Marginal Revolution https://marginalrevolution.com/ Small Steps Toward A Much Better World Sun, 05 Apr 2026 15:46:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://marginalrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/cropped-MR-logo-thumbnail-32x32.png Marginal REVOLUTION https://marginalrevolution.com/ 32 32 42693868 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/good-sentences-9.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=good-sentences-9 Good sentences https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/953319170/0/marginalrevolution~Good-sentences.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/good-sentences-9.html#comments Sun, 05 Apr 2026 15:46:48 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=92772 This leads us to the next of Freud’s major contributions to neuroscience: his realization that cognition is, at bottom, wishful. That is from the new and notable Mark Solms, The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing.  This is a good book for people who underrated Freud, or think he is a mere […]

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This leads us to the next of Freud’s major contributions to neuroscience: his realization that cognition is, at bottom, wishful.

That is from the new and notable Mark Solms, The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing.  This is a good book for people who underrated Freud, or think he is a mere charlatan.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/good-sentences-9.html/feed 12 92772 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/the-ca-minimum-wage-increase-summing-up.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-ca-minimum-wage-increase-summing-up The CA Minimum Wage Increase: Summing Up https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/953306246/0/marginalrevolution~The-CA-Minimum-Wage-Increase-Summing-Up.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/the-ca-minimum-wage-increase-summing-up.html#comments Sun, 05 Apr 2026 11:21:43 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=92763 Two recent joint-papers Did California’s Fast Food Minimum Wage Reduce Employment? by Clemens, Edwards and Meer and The Effects of California’s $20 Fast Food Minimum Wage on Prices by Clemens, Edwards, Meer and Nguyen give what I think is a plausible and consistent account of California’s $20 fast food minimum wage. California’s $20 fast food […]

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]]> Two recent joint-papers Did California’s Fast Food Minimum Wage Reduce Employment? by Clemens, Edwards and Meer and The Effects of California’s $20 Fast Food Minimum Wage on Prices by Clemens, Edwards, Meer and Nguyen give what I think is a plausible and consistent account of California’s $20 fast food minimum wage.

California’s $20 fast food minimum wage raised wages in the sector by roughly 8 percent relative to the rest of the country but employment fell by 2.3 to 3.9 percent (depending on specification, median ~3.2%), translating to about 18,000 lost jobs. Food away from home (FAFH) prices in California’s four CPI-reporting MSAs rose 3.3–3.6 percent relative to 17 control MSAs. Falsification tests on Food at Home and All Items Less Food and Energy show zero differential movement—this is specific to restaurant prices.

What’s interesting is that the papers are independently estimated but the fit is consistent. The price paper uses Andreyeva et al.’s demand elasticity of -0.8 to convert the estimated price increases into an implied quantity declines: about 3.9–4.1 percent in limited-service and 1.7–1.8 percent in full-service. These align well with the employment declines of 3.2 and 2.1 percent estimated in the first paper.

The consistency tells us something about the mechanism. One thing we have learned about the minimum wage in recent years is that the pass-through effect is large and more of the employment decline is driven by pass through than by labor-capital substitution. In other words, prices rose, quantity demanded fell, and that’s what killed the jobs—not robots replacing workers. Not today, anyway.

In terms of welfare, the bulk of employed workers get an 8% wage increase, a small minority get disemployed. The big transfer was from consumers to workers. California has roughly 39 million residents, all of whom face 3.3–3.6% higher FAFH prices. The transfer is likely regressive — lower-income households spend a larger budget share on fast food specifically. So the policy effectively taxes low-income consumers generally to raise wages for a subset of low-income workers, while eliminating jobs for another subset. Your mileage may vary but I don’t see this as a big win for workers. We thought small increases in the minimum wage were absorbed–maybe some were or maybe they were just hard to estimate–but you can’t extrapolate the small  increases to big ones–the effect is non-linear. Big increases in the minimum wage start to bite.

