Marginal Revolution https://marginalrevolution.com/ Small Steps Toward A Much Better World Fri, 16 Oct 2026 20:20:33 +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/2026/10/solving-for-the-equilibrium-2.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=solving-for-the-equilibrium-2 Solving for the equilibrium? https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/971724068/0/marginalrevolution~Solving-for-the-equilibrium.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/solving-for-the-equilibrium-2.html#comments Sat, 17 Oct 2026 07:34:21 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=94012 Sixteen AI agents were each ha‍nded 1,000 satoshi⁠s of real b‌itcoin and told nothing about how to use​ it. A hund‍red rounds l‌at‍er⁠, four of them had roughly doubled⁠ th‍eir money, tw‍o h‌a‍d​ been wiped out, and the‍ three richest a​gents held more than half‍ of all the bitco‌in in the room.⁠ Nobody wrote a […]

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Sixteen AI agents were each ha‍nded 1,000 satoshi⁠s of real b‌itcoin and told nothing about how to use​ it. A hund‍red rounds l‌at‍er⁠, four of them had roughly doubled⁠ th‍eir money, tw‍o h‌a‍d​ been wiped out, and the‍ three richest a​gents held more than half‍ of all the bitco‌in in the room.⁠ Nobody wrote a r​ule that‌ sai⁠d “expl‌oi​t the trusting ones.” The agen​ts foun‍d t​hat on thei‌r o⁠wn.‍ This was not a thought experiment. It was a rea⁠l study⁠ of AI agents and Bitcoin, run by an independent d​evelo‍per w‍ith 8 Claud‌e agents an‌d 8 GPT-​4o age‍nts, and it⁠s raw payment data is​ publi‌c. I​ downloa​ded every on⁠e⁠ o‍f those pa‍y⁠men⁠ts and checked what they really show, in‌clu‌d‍ing one headline claim that holds up better than I ex​pect‍ed and one t‌hat does n​ot hol‌d up at all.

This matters now becaus​e the plumbing⁠ for AI agent payments arr​i​ved t‍his yea⁠r. I‍n J​uly 20⁠26, Light⁠n⁠ing Lab​s rele⁠ased Wave‍length,‌ a‌…

Here is more from Hayanan, via Sonia Farrell Pearson.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/solving-for-the-equilibrium-2.html/feed 7 94012 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/new-matt-flaherty-study-of-the-nsf.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-matt-flaherty-study-of-the-nsf New Matt Faherty study of the NSF https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/971722343/0/marginalrevolution~New-Matt-Faherty-study-of-the-NSF.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/new-matt-flaherty-study-of-the-nsf.html#comments Sat, 17 Oct 2026 04:55:57 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=94013 From the Executive Summary: Therefore, the NSF, NIH, and the federal government should put far more resources and effort into developing metascience. With proper metascience efforts, the NSF could run experiments on science funding reform proposals, such as shifting to a people-over-projects funding model or directly funding replication efforts, and determine which reforms will most […]

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]]> From the Executive Summary:

  • Therefore, the NSF, NIH, and the federal government should put far more resources and effort into developing metascience. With proper metascience efforts, the NSF could run experiments on science funding reform proposals, such as shifting to a people-over-projects funding model or directly funding replication efforts, and determine which reforms will most improve NSF outcomes. The NSF’s September 2026 announcement of an Office of Metascience is a welcome step toward this goal. This report’s recommendations can help guide the office’s development, its experimental agenda, and the evaluation of its results.
  • On July 21, 2026, Michael Kratsios, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, released “Science: A New Golden Age,” a report for the President that, if fully enacted, might constitute the greatest overhaul of federal science policy since World War II. Based on my interviews and research, I strongly support most of the report’s recommendations and conclusions, and I believe the wider science community should as well.

