Instead of Amazon, I spent the past week browsing a new breed of websites known as “dopamine sites,” a trend that emerged in South Korea. These websites — like Dopamine Shop and FoodNeverComes — recreate the entire ritual of online shopping: You search for products, compare reviews, add items to your cart, enter a shipping address, place an order, and even track your delivery.

Then … nothing happens. No money changes hands. No package arrives.

Here is more from Itika Sharma Punit.  Via the excellent Samir Varma.

The post South Korean aspirational markets in everything appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• This reminds me of how alcoholics are told not to drink NA beer ... by Ted Craig
• Nothing new. Just another computer game. by bazza
• In reply to mkt42. And there's no application fee! by Dismalist
• In reply to Dismalist. If a student applies to one the most ... by mkt42
• In reply to dmcharette. I almost never track my orders, but ... by mkt42
• Plus 3 more...

Related Stories

• Is Lichtenstein an actual monarchy?
• How are the market valuations for the U.S: insurers doing?
• Real GDP Per Capita and the Standard of Living

 

2. Eliezer predictions.

3. Are humpback whales policing nature?

4. “Traces of nearly four million coins reveal how Rome achieved economic integration.”

5. Estimating cybersecurity costs (numbers).

6. Great Barrier Reef is doing fine?

7. California Forever meets further setbacks (NYT).

The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to Spinor. On the other hand, a lot of the naysaying ... by Anonymous
• In reply to Spinor. Seriously? The word “serious” is ... by Jake
• In reply to Randall. This is why we can't have nice things, ... by RAD
• In reply to gVOR10. From your link: “”Reading reef ... by bazza
• In reply to Jake. True that misaligned AIs were in fiction, ... by Spinor
• Plus 10 more...

 

Standard optimal capital tax theory abstracts from modeling asset prices, making it unsuitable for thinking about capital gains and wealth taxation. We study optimal redistributive taxation in an environment with asset price movements, adopting the modern finance view that asset prices fluctuate not only because of changing cash flows, but also due to other factors (“discount rates”). We show that a combination of realization-based capital gains and cash flow taxes implements the optimal allocation regardless of the source of asset-price fluctuations. Moreover, the capital gains tax avoids distortions in portfolio choice (the socalled lock-in effect) by targeting total net trades rather than gains from selling individual assets. These results stand in contrast to the classic Haig-Simons comprehensive income tax concept as well as recent proposals for wealth or accrual-based capital gains taxes.

Wealth taxes lose the comparison.  That is from Econometrica, by Mark Aguiar, Benjamin Moll, and Florian Scheuer.

The post Capital gains vs. wealth taxes appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to Kaz Stanczak. And you are also paying interest on ... by sort_of_knowledgeable
• In reply to gVOR10. And 1947 tax policy? In 1947, debt-to-GDP ... by Chuck Kotlarz
• In reply to dearieme. Two wolves and a sheep deciding what to ... by Bill Allen
• In reply to Harun. Apparently not. It was just a few months ... by Gilligan
• SNAP spending just went down 12%. Anyone see anyone starving? ... by Harun
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• Insurance price sentences to ponder
• The Kalshi Citizen Debt Forecast (CDF)
• How are the market valuations for the U.S: insurers doing?

 

Shane Regan, Long Island, 16, AI agents.

Maximilian Kornstein, 15, Atlanta area, agents and general career support.

Irene Chen and Jessica Dai, UC Berkeley, data on peptides use.

Evan Warfel, Bay Area, updated meta-analyses through AI.

Daniel Dominguez Gomez, biomedical think tank for Mexico.

Malhaar Agrawal, U Penn., prediction markets and clinical trials.

Andrei Russel Ismael, Harvard, biomedical start-up.

Benedict Springbett, London, conference on the importance of legal issues for UK growth.

Metin Metin, Izmir, Turkey, 15, AI and brain organoid electrophysiology.

Ben Vyshedskiy, Harvard, biology podcast.

Afra Wang, Bay Area, podcast and study of Chinese AI.

Joe Hazell, LSE, AI and macroeconomics.

Anne Arno, Krakow, writing and biography.

The post Emergent Ventures winners, 59th cohort appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• But is any of this “economics”?! by ShatGPT
• In reply to Patrick. That's too abrasive, too harsh, too ... by ged
• Just put “and 'AI'” or “'AI' and” or “through 'AI'” ... by Patrick

Related Stories

• Real GDP Per Capita and the Standard of Living
• The College Wage Premium in the Generative AI Era
• *Visions from San Francisco Bay*

 

NYU Stern researcher @NateWitkin questions why cyber insurance rates keep falling if AI cyber risk is accelerating:

“Insurance rates for cyber risk declined by about 4% globally in Q2 of this year, and that’s actually the 12th consecutive quarter in which they’ve declined. This is very valuable signal that implies that at a minimum you shouldn’t overindex on the Hugging Face incident.”

