who depend on welfare for the majority of their income has increased (although it was also increasing under Bush). And under Obama unemployment has dropped, G.D.P. growth has been “robust,” and there have been close to seventy straight months of job growth. But, O.K.: there has indeed been a “skyrocketing” in the number of Americans needing some form of means-tested federal aid, although Obama’s initiatives kept some six million people out of poverty in 2009, including more than two million children.
A very bad sign for all but America's biggest cities - Chicago Tribune
In the economic recovery of the early 1990s, 125 counties combined to generate half the total new business establishments in the country. In this recovery, half the growth has been generated by just 20 counties.
Twitter stops buying ping pong tables
Asked why Twitter stopped buying tables, spokesman Jim Prosser says: “I guess we bought really sturdy ones.” Twitter spokeswoman Natalie Miyake says: “Honestly, we’re more of a Pop-A-Shot company now,” referring to an indoor basketball game.
Is the tech bubble popping? Ping pong offers an answer, and the tables are turning.
“Last year, the first quarter was hot” for tables, says Mr. Ng, who thinks sales track the tech economy. Now “there’s a general slowdown.”
Putting for par is easier than putting for birdie
A study of over 1.6 million putts shows that professional golfers are significantly more likely to succeed in sinking a par putt than a birdie putt of equal distance and difficulty. Remarkable but true: If the average top golfer putted as well for birdie as he puts for par, he would make an additional $1.2 million a year.
Economists of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences speak out against the central bank’s “foundations” – Hungarian Spectrum
These purchases are nothing compared to the €700 million earmarked by the Hungarian National Bank from its profits for foundations to support the teaching of economics, outside of the regular channels of higher education. The Bank set up five such foundations named after Pallas Athena, the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill. A perfect description of Hungary today! The amount the National Bank allocated to teach economics is one and a half times more than the Hungarian government spends a year on higher education.
Even when not threatened, some bacteria specialize as antibiotic resistance
"It's costly from a metabolic standpoint for a cell to express the proteins that enable it to be resistant," said Mary Dunlop, assistant professor in the university's College of Engineering and Mathematics Sciences, and the paper's corresponding author. "This strategy allows a colony to hedge its bets by enabling individual cells within a population to assume high levels of resistance while others avoid this extra work."
Previous research has demonstrated that, when exposed to some antibiotics, all the cells within a bacterial population will use the protein cascade strategy, activated by a mechanism called MarA, to become resistant.
But the new study is among the first to show that colonies use the protein cascade strategy even when they are not under threat.
"This transient resistance, distributed in varying degrees among individual cells in a population, may be the norm for many bacterial populations," Dunlop said.
The sad economics of being famous on the internet | Fusion
We’re a two-person video creation machine. When we’re not producing and starring in a comedy sketch and advice show, we’re writing the episodes, dealing with business contracts and deals, and running our company Gallison, LLC, which we registered officially about a month ago.
And yet, despite this success, we’re just barely scraping by. Allison and I make money from ads that play before our videos, freelance writing and acting gigs, and brand deals on YouTube and Instagram. But it’s not enough to live, and its influx is unpredictable. Our channel exists in that YouTube no-man’s-land: Brands think we’re too small to sponsor, but fans think we’re too big for donations.
U.S. Payrolls Rise as Jobless Rate Drops to Six-Year Low
The last time payrolls increased at least 200,000 for as many months was a stretch that ended in March 1995.
