This and That

In Hong Kong, diners fined for leaving leftovers;

At one restaurant, customers are charged 64 cents per ounce for food left on their plates.

Computer Scientists' Analysis Of Venezuelan Election Does Not Substantiate Fraud Claims

An analysis of polling data from the Aug. 15 referendum in Venezuela to recall President Hugo Chávez indicates that certain forms of computer fraud were unlikely to have occurred during the electronic voting process, according to a study by computer science researchers from Johns Hopkins and Princeton universities.

Banker Says He’ll Smooth His Style, but Waters Are Choppy ;

According to several bank officials who talked to people who were at the meeting, one of Mr. Wolfowitz’s two senior deputies in charge of running the bank, Graeme Wheeler, a former senior Finance Ministry official from New Zealand, said Mr. Wolfowitz needed to step down as president for the good of the bank.

Two Years Ago Bruce Bartlett Wrote About Paul Wolfowitz

The Origins of State Capacity: Property Rights, Taxation, and Politics

The Advisers Are Writing Our Future;

The truth is that if you put the economic advisers, from both parties, in a room and told them to hammer out solutions to the country’s big economic problems, they would find a lot of common ground. They could agree that doctors and patients need better incentives to choose effective medical care. They would probably hit upon education policies along similar lines, requiring that schools be held more accountable for what their students are, and are not, learning. They might suggest a carbon tax — a favorite idea of Mr. Mankiw — to deal with global warming. And they would shore up Social Security by reducing benefits for high earners, as Mr. Hubbard has suggested.

Addressing Climate Change-Is there a role to be played by the IMF?;

Global climate change has moved high on the agenda of key policy makers in many industrial countries. As a “global public good,” a coordinated global response in terms of efforts at mitigation will be critically necessary. Equally, many countries will face serious economic harm in the absence of adaptation efforts. As one of the key global institutions with responsibility for global economic stability and growth, this paper argues that climate change should be on the economic surveillance agenda of the International Monetary Fund, with the focus principally on the macroeconomic implications. While the IMF’s role would be necessarily limited, the paper raises questions about the adequacy of the financing and organization of current global coordination mechanisms to address climate change.

In the Real World of Work and Wages, Trickle-Down Theories Don’t Hold Up

Matrimony Has Its Benefits, and Divorce Has a Lot to Do With That - Tyler Cowan

Divorce seems an unusual topic for economists, but decisions to end a marriage weigh costs and benefits and thus reflect economic reasoning. Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson, both assistant professors of economics at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, have led the creation of new studies, which are surveyed in their working paper “Marriage and Divorce: Changes and Their Driving Forces.”

Harvard’s Former Lightning Rod Is a Hit in Asia;

But in Asia, Mr. Summers appears to be the man of the hour. His views on the importance of Asia’s growth, the challenges of globalization and the danger of the United States’ huge trade deficit are widely promoted by policy makers and economists. He is eagerly solicited for lectures and keynote speeches, where his characteristically unvarnished opinions creep into discussions of fiscal policy.

On Tuesday, Mr. Summers spoke to an audience that overflowed a ballroom at the Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi, telling hundreds of economists, government officials and business executives that most of the action on global warming needed to “take place in the developing world.”

Eastern Europe Becomes a Center for Outsourcing ;

To be sure, Eastern Europe, with an outsourcing business estimated at about $2 billion this year, represents just a fraction of the global outsourcing market, estimated this year at nearly $386 billion. But Robert H. Brown, an outsourcing analyst at Gartner Dataquest, expects growth in Eastern Europe to outstrip the rest of the market in the next four years, expanding close to 30 percent by 2010, compared with 25 percent for the global market

No-Fishing Zones in Tropics Yield Fast Payoffs for Reefs ;

The Micronesia Challenge has resonated far beyond Micronesia. Five months after Mr. Remengesau issued it, President Susilo Bangbang Yudhoyono of Indonesia pledged to increase marine protected areas to 24.7 million acres from 18 million acres by 2010. In the Antilles, the states of Grenada, the Bahamas, Belize and the Grenadines, which have already protected some reef areas, have committed themselves to a Caribbean Challenge and are trying to persuade the other nations to make similar pledges, according to Bill Raynor, the Nature Conservancy’s director for Micronesia.

But in the United States, marine protected areas are less than 1 percent of near-shore waters. In Hawaii, where the reefs are largely depleted of fish, a “right to fish” bill recently approved by the state house of representatives would make it almost impossible to create any protected areas by requiring unattainable scientific data

What Environment Do We Owe Our Descendents?

For a Change, Good News on Dating

Mel Gibson and Social Category Bias

Kremlin justice in the U.S.

For Consumers, the Raw Deal

The power of prices

Reviewing Landsburg's Errors

Find the error

Maybe Only God Can Make a Tree, but Only People Can Put a Price on It

Jesus tomb film scholars backtrack

What a lawyer means by "fact", "conclusion" and "opinion"

Prudence is knowing that not all swans are white

Sanjaya’s Surprise: Behind the ‘Idol’ Vote

Counting Clicks on the Web

Carnival of Mathematics 5

Winning 'triggers fan aggression'

The psychopathology of the modern American corporate leader

One for All

Pas de Deux of Sexuality Is Written in the Genes

When a Brain Forgets Where Memory Is

The Coming (?) US Current Account Adjustment: Two Questions Inspired by Two Graphs