Marginal Revolution https://marginalrevolution.com/ Small Steps Toward A Much Better World Tue, 08 Sep 2026 18:12:47 +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/2026/09/reasons-to-go-to-college.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=reasons-to-go-to-college Reasons to go to college https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968859950/0/marginalrevolution~Reasons-to-go-to-college.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/reasons-to-go-to-college.html#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2026 04:47:02 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93743 That is the topic of my latest Free Press column, here is one excerpt: …college is a great place to make friends, date, and possibly meet a spouse. Those features are ever more important as America suffers a crisis of loneliness. Furthermore, if you think that artificial intelligence may displace a lot of jobs, or […]

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]]> That is the topic of my latest Free Press column, here is one excerpt:

…college is a great place to make friends, date, and possibly meet a spouse. Those features are ever more important as America suffers a crisis of loneliness. Furthermore, if you think that artificial intelligence may displace a lot of jobs, or just reduce work hours, marrying well will become more important. The title of the new essay by Clara Collier says it all: “After Work, We’ll Have Each Other.” You are also going to live longer, so think hard about who you wish to spend that time with.

The data show that college-educated people are more likely to marry, and to stay married. More generally, college-educated folks have superior social indicators of all kinds, including resistance to alcohol, drug, and gambling addiction. (Charles Murray wrote a whole book on this theme, called Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.)

If you have a bachelor’s degree and are over 25 years of age, your chance of being married is 64 percent. If you have only a high school degree, your odds of being married are an even 50 percent.

For divorce, the results are more dramatic yet. The chance of a woman remaining married for at least 20 years is 78 percent if she went to college, but 41 percent if she is only a high school graduate. For men, the gradient is less sharp though still significant—namely, 65 percent versus 47 percent.

People who finished college also have more extensive networks of friends. For instance they are twice as likely to have six or more close friends, and less than half as likely to have no close friends at all.

There are some private sector jobs where you can spend four years alongside the same group of people and then have social networks to stay in touch over the following years. But all too often people come and go in their jobs and lose touch with former colleagues rapidly, or maybe never share much of a common experience in the first place. College seems to do an especially good job of keeping people connected.

We do not know the extent to which these relationships are causal ones. That’s to say, does going to college induce better outcomes, or are the people who will have better outcomes in any case more likely to attend college in the first place? Probably some of both. In any case, it is better to have this force on your side, even if you are not sure how important it is.

So, in sum, while the money premium from college is falling, the friends and marriage premium from college is going up and probably will rise further still.

Of course those are not the only reasons.  That said, I do think going to college makes less sense, at the margin, than it did say seven or eight years ago, as I outline in the piece.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/reasons-to-go-to-college.html/feed 1 93743 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/tuesday-assorted-links-585.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tuesday-assorted-links-585 Tuesday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968839973/0/marginalrevolution~Tuesday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/tuesday-assorted-links-585.html#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2026 15:55:42 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93762 1. The Carob Prize, for scholars who tell the truth (WSJ). 2. Observations from watching Iranian social media. 3. The Emma McAleavy feminist vision. 4. Is the inflation picture shifting? 5. The labor market is doing fine. 6. If LLMs had the personalities of TV stars, would you choose Colombo?

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]]> 1. The Carob Prize, for scholars who tell the truth (WSJ).

2. Observations from watching Iranian social media.

3. The Emma McAleavy feminist vision.

4. Is the inflation picture shifting?

5. The labor market is doing fine.

6. If LLMs had the personalities of TV stars, would you choose Colombo?

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/tuesday-assorted-links-585.html/feed 54 93762 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/some-navier-stokes-updates.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=some-navier-stokes-updates Some Navier-Stokes updates https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968834105/0/marginalrevolution~Some-NavierStokes-updates.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/some-navier-stokes-updates.html#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2026 13:39:08 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93766 Some Terry Tao. More Terry Tao. Some ChatGPT. Some are calling this “a Deep Blue moment” for AI. All via T., a mathematician. Update from OpenAI: “Our internal model group arrived at the Navier–Stokes solution in 88 hours, using around 10,000 coordinating AI agents.”  And this.  And from Noam Brown: “Yes, this result cost millions […]

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]]> Some Terry Tao.

More Terry Tao.

Some ChatGPT.

Some are calling this “a Deep Blue moment” for AI.

All via T., a mathematician.

Update from OpenAI: “Our internal model group arrived at the Navier–Stokes solution in 88 hours, using around 10,000 coordinating AI agents.”  And this.  And from Noam Brown: “Yes, this result cost millions of dollars. But remember that when @OpenAI announced o3 it cost ~$500,000 to score 87.5% on ARC-AGI 1. Today, Astra scores higher for ~$20. In 2025 it took us and GDM an enormous amount of compute to achieve IMO gold. For the 2026 IMO, anyone with a $20/month ChatGPT subscription could do it. Massively scaling test-time compute gives us a glimpse of the future. I believe that a year from now everyone will have an AI at their fingertips capable of solving problems of this caliber.”