Here is the entire study, of interest throughout.  Here is an earlier Matt Faherty study on improving the NIH.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/new-matt-flaherty-study-of-the-nsf.html/feed 1 94013 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/friday-assorted-links-595.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=friday-assorted-links-595 Friday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/971706764/0/marginalrevolution~Friday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/friday-assorted-links-595.html#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2026 16:42:18 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=94003 1. Can Dybantsa (and others) turn around the Wizards? (NYT) 2. Claims about interpretability.  I have to say I do not quite “get it”…?  Here is some exposition. 3. “90% of Americans’ working hours are spent on tasks not covered well by AI benchmarks. That’s our best guess from a new project mapping frontier benchmarks […]

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]]> 1. Can Dybantsa (and others) turn around the Wizards? (NYT)

2. Claims about interpretability.  I have to say I do not quite “get it”…?  Here is some exposition.

3. “90% of Americans’ working hours are spent on tasks not covered well by AI benchmarks. That’s our best guess from a new project mapping frontier benchmarks onto the US economy.”  Study here.

4. Ross Douthat (The Free Press) on how to survive the robot apocalypse.

5. Jonathan Beauchamp podcast on genonomics.

6. More Bob Hall on monetary economics.

7. Arundhati Roy is upset at AI.

8. Flying car, at least for a bit.  And here.  As Roon points out, they offer you the characters too!

9. Henry Oliver on the Mid-South.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/friday-assorted-links-595.html/feed 97 94003 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/india-has-more-restrictive-labor-law-than-germany.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=india-has-more-restrictive-labor-law-than-germany India has more Restrictive Labor Law than Germany https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/971687360/0/marginalrevolution~India-has-more-Restrictive-Labor-Law-than-Germany.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/india-has-more-restrictive-labor-law-than-germany.html#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2026 11:20:31 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93993 In Premature Imitation and India’s Flailing State, Shruti Rajagopalan and I discuss how India has essentially all of the laws of a developed country but at much lower state capacity–this mismatch creates what we call premature imitation, with a host of negative consequences. What is even more amazing, however, is when a country like India […]

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]]> In Premature Imitation and India’s Flailing State, Shruti Rajagopalan and I discuss how India has essentially all of the laws of a developed country but at much lower state capacity–this mismatch creates what we call premature imitation, with a host of negative consequences. What is even more amazing, however, is when a country like India regulates beyond most developed countries. Anand, Chandra, and Pradeep provide a case in point at Prosperity Insights–India regulates labor hours more than Germany.

Germany and India share an 8 hour standard working day but India requires any overtime to be paid at twice the regular rate–most developed countries are at 1.5 and a few have no statutory cap at all. In fact, Germany has no statutory overtime rate–it can vary depending on bargaining. Germany is also more flexible than India on the number of overtime hours. India has a cap of 144 overtime hours a quarter. Technically, Germany doesn’t regulate overtime hours but it does cap total hours at 10 a day and 48 a week on average. The average is crucial. In Germany overtime hours can be moved between weeks within a 6 month period while India regulates each week. In other words, long weeks in Germany are legal as long as short weeks offset them before the period ends–while in India each week has a cap. The weekly cap and the double overtime pay make it very costly and difficult to meet rush or large seasonal orders.

Consider a hypothetical 500-worker electronics factory, working a single shift, in each of the 16 countries studied. Ahead of a September iPhone launch, each factory receives an order for 10,000 devices to be completed in three months.

Say the factories are identical in productivity, wages and technology; only the rules on working hours differ. How fast and at what labour cost would the Indian factory deliver compared to elsewhere?

The results are stark.

The factory in India cannot match the pace of its global peers. It takes 13.7 weeks to complete the 10,000-iPhone order, 23% longer than the fastest factory…The Indian factory falls behind because it cannot keep the same pace throughout the production cycle. Without the option to rearrange regular hours, the only way to go faster is overtime…The Indian factory cannot compete on cost either. To complete the iPhone order, it pays for 49.3 labour-hours per unit, at least 18% more than factories at the cost frontier. India’s unit cost is high because 144 of the 800 production hours per worker are paid as overtime at 2x the regular wage, pushing paid labour to 985 hours for 800 hours of output.

…The combination of slow delivery and high cost makes India an unattractive manufacturing destination.

