Politics, Economics and other Stuff

Short Post

My MIL's Internet connection has slowed to a crawl, so I'm posting
from my iPhone.

I wanted to post more about climate, population & economics, but
that's hard to do from a phone.

Question: have anti-population strategies to mitigate resource use
ever worked? Either against others or self?
I can't think of successful examples except in overwhelming cases of
military superiority or pre-modern cases but then again, you'd expect
successful cases to be reinterpreted in the historical record. I'm not
counting expulsions or pop transfers here. China's one child policy
may count...

I've had my 2nd week of running over 20 miles. Here I hoping I can
keep it up uninjured. A tad over 8 min/mile on pavement, back to
trails for the most part now.

I'll try pistol squats in 2012. May take a while.

I'm far over 155 lbs. now, but that's the holidays at my MIL. Aiming
for 146 lbs.
I can notice the extra weight i have now while running.

Why is current climate warming predicted to make the world dryer if in
the past warmer climate is associated with wetter climate? More on
that later.
Anybody want to guess?

Sent from my iPhone

Female Fertility

I went looking for these curves a while back, but didn't find anything.  Razib Khan is more successful, though I'd not vouch for the underlying data. Nor is the interpretation of this data in terms of birth outcomes straightforward. 

The paper A systematic review of tests predicting ovarian reserve and IVF outcome had what I was looking for. First, let’s review the cumulative distribution of fertility curves for women:

The way I read the figure 50% of women are sterile at 41. 50% begin their fertility drop at 31. Note that a small, but significant, minority of women are already sterile by age 35. People talk about fertility curves, but less weight is given to the fact that the curve varies in terms of its chronology!

Second, let’s look at the number and quality of ovarian follicles over time (they correspond to number of incipient eggs):

This figure is not easy to read. But you can see that at age 20 there are ~100,000 follicles. That number seems to drop by a little less than half by 30, and is at 20,000 by 40. But by this point 25 percent are of “poor quality.”

What are the consequences of low cost cryonics?

This xkcd cartoon made me wonder what the economic consequences of low cost cryonics would be...I can think of a whole slew of hypothetical equilibria.  Would it solve today's overpopulation and resource exhaustion problems?  Or would it instead show that we are, indeed, running our planet over the cliff? 

In my fantasy life I think a world population of under one billion is about right, maybe the world population of 1820, but there's no feasible way of getting there that would make even the remaining people better off.  Low cost cryonics would at least potentially do it...

I also like the population distribution of 1820: 25 million Germans, 10 million Americans, 380 million Chinese.  But how to get there? 290 million Americans into cryonic freeze, with 1/30 out of the freeze at any one time?  What sort of prices and participation would you get under 'standard' preferences for low cost cryonics?   And, yes, the whole question of what would happen to relative prices and wages in particular through time, for different goods and workers.  Who would be frozen when and how would the world change?   I'm assuming that the technology works and has no serious fixed costs: you could go under for a short while: in for a year, out for year, etc. 

Yet Another Canon 5DIII Rumor

Canon Rumors writes:

Barring another manufacturing problem in Asia, count on the 5D Mark III being announced around the end of March or early April 2012.

Availability will probably happen before the summer begins in 2012. No specs were given at this time. This is a very solid [rumor from a known source].

Post-Christmas Returns in Harvard Square

Perverse Reputational Incentives In Central Banking

Matthew Yglesias has a nice post (see below) --- is this the right story for the two cases discussed?  And how strong is this effect in general?  It is clearly there at the margin.  It strikes me as a strong contributing factor for the persistence of the Fed's current policy stance.  I'm sure there's theoretical work on this, but I've not seen any empirical work in any context on this sort of reputational model. 

Perverse Reputational Incentives In Central Banking

I was reading recently in Hjalmar Schacht's biography Confessions of the Old Wizard (thanks to Brad DeLong for getting me a copy) and part of what's so incredible about it are that Schacht's two great achievements—the Weimar-era whipping of hyperinflation and the Nazi-era whipping of deflation—were both so easy. The both involved, in essence, simply deciding that the central bank actually wanted to solve the problem.