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/some-navier-stokes-updates.html/feed 41 93766 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/no-doing-no-learning.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=no-doing-no-learning No Doing, No Learning https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968821979/0/marginalrevolution~No-Doing-No-Learning.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/no-doing-no-learning.html#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2026 11:16:52 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93748 A regulation that raises gasoline prices makes people angry but when regulation prevents an industry from ever existing, most people never learn what they lost. Consider nuclear power. Overnight construction costs for early U.S. demonstration reactors fell 81 percent between 1954 and 1968. For reactors begun between 1967 and 1972, costs rose 187 percent. The […]

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]]> A regulation that raises gasoline prices makes people angry but when regulation prevents an industry from ever existing, most people never learn what they lost.

Consider nuclear power. Overnight construction costs for early U.S. demonstration reactors fell 81 percent between 1954 and 1968. For reactors begun between 1967 and 1972, costs rose 187 percent. The 1971 Calvert Cliffs decision and then the reaction to Three Mile Island in 1979 accelerated the cost increases and slowed construction even more.

What might have happened had the earlier learning and deployment trends continued? Peter Lang’s 2017 paper in Energies estimates that nuclear power would have cost about one-tenth as much by 2015. The additional generation could have avoided as many as 9.5 million premature deaths.

The number is staggering even if quartered. Millions of deaths. Yet, the graveyard was both invisible and silent.

(Furthermore, climate change would not be a problem today had nuclear power not been handicapped.)

The nuclear story you probably know but Niko McCarty has an excellent new Works in Progress piece on an invisible graveyard of technology that I knew almost nothing about.

In the 1980s, officials decided to regulate engineered microbes under the Toxic Substances Control Act, a law written for industrial chemicals. Microbes swap genes all the time, but EPA treats them as “new” whenever DNA is introduced from another genus. As a result, even a marker gene used simply to identify successfully edited cells can trigger review if it remains in the organism. McCarty reports that researchers filed more than 240 applications between 1987 and 2018: “Only a few were ever approved for widespread use.”

What have we lost? We can’t know for sure but among the plausible losses McCarty discusses are engineered bacteria that detect buried explosives, microbes that extract rare-earth metals and improved plastic-digesting enzymes. Similarly, Chernia et al. write:

Promising many societal benefits, emergent products of biotechnology involve releasing genetically modified microbes (GMMs) into the environment. However, regulatory challenges limit their use. So far, GMMs have mainly been tested in agriculture and environmental cleanup, with few approved for commercial purposes. Current government regulations inadequately address modern genetic engineering and limit the potential of gut therapeutics, skin products, self-repairing materials, ocean pollution treatment, anti-corrosion coatings, etc.

And those are just some of the plausible first-stage losses. Perhaps even more importantly, we learn by doing. Thus, no doing, no learning. The first approved product is rarely the safest or the best but when we fail to approve the first we don’t get the much better 5th. Forty years of that process could have taken us well beyond the applications McCarty describes. We must build to build better.

Nuclear power at least left us enough reactors to get some idea of what we lost. With microbes, I needed McCarty to tell me there was something missing even though I study these issues for a living. And note one reason new microbe loss was invisible. No vote was ever taken. No debate was ever had. Officials in the 1980s reasoned that genomes are made of chemicals and chemicals are covered, and that doctrine has governed the field ever since despite being overly broad and excessively costly.

How many other gaps in our technology have explanations buried in the Federal Register?
—

Here is a video version of this post. Which do  you like better?

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/no-doing-no-learning.html/feed 50 93748 https://marginalrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/No_learning_no_doing.mp4 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/ed-elson-and-scott-galloway-interview-me-on-ai.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ed-elson-and-scott-galloway-interview-me-on-ai Ed Elson and Scott Galloway interview me on AI https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968812823/0/marginalrevolution~Ed-Elson-and-Scott-Galloway-interview-me-on-AI.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/ed-elson-and-scott-galloway-interview-me-on-ai.html#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2026 07:00:39 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93744 The post Ed Elson and Scott Galloway interview me on AI appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/ed-elson-and-scott-galloway-interview-me-on-ai.html/feed 16 93744 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/will-new-transportation-technologies-increase-urban-density.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=will-new-transportation-technologies-increase-urban-density Will new transportation technologies increase urban density? https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968809565/0/marginalrevolution~Will-new-transportation-technologies-increase-urban-density.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/will-new-transportation-technologies-increase-urban-density.html#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2026 04:56:22 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93759 Will 21st century transportation innovations work against urban density, as the car did in the 20th century, or promote urban centralization, as the railroad did in the 19th century? Reducing the cost of commuting always reduces urban centralization in the classic Alonso-Muth-Mills model but that result reverses if the number of trips is endogenous and […]

