This and That

Taxing Logic By Donald J. Boudreaux

"Sebastian Mallaby—one of my favorite columnists—recently argued in the Washington Post for a policy that combines higher taxes with a more determined push for freer trade. Mallaby wants these tax revenues to be used to fund programs that reduce people’s fear of globalization. As Mallaby sees matters, “knee-jerk opposition to raising taxes is misguided. The government could and should spend more on making health care portable and retraining displaced workers. That is a much better bet than protectionism.”

We can argue about how well such government-funded programs will succeed in achieving their stated purposes. Dartmouth economist Douglas Irwin, for example, reports that the evidence is against the notion that worker-retraining programs deliver much in the way of genuine worker retraining. But whether or not government programs aimed at relieving voters’ fears about globalization really make people’s lives more secure can be regarded as being of secondary importance if these programs are believed by voters to make globalization less threatening."

Psychology- The big turn off

"Ellie Parker and Adrian Furnham of University College London devised an experiment to test three ideas. The first was to confirm that men and women alike would struggle to remember the brand of a product that was advertised during a break in a programme that contained sex. The second was that commercials that had an erotic element would be recalled more readily than those that did not. Finally they wanted to know whether people would remember the advertisement more easily if its theme contrasted with the programme into which it had been inserted...

Earlier work has suggested that sex and violence in television programmes deter people from paying attention to advertisements, but speculated that this may be overcome by using sex in the commercials as well. The new work suggests that this view is mistaken. It would appear that sex does not sell anything other than itself."

Why are Latin American politicians so bad?

Question & Answer: The Trade Deficit

The greatest women artists of the 20th century?

Great women artists include young geniuses, old masters

Marketing to the malnourished

Paul Krugman: The Big Meltdown

Amy Finkelstein: The Costs and Benefits of Universal Health Insurance

A $2 Trillion Footnote? By Robert J. Samuelson

"With hindsight, it seems almost incontestable that the Iraq war should never have been fought. It has eroded our global power, weakened our military and resulted in thousands of American and Iraqi deaths. What I most regret about my earlier column is that it seemed to bless a war, when I was mainly trying to focus attention on questions more important than money. Given the headline (I wrote it) and the fact that those questions came at the end of the column ("Is this war justifiable? . . . What would happen if we don't fight? What will happen if we do?"), the reaction was understandable. In truth, I was uncertain about the war then, just as I'm unsure of what to do now."

Mega-cities, mega-problems by Nicolas P. Retsinas

"It is internal migrant populations that are pouring into most of these exploding urban areas. In China, for instance, 150 million people have left their rural homes in the last 10 years, leaving a dearth of workers in the agricultural sector. Political and war refugees, too, flow in steadily. A fortunate few may realize a steady income, maybe even own property, but most live in slums whose filthy water, political chaos and nonexistent municipal infrastructure would startle Dickens and Marx."

The YouBubble: Investing in Minimal Attention Span

Will a boom in philanthropic prize-giving change the world?

"...The chronometer was invented to win an 18th-century British government prize. Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic to win $25,000 offered by Raymond Orteig, a hotelier. That inspired Peter Diamandis, the X Prize's creator, to offer $10m for the first private space flight, won in 2004 by SpaceShipOne.

In October the foundation launched its second prize, for genomics: $10m to the first inventor able to sequence 100 human genomes in ten days. In the same month Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese mobile-phone entrepreneur, endowed an annual prize of $5m plus $200,000 a year for life for former African leaders reckoned to have governed well. Last month a British entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, launched the Virgin Earth Challenge, offering $25m to the inventor of a commercially and environmentally viable method of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere...

Matthew Leerberg of Duke University, points out* that prizes are more commonly based on recognition of past achievement (such as the Nobel awards), or promote awareness of causes favoured by the donor. “Incentivising” prizes, by contrast, stimulate achievement of specific goals. That has big attractions for businesslike philanthropists such as Mr Page. This new generation of donors believes that traditional philanthropy is hugely inefficient. On past experience, Dr Diamandis reckons that a prize means “ten to 40 times the amount of money gets spent”. Transatlantic fliers spent a combined $400,000 to win $25,000 from Mr Orteig; the 26 teams competing for the $10m spaceflight prize spent $100m.

Flu-tures trading

For the Super-Rich, Too Much Is Never Enough

"But the move by Mr. Buffett raises the question of exactly what the other billionaires do have in mind for their money. According to the economist Christopher Carroll at Johns Hopkins University, in his article “Why Do the Rich Save So Much?,” the seemingly obvious question of why people would want so much money turns out to be a real puzzle....

Professor Carroll says the super-rich can’t be accumulating the money with the intention of spending it, either, because no one could spend that much."

One Hundred Interesting Mathematical Calculations: Number 16: How Rich Is Fitzwilliam Darcy?

The true cost of Britain’s failed pensions by John Kay

For the next 50 years, there will be a large legacy of pension commitments, made and received in good faith but identified with companies whose current owners have no commercial interest in fulfilling the responsibilities their predecessors assumed. The government’s claim that last week’s ruling might cost it £15bn ($29.4bn) is wildly exaggerated. But we will be lucky if the final bill for sorting out decades of good intentions and minimal foresight turns out to be so low.

Harvard College Economics Review - run by the students

Relationship counselling for the fund and the bank

The Financial Domino Effect

Medical Study Biases

Money Is Umm... Food?
Drawing on this theoretical similarity between money and food, Briers et al.1 hypothesize in a recent paper that the biological basis for the value of money may be the same as the basis for the value of food. As support for this hypothesis, they present the results of three experiments.

Is French the safest language for legal purposes?

"Babel" babble

Crypt Held Bodies of Jesus and Family, Film Says

Ghosts Make You Less Likely to Cheat

Taking our leaders at face value
A new study suggests that how we respond to a candidate's face could determine who we vote for.

Lack of sleep may impact upon moral judgement

Teens Can Multitask, But What Are Costs?
"Introducing multitasking in younger kids in my opinion can be detrimental," he said. "One of the biggest problems about multitasking is that it's almost impossible to gain a depth of knowledge of any of the tasks you do while you're multitasking. And if it becomes normal to do, you'll likely be satisfied with very surface-level investigation and knowledge."

Brain 'can beat early blindness'