Marginal Revolution

Alan Greenspan, RIP at 100

Tyler Cowen — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 13:01:35 +0000

Here is a NYT obituary. Here is a WSJ obituary.

The post Alan Greenspan, RIP at 100 appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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I hadn't realized that Alan Greenspan initially studied music ... by mkt42
He was a sax player at Juilliard? I had no idea. Wow. by CarlosLA
If he had outlasted Marv Levy, Dick Van Dyke and David ... by Peter
That certainly is a snarky obit from the Times. by PHomchick
RIP. The Man Who Knew is a good book (biography of Greenspan by ... by Tom Raus

California’s Gay Certification Program

Alex Tabarrok — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 11:18:16 +0000

Chris Rufo and Austen Hufford have a good piece on California’s Gay Certification program. Yes, you read that right.

In 1986, Governor George Deukmejian signed Assembly Bill 3678, which required certain CPUC-regulated utilities to submit annual “plans” for buying goods and services from woman- and minority-owned companies. Two years later, CPUC created its “Supplier Diversity Program,” which would enforce the law and set contracting “goals” for large utilities.

Under a series of Democratic governors, the program has expanded to include gay-owned businesses. In September 2014, then-Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation requiring CPUC to recognize “LGBT-owned businesses” as eligible for supplier-diversity benefits. Five years later, Governor Gavin Newsom expanded the program further, “encouraging” other companies involved in the energy sector to award contracts to gay-owned firms.

…This scheme raises an obvious question: How does a business qualify as officially gay? Paperwork. Supplier Clearinghouse, a group that certifies firms for the CPUC program, features a list of qualifications linked on its website. Applicants can secure certification by providing a letter from an “LGBT organization” attesting to their sexual preferences; proof that a newspaper identified them as “LGBT”; or three letters from “personal contacts” written “on company letterhead” attesting to their homosexual orientation. Corporate officials who “falsely represent” their business as gay face up to a year in county jail.

So there you have it. Under the logic of ever increasing privileges for pretty much anyone except white males we now certify whether someone is gay or not.

This is an economics blog, however, so let’s turn from the culture war and ask, following Luke Froeb at Managerial Economics, what these set-asides cost the taxpayer:

A set-aside moves price through two separate channels, and they push the same direction.

First, it shrinks the number of bidders, so the second-lowest cost is higher (or the second-highest value is lower).

Second, the set-aside bidders themselves may be higher-cost or lower-value than the bidders they replace.

Both channels move price against the government….The lesson applies to California. Fewer, weaker bidders mean a worse deal for the government.

Brannman and Froeb estimate that set asides for small businesses reduce revenues in timber auctions by 15%, a substantial amount.

Addendum: It is worth noting that optimal auction theory tells us that it can sometimes be in the seller’s interest to handicap a strong bidder in order to make them increase their bids. Thus, in theory, an “affirmative action” program (not a set-aside) that deemed a bid from a minority firm as say 5% higher (so a minority bid at 100 can beat a non-minority bid at 104) could raise revenues. Note, however, that this optimal auction story only works when the minority firm loses the bid! In practice, even these sorts of schemes are money losers for the taxpayer.

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In reply to Hazel Meade. To be Constitutional, I think you'd ... by Gilligan
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With Trump, the crazy is idiosyncratic. With Democrats, the ... by Keith
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Scotland facts of the day

Tyler Cowen — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 07:09:26 +0000

By one metric there are 841,000 practicing Catholics in Scotland, with 184,283 attending Mass regularly. That puts Catholics as far outnumbering Protestants in Scotland, for the first time since the Reformation.

Between 2012 and 2022, the number of obese adults in Scotland rose 46 percent, to comprise about one-third of the population.

In 1950, 76 percent of Scots age 16 or older were married, now it is about 45 percent.

All those details are from the new and fun book by Alistair Moffat, To See Ourselves: A Personal History of Scotland Since 1950. From these tidbits I conclude that “Scotland as we knew it” is not just evolving, but also disappearing.