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Will 21st century transportation innovations work against urban density, as the car did in the 20th century, or promote urban centralization, as the railroad did in the 19th century? Reducing the cost of commuting always reduces urban centralization in the classic Alonso-Muth-Mills model but that result reverses if the number of trips is endogenous and the elasticity of trips with respect to their costs is greater than one. That elasticity may have increased over time, as an increasing share of daily trips seems to be discretionary and city centers increasingly provide entertainment. This paper asks discusses the urbanizing effects of four trends in transportation technology: shared mobility (such as Uber), autonomy (such as Waymo), vertical travel and green mobility, as provided by bike lane. As people spend more time travelling in denser, large areas, innovations that reduce the time cost of travel, such as autonomous cars, seem likely to complement urban living, as long as they don’t excessively increase traffic. Sharing is also easier in big cities, so technologies that involve sharing are also centripetal. The other trends seem less likely to have major effects. Moreover, the forces of inertia, which include both regulation and legacy infrastructure, are likely to limit the impact of any new technologies in Europe and the U.S., so that the biggest changes in urban form are likely to appear in east Asia and the developing world.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Ed Glaeser.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/will-new-transportation-technologies-increase-urban-density.html/feed 45 93759 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/south-korean-aspirational-markets-in-everything.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=south-korean-aspirational-markets-in-everything South Korean aspirational markets in everything https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968783027/0/marginalrevolution~South-Korean-aspirational-markets-in-everything.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/south-korean-aspirational-markets-in-everything.html#comments Mon, 07 Sep 2026 18:41:20 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93756 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, […]

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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.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/south-korean-aspirational-markets-in-everything.html/feed 28 93756 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/monday-assorted-links-576.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=monday-assorted-links-576 Monday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968778224/0/marginalrevolution~Monday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/monday-assorted-links-576.html#comments Mon, 07 Sep 2026 16:17:10 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93752 1. How are age verification systems going? 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).

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]]> 1. How are age verification systems going?

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).

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/monday-assorted-links-576.html/feed 57 93752 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/capital-gains-vs-wealth-taxes.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=capital-gains-vs-wealth-taxes Capital gains vs. wealth taxes https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968570903/0/marginalrevolution~Capital-gains-vs-wealth-taxes.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/capital-gains-vs-wealth-taxes.html#comments Mon, 07 Sep 2026 07:47:13 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93750 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 […]

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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.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/capital-gains-vs-wealth-taxes.html/feed 72 93750 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/emergent-ventures-winners-59th-cohort.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=emergent-ventures-winners-59th-cohort Emergent Ventures winners, 59th cohort https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968569190/0/marginalrevolution~Emergent-Ventures-winners-th-cohort.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/emergent-ventures-winners-59th-cohort.html#comments Mon, 07 Sep 2026 04:32:31 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93724 Tym Syrytczyk, London, autonomous vehicles in the UK. 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 […]

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]]> Tym Syrytczyk, London, autonomous vehicles in the UK.

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.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/emergent-ventures-winners-59th-cohort.html/feed 3 93724 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/sentences-to-ponder-140.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sentences-to-ponder-140 Insurance price sentences to ponder https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968565758/0/marginalrevolution~Insurance-price-sentences-to-ponder.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/sentences-to-ponder-140.html#comments Sun, 06 Sep 2026 19:39:39 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93749 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 […]

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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.”

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/sentences-to-ponder-140.html/feed 43 93749 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/saturday-assorted-links-577.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=saturday-assorted-links-577 Sunday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968564396/0/marginalrevolution~Sunday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/saturday-assorted-links-577.html#comments Sun, 06 Sep 2026 16:33:49 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93714 1. Vishy now thinks Pragg is number one in the chess world. 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 […]

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]]> 1. Vishy now thinks Pragg is number one in the chess world.

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.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/saturday-assorted-links-577.html/feed 55 93714 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/why-not-bolivia.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-not-bolivia *Why Not Bolivia?* https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968558654/0/marginalrevolution~Why-Not-Bolivia.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/why-not-bolivia.html#comments Sun, 06 Sep 2026 04:27:11 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93710 The author is Calvin Korponai, and the subtitle is From Macchu Picchu into Bolivia in search of the Garden of Eden.  Bolivia is a fantastic country to visit, more original than most people are expecting, and this is the book to tell you why.  Excerpt: The landscape itself is like noting else in the Americas.  […]

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]]> The author is Calvin Korponai, and the subtitle is From Macchu Picchu into Bolivia in search of the Garden of Eden.  Bolivia is a fantastic country to visit, more original than most people are expecting, and this is the book to tell you why.  Excerpt:

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.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/why-not-bolivia.html/feed 33 93710 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/short-videos-big-self-control-problems.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=short-videos-big-self-control-problems Short Videos, Big Self-Control Problems https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968554541/0/marginalrevolution~Short-Videos-Big-SelfControl-Problems.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/short-videos-big-self-control-problems.html#comments Sat, 05 Sep 2026 18:11:39 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93713 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. […]

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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.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/short-videos-big-self-control-problems.html/feed 26 93713 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/friday-assorted-links-588.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=friday-assorted-links-588 Saturday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/968553173/0/marginalrevolution~Saturday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/friday-assorted-links-588.html#comments Sat, 05 Sep 2026 15:50:35 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93698 1. Joaquin Rodrigo’s Toccata.  Rodrigo by the way was blind, 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. […]

The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> 1. Joaquin Rodrigo’s Toccata.  Rodrigo by the way was blind,

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.

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