To step back to the hyperinflation. You might ask yourself how things could possibly have gotten that bad. And the answer really just comes down to refusal to admit that a mistake had been made. To halt the inflation, the Reichsbank would have to stop printing money. But once the inflation had gotten too high for Reichsbank President Rudolf Havenstein to stop printing money and stop the inflation would be an implicit admission that the whole thing had been his fault in the first place and he should have done it earlier. It was easier to say that hyperinflation was a necessary consequence of allied demands for reparations payments and that he had no choice but to print currency in the quantity demanded. Similarly, the rapid collapse of the value of the mark led private firms to want to issue their own bills. This caused further inflation, but was permitted as a necessary accommodation to the inflationary conditions. Again, as a technical matter there would have been nothing difficult about reversing this policy. But to reverse course would be to admit that a mistake had been made. So things continued for several years until a new government brought Schacht on as a sort of currency czar. Schacht stopped the private issuance of money, launched a new land-backed currency and simply . . . refused to print too much of it. The problem was solved both very quickly and very easily. His later work helping Hitler rebuild the German war machine was a bit differentnt, but again essentially just involved looking at what the previous failed policy had been (gold standard and deflation) and doing the reverse.

The institutional and psychological problem here turns out to be really severe. If the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee were to take strong action at its next meeting and put the United States on a path to rapid catch-up growth, all that would do is serve to vindicate the position of the Fed's critics that it's been screwing up for years now. Rather than looking like geniuses for solving the problem, they would look like idiots for having let it fester so long. By contrast, if you were to appoint an entirely new team then their reputational incentives would point in the direction of fixing the problem as soon as possible.

Update #1: Scott Sumner writes in his blog:

This reminded me 1936-37, when the Fed made the mistake of doubling reserve requirements.  Late in the year the economy slumped badly, and it was clear that the decision had been a mistake.  At the November FOMC meeting they discussed the possibility of reversing the decision:

“We all know how it developed. There was a feeling last spring that things were going pretty fast … we had about six months of incipient boom conditions with rapid rise of prices, price and wage spirals and forward buying and you will recall that last spring there were dangers of a run-away situation which would bring the recovery prematurely to a close. We all felt, as a result of that, that some recession was desirable … We have had continued ease of money all through the depression. We have never had a recovery like that. It follows from that that we can’t count upon a policy of monetary ease as a major corrective. …  In response to an inquiry by Mr. Davis as to how the increase in reserve requirements has been in the picture, Mr. Williams stated that it was not the cause but rather the occasion for the change. … It is a coincidence in time. … If action is taken now it will be rationalized that, in the event of recovery, the action was what was needed and the System was the cause of the downturn. It makes a bad record and confused thinking. I am convinced that the thing is primarily non-monetary and I would like to see it through on that ground. There is no good reason now for a major depression and that being the case there is a good chance of a non-monetary program working out and I would rather not muddy the record with action that might be misinterpreted. (FOMC Meeting, November 29, 1937. Transcript of notes taken on the statement by Mr. Williams.)”

This is one of the most chilling statements I have ever read.  The opening sentence is the sort of thing juvenile delinquents say to each other when their prank has gone horribly awry, and they are nervously working on a joint alibi.  An incredible effort at denial runs all through the piece.  First he admits that they raised reserve requirements because “some recession was desirable.”  Then he claims it was just a “coincidence in time” that the downturn followed the reserve requirement increase, even though the express purpose of the increase was to cause a “recession.”  Then he claims that if they reverse their decision it will look like the previous decision had caused the recession.  Then he said that a depression can’t be happening, because there is no good reason for a depression.  Well it was happening, unemployment rose to almost 20% in 1938.  In the end, they decided to stick with the high reserve requirements throughout the rest of 1937.  Reading that quotation one can almost see the perspiration on Mr. Williams’ forehead.

Mobile phone data

A random assortment of data:

First, Apple is the dominant firm by worldwide profits, but not unit sales or even revenues.  Samsung also makes money, then it gets pretty thin (i.e. HTV is doing okay, everybody else is struggling, including LG?).  Note that the boundaries between these firms aren't all that clear, at least not to me. 

Note that annual cell phone sales worldwide are now over 1.1 billion. 

(link)

Smartphone data:

Nielsen reports that 43% of the phones in use in the US now are smartphones in the US with Ages 25 to 34 having 62% penetration.  (link)  One of the reasons we got iPhones: people now assume you have them, in our age and income/education/professional bracket. 