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In reply to Fergus. That's crazy talk. Everyone knows they're ... by Elad
Seems nicer, if not much changed, than in the era of ... by M
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What I’ve been reading

Tyler Cowen — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 04:59:04 +0000

1. Allison Schrager is very good, including her new book Worth the Risk: The Seven Myths that Keep Us from Taking the Chances We Need to Take.

2. Dialogues of Confucius, translated and edited by Brian Buya and Wenwen Li. It seems these works, once considered doubtful in provenance, are likely by Confucius after all? So this is an epic volume of real import. But does it raise my opinion of Confucius as a thinker? No.

3. I liked all of Thomas F. Madden’s The Fall of Republics: A History from Ancient Carthage to the American Constitution, but most of all the section on Venice.

4. Frank Callanan, James Joyce: A Political Life. An excellent book, and it truly induces us to revalue Joyce and understand him in a new light. Joyce was in fact highly politically conscious, heavily influenced by Parnellism, and in part writing a critique of Irish nationalism from an internal perspective.

4. Alastair Reynolds, “Zima Blue,” one of the better short stories about AI, and also aesthetics. Via R.

5. Justin Gest, Democratic Drain: Global Migration and the Struggle for Democracy is a political economy argument that widespread immigration can drain home countries of their democracy supporters to some extent.

Daniel Susskind, What Should My Children Do?: How to Flourish in the Age of AI is a book that needed to be written.

Melissa S. Kearney and Luke Pardue, editors. Demographic Headwinds: The Economic Consequences of Lower Birth Rates and Longer Lives. A short volume, to the point, worry is in order.

And there is Jeremy A. Simmons, Sea of Treasures: A Cultural History of Ancient Indian Ocean Trade.

The post What I’ve been reading appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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In reply to RAD. More dragon wisdom. by RAD
In reply to RAD. Sci-fi special: Margaret Atwood | New ... by RAD
Madden's books on Venice (“a New History”) and Istanbul ... by Michael Tinkler
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Bastiat’s telephone?

Tyler Cowen — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 19:09:27 +0000

Oakland has seen a 37% decrease in car break-ins over the last year.
What’s good news for car owners is less so for repair shops that specialize in window and windshield replacements.
Multiple businesses have reported a sharp decline in their income as a result.

Here is the article, via Air Genius Gary Leff.

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In reply to skeptic. Once the dollar value of the operation ... by Old Programmer
BAN CARS ASAP. by Patrick
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Hazlett's Broken Window fallacy just won't die. by Brian Villanueva
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Sunday assorted links

Tyler Cowen — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 16:00:58 +0000

1. “Cuba se abre al capitalismo y aprueba su mayor reforma en décadas: banca privada, mercado de cambios y fin de los subsidios.”

2. Short TV clip of me on the Brazilian economy.

3. Patrick Collison on Paris.

4. “Thrilled to announce the inaugural cohort of the 1991 Fellowship @mercatus. Meet some of the most talented and creative minds working on challenging policy problems at the state level in India.” Link here.

5. AI has won another literary prize.

6. Roon on worship. Roon is one of our best thinkers.

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In reply to Nick. I find it endearing. Love the style. I also ... by rocketmango
In reply to inacaféonspiridonovka. The French quit the 1940 ... by Kaz Stanczak
He writes, “central Paris is unique for the fraction of its ... by inacaféonspiridonovka
In reply to RAD. Indeed, as if Bay of Pigs, Missile Crisis ... by Axa
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Labor market effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Tyler Cowen — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 06:53:30 +0000

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 represents the most significant reform of the U.S. income tax code since the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Previous analyses of the TCJA’s economic impact often rely on estimates based on data prior to the enactment of the legislation. This paper leverages plausibly exogenous variations in state-level tax changes brought about by the TCJA and employs local projections with two-way fixed effects to examine its effects on the labor market. Measures of TCJA tax shocks are constructed with the NBER-TAXSIM model using state-level tabulations of individual income tax returns from the Statistics of Income (SOI). Our findings suggest that tax cuts amounting to 1 percent of Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) under the TCJA are associated with a 0.7–1 percentage point increase in the labor force participation rate (LFPR) and a 0.8–1.5 percent increase in payroll employment over the two years following the TCJA’s implementation. These results appear broadly robust to assumptions about heterogeneous state responses and the inclusion of interactive fixed effects.