As usual, when it comes to fast food there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Addendum: Clemens’s JEP paper continues to be the masterclass in how to think through minimum wage issues.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/the-ca-minimum-wage-increase-summing-up.html/feed 23 92763 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/sunday-assorted-links-561.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sunday-assorted-links-561 Sunday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/953293877/0/marginalrevolution~Sunday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/sunday-assorted-links-561.html#comments Sun, 05 Apr 2026 06:33:18 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=92762 1. Josefina Aguilar Alcantara, RIP (NYT). 2. Move abroad so you can default on your student debt (NYT). 3. History of golf course bunkers (WSJ). 4. Four reasons why possible aliens might make you more ambitious. 5. New learnings on octopuses and sex. 6. “They estimate roughly 90% of the tariffs have been passed through […]

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]]> 1. Josefina Aguilar Alcantara, RIP (NYT).

2. Move abroad so you can default on your student debt (NYT).

3. History of golf course bunkers (WSJ).

4. Four reasons why possible aliens might make you more ambitious.

5. New learnings on octopuses and sex.

6. “They estimate roughly 90% of the tariffs have been passed through to importers, with foreign exporters absorbing only about 10% of the cost by lowering their before-tariff prices.“

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/sunday-assorted-links-561.html/feed 41 92762 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/emergent-ventures-winners-53rd-cohort.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=emergent-ventures-winners-53rd-cohort Emergent Ventures winners, 53rd cohort https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/953290448/0/marginalrevolution~Emergent-Ventures-winners-rd-cohort.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/emergent-ventures-winners-53rd-cohort.html#comments Sun, 05 Apr 2026 04:52:14 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=92646 Elif Ozdemir, Ankara, align satellites. Lily Zuckerman, University of Austin (and NYC), painting and general career support. Benjamin Unger, NYC, AI to measure the performance of New York governments. Maarten Boudry, Brussels, to write a book on who is really for progress, or not. Allan Wandia, San Francisco, foundation models that learn directly from raw […]

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]]> Elif Ozdemir, Ankara, align satellites.

Lily Zuckerman, University of Austin (and NYC), painting and general career support.

Benjamin Unger, NYC, AI to measure the performance of New York governments.

Maarten Boudry, Brussels, to write a book on who is really for progress, or not.

Allan Wandia, San Francisco, foundation models that learn directly from raw experimental data.

Richard Ng, London, AI agents.

Jordan Unokesan, London, trust scoring for government contractors.

Alexander Griffiths, London, infrastructure policy and decisions.

Pio Borgelt, 17, Osnabruck, AI. 

Vedant Agarwal, 18, Cambridge UK, biosciences.

Chris Lee, Murietta, 18, CA, police recruitment.

Broderick Cotter, Austin, 17, finding the best materials for 3-D printing.

Jehan Azad, San Francisco, radar and UAPs.

Marius Drozdzewski, with collaborators, Berlin, German liberal periodical Aevum.

Ethan Galloway, London, 16, AI algorithms.

Keelan O’Carroll, Florida, happiness podcast.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/emergent-ventures-winners-53rd-cohort.html/feed 4 92646 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/economic-growth-and-the-rise-of-large-firms.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=economic-growth-and-the-rise-of-large-firms Economic growth and the rise of large firms https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/953266298/0/marginalrevolution~Economic-growth-and-the-rise-of-large-firms.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/economic-growth-and-the-rise-of-large-firms.html#comments Sat, 04 Apr 2026 18:18:49 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=92738 Rich and poor countries differ in the size distribution of business firms. This paper shows that the right tail of the firm size distribution systematically grows thicker with economic development, both within countries over time and across countries. The author develops a simple idea search model with both endogenous growth and an endogenous firm size […]

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Rich and poor countries differ in the size distribution of business firms. This paper shows that the right tail of the firm size distribution systematically grows thicker with economic development, both within countries over time and across countries. The author develops a simple idea search model with both endogenous growth and an endogenous firm size distribution. The economy features an asymptotic balanced growth path. Along the transition, Gibrat’s law holds at each date, and the right tail of the firm size distribution becomes monotonically thicker. The firm size distribution converges to Zipf’s distribution. The model also implies that policies favouring large firms can improve welfare due to the externality associated with idea search. Finally, the author extends the results obtained in the simple model to a general class of idea search models. Under common functional form assumptions, this model stands out as the only model within that class that is consistent with both Gibrat’s law and a thickening right tail.