“This is a plea for level headedness, but I think it would be helpful for safety folks to engage with these numbers just ’cause this is an avenue of criticism from folks like me and to an extent folks like Tyler.”

“Why are these numbers not moving? Is it because people are underestimating capabilities? Are they not taking the problem even as close to as seriously as they should or is it something else?”

Here is the link with video.  File under “Questions that are all too rarely asked.”

I am happy to admit that the answers here are far from obvious, and that I am myself expecting prices to rise somewhat.

I will continue to note that there are a remarkable number of ways, seen among other places on Twitter, to rephrase and to rationalize the statement: “I have the most remarkable and important and true macro risk story in the world to tell you.  Unfortunately, it does not correlate with any observed asset market prices.”

The post Insurance price sentences to ponder appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• Actuary but no expertise here – my guess would be: 1. If ... by Phil King
• In reply to AI Doomer. AI doom requires two things to be ... by AI Doomer
• In reply to hash872. Apply clock theory. If you have millions ... by Wayfaring Stranger
• In reply to Wayfaring Stranger. IOW your position reflects ... by Wayfaring Stranger
• In reply to Pshrnk. To respond to your question seriously, ... by Wayfaring Stranger
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• How are the market valuations for the U.S: insurers doing?
• Share price numbers for the Hugging Face incident
• Short Videos, Big Self-Control Problems

 

2. Do children grow continuously, or grow in fits and starts?

3. It remains my view that Ferrante is the husband and wife team.

4. Essay on Olaf Stapledon.

5. “US annual interest expense is up to a record 18.5% of federal government revenue. This is officially above the previous record of 18.4% set in 1991. This percentage has more than QUADRUPLED over the last 4 years as interest expenditures on public debt skyrocketed.”  Link.

6. Statistical meddling at the Census Bureau.

The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to Peter Akuleyev. This might be a little unfair to ... by TJL
• In reply to Dismalist. So in determining who counts as poor ... by BadgerNoonan
• In reply to rayward. And yourself? by gimmeabreak
• In reply to Doug Jones. Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, ... by Dismalist
• In reply to M. Home video cameras and being able to watch and ... by SJ
• Plus 10 more...

 

The landscape itself is like noting else in the Americas.  The altiplano is flat in the way that only vast geological formations can be flat, not the flatness of a plain that was once a sea, but the flatness of a plateau that was raised bodily by tectonic forces millions of years ago and then scoured by ten thousand years of wind and ice into the extraordinary emptiness it presents today.  The horizon in every direction is uninterrupted.  The sky is immense, a dome of blue so saturated at this altitude that photographs rarely convey it accurately, because the camera’s sensor cannot process a blue that contains no haze, no moisture, no atmospheric diffffusion between the sun and the surface.

And:

Arriving at El Alto International Airport (which sits on the altiplano above the city at forty-one hundred meters, making it the highest international airport in the world), you step off the plane into air so thin that the simple act of carrying your luggage to the terminal produces a shortness of breath that is mildly alarming if you have never experienced it and completely normal if you have.  The airport itself is unremarkable.  What happens next is not.  You get into a taxi or bus and the driver takes you to the edge of the antiplano, and then the city appears, not gradually but all at once, a cascade of buildings and lights and terracotta roofs pouring down the walls of a canyon so steep and so deep that the bottom is invisible from the rim.  La Paz does not reveal itself slowly.  It drops away beneath you like a held breath released.

Recommended, and yes Cochabamba is an amazing food city.

The post *Why Not Bolivia?* appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to Hoosier. “ Why would you tar people like ... by sumadartson
• In reply to sumadartson. The state of Louisiana has 10 ... by Hoosier
• In reply to mkt42. That's an interesting model. I think if ... by M
• In reply to DMSeattle. Don't worry; he'll have a conversation ... by M
• In reply to Etalon d'Silomar. Right, whereas US cities have a ... by mkt42
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• My excellent Conversation with Luke Burgis
• Mein Ingeborg Bachmann Studium
• My excellent Conversation with Michael Moritz

 

I study how short-form design amplifies self-control problems in digital media. Short units repeatedly renew temptation that lasts longer than each unit, turning local temptation into sustained overconsumption. Using microdata from a U.S. short-drama platform, I exploit a nonlinear top-up menu to infer viewing plans and show that paying users watch 82.1% more than intended. Structural estimates imply an average temptation horizon of 11.2 minutes, short relative to the full drama but long relative to one-minute episodes. Counterfactuals show that larger decision units, default limits, and breaks improve long-run welfare. A short-video calibration highlights the broader welfare relevance.

That is from Renjie Bao of Princeton University.  I believe a Princeton job market candidate?  Via Quan Le.

