Marginal Revolution

Wednesday assorted links

Tyler Cowen — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 17:28:55 +0000

1. “We were discussing this today in office: future paper is 5 pages (what’s question, where is lit now very briefly, what do we do, what do we find), with all details left to a long appendix, hyperlinked, with rigorous AI review. We would read many more papers in that world! Agree?” Kevin Bryan.

2. “Norway now has more than 2,000 underwater AI laser robots shooting lice off its salmon”

3. Coefficient Giving is looking to support new types of organizations.

4. The future of fermented food in Africa.

5. Shruti and Henry Oliver podcast with transcript on Gulliver’s Travels.

6. Houellebecq probed over comments about Muslims.

The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

What should I ask Simon Sebag Montefiore?

Tyler Cowen — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 13:55:24 +0000

I will be doing a Conversation with him, most of all about his new and very good book The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East. He has many other excellent books too, including on Russian history and some fiction. Here is his home page, here is his Wikipedia page.

So what should I ask him?

The post What should I ask Simon Sebag Montefiore? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Comments

In reply to William Carrington. Those were mostly (but not ... by Gardel
A lot of secondary sources on the Middle East are highly ... by ddh
Ask about Yahya Sinwar’s 2021 conference “Promise of the ... by Dr.Cornelius
What's his favorite book on the mandatory period, other than ... by Ethan
Ask about the importance of cultural differences between Arab ... by Dr.Cornelius
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UK fact of the day

Tyler Cowen — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 07:51:15 +0000

UK panel data, 1991-2019. Couples who support different parties separate more often. The effect is as strong as some other mismatches, like education. Disagreement over Brexit mattered even more than party preference.

Here is a longer Nikolaus Haufler thread on European fertility, with a variety of interesting observations about other countries.

The post UK fact of the day appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Comments

In reply to Wayfaring Stranger. Interesting way of looking at ... by Queezy
In reply to Creatine Addict. So ban everything for minors ... by anonprof
In reply to Wayfaring Stranger. BTW, a low net survival rate ... by Wayfaring Stranger
In reply to Sure. Thats a long way of saying exactly the same ... by Wayfaring Stranger
In reply to Sure. I was responding to the original post ... by Vivian Darkbloom
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Spying makes a comeback

Tyler Cowen — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 05:55:45 +0000

That is the theme of my latest Free Press article, here is one excerpt:

It may look like merely the latest story of a wealthy, powerful man making an irresponsible decision. But below the surface, it is also a harbinger of the erosion of privacy today, as well as the acceleration of espionage and the increasing value of secrets. More time and resources are going to be devoted to uncovering secrets, with honeypotting only one part of a larger picture: more spying, more attempted honeypotting, more private surveillance, more attempts to record (and search, using AI) conversations, more hacks of phones and computers, and more attempts to use AI to figure out the details of people’s lives and plans. Life is going to feel much more cloak-and-dagger, especially for the wealthy and influential…

The wealthy and influential are likely to take ever-greater care to minimize public scrutiny, protect their digital privacy, prevent journalists from going through their trash, and travel incognito, and their language in (supposedly) private conversations will have to be more guarded as well. We now live in an era where NDAs for hookups and even dinner dates are a thing.

Worth a ponder, as in the pending world secrets will be more valuable than before. The super-wealthy and their companies can be decisive actors, there are more prediction markets than before, and AI is equalizing the value of high-quality but publicly available information.

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Comments

In reply to sumadartson. >technology espionage There is ... by Gilligan
There are only two ways the mighty fall. Greed / Lust or Ego ... by RM
In reply to RAD. Sounds unlikely. NVIDIA legal would never ... by Gilligan
In reply to RAD. Right, exactly – in that interview, Jensen ... by JD
In reply to Kieran. If secrets are becoming more valuable ... by Boomersooner
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Are RCTs underpowered?