Amazingly, on an equal-wage basis producing iPhones in Germany is actually cheaper and faster than in India! Of course, wages are not equal but neither is productivity–the key point is that the chart isolates the cost of India’s regulatory inflexibility.

Returning to premature imitation, it won’t surprise you that many firms and workers in India evade the overtime rules and come to their own understandings but this applies mostly to small Indian firms and not the Foxconns and big international firms that India wants to attract but which must obey the laws as written.

Hat tip: Paul Novosad.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/india-has-more-restrictive-labor-law-than-germany.html/feed 25 93993 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/on-bergmans-persona.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-bergmans-persona On Bergman’s *Persona* https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/971678813/0/marginalrevolution~On-Bergmans-Persona.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/on-bergmans-persona.html#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2026 06:53:12 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=94001 I first saw Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, his stone-cold classic of 1965, as a teenager, and God knows how many times I have seen it since. It has the greatest opening sequence in cinema: a percussive, rapid-fire montage that can never be wholly accommodated or understood. The film’s story is, however, a simple one (even if […]

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I first saw Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, his stone-cold classic of 1965, as a teenager, and God knows how many times I have seen it since. It has the greatest opening sequence in cinema: a percussive, rapid-fire montage that can never be wholly accommodated or understood. The film’s story is, however, a simple one (even if its Jungian resonances are deep and complex). A celebrated actress, Elisabeth Vogler (one of Liv Ullmann’s defining roles), is struck dumb, having dried up in the middle of a performance of Electra. Three months later, still speechless, she is granted a nurse, Alma (Bibi Andersson), who, fearing silence, cannot stop talking to and at her patient. Elisabeth becomes the audience, Alma the performer, and the two personalities intertwine against a biblical monochrome landscape of sand, rock and water. More than 60 years on, it remains inexhaustible, never to be entirely absorbed, intimate, stark and utterly compelling.

Here is more from Paul Lay.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/on-bergmans-persona.html/feed 21 94001 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/i-guest-host-the-nyt-podcast-and-interview-dwarkesh.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=i-guest-host-the-nyt-podcast-and-interview-dwarkesh I guest host the NYT podcast and interview Dwarkesh https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/971675162/0/marginalrevolution~I-guest-host-the-NYT-podcast-and-interview-Dwarkesh.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/i-guest-host-the-nyt-podcast-and-interview-dwarkesh.html#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2026 04:44:22 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=94002 Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Excerpt: Cowen: Unreleased models — why are they important? Patel: As in the ones that are internal to the companies? Cowen: Well, many companies have unreleased models. Maybe it would cost too much to release them or they’re not safe yet, but the public doesn’t see them. Patel: […]

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]]> Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Excerpt:

Cowen: Unreleased models — why are they important?

Patel: As in the ones that are internal to the companies?

Cowen: Well, many companies have unreleased models. Maybe it would cost too much to release them or they’re not safe yet, but the public doesn’t see them.

Patel: Yeah.

Cowen: You’re an insider. Whether or not you see them, you hear about them; you know something about them. How should we think about unreleased models, and how does that change our picture of what’s going on?

Patel: I think there’s a very frustrating element to the current situation right now, where people inside the A.I. labs claim to have evidence that makes them more worried, and they are not allowed to talk about it. This makes it a very difficult situation on the outside to evaluate how worried we should be.

For example, maybe two days ago, I was talking to somebody at Anthropic, and they were like: Look, I expect A.I.s to beat humans at A.I. research within nine months.

And I’m like: Why do you believe that?

They’re like: It’s not just vibes, but I have information on the inside.

I’m like: What is it? Is it a new model? Is it some evaluation you ran?

He’s like: I can’t talk about it.

I think it’s a terrible state of affairs. If they really believe this, if they think that we’re in a situation where we’re less than a year away from automating A.I. research and radically speeding it up, they should make this evidence public.

I especially worry about the following scenario, whereas A.I.s get better and better at making A.I. progress faster and automating it, they will be inclined not to keep releasing models that are even close to their smartest models externally, because then if they release those externally, it would help others make smart models.

And it’s just kind of a schlep to release models externally. You need all these safeguards and everything.