(link)

 Worldwide non-smart and smart phone subscriptions/lines:

(link)

More later...one thing that makes the data hard to understand is the very high per capita cell phone penetration you get in many places, far above one phone per person (not per adult).  For instance, Germany has 1.3 cell phones per capita, the US only about 1.03 per capita.  I can see some fraction of the population having a private and a work phone, but how do you get to 1.3 phones per capita?  Unless there is some double/triple counting of pre-paid subscrtiptions, i.e. at one extreme you buy four 3 month pre-paid lines per year and that counts as four cell phones in the data.  If that's it this data needs to be interpreted quite differently and isn't going to be comparable across counties with different pre-paid phone behavior.   

We are a 3 cell phone line household: 2 iPhone 4S and one pre-paid minimal plan old Samsung.

I'm up to 15 good form pull-ups in a max set

Not all that terrible, but progress isn't fast.  20 pull-ups in a max set by end of February?  The Christmas break may cause problems for that...

The Iraq War Today: US Polling

from Pew:

Overcast Sugarloaf Mountain

Update #1: ah, there's an iPhone orientation for posting to typepad from the phone...also, no choice of photo size...

After a tiny bit of post-processing (though I'm not used to post-processing non-raw files), posted from home.  Walk was a bit boring, the area is too developed. 

Plans for tomorrow

• run.  Probably ~ 40 min, easy pace.  Injury prevention and a slow ramp up is primary.  This is a switch to running every other day. 
• 2nd breakfast at Cafe Nehmoneeh.  Good baklava and a bit of reading.
• Hiking at Sugarloaf Mountain, after a 1+ hour drive via the exurban reaches of the Potomac (i.e. around the West, not via DC). 
• some pre-Christmas chores.

One thing about having a day off: you can go to bed early, since you can focus on the things you want to do the next morning. 

When I was young and light

My 'equivalent running times' from McMillan running, from when I was young and light (~145 lbs) but very much not well trained in running, all early high school.  I did run some of these times.  I considered these crappy times then, in need of improvement... supposedly my age handicap (from an age in my early twenties, not from the age of 15) on 5K is now around 1:47 and my weight handicap around 0:56, for a total handicap of 2:43, so I am actually getting pretty close to where I should be running a 5K: 18:06 + 2:43 = 20:49 (compared to 21:06 actual). 

I'm still hoping that I can get under 20:00 on a 5k by getting down to 148 lbs or less and also sustaining two weekly tempo runs without injury.  Hey, I'm hoping for times closer to 19:00 or even less eventually, if I'm smart about how to do this. 

Yet another futile attempt at tree photography

Still decent internet speed on the landline

Verizon 3G, on the other hand, is at times very slow (<0.05 Mb/s), especially at the office, presumably due to heavy network use by hundreds/thousands of other users.  It can get up to 1 Mb/s or more during off hours.  My monthly data use so far is a bit over 700 MB, so far under my 2 GB/month plan.  On the other hand, the lower plan of 300 MB/month is about where my wife's usage is right now, and that may increase.  I'll stop trying to keep my usage down (so from now on I'll send the less compressed jpg). 

Otherwise, the oddest thing so far with wireless internest access is simply that I don't have to check email any more when I come in the house.  And I am clicking unsubscribe on most of the marketing emails I've picked up over the years...they are much more annoying if you get them on a phone. 

Liver

I finally got around to cooking liver for dinner, since the rest of the family had burgers at Foster's and I'm dieting...not that that I had a good day there, shopping and Christmas is dangerous, with several lattes and some Apfelstrudel, Weisswurst and Christstollen.  Also a run in with some chocolate.  Nothing too bad, but I'm over 155 lbs again.  I ran a 5K with kid #3 this morning, fast for her, though we didn't quite crack 30 min.  My wife ran the 10K.  Kid #1 picked up 3rd palce for girls under 19 years, but that was in part low participation by kids.  There were 50 year olds under 40 min in the 10K...best 5K time was under 16 min. 

Update #1: the key fact here is that my wife hates liver and it is best cooked when she's not around. 

Update #2 (Dec. 18): 154.8 lbs this morning, so still under my 'hard ceiling' of 155 lbs. 