Tyler Cowen — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 20:05:26 +0000

Maybe so:

We study the statistical credibility of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in development economics and the optimal allocation of resources to replication. Using 745 principal-hypothesis tests from 190 articles in leading economics journals, we find that actual t-statistics peak well below the theoretical benchmark of 2.8 expected under 80 percent power, though above values associated with p-hacking. This suggests many RCTs are underpowered. Estimating an empirical Bayes mixture model that accounts for selective publication, we find that approximately 30 percent of published rejections are false discoveries, with average directional power at only 40 percent. At conventional significance thresholds, the posterior probability of a false discovery reaches 66 percent. Doubling original sample sizes lowers the average false discovery rate by five percentage points, whereas tightening the significance threshold to 0.005 yields a larger reduction at the cost of total discoveries. Finally, we characterize a funder’s optimal replication policy under a fixed budget and an evidence standard. Under standard regularity conditions, replications concentrate in an intermediate interval of original test statistics, and the optimal replication sample size is single-peaked in the original t-statistic. Illustrative calibrations show that successful replications reduce aggregate false discovery rates to 1.8–7.8 percent, depending on the evidence standard.

That is from a new paper by Qingyuan Chai, Kevin Lang & Liang Zhong.

The post Are RCTs underpowered? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Comments

So, we don't really don't know anything. And LLMs are trained ... by Quantitative Sneezing
In reply to Wayfaring Stranger. If you get too detailed in ... by Steven Strogatz
In reply to Copilot-rsm. “reality is richer than any ... by Wayfaring Stranger
In reply to Copilot-rsm. A map in the scale of 1:1 is useless. by Joan Robinson
In reply to Paul Feyerabend. […] What's interesting is ... by Copilot-rsm
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Tuesday assorted links

Tyler Cowen — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 16:50:08 +0000

1. AI as a normal technology.

2. Hayek for our time, by Cass Sunstein, free download for two weeks.

3. Works in Progress is looking for business and finance writers.

4. Matthew Lilley on Harvard grad students. I believe they teach the permanent income hypothesis there?

5. Ethan Mollick on Fable 5.2.

6. John Cochrane on Brazil finances.

7. “The latest Godzilla release has become the first Japanese film to simultaneously top the box office in both North America and Japan on its opening weekend…” (FT)

The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Comments

Graduate School is not a career. Schools are not giving Grad ... by ed o
In reply to Slocum. “…soon take all human jobs…” ... by Mark Bahner
In reply to luzh. 5-10 years ago I couldn't see this, but it ... by Mark Bahner
7. “The latest Godzilla release has become the first Japanese ... by mkt42
In reply to mkt42. I should have been clearer. The 4/4 load ... by anonprof
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Checking the AI audit of Saez and Zucman’s research.

Tyler Cowen — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 11:32:14 +0000

From SaneCite:

We checked the anonymous AI audit of Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman’s research that Marginal Revolution featured on 28 Oct: all 147 problems it calls serious enough to change a headline number, against the papers, their sources and the authors’ own data. The audit’s facts hold up: for 131 of the 147, every fact we could check was right, and none had its core facts wrong. 21 of the 147 change a headline number; 98 depend on a disputed choice of method; 20 change no number; 8 we could not check on that question. A second pass graded the 99 flags we first counted as depending on a disputed choice of method: 11 standard, 70 defensible, 11 questionable, 6 we could not grade, and 1 contested. It found one, No. 54, that does change a headline number, which is why the counts are now 21 and 98. Saez and Zucman were sent our findings on 29 Oct and did not reply by 6 Nov.

Here is the audit of the audit, open code and data, kudos to the authors. Here was the original AI audit. Here is the October 30 revision of that audit.

Addendum: And a revised version with less jargon.

The post Checking the AI audit of Saez and Zucman’s research. appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Comments

In reply to Stephan Joseph, SaneCite. Appreciated, and credit ... by Claude
In reply to Claude. All three are fair, and the first one is ... by Stephan Joseph, SaneCite
In reply to Bufo. Good question, and you can test it ... by Stephan Joseph, SaneCite
In reply to You might want to read. Not quite. Here is what ... by Stephan Joseph, SaneCite
In reply to Anonymous. Fair points, and we agree nobody can ... by Stephan Joseph, SaneCite
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Godzilla: Minus Zero (no spoilers)

Tyler Cowen — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 08:24:18 +0000

This is a morally serious movie (really). And Ghidorah stars! The whole thing is about twenty minutes too long, but mostly very good. And like many in the Godzilla series, it offers extended and instructive commentary on American-Japanese relations, and how the Japanese view them. Not for everyone, but I am glad I went.