The post Short Videos, Big Self-Control Problems appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to rsm. Survivorship bias by JFA
• In reply to mkt42. That’s why I only get the snickers ice ... by JFA
• In reply to MikeP. Personally I find the proliferation of ... by Wayfaring Stranger
• From the fans' perspective, baseball games operate on the same ... by Benjamin Cole
• In reply to MikeP. 800-325-3535 by Dismalist
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• How are the market valuations for the U.S: insurers doing?
• Shout it from the rooftops (of the data centers)
• Insurance price sentences to ponder

 

2. China word of the day.

3. “People Keep Sneaking Into New York City Sewers. No One Knows Why.” (NYT)

4. Yiyang Zhuge has postponed her recording session with CWT, in case you will be wondering why the episode does not show up soon.

5. Who was the most consequential emperor in Chinese history?

6. Are science fiction films becoming more optimistic?

7. Ruxandra on clinical trials as the main obstacle (NYT).

8. The trend in U.S. cyberinsurance prices since 2020.

9. Fermat’s Last Theorem, the number of links cannot keep up with the world.

The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to M. @Sure, I think at this point, when you talk ... by M
• In reply to M. M: “I guess then am one of those weirdos ... by Sure
• In reply to M. Sure: “I am one of those weirdos who thinks ... by M
• In reply to M. M: I dunno, women don't do much violence ... by Sure
• 2. The etymology of the character 倀 (chāng) reveals a ... by Kieran
• Plus 10 more...

 

Prediction markets offer a new market-based approach to measuring macroeconomic expectations in real-time. We evaluate the accuracy of prediction market-implied forecasts from Kalshi, the largest federally regulated prediction market overseen by the CFTC. We compare Kalshi with more traditional survey and market-implied forecasts, examine how expectations respond to macroeconomic and financial news, and how policy signals are interpreted by market participants. Our results suggest that Kalshi markets provide a high-frequency, continuously updated, distributionally rich benchmark that is valuable to both researchers and policymakers.

Kalshi gives one example of how this data might be used, the Citizen Debt Forecast (CDF). The CBO forecasts the future debt path but it updates only twice a year and is limited to a legislative baseline even when most observers expect, for example, taxes to increase or spending to be cut. The Kalshi CDF updates continuously and can build in market expectations about future legislative changes.

The Kalshi forecast, as seen below, is slightly more optimistic than the CBO forecast but I don’t read too much into that. The larger issue is how prediction market data can be integrated into a wide variety of forecasts.

The post The Kalshi Citizen Debt Forecast (CDF) appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to Devin. Is the regulated sports betting, where the ... by Anonymous
• If you show CBO projections from the 1980s do they shade 40% ... by rsm
• In reply to Devin. Yes lmao, perhaps the real brain drain is ... by Crusader
• In reply to dmcharette. Maybe… the State is more likely to ... by Gilligan
• Tangential thought: When people are addicted to state ... by dmcharette
• Plus 8 more...

Related Stories

• How are the market valuations for the U.S: insurers doing?
• Real GDP Per Capita and the Standard of Living
• Capital gains vs. wealth taxes

 

And so I have been looking into Bachmann more.  Her volume of letters with Max Frisch, her lover and the leading Swiss novelist of his time, is the best “letters book” I know.  After four hundred pages, with another 180 or so to go, I still am not bored.  It is called “Wir haben es nicht gut gemacht.” Der Briefwechsel.  (This November coming out in English…and probably the letters work well in English?)  Overall, it is remarkable how many ups and downs a relationship can have and persist.  It works best to read only a few of the letters at a time, so that the story does not go by too quickly.  One sees connections between the letters and the unfolding of Malina.

She also has letters volumes with Paul Celan and Henze, those are in my pile too.  (She and Henze were just friends.)  And just this year there was a wonderful new biography of Bachmann, namely Dieter Burdorf’s Dieses unruhige Ich: Ingeborg Bachmann.  I have started that.

There is a movie of Malina, an opera too, and a biopic about Bachmann and Frisch.  I have heard Max Frisch’s Montauk is partly about the Frisch-Bachman relationship as well.  And we haven’t even gotten yet to Volker Schlondorff, have we?

Bachmann has poetry in German, and a new edition of her short stories is coming out this fall in English.

It is wonderful to discover something/someone so new and unexpected.  And as I get older and know more, it happens less frequently than it used to.

I will continue with this.  Amazing (and charming) how many words people can spill about “stuff”!