Day Off

Update # 1(Evening, Dec. 16): the hike turned out to be a bit boring, maybe what you should expect for a hike in the Virginia hills in December.  The first photo below was posted from the hike using the new iPhone.  The second photos is the same shot with my regular camera, for quality comparison...yes, the iPhone can't really be used except for documentation purposes.  Also, the iPhone, when used as a GPS -- important if you want to hike loops and not just in and out the same way -- runs out of power a bit over 5 hours in, so I do think I'll look into a add-on iPhone battery pack for hiking.  Hike was around 4 hours, preceeded by a stop to drink coffee and eat baklava at Cafe Nemoneeh. 

I put my tripod in the car, but it didn't go on the hike. 

Update #2: ah, some of the iPhone quality problem is simply the compression I used to email photos over 3G.  The uncompressed jpg at 1200 pixel width at the bottom.  Quite a bit better. 

How did this happen?

I couldn't find any traces of whatever caused this.   Bad iPhone quality photo from one of my early morning walks.  BTW, I may make tomorrow morning my last walk, then we're back to running and biking only (except maybe over Christmas, when I won't have a bike with me). 

Aiming for 146 lbs

I think I'll aim to get down to 146 lbs. I am a tad over 153 lbs right now and I was down to a tad over 148 lbs this summer, so this should be doable, even with some additional upper body bulking up since the summer.   I've got enough fat to take off. 

More later...partly this is just to give me a goal so I can survive Christmas.  I don't expect to be under 152 lbs by Jan. 1, but I don't want to be over 153 lbs either.  I'm going to have to give intermittent fasting a shot to get and sustain being under 150 lbs. 

Update #1 (December 14): well, still not under 153 lbs yet...pre-Christmas season isn't an easy time to loose weight.  On the other hand, I'm under 154 lbs despite social occasions. 

Update #2 (December 15): now  up to 155 lbs.  Due to a large batch of chocolate chip cookies made by kid #2.  They were much better after a day in a tin. 

The Electronic-Industrial Complex is unable to sell me the products I want

It seems the Garmin 910xt I pre-ordered back in October is now delayed into February 2012.  And there is still no concrete sign of the Canon 5DIII.  The spec rumors of the 5DIII continue, but they are all over the place. 

And the main power meter I'm considering for my bike, the CinQo crankset SRAM S975 BB30 50/34 172.5mm hasn't been available for order for more than a month either.  I'm on the notification list for availability. 

Hey, at least I don't spend any money this way.

Why I am not a Republican, Part MMXXIV

Rick Perry's latest...note the Aaron Copland-esque music...gay atheist composers still seem okay, or the Perry campaign might not have know about that...

Above 155 lbs

There's good food everywhere.  Agh...what to do?

I do plan to run for the first time in (almost?) a month tomorrow.  But I need to increase speed and mileage very gradually, so I'm not going to get too much out of it in terms of weight control.  Maybe a bit of appetite suppression. 

Update #1: oops, no running due to rain tomorrow.  Just stationary biking, which is less calorie intensive. 

Update #2 (Dec. 7): surprisingly under 154 lbs. this morning.  So maintained restored the hard 155 lbs. limit. 

Update #3 (evening of Dec. 7): agh, it is supposed to rain all night, so the trail may be too muddy tomorrow for me to run. 

What did OECD bank bailouts costs?

I'm annoyed I can't find any good data.  Here is the IMF -- this appears to be the data source or at least methodology for the IMF report I cited a few days ago --  on 'costs' as of, I think, the end of 2009, but this doesn't look to me to be a very good measure of actual costs.  Instead, these look like 'accounting' numbers, costs could be both higher or lower than this.  I'd like something like 'realized cost', i.e. cost that will not be recovered for sure. 