The post *Godzilla: Minus Zero* (no spoilers) appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Comments

In reply to Ostalgie. Fair enough assessment. I do recall his ... by Sometorontoguy
In reply to Sometorontoguy. Did you actually watch the first ... by Ostalgie
Not surprised that this is good. “Godzilla Minus One” was ... by Roger Barris
In reply to George. +1. Instead of dealing with the ... by mikeInThe716
There should be a follow-up post about how this and the ... by Walt
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Unbeatable: The Brutally Honest Case for Free Markets

Tyler Cowen — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 05:39:10 +0000

That is the new and forthcoming book from Bryan Caplan, University of Chicago Press. Excerpt:

Real-world free markets deliver one broad benefit that flies under the radar of economic theory: They shield humanity from its own Social Desirability Bias. Markets do the good things that sounds bad. Good things like driving incompetent, unresponsive, and obsolete businesses into bankruptcy. Producing “shameful” products people secretly love. Refusing to produce “admirable” products they secretly loathe. Keeping costly products out of the hands of pe ople who barely appreciate them. Putting convenience above safety. Firing superfluous workers so they search for constructive ways to spend their lives. Charging people to drive. Charging extra during rush hour. Inducing teens to abandon their childish dreams. Persuading grown-ups to volunteer for the uninspiring dirty jobs that someone has to do.

Bryan of course is very much on target here, as he is in the broader text. Here is the Table of Contents:

Introduction: When good sounds bad and bad sounds good

1. What economists really think about markets and government

2. Why economists tragically underrate free markets

3. Why economists absurdly overrate government

4. Irrationality is the best case for and against government

5. What we ought to do but probably won’t

Conclusion: A Plea to the Free-Marketeers of the Future

I am delighted to see another book by Bryan, the title says it all.

The post *Unbeatable: The Brutally Honest Case for Free Markets* appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Comments

In reply to Wayfaring Stranger. Nor the flip side of that ... by john
In reply to rayward. I'm if your think your observation, ... by Mishkilji
In reply to miles jacob. But reproduction now up among richer ... by Tom
In reply to Wayfaring Stranger. Given we're talking about ... by Gilligan
In reply to Gilligan. err, mediating institutions. by Gilligan
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Monday assorted links

Tyler Cowen — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 17:42:35 +0000

1. What WWII looked like, four and a half minute video.

2. Intellectual Deep Web, YouTube channel.

3. Complete works of Schelling, and no I do not mean Thomas.

4. What the French Left is proposing.

5. How much AI could the CEA manage?

6. Douthat!

7. Andrew Maxfield, Stations of the Cross, vocal music.

The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Comments

In reply to rsm. France doesn't have tight fiscal constraints. by Anti-Gnostic
In reply to Hazel Meade. It never works. It only worked ... by Anti-Gnostic
In reply to Anti-Gnostic. Taking North Africa would have ... by Hazel Meade
In reply to M. Good comment. I've been a PPP sceptic, not ... by TMC
In reply to Phil S.. Maybe if he paused and consolidated the ... by Hazel Meade
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End the State Veto on Power Lines

Alex Tabarrok — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 12:18:45 +0000

It’s one of the peculiarities of American regulatory history that a natural gas pipeline can cross state lines with a single federal permit, but oil and electricity must run a gauntlet of state approvals. When a power line crosses one state to reach another, for example, the intervening state often imposes exorbitant tolls or, worse, vetoes the project entirely. It’s the holdout problem played out among the states.

In a new paper, Liscow, Shapiro and Williams show that after Congress ended the states’ veto over interstate gas pipelines in 1947, miles built per year rose nearly sixfold. Oil pipelines, which still had to run the state gauntlet, held steady. Lower transaction costs let natural gas flow to where it was most valued, creating a national market.

Today, as Liscow and Shapiro write in the Washington Post, the issue is electricity:

An interstate power line, however, typically needs approval from every state it crosses. That gives each state a veto over projects in which the benefits often flow mostly to its neighbors.

New England has experienced the consequences. In 2016, Massachusetts attempted to import Canadian hydropower. New Hampshire, which would have hosted the power lines without getting the same influx of cheap energy, rejected it. A second route through Maine was blocked in a referendum and didn’t deliver power until January. Meanwhile, Massachusetts households paid some of the highest electricity prices in the country.

As with natural gas, electricity is cheapest to produce far from where it is most valued, so to get the most from our national resources we need to transmit electricity across the country.

The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, which faces a Senate cloture vote on Monday, would let FERC approve an interstate line that a state has blocked or stalled for a year, a big step toward a national market in electricity.

Let the power flow!