That is from a newly published article by Anil Kumar. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.

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Music markets remain deglobalized

Tyler Cowen — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 05:10:46 +0000

It might seem surprising, in a world of global stars, that the 6m Danes, many of whom are fluent in English, listen mainly to homegrown music. And until fairly recently they did not. In 2019 only five songs in Denmark’s top 20 were in Danish. By last year the figure was 18.

A similar trend is under way in other countries—and in other forms of entertainment. From Asia to the Americas, music charts are increasingly dominated by local sounds. Hollywood television-streaming companies are commissioning more local productions in foreign markets, causing consumption of American shows to fall. Social networks are connecting the whole world, but so far people are mainly using them to consume local content. And as video gaming expands, it too is becoming increasingly tailored to local cultures…

In 2023 Will Page and Chris Dalla Riva noted in a London School of Economics paper that a number of European countries including France, Germany, Italy and Poland had seen rising domestic shares of their top tens in the preceding decade. Since then the phenomenon seems to have spread. Mr Page, formerly chief economist at Spotify, finds that 55% of streams of songs in Sweden’s top 20 last year were in Swedish, up from 29% in 2019. Norway’s figure rose from 13% to 38% in the same period.

That is from The Economist, and of course it echoes themes from my earlier Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures. And Brazil most of all?

Latin America has gone the same way (see chart 1), Brazil astonishingly so: in the first week of June 96 of the top 100 artists on YouTube Music in the country were Brazilian (foreigners included Justin Bieber and Michael Jackson). Last year Thailand had a solidly local top ten, while Indonesia and the Philippines each had eight local tracks in their respective charts; Nigeria’s top ten were all local, as were nine of South Africa’s, according to the IFPI, which represents the recorded-music industry.

The same trends are happening for television as well, albeit less radically.

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Extra… extra…: “Libertarian Economist Discovers Culture ... by Brian Villanueva
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My aesthetics podcast with Benjamin Lima

Tyler Cowen — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 17:57:03 +0000

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0HBFWS1avb6tYY1IoLefYb

Web: https://athenaeumreview.org/podcast/aesthetics-a-conversation-with-tyler-cowen/

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/aesthetics-a-conversation-with-tyler-cowen/id1509089416?i=1000773451248

Here is basic information about art scholar Benjamin Lima, it was great fun for me to do this one.

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In reply to Indoor Camping. 1) Great comment – applies to ... by dmcharette
This New Aesthetics thing is good, my main concern is that it ... by luzh
Enjoyed throughout but Ben needs to be more courageous and ... by Imtiaz
I would put Antonio Lopez Garcia above Kentridge, Kiefer, ... by Benjamin
Huge admirer of Ben Lima. When someone as revered as Tyler ... by Indoor Camping

Cuba

Alex Tabarrok — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 16:17:05 +0000

The Miami Herald

Some of the most impactful measures announced by Cuba’s Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Thursday include allowing:

Private and foreign capital to purchase and sell fuel

The creation of private corporate banking

Private business owners to own more than one company and hire more than 100 workers

Private businesses in agriculture and tourism

Tourism property sales, evaluated case-by-case, for Cubans resident in the country and abroad

Foreign investors to hire workers directly

Foreign investment in Old Havana and other tourist spots, in state telecom ETECSA data centers, mobile networks, and other digital infrastructure

The extension of surface rights up to 99 years and leases up to 50 years for foreign investments

Real estate development in tourism

Farmland lease rights for an “indefinite period”

Wholesale and retail trade without limits by foreign entities

The sale of state assets and state companies’ shares to the private sector and foreign companies.