Christmas Shopping

• I got one more external hard drive.  2TB for $130 (including shipping).  I'm suffering from the Thai floods.  I'm now not doubly backed up anymore, since that would require another 2 TB drive (i.e. my main drive + OS drive just went past 2 TB).  But all the singly backed up files are replacable. At some point I'll get another backup disk, but probably only once non-replacable files hit 2 TB.  I'm still about 380 GB (actually more, that that would start turning into a real pain) away from that. 
• A Garmin nüvi 1450LMT 5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Lifetime Map & Traffic Updates and Garmin Portable (Dashboard) Friction Mount for my mother-in-law.  This is the most sold GPS on Amazon and the first non-Kindle and non-Apple electronic item (at #8).  Bigger than what I'm used to, but my mother-in-law prefers this size to the next smaller size (it is easier to read). 
• 5 lbs.  of citric acid powder for descaling.  What happens if you buy online, given shipping you can buy 5 lbs for twice the cost of 4 oz.  So I'm prepared.  Trying to buy citric acid at a local drug store proved to be a wild goose chase, I only could find 'medical' versions that were much more expensive.  Descaling works fine, though I've not tested for an aftertaste yet. 
• A new fish feeder to prevent fish death (the current fish feed killed two fish, the last one last month over Thanksgiving). 
• A Honeywell Replacement Post Filter for 20x25" F300/F50F Air Cleaners, 50000293-004 for the heating system.  I got the electrostatic air cleaner to work without sparking, but I did turn it off after day for probably producing excess ozone.  Filter shows up tomorrow (I just vacum cleaned to current post-filter, which helped a lot, the dirty filter was making the whole heating system work excessively hard and we did probably run up some excess heating costs this month due to that).  I may turn the electrostatic air cleaner back on if the smell I think is ozone continues, since it may just be bathroom cleaner (bathrooms got cleaned the same day I put the air cleaner on, after several weeks of not being cleaned).  An ozone detector would be nice, but I don't know who could lend me one. 

Not really Christmas shopping for the most part...

xkcd

A repost of my favorite xkcd comic:

iPhone Data Usage

My data usage so far is lower than I'd expected: 70.6 MB sent, 428 MB received after two weeks. My data plan is for 2 GB. The next lower plan is for 300 MB.

xkcd

Nothing from xkcd for a while, hence this one. 

Deep Sea Tuna Fishing 42,000 years ago

This caught me by surprise --- Pelagic Fishing at 42,000 Years Before the Present and the Maritime Skills of Modern Humans, Sue O’Connor, Rintaro Ono, Chris Clarkson writing in Science :

By 50,000 years ago, it is clear that modern humans were capable of long-distance sea travel as they colonized Australia. However, evidence for advanced maritime skills, and for fishing in particular, is rare before the terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene. Here we report remains of a variety of pelagic and other fish species dating to 42,000 years before the present from Jerimalai shelter in East Timor, as well as the earliest definite evidence for fishhook manufacture in the world. Capturing pelagic fish such as tuna requires high levels of planning and complex maritime technology. The evidence implies that the inhabitants were fishing in the deep sea.

Deep sea fish bones appear to be around 1/3 of all animal remains in these sites, so deep sea fishing is not a ritual side show. 

Update #1: my wife point out that catching tuna 42,000 years ago may have much been easier than it is now.  Tuna were more abundant and may have been behavorially easier to catch: as top predators they may have been unused to human predators.  Not the chicken of the see, but the dodos of the sea.  They didn't get wiped out by humans like many land animals, but could their behavior have changed? 

Fiscal Austerity in Germany and UK Debt in the 19th Century doesn't look so sustainable ex-ante

via Delong, Duncan Weldon writes about the IMF Regional Economic Outlook for Europe:

Earlier this week the IMF released its Regional Economic Outlook for Europe.

The press picked up on the fact that it was reiterating its call for some countries (including specifically the UK and Germany) to slow the pace of cuts if growth falters.

They made the same call in the most recent World Economic Outlook and Director Christine Lagarde urged policy makers not to ‘slam on the fiscal brakes’ in an FT article back in July.

Given that this isn’t a new call I thought the chart below was perhaps the most interesting bit of analysis in the report. And something I’ll be returning to in a future blog.

It shows what has driven the increase in public debt between 2007 and 2011 in four selected European countries.

The red segment is fiscal stimulus – what becomes clear is that the UK’s fiscal stimulus (the VAT cut and the bringing forward of investment) was relatively small – especially when compared to ‘austere’ Germany’s much larger direct stimulus.

The yellow segment is support for the financial system – the direct costs of bailing out banks. It’s interesting again to note that Britain’s costs here – although higher than those of France or Italy – are well below German levels.

The grey segment is the ‘interest-growth dynamics’ – the effect of higher interest payments (due to either a bigger stock of debt or higher rates) adjusted for growth. Here we see that the UK and Germany are doing relatively well but Italy is really suffering – it’s these dynamics that are a major driver of market fears about Italy’s debts.

Finally the blue segment is ‘accommodated revenue loss’ –as the IMF explains are ‘revenue losses associated with output losses from the financial crisis’ – which was clearly the driver of the UK’s increase in public debt.