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Comments

In reply to Mark Bahner. On a road trip with a mechanical ... by Old Programmer
Beware national markets! Look at Australia's foray into this.. by carlospln
In reply to Sure. I just looked up Massachusetts on the map ... by Crikey
In reply to mkt42. There is a third way: states agree to ... by Gilligan
Alex makes a useful and valid critique of current policy about ... by mkt42
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The economics of honeypots

Tyler Cowen — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 11:35:02 +0000

Of course as an economist I am always wondering what the equilibrium is. And, in this case, what is the scarce factor?

It seems that in the case under current consideration, the returns to honeypotting are very high for somebody. Maybe for China, maybe for the shorts, or maybe for parts of the Deep State that seek to shape domestic politics (and they possibly drove the timing of the leak?).

So why are not three potential honeypots sent every day to the most prominent men? If the guy says no, you do not have to pay them for very long, right? Or you can just have them try another, different guy.

I can think of a few hypotheses:

1. The number of attractive women with sufficient spy training is actually pretty low. Furthermore the spy agency has to trust the woman to some degree.

2. The number of attractive women willing to do this is pretty low. But at what wage? And in some countries threats to the family, or benefits to the family, can be added to the transaction.

3. It is difficult to access the most prominent men, and that limits the number of honeypots that can be sent. Furthermore, at some point the honeypot woman has to find time alone with the man, and that is not always easy.

4. In fact three potential honeypots are sent every day to the most prominent men.

5. Competition from the non-honeypot women is so strong the honeypots do not have such a great chance, thus limiting their supply. The non-honeypot temptresses will sometimes have stronger vetting as well.

6. Some of the most prominent men “go the Epstein route” instead, hoping for delegated vetting and a kind of mutual “hostage-taking,” noting that proved extremely risky as well.

What else?

The post The economics of honeypots appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Comments

There's some context missing. Some number of the most ... by Bryan Willman
In reply to john. Nope, TTSS does not have a honeypot. ... by cthulhu
7. High risk of detection if the relationship becomes close ... by Loop Garoo
In reply to Traveler. Hate to break it to you, but I get ... by AI Guy
Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, was reportedly ... by Kieran
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Seb Krier, Ricardian?

Tyler Cowen — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 07:21:09 +0000

Here is the initial post. In the comments Michael Wiebe notes: “So progress per R&D dollar fell by 63%, even while progress per year doubled.” File under: David Ricardo, underrated.

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Comments

In reply to Kaz Stanczak. The chart is consistent with ... by Peter
I like Ricardo because Charles Peirce was a big fan of his, in ... by Joseph Ferguson
ECI and its variants are effectively on a log scale. An ... by hnau
In reply to mento. In actual fact, you could explain that, if ... by M
In reply to M. Actually recently, that relationship of ... by mento
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The Paraguayan bank story

Tyler Cowen — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 05:27:57 +0000

Despite its weaknesses, Paraguay’s young democracy was still able to deliver under stress. Its free, boisterous press was the first to sound the alarm about Peña’s shenanigans. The Central Bank’s supervision chief did his job: he examined ueno’s numbers and recommended blocking the sale of its bad loans to a related company (Peña had appointed him to a different agency four days earlier). Legislators, including most of Peña’s fellow Colorados, moved swiftly to investigate and impeach the president. Prosecutors, who belong to a Public Ministry not always independent of the executive, ordered the arrest of ueno’s top directors the day the Central Bank took over the bank. They ordered Peña’s arrest the minute Congress impeached him—all within less than a week.

One of Paraguayan democracy’s greatest accomplishments has been earning an investment-grade rating for its sovereign debt, from Moody’s in 2024 and S&P in 2025. The macroeconomic and financial management behind it, through the finance ministry and the Central Bank, has brought low inflation and overall stability. As a result, Paraguayans can save, invest, and run their households and businesses like never before, and per capita GDP has grown steadily for three decades. That same framework is now repaying ueno’s small depositors through a deposit guarantee of up to $38,000 per person and, so far, has kept the panic from spreading to other banks. Whether it can also make whole the pension fund and the state agencies with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake is the next test.

Last but not least, there’s a big dog that hasn’t barked in this crisis. Unlike almost all of Paraguay’s previous political crises, the military has been a non-entity. No military leader has stepped forward to offer a solution, the press doesn’t even mention the military, and nobody on the streets expects or wishes a military solution. That’s a major democratic win.

Here is much more from Tomas Mandl, who also has an excellent book on Paraguay.

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