That is by Zhang Chen, and a revised version will be appearing in Econometrica.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/economic-growth-and-the-rise-of-large-firms.html/feed 24 92738 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/saturday-assorted-links-555.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=saturday-assorted-links-555 Saturday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/953259419/0/marginalrevolution~Saturday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/saturday-assorted-links-555.html#comments Sat, 04 Apr 2026 16:14:47 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=92752 1. Nyege Nyege Tapes. 2. Does it help poets to be religious? 3. Martin Jay on Habermas. 4. U.S. prime age employment rate is near an all-time high.  For a different perspective, here is NYT on AI and the job market.  And new measures of AI task performance from MIT. 5. China’s AI education experiment. […]

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]]> 1. Nyege Nyege Tapes.

2. Does it help poets to be religious?

3. Martin Jay on Habermas.

4. U.S. prime age employment rate is near an all-time high.  For a different perspective, here is NYT on AI and the job market.  And new measures of AI task performance from MIT.

5. China’s AI education experiment.

6. Real retail U.S. electricity prices have fallen since 2010.

7. Compare ride-share prices.

8. Is Mandarin being Europeanized?

9. 2000 or so additional pages of Leibniz will be published.

10. The game theory of the NCAA EO.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/saturday-assorted-links-555.html/feed 70 92752 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/advice-for-economics-graduate-students-and-faculty-vis-a-vis-ai.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=advice-for-economics-graduate-students-and-faculty-vis-a-vis-ai Advice for economics graduate students (and faculty?) vis-a-vis AI https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/953228912/0/marginalrevolution~Advice-for-economics-graduate-students-and-faculty-visavis-AI.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/advice-for-economics-graduate-students-and-faculty-vis-a-vis-ai.html#comments Sat, 04 Apr 2026 07:03:17 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=92760 From Isiah Andrews, via Emily Oster and the excellent Samir Varma.  A good piece, though I think it needs to more explicitly consider the most likely case, namely that the models are better at all intellectual tasks, including “taste,” or whatever else might be knockin’ around in your noggin…I am still seeing massive copium.  But […]

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]]> From Isiah Andrews, via Emily Oster and the excellent Samir Varma.  A good piece, though I think it needs to more explicitly consider the most likely case, namely that the models are better at all intellectual tasks, including “taste,” or whatever else might be knockin’ around in your noggin…I am still seeing massive copium.  But the models still are not able to “operate in the actual world as a being.”  Those are the complementarities you need to be looking for, namely how you as a physical entity can enhance the superpowers of your model, or should I express that the other way around?  That might include gathering data in the field, persuading a politician, or raising money.  I am sure you can think of examples on your own.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/advice-for-economics-graduate-students-and-faculty-vis-a-vis-ai.html/feed 32 92760 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/how-should-you-change-your-life-decisions-if-we-are-being-watched-by-alien-drone-probes.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-should-you-change-your-life-decisions-if-we-are-being-watched-by-alien-drone-probes How should you change your life decisions if we are being watched by alien drone probes? https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/953224091/0/marginalrevolution~How-should-you-change-your-life-decisions-if-we-are-being-watched-by-alien-drone-probes.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/how-should-you-change-your-life-decisions-if-we-are-being-watched-by-alien-drone-probes.html#comments Sat, 04 Apr 2026 05:10:58 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=92757 I’ve asked a few people that question lately, and get either no answer or very exaggerated answers. Rep. Burchett recently raised the possibility of being terrified and not sleeping at night if UAPs are aliens.  But even if that is your immediate response, you need a more constructive medium-term adjustment to the new situation. One […]

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]]> I’ve asked a few people that question lately, and get either no answer or very exaggerated answers.

Rep. Burchett recently raised the possibility of being terrified and not sleeping at night if UAPs are aliens.  But even if that is your immediate response, you need a more constructive medium-term adjustment to the new situation.

One option would be to pray to the aliens as gods, but I do not recommend that.