So there we have it – according to the IMF the reason the UK has experienced a large build up in public debt is because of the costs of the large loss of output following the crisis. Not quite the story of public sector profligacy the government is usually so keen to tell.

Financial sector was that large in Germany!? That's considerably larger as a fraction of GDP that what the US did (which is mostly the GSEs and AIG, plus hidden subsidies to the private banking sector via regulatory rules and anti-trust forebearance and montary policy, i.e. things that don't show up in fiscal accounts). 

Krugman writes today that

I’ve been playing around with the IMF’s historical public debt database, which has long-term information on ratios of debt to GDP. And you really have to marvel, given that historical record, at the deficit panic now so widespread. Here’s debt as a percentage of GDP in Britain, back to 1830:

That uptick at the end — you’ll see it if you squint — is what’s driving the Cameron government’s insistence on slashing spending in a liquidity trap.

It’s also interesting to note — contrary to what you often hear — that at the time Keynes was writing, and calling for fiscal stimulus, Britain was substantially deeper in debt than Britain or the United States are now.

I note that before 1930 UK government spending was a lot lower than today, with nevertheless a very strong tax base.  A strong tax base together with low government spending goes a long way towards supporting a large government debt (and gets you low real interest rates as well, which makes it easier again to have a large debt).  One of the concerns now is that spending of the elderly's health care with crowd out servicing public debt. 

I should look up the numbers on taxes and spending. 

Not quite on point, but still (very) interesting Debt Sustainability in Historical Perspective: The Role of Fiscal Repression by Mauricio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth:

Figure 2 looks at the evolution of Britain’s debts and primary surpluses over the 18th century. Primary surpluses increased in absolute value after every war, but they hardly changed at all relative to GDP. In 1700, Britain had a primary surplus of 7% of GDP; by 1790 it stood at 7.8%. Given the enormous accumulation of debts relative to GDP, rising from 28% to 116%, this is surprising. As shown in Figure 1, there is only a mildly upward-sloping relationship between primary surpluses and debt levels in Britain. The regression implies that, when debt/GDP stood at 20%, the typical surplus was 3.3% of GDP and rose to 3.6% when debt reached 50% of GDP. These values are far below the ones found by the IMF for developed countries today, and at higher levels of indebtedness they are similar to values seen in emerging markets today.  ...

At its peak in 1822, the British government had contracted loans equivalent to nearly three times GDP (Barro 1987). Whenever the country fought a war, debt surged. It increased from 50% of GDP after the War of the Spanish Succession to 140% after the Seven Years War and to 275% after the Napoleonic Wars. Yet repay Britain eventually did, while many of the lenders to Philip II saw their claims reduced as part of the reschedulings. However, it took the long Pax Britannica after 1815 to reduce debts to negligible levels. For 64 out of 97 years in our historical sample from the 18th century, the U.K.’s actual debt level was above the sustainable level, often by a factor of 1.3 or more. Investors buying government debt carrying interest rates of 3% stood a chance of being repaid only if the frequency of war declined sharply relative to their historical experience. Only then, with Britain using large peacetime surpluses to pay down its debts, was there a chance of sustainability. Whether investors could have foreseen peace breaking out with a vengeance in the 19th century is highly doubtful. That the Pax Britannica did take hold after 1815 is no proof of ex ante investor rationality. We simply do not know how much luck at Trafalgar and Waterloo was necessary to ensure the eventual triumph of Britain, but few historians would argue that success was a foregone conclusion at any stage. That investors purchased consols may well tell us more about their lack of alternatives than about the inherent attractions of U.K. government paper. ...

We favor an alternative interpretation: financial repression. British fiscal rectitude in the early 1700s is an unlikely explanation for the progressively lower interest rates later in the century. When the U.K. showed the most favorable ratio of primary surpluses to debt, in the early 18th century, its interest rates were not particularly low. In real terms, they were as high as those paid by Philip II. It is only from the 1710s and 1720s onward that British interest rates decline precipitously (Sussman and Yafeh 2006). Since this places the discontinuity a good quarter of a century after the Glorious Revolution, it follows that institutional quality and the restraints imposed by parliamentary rule are also unlikely candidates. Instead of earning a right to lower interest rates, Britain carefully ensured the government’s privileged access to citizens’ savings. Interest rates were heavily regulated. Usury laws reduced the private sector’s competition for funds and created artificially