In an important new paper, Can Education be Standardized? Evidence from Kenya, Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Anthony Keats, Michael Kremer, Isaac Mbiti and Owen Ozier evaluate Bridge International schools using a large randomized experiment. Twenty five thousand Kenyan students applied for 10,000 scholarships to Bridge International and the scholarships were given out by lottery. Kenyan pupils who won […]
Marty Weitzman passed away suddenly yesterday. He was on many people’s shortlist for the Nobel. His work is marked by high-theory applied to practical problems. The theory is always worked out in great generality and is difficult even for most economists. Weitzman wanted to be understood by more than a handful of theorists, however, and …
As I continue to do Conversations with Tyler, more people ask me about “the Tyler Cowen production function.” Well, here is one piece of it I don’t think I’ve written about or talked about before. I’m going to bring you there in slightly long-winded fashion, long-winded for a blog post that is. I’ve long been …
Let’s assume, for purposes of argument, that basically all of the complaints about social media are correct. Then let’s also imagine, as Matt Yglesias periodically suggests on Twitter, that Facebook is shut down altogether, toss in Twitter and the others as well. What would happen? One possibility is that America would move toward a Chinese-style …
That is the title of my latest Bloomberg column, here is the opening bit: Every now and then, a few apparently random news events come together and influence how you see the world. My most recent lesson is that blackmail and blackmail risk are a lot more common than I had thought. And: …the main …
Here is her NYT piece, I’ll go through her four main solutions, breaking up, paragraph by paragraph, what is one unified discussion: What would a genuine legislative remedy look like? First, personalized data collection would be allowed only through opt-in mechanisms that were clear, concise and transparent. There would be no more endless pages of …
That is the title of a new and interesting short essay by Arthur Waldron, here is one interesting bit of many: Since the attack on Scarborough Shoal, now six years ago, my own opinion is that China expected to have occupied a lot more. Her slightly delusional view of her claims, first made explicit in …
I’ve been guilty of this too, and I apologize. It strikes me that it has become politically acceptable among some of the high status people in my Twitter feed to make fun — if only implicitly — of the ugly, idiosyncratic, puzzled, sweaty, or otherwise mockable images sometimes presented by members of the Trump administration. …
There are two striking facts about China. First, the country is quite large. Second, the country was remarkably large early in its history, compared to most other political units. For instance, here is China in 200 AD: How did this happen? Or consider a modern version of the puzzle: currently there are over one billion …
It’s long been known that the Chinese government hires people to support the government with fabricated posts on social media. In China these people are known as the “50c party”, so called because the posters were rumored to be paid 50 cents (5 jiao or about $.08) to write the posts. The precise nature and extent …
Here is one bit: Trump’s critics complain about his relentless invoking of crisis — despite agreeing with him that the system is collapsing. Conservatives keep telling us that the American project is in mortal danger, that liberty itself is at stake. Liberals keep telling us that global capitalism is wrecking everything that’s decent in society, …
That question came up briefly in my chat with Cass Sunstein, though we didn’t get much of a chance to address it. In the Star Trek world there is virtual reality, personal replicators, powerful weapons, and, it seems, a very high standard of living for most of humanity. The early portrayals of the planet Vulcan …
This is a lengthy email from an MR reader who wishes to remain anonymous. These are his words, not mine, everything which follows: Back in December I asked you knew of any naive measures of “gun murders / # of civilian guns” per country, and seeing where the US falls in this distribution. Some time …
WSJ: In the 1960s the future of aviation seemed bright. In 1958 Boeing had built its first jetliner, the 707, which cruised at speeds of up to 600 mph. The Concorde came along in 1969, flying at Mach 2—more than 1,500 mph. An age of affordable supersonic flight seemed inevitable, promising U.S. coast-to-coast travel in …