Cowen: So the gap between what they know and what we know would get bigger and bigger under that scenario. We’d end up more in the dark, more surprised when things happen. It would be harder for regulators, policymakers, members of Congress, everyone.

Kudos to Dwarkesh for taking the other side of the microphone.  Do also see our discussion of AI psychosis, among other topics.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/i-guest-host-the-nyt-podcast-and-interview-dwarkesh.html/feed 33 94002 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/thursday-assorted-links-574.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=thursday-assorted-links-574 Thursday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/971648441/0/marginalrevolution~Thursday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/thursday-assorted-links-574.html#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2026 16:43:28 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93994 1. Claims about military satellites. 2. book talk. 3. AI misalignment in Sweden? 4. Will El Salvador grow? 5. AI, automation, and the Indian workforce. 6. How language models revise the documents that govern them. 7. Arpit Gupta, economist, visits Anthropic. 8. Ten-year yield is down, even though inflation came in higher than expected.

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]]> 1. Claims about military satellites.

2. book talk.

3. AI misalignment in Sweden?

4. Will El Salvador grow?

5. AI, automation, and the Indian workforce.

6. How language models revise the documents that govern them.

7. Arpit Gupta, economist, visits Anthropic.

8. Ten-year yield is down, even though inflation came in higher than expected.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/thursday-assorted-links-574.html/feed 57 93994 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/astra-held-its-ground-truth.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=astra-held-its-ground-truth Astra Held Its Ground (Truth) https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/971621315/0/marginalrevolution~Astra-Held-Its-Ground-Truth.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/astra-held-its-ground-truth.html#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2026 11:18:46 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93997 TheoPhysEval: We present a suite of 50 unpublished research-level theoretical physics problems with verifiable answers. Without AI assistance, a typical problem in our collection could be solved by a world expert in about a day or less but would take considerably longer for experts in adjacent specialties. We test the ability of off-the-shelf AI agents […]

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TheoPhysEval: We present a suite of 50 unpublished research-level theoretical physics problems with verifiable answers. Without AI assistance, a typical problem in our collection could be solved by a world expert in about a day or less but would take considerably longer for experts in adjacent specialties. We test the ability of off-the-shelf AI agents to tackle these problems autonomously, without human hints. When given access to tools available in a realistic setting, including the ability to search the literature and write scripts for numerical and symbolic work, the best-performing agent, GPT-6-Astra harnessed in Codex, obtains the final answers with a near-perfect accuracy of 98% at an average cost under USD 3 per problem.

Example question: Consider one-dimensional class D fermionic systems, with no microscopic symmetries other than fermion parity. Restrict to the trivial phase and to free-fermion models. Using the suspension construction, construct a two-parameter Hamiltonian corresponding to a fermion parity pump. What is the central charge of the critical theory at the diabolical point? Under free-fermion perturbations, what does the diabolical point destabilize to?

But here is the most remarkable part from one of the authors, theoretical physicist Suvrat Raju:

Our initial evaluation suggested that GPT-6-Astra’s score was in the late eighties followed closely by Opus 5.5 But, as we started to investigate the mistakes that the models might have made, the models, especially Astra, insisted that they were right and that it was the expert-supplied answers that were erroneous. When we went back to the experts it turned out, in multiple instances, that the experts found some subtle errors buried deep inside their calculations. As they revised their answers, Astra’s score started to inch up and it finally ended up with 98% (49/50).

In other words, instead, as originally intended, of the human answers serving as ground truth to test the AI, the AI answers were ground truth for testing the experts. As I commented on twitter, we are at “the fuck” level.

Image

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/astra-held-its-ground-truth.html/feed 80 93997 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/why-i-do-not-use-llms-more.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-i-do-not-use-llms-more Why I do not use LLMs more https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/971607044/0/marginalrevolution~Why-I-do-not-use-LLMs-more.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/why-i-do-not-use-llms-more.html#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:20:41 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=94000 They are so very, very good at matching me to the books I wish to read and the music I wish to listen to.  In this odd sense they are not very sticky.  The LLMs are amazing, but the world is awesome too!  Thus the LLMs keep on sending me away.  There is quality travel […]

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]]> They are so very, very good at matching me to the books I wish to read and the music I wish to listen to.  In this odd sense they are not very sticky.  The LLMs are amazing, but the world is awesome too!  Thus the LLMs keep on sending me away.  There is quality travel as well.