Another option is to not change anything, on the grounds that the aliens (probably?) have not been interfering in earthly affairs.  Or if they have been interfering, they might be interfering in steady ways which are compatible with you continuing your previous life course.

That is mostly a defensible stance, but it hardly seems a true marginalist should make zero adjustments in light of the new and very radical piece of information.  If nothing else, you need to consider that other people will in time respond, and you will in turn want a response to their choices.

A third option is to write more about the aliens, so that when their presence is (partially?) revealed, you will rise in status and influence.

Should you buy more insurance?  But against what exactly?

Hold more defense stocks in your portfolio, if you anticipate more defense spending as the pending human reaction to the revelations?

Consume more?  Maybe.

The most plausible decision however is to slightly lower your level of ambition.  Consider a few of the core scenarios.

If the aliens go rogue on us and end it all, the efforts you might be making now will have been for naught.

If the aliens are here to cap the level of human achievement, for instance to keep us on Earth and prevent us from exploring the galaxy, yet without harm, you also can scale back your ambition a bit.  You do not need to invest so much capital in supporting the space program.  Most of your more local ambitions however should remain untouched.  You might even become more ambitious in keeping the Earth a safe place, since escape hatches are now less likely.  Alternatively, you might think the aliens are our “saviors of last resort,” but that too probably makes you less ambitious.

A more general Bayesian update is simply that human efforts, in the broader scheme of things, have lower relative marginal products than you might have thought.  The aliens apparently have lots of powers, at least if they managed to get here.  That too militates in favor of lowering your ambitions.  Conversely, if you start believing we are the only intelligent, agentic beings in the galaxy, arguably you should increase your ambitions.  There will be fewer outside forces to stop, limit, or reverse your efforts.

To be clear, in this Bayesian update large numbers of people still should increase their ambitions, since they were not optimizing in the first place.  But they should increase those ambitions slightly less than one used to think.  And in some areas, perhaps they should not increase their ambitions at all.

Finally, you should not decrease your ambitions a lot.  For one thing, you may need an ongoing high level of energy and ambition to deal with the changes that aliens — or even the perceptions of alien presence — will bring to earthly civilization.  Furthermore, since any alien-induced uncertainty about the future is very hard to model, most people will do best by simply continuing on their current tracks.  It makes no sense to start waving around a sword to scare off the alien drone probes.

Nonetheless, some of your more extreme ambitions should be carved back just a wee bit.  Sorry about that.

I guess it is a good thing nobody is watching then.

Addendum: For this post I am indebted to a useful lunch conversation with Robin Hanson, Bryan Caplan, and Alex T.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/how-should-you-change-your-life-decisions-if-we-are-being-watched-by-alien-drone-probes.html/feed 76 92757 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/nsf-update.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nsf-update NSF update https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/953216225/0/marginalrevolution~NSF-update.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/nsf-update.html#comments Sat, 04 Apr 2026 02:15:50 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=92761 The White House seeks to slash the NSF budget by nearly 55%, to $4 billion. The proposal also cuts all funding for the NSF division that funds research on the social sciences and economics. At an internal all-hands meeting on Friday, NSF leaders announced that they would dissolve the agency’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences […]

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The White House seeks to slash the NSF budget by nearly 55%, to $4 billion. The proposal also cuts all funding for the NSF division that funds research on the social sciences and economics. At an internal all-hands meeting on Friday, NSF leaders announced that they would dissolve the agency’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate based on the budget request, according to two NSF staff members who shared information anonymously in order to speak freely.

Here is the full story.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/nsf-update.html/feed 56 92761 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/my-email-on-nba-anti-tanking-rules.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=my-email-on-nba-anti-tanking-rules My email on NBA anti-tanking rules https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/953191388/0/marginalrevolution~My-email-on-NBA-antitanking-rules.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/my-email-on-nba-anti-tanking-rules.html#comments Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:55:29 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=92755 I fear that bad management is a recurring problem with those teams. So perhaps no system of incentives can fix that. I am not sure that bidding and superstar teams are so unpopular with the fans, especially as the NBA has become more international. Maybe ten superstars sell the league in any case, and you […]

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I fear that bad management is a recurring problem with those teams. So perhaps no system of incentives can fix that.