The post Mein Ingeborg Bachmann Studium appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Malina-Ingeborg-Bachmann/dp/351837... by sumadartson
• In reply to Moral Panic. 😊 Yes—it’s in my toolkit, but ... by Kaz Stanczak
• In reply to JFA. The 19th century novels by women are highly ... by Kalalalar
• In reply to Wayfaring Stranger. No worries. I had to double ... by JFA
• In reply to Kaz Stanczak. If you are not afraid to bail on a ... by Moral Panic
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• My excellent Conversation with Michael Moritz
• *Why Not Bolivia?*
• Astra, doing poetry

 

Internal documents reviewed by the FT show that three days earlier, behind the walls of Vaduz Castle, Europe’s wealthiest ruling dynasty had quietly approved an overhaul that strengthens the authority of a prince who already wields extraordinary power over his 42,000 citizens, while reducing some of the rights and checks exercised by his relatives in the Princely House of Liechtenstein.

Even before the changes, Prince Alois could veto legislation, dismiss the government, dissolve parliament, appoint judges and reject laws approved by referendum. In June, the Catholic prince said he would veto a citizens’ initiative to legalise abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, even if voters backed it…

The latest changes to the House Law go far beyond succession. According to internal documents, the prince gains greater discretion over who belongs to the dynasty and explicit authority to set rules on family names, titles and coats of arms. The Family Council, a body of relatives that oversees dynastic affairs, will expand from three to five members but loses an important check: the prince will no longer need its consent for pardons, only to consult it…

The reforms were approved not by parliament or the public, but by members of the dynasty itself.

Here is more from Paul Caruana Galizia at the FT.

The post Is Lichtenstein an actual monarchy? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to Tom T.. IOW, it's not a real country. Many such ... by Anti-Gnostic
• In reply to Fazal Majid. Those could be the opening lines to ... by mkt42
• In reply to Marie. Yes, I remember that story. by Steve Griffin
• In reply to Patrick. WTF? As Wolfgang Pauli reportedly said: ... by Bill Allen
• In reply to dearieme. Not until the U.S. Military takes care ... by Bill Allen
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• How are the market valuations for the U.S: insurers doing?
• Real GDP Per Capita and the Standard of Living
• Shout it from the rooftops (of the data centers)

 

U.S. insurance stocks have been doing quite well since the beginning of May 2026, and they have materially outperformed the overall market. I’m using the May 1 close through the September 3 close so that we compare complete trading days; these are price changes, excluding dividends.

The cleanest broad measure is the iShares U.S. Insurance ETF (IAK), which covers U.S. life, property and casualty insurers. It rose from $132.01 on May 1 to $147.87 on September 3: +12.0%. An alternative, more equal-weighted measure, the SPDR S&P Insurance ETF (KIE), rose from $56.79 to $64.80: +14.1%.

For comparison, the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) went from $720.65 to $773.17 over the same period, +7.3%. So insurers have beaten the market by roughly 5–7 percentage points in four months.

That is from GPT Pro.  Here is my earlier post on numbers and market valuations.  Do any market prices reflect a realistic chance of very bad outcomes from advanced AI?

Here is advice on how to short those shares.

The post How are the market valuations for the U.S: insurers doing? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• Tyler has forgotten the first rule of forecasting: “Never ... by Drew
• In reply to Sure. This is one of the most serious objections, ... by L1
• If we were to find something that fell short of the S&P 500 by ... by Saccharine analysis
• In reply to rsm. No. The risk is that the markets will ... by Sure
• There is a reflexivity additionally to AI development, where ... by Francis Quinn
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• Real GDP Per Capita and the Standard of Living
• Shout it from the rooftops (of the data centers)
• Share price numbers for the Hugging Face incident

 

2. Gloria Steinem, RIP (NYT).

3. Henry Oliver on Finding Emily.

4. Solve for the Russian family squabble equilibrium (short video).

5. New Fuchsia Dunlop book due out October 20.

6. The O-Ring model, restated for AI.

7. Joshua Saxe on AI safety.

8. The pig kidney worked (NYT).

The post Friday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to Kaz Stanczak. A lot of men talk about finding a ... by Jamie_NYC
• In reply to M. This is a pretty common criticism of the ... by M
• In reply to Cyrus. Yes, I think that's the core challenge you ... by M
• 4. Russian musicologists who find themselves in a heated ... by Jumfrey Tuckins, President of Texas
• 1. “Viktor Emil Frankl (Austrian German: [ˈfraŋkl̩]; 26 ... by Mort Main
• Plus 10 more...

 

The post Real GDP Per Capita and the Standard of Living appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to Debt, debt, debt. There has been zero effort to ... by Thomas L Hutcheson
• Appreciate the effort and the sentiment but IMO students should ... by Wayfaring Stranger
• One of the greats! I make my kids watch it. by Panderer
• In reply to rayward. Yes, the real issue now seems to be, as ... by Debt, debt, debt
• If happiness stays constant, do the things that mainstream ... by rsm
• Plus 3 more...

Related Stories

• How are the market valuations for the U.S: insurers doing?
• The College Wage Premium in the Generative AI Era
• The Kalshi Citizen Debt Forecast (CDF)