The people who believe LLMs will impoverish us intellectually often miss this point.  And it might also provide a cap on market demand.  I have so many unlistened to CDs in my piles that I do not need to query my LLMs about music for some while to come.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/why-i-do-not-use-llms-more.html/feed 45 94000 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/my-excellent-conversation-with-liaquat-ahamed.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=my-excellent-conversation-with-liaquat-ahamed My excellent Conversation with Liaquat Ahamed https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/971591948/0/marginalrevolution~My-excellent-Conversation-with-Liaquat-Ahamed.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/my-excellent-conversation-with-liaquat-ahamed.html#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2026 04:37:06 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93995 Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is part of the episode summary: They start with that puzzle before moving through Gladstone’s startlingly self-interested bet on Egyptian bonds, Bismarck’s role in destroying bimetallism and deflating the world economy for two decades, whether a global silver or symmetallic standard could have worked, Britain’s fateful decision […]

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]]> Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is part of the episode summary:

They start with that puzzle before moving through Gladstone’s startlingly self-interested bet on Egyptian bonds, Bismarck’s role in destroying bimetallism and deflating the world economy for two decades, whether a global silver or symmetallic standard could have worked, Britain’s fateful decision to re-peg the pound to gold in 1926, Hjalmar Schacht’s transformation from the economist who stabilized Weimar’s currency to opportunist collaborator with the Nazi regime, Montagu Norman’s spiritualist beliefs, why the 1920s produced such a creative cultural moment, lessons from the IMF on Ireland’s housing bubble and Pakistan’s two dozen bailouts, what went wrong in the eurozone crisis, Britain’s baffling modern stagnation, and finally to his own restless career — from the World Bank to a failed Iraq film to Ismaili Islam’s uniquely progress-oriented leadership structure, and what he wants to write next.

We open thus:

COWEN: I have a general question about how your work fits together. Your book Lords of Finance, it convinced me that financial crises really matter, and your new book, 1873, almost convinced me that financial crises don’t really matter, because the world just keeps on growing. What makes the difference for when, historically speaking, crises will really matter?

AHAMED: I think the first book, Lords of Finance, was about the financial crisis that really plunged the world into a Great Depression. The second, 1873, is about a crisis that didn’t actually plunge the world into a terrible great depression, but what it did was cause a sequence of effects throughout the world which damaged the political economy of the world for the next 20 years. A better title would have been The First Great Deflation.

COWEN: We’re supposed to believe that deflation is bad, nominal wages are sticky. This was a pretty slow deflation, but by one measure, the major world economies are growing 2.5 percent over the next 20 years from 1873 onwards. How did we adjust so well to this?

AHAMED: Because prices were flexible. Nominal wages went down. I think the distributional consequences and the political impact of those distributional consequences were much more damaging than the pure economic consequences.

COWEN: In the 1920s, and a bit afterwards, of course, you could say politics goes crazy in many countries, most of all in Europe. After 1873, would you say politics went crazy, or it just continued along its 19th-century path?

AHAMED: No, I don’t think it went crazy, but it wasn’t a happy time politically—it’s populism in the United States, the resurgence of protectionism in Europe, the retreat from liberal ideas, the revival of imperialism by Britain when it invaded Egypt. Those were not happy things that happened.

And this:

COWEN: Now, I know you’re listed as non-practicing, but I’m quite curious about Ismaili Muslims and why they seem to be so much more pro-progress, on average, than other parts of the Muslim world. Do you have a view on this?

AHAMED: Yes, very much so, because of our leadership. We Ismailis believe in the leadership of a man, the Aga Khan. We believe he’s the direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, and he sets the agenda for the whole community. Many, in the old days, people believed he was divine or he had divine spirit. I don’t think many people believe that anymore, but he’s invested with so much moral authority that if he says, move to Africa, big chunks of the community will do that. He has charted an incredibly enlightened direction for the community. It’s not very large. There are maybe two or three million Ismailis in the world.