I am not sure that bidding and superstar teams are so unpopular with the fans, especially as the NBA has become more international. Maybe ten superstars sell the league in any case, and you want them to be on very good teams.

…The incentives system also has to be palatable and explicable to the very casual fan, which I think rules out some of the more complex options. If the fans are asking “is my team trying to win or to lose now?” the system is maybe already broken.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/my-email-on-nba-anti-tanking-rules.html/feed 42 92755 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/friday-assorted-links-566.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=friday-assorted-links-566 Friday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/953181995/0/marginalrevolution~Friday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/friday-assorted-links-566.html#comments Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:28:49 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=92747 1. Ben Yeoh on Measure for Measure. 2. How much is a badly damaged Gentileschi worth? 3. Sabine Hossenfelder on UAP evidence.  And a bit more. 4. New record as Indian painting auctions for $17.9 million. 5. On African urbanization. 6. South Africa banned TV until 1976. 7. Ping Pong Park, in France. 8. How […]

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]]> 1. Ben Yeoh on Measure for Measure.

2. How much is a badly damaged Gentileschi worth?

3. Sabine Hossenfelder on UAP evidence.  And a bit more.

4. New record as Indian painting auctions for $17.9 million.

5. On African urbanization.

6. South Africa banned TV until 1976.

7. Ping Pong Park, in France.

8. How do AI models respond to direct authoritarian requests?

9. Lynne Kiesling on which parts of economics will be repriced, as a result of AI.

10. How replaceable am I?  An agent takes on that question.  And another Karpathy idea.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/friday-assorted-links-566.html/feed 29 92747 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/the-presidents-fought-the-law-and-the-law-won.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-presidents-fought-the-law-and-the-law-won The President(s) Fought the Law and the Law Won https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/953165276/0/marginalrevolution~The-Presidents-Fought-the-Law-and-the-Law-Won.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/the-presidents-fought-the-law-and-the-law-won.html#comments Fri, 03 Apr 2026 11:21:49 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=92753 In our textbook, Modern Principles, Tyler and I emphasize that Congress and the President are subject to a higher law, the law of supply and demand. In an excellent column, Jason Furman gives a clear example of how difficult it is to fight the law of inelastic demand: …Today a given number of autoworkers can […]

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]]> In our textbook, Modern Principles, Tyler and I emphasize that Congress and the President are subject to a higher law, the law of supply and demand. In an excellent column, Jason Furman gives a clear example of how difficult it is to fight the law of inelastic demand:

…Today a given number of autoworkers can make, according to my calculations, three times as many cars in a year as they could 50 years ago.

The problem is that consumers do not want three times as many cars. Even as people get richer, they increase their spending on manufactured goods only modestly, preferring instead to spend more on services like travel, health care and dining out. There are only so many cars a family can own, but that’s not the case for expensive vacations or fancy meals. As a result we have fewer people working in auto factories and more people working in luxury resorts and the like.

These forces — rising productivity but steady demand — explain why the United States was losing manufacturing job share as far back as the 1950s and 1960s, long before trade became a major factor.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/the-presidents-fought-the-law-and-the-law-won.html/feed 75 92753 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/the-happiness-crash-of-2020.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-happiness-crash-of-2020 The Happiness Crash of 2020 https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/953148554/0/marginalrevolution~The-Happiness-Crash-of.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/the-happiness-crash-of-2020.html#comments Fri, 03 Apr 2026 06:35:12 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=92732 From the still-active Sam Peltzman: I document a sudden, sharp and historically unprecedented decline in self-reported happiness in the US population. It occurred during 2020, the year of the Covid pandemic, and mainly persists through 2024. This happiness crash spread across nearly all typical demographics and geographies. The happiest groups pre-Covid (e.g., whites, high income, […]

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]]> From the still-active Sam Peltzman:

I document a sudden, sharp and historically unprecedented decline in self-reported happiness in the US population. It occurred during 2020, the year of the Covid pandemic, and mainly persists through 2024. This happiness crash spread across nearly all typical demographics and geographies. The happiest groups pre-Covid (e.g., whites, high income, well-educated and politically/ideologically right-leaning) tend to show the largest happiness reductions. The glaring exception is marital status, which has consistently been an important marker for happiness. The already wide happiness premium for marriage has, if anything, become slightly wider. With both married and unmarried reporting large declines in happiness the country has become segregated: slightly over half-the married adults-remain happy on balance; the unmarried, nearly half, are now distinctly unhappy. I also show that across a number of aspects of personal and social capital post-Covid deterioration is the norm, including a collapse of belief in the fairness of others and of trust in the US Supreme Court.