Taken together, the reforms proposed significantly expand the private sector six decades after Cuba’s communist leaders forbade all private business—even frita stands— and adopted a centrally planned economy model that ended up ruining the country and dragging Cubans into a severe humanitarian crisis. Currently, the government is in such dire straits that it is even seeking to transfer the management of the country’s zoos and aquariums to private hands, another announced change.

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Saturday assorted links

Tyler Cowen — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 15:57:22 +0000

1. Do weird corporate governance structures work well?

2. Are elite economists overpaid? Elite economists conclude no.

3. Dialog.

4. Are you in the weights?

5. Inside the world’s first AI art museum (Los Angeles).

6. Redux of my 2023 post on AI and existential risk.

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The Free Press summer reading list

Tyler Cowen — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 06:58:54 +0000

I was asked to nominate so here goes:

Free Press columnist Tyler Cowen picks a biography of one of the finest poets of the 20th century, Paul Celan: A Life, by Anna Arno.

Could Celan be the very best poet of all time? When read in the German language, I think he might be. When read in English, he is still very good. No one has a poetic topic of more importance than the Holocaust. Contrary to Theodor Adorno, he decided it was possible to write poetry after it, and he took that mission very seriously.

Now we finally have a first-rate biography. Celan’s mother was killed in the Holocaust, and he took his own life in 1970, drowning himself in the Seine. How did he get to that point? How did he have the strength and wherewithal to write such powerful poetry in the first place?

I found this book gripping from start to finish. Given the topic I cannot call it a “fun” read, but it is absorbing and the translation is very accessible.

Is it possible that Anna Arno is one of our best intellectuals today? She has written on the German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker and the Polish writer and activist Konstanty Jeleński, and has done important work as a translator, including of Henry James—though those works are in Polish, and thus inaccessible to me. Can we get translations as soon as possible? In the meantime, you can start with this one.

The article has many other quality selections as well.

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Adrian Wooldridge on Sweden and liberalism

Tyler Cowen — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 05:07:06 +0000

Sweden is continuing to reap the rewards of this mixture of fiscal rectitude and pro-market reforms. GDP is projected to grow by 1.8% to 1.9% this year; headline inflation stands at 1.5%; debt-to-GDP ratio is one of the lowest in the world, at just above 35%.

There are some flies in this ointment, of course: The economy has recently endured a bout of stagnation, unemployment is at an uncomfortably high 9.4% and Sweden has one of Europe’s highest rates of household debt. But the business environment is healthy, particularly when it comes to business to business. Sweden has a diversified business scene — the highest number of unicorns per capita in Europe, with notable successes such as Spotify, but also a healthy manufacturing and engineering sector. Many of these established companies are thriving because of a surge in demand for both server farms and military equipment…

Sweden has recently experienced its first net emigration in 50 years, thanks to higher minimum wages for labor visas, tougher citizenship tests and, most controversially, financial payouts of up to $37,000 for refugees who volunteer to leave. It has also made progress against violent crime in the immigrant-heavy suburbs, increasing police numbers and toughening the penal code, including a boost to stop-and-search powers and a lowering in the age of criminal responsibility to 14. The number of shootings fell by 63%, from 390 in 2022 to 147 by the end of 2025.

Here is the full Bloomberg column. And here is Adrian’s new book on liberalism, self-recommending.

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The notion that immigration is an unqualified good is ... by Anti-Gnostic
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Important committees in history

Tyler Cowen — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 20:04:51 +0000

Robin Hanson queries:

Missing book: Glorious Committees of History, on great committees that accomplished great things as committees.

GPT Pro has an impressive response, here is the start:

1. The King James Bible translation companies. This is maybe the purest literary example: 47 scholars organized into six companies at Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge, with review procedures, producing one of the monuments of English prose. The committee form mattered because it blended scholarship, doctrinal acceptability, and a shared ear for cadence.

And Henry Oliver suggests The Great Exhibition?

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