COWEN: You think it’s that the Imam is nonhidden that’s useful because he’s a source of ongoing change?

AHAMED: Yes. That was the whole rationale for Shiism.

Interesting and substantive throughout, recommended.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/my-excellent-conversation-with-liaquat-ahamed.html/feed 18 93995 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/china-fact-of-the-day-83.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=china-fact-of-the-day-83 China fact (?) of the day https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/971544716/0/marginalrevolution~China-fact-of-the-day.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/china-fact-of-the-day-83.html#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:56:23 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93996 A monograph by Yi Fuxian, a University of Wisconsin-Madison demographer and longtime critic of China’s population policies, argues that China’s actual population may be closer to 1.27 billion—not the 1.4 billion officially reported. The gap would be as much as 130 million people, roughly the population of Mexico. And Yi argues the distortion has warped […]

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A monograph by Yi Fuxian, a University of Wisconsin-Madison demographer and longtime critic of China’s population policies, argues that China’s actual population may be closer to 1.27 billion—not the 1.4 billion officially reported. The gap would be as much as 130 million people, roughly the population of Mexico. And Yi argues the distortion has warped strategic thinking in both China and the U.S., feeding overconfidence in Beijing and anxiety in Washington.

To make his case, Yi points to evidence in the country’s health and education records. Every newborn in China is required to receive a BCG tuberculosis vaccine within 24 hours of birth. Because multi-dose vials must be discarded 30 minutes after opening, each vial yields only about 1.2 to 1.6 usable doses in practice. Between 2018 and 2020, he noted, the government approved roughly 5.8 million vials a year. Yet official statistics claimed more than 14 million births annually. That would mean each vial somehow vaccinated 2.4 babies, which Yi said would be medically and practically impossible nationwide.

Yi also points to discrepancies in the reported size of individual birth cohorts. For instance, the National Bureau of Statistics said 17.7 million babies were born in 2000. But when that cohort reached age 10 in the 2010 census, only about 14.4 million were counted. By the time they graduated middle school in 2015, only about 14.2 million walked across the stage. About 3.5 million people from a single year were unaccounted for.

Yi said he cross-checks census records against school enrollments, hospital births, vaccine batches and household registrations. The picture that emerges, in his analysis, is a pattern of systematic inflation across multiple data sources.

Here is more from the WSJ, via Bob Davis.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/china-fact-of-the-day-83.html/feed 58 93996 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/wednesday-assorted-links-575.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wednesday-assorted-links-575 Wednesday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/971530238/0/marginalrevolution~Wednesday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/wednesday-assorted-links-575.html#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2026 16:07:03 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93989 1. Planets more habitable than Earth? (NYT) 2. Those new service sector jobs: “Cambiar de vida: cómo irte a contar pingüinos en la Antártida por hasta 2500 euros al mes.” 3. AI song about the China Shock debate. 4. “An amusing result of this new survey is that Democratic-voting workers had a startlingly high net-favorable […]

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]]> 1. Planets more habitable than Earth? (NYT)

2. Those new service sector jobs: “Cambiar de vida: cómo irte a contar pingüinos en la Antártida por hasta 2500 euros al mes.”

3. AI song about the China Shock debate.

4. “An amusing result of this new survey is that Democratic-voting workers had a startlingly high net-favorable view of Socialism while also saying that taxes were too high and they oppose government ownership stakes in companies.”

5. “Fewer then 5 innovations could return 1920s era growth.”