Here is the paper, via the excellent Kevin Lewis.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/the-happiness-crash-of-2020.html/feed 55 92732 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/what-ive-been-reading-285.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-ive-been-reading-285 What I’ve been reading https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/953143010/0/marginalrevolution~What-Ive-been-reading.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/what-ive-been-reading-285.html#comments Fri, 03 Apr 2026 04:38:47 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=92662 1. Allister Sparks, The Mind of South Africa: The Story of the Rise and Fall of Apartheid.  This history book actually tries to explain to the reader how things were.  Oh such books are so rare!  (Why is that?)  Definitely recommended, written at the very end of the apartheid era which gives it yet another […]

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]]> 1. Allister Sparks, The Mind of South Africa: The Story of the Rise and Fall of Apartheid.  This history book actually tries to explain to the reader how things were.  Oh such books are so rare!  (Why is that?)  Definitely recommended, written at the very end of the apartheid era which gives it yet another angle of interest.

2. Nic von Wielligh and Lydia von Wielligh-Steyn, The Bomb: South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Programme.  I had been looking for a book on this topic for a long time, and finally I found the right one in a South African bookshop.  They did build six atomic bombs, almost seven, and this is the story of how that started and was later reversed.  Hundreds of pages of substantive detail, and I had not realized how much the conflict in Angola, and Cuban/Soviet involvement, was a major factor in the whole episode.

3. David Stuart, The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya.  We keep on learning lots about the Maya, and this is the best book to follow what has been going on.  Well-written and clear, and it does not numb your mind with details you may not care about.

4. Mark B. Smith, Exit Stalin: The Soviet Union as a Civilization 1953-1991.  I am seeing an increasing number of excellent books on what the Soviet Union really was.  This one is well written, broad in scope, and yet rich in detail, treating the covered era as a living, breathing time in human history.  It makes the time and place imaginable.  The book also goes a long way toward disaggregating different Soviet eras, rather than just the end of Stalinism.

5. Kevin Hartnett, The Proof is in the Code: How a Truth Machine is Transforming Math and AI.  A very useful book about the history of proving math theorems by computer.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/what-ive-been-reading-285.html/feed 16 92662 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/thursday-assorted-links-546.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=thursday-assorted-links-546 Thursday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/953084276/0/marginalrevolution~Thursday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/thursday-assorted-links-546.html#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2026 15:54:55 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=92740 1. The most important woman in Kant’s life. 2. Incentives matter?  Dealing with Iranian scientists (New Yorker). 3. “In the months that followed, US tariff policy changed more than 50 times, spanning rate increases, rate decreases, new product exemptions, and new product inclusions.” 4. The British minimum wage. 5. The next generation of books and […]

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]]> 1. The most important woman in Kant’s life.

2. Incentives matter?  Dealing with Iranian scientists (New Yorker).

3. “In the months that followed, US tariff policy changed more than 50 times, spanning rate increases, rate decreases, new product exemptions, and new product inclusions.”

4. The British minimum wage.

5. The next generation of books and publishing?

6. More Scott Sumner movie reviews.

7. How people actually use ChatGPT.  A massive new dataset from OpenAI.

8. They added a baby to the end of Tristan!???

9. Results on reproducibility.  And a simple visual, comparing different fields.  “Education” does not do great.  And the Nature link.  None of this should come as a surprise.

10. Resilient societies: a Mercatus call for proposals.

11. “There are now ten toilets in space.” (And the aliens?)

12. The anti-data center coalitions and their squabbles.

Lots to read and ponder in today’s links…

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/thursday-assorted-links-546.html/feed 74 92740