6. Anthropic is hiring economists and political scientists, to teach their models those topics.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/wednesday-assorted-links-575.html/feed 100 93989 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/plunder-the-last-of-the-war-in-europe-1945.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=plunder-the-last-of-the-war-in-europe-1945 *Plunder: The Last of the War in Europe, 1945* https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/971473529/0/marginalrevolution~Plunder-The-Last-of-the-War-in-Europe.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/plunder-the-last-of-the-war-in-europe-1945.html#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2026 07:02:57 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93992 By Max Hastings, an excellent book, I benefited from every page.  One recurring theme is simply how hard the Germans fought on the way down, and how unusual that behavior was.  Here is one interesting passage of many: In World War I, 150 German soldiers were sentenced to death for serious crimes, of which a […]

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]]> By Max Hastings, an excellent book, I benefited from every page.  One recurring theme is simply how hard the Germans fought on the way down, and how unusual that behavior was.  Here is one interesting passage of many:

In World War I, 150 German soldiers were sentenced to death for serious crimes, of which a mere forty-eight were executed.  In World War II, thirty thousand death sentences were decreed by military courts, of which two-thirds were carried out, in addition to many more that took place without any judicial proceeding.  By contrast the British executed forty men, the French 103, the Americans 146, almost all the condemned Allied soldiers having committed capital crimes as defined in civil law, rather than being sentenced for dereliction of military duty.  Meanwhile the Japanese executed 22,253 of their own men, and the Russians at least 150,000, possibly as many as 300,000.

As I like to say, you can never read too many books about WWII.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/plunder-the-last-of-the-war-in-europe-1945.html/feed 84 93992 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/well-planned-african-immigration-to-america-will-go-fine.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=well-planned-african-immigration-to-america-will-go-fine Well-planned African immigration to America will go fine https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/971459972/0/marginalrevolution~Wellplanned-African-immigration-to-America-will-go-fine.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/well-planned-african-immigration-to-america-will-go-fine.html#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2026 04:19:22 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93990 That is the topic of my latest Free Press column, here is one excerpt: The good news is that African immigrants already have done well in the United States. For instance, 46 percent of African immigrants complete a college education, well above the immigrant average of 36 percent and the native-born American rate of 37 […]

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

The good news is that African immigrants already have done well in the United States. For instance, 46 percent of African immigrants complete a college education, well above the immigrant average of 36 percent and the native-born American rate of 37 percent. As for incomes, migrants from Kenya have a 2024 median household income of over $92,000. Those from Cameroon have a median household income of over $91,000. Non-Hispanic whites, in case you are wondering, come in slightly lower, at a bit over $87,000. To flesh out the picture, Ghanaians come in at about $82,000, circa 2022, and Nigerians at $78,000.

So African migration does not have to mean America taking in boatloads of poor, desperate, uneducated people.

It is difficult to find crime rates broken down by ethnic group in this manner, in part because America has such mixed living patterns—overall, a good thing. Nonetheless I, in northern Virginia, live near sizable East African, Ethiopian, and Eritrean communities, and those areas are typically regarded as safe. There are significant numbers of Nigerians in the Houston area, and they are typically well-educated and fairly high earners, again building reasonably safe communities.

Those good results do not come automatically. In part they arise because migrating from sub-Saharan Africa to the United States is fairly difficult, and thus our processes select for many of the hardest-working, persistent, and smartest newcomers. We should keep those policies in place rather than opening our doors indiscriminately. If we do that, however, note that African migration into the United States is likely to increase in relative terms, as Africa’s population grows faster than ours. Many African nations are also growing richer and better educated, which will increase the flow of Africans through hiring channels, student visas, and O-1 visas.

Recommended.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/well-planned-african-immigration-to-america-will-go-fine.html/feed 89 93990 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/perry-mehrling-rip.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=perry-mehrling-rip Perry Mehrling, RIP https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/971421728/0/marginalrevolution~Perry-Mehrling-RIP.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/perry-mehrling-rip.html#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2026 20:51:16 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93991 He and I were in the same Harvard class together, and spent a good deal of time talking economics together.  We also were (briefly) bridge partners in a few games.  I was a big fan of his book on Fischer Black.  I am very sorry to see him gone.

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]]> He and I were in the same Harvard class together, and spent a good deal of time talking economics together.  We also were (briefly) bridge partners in a few games.  I was a big fan of his book on Fischer Black.  I am very sorry to see him gone.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/perry-mehrling-rip.html/feed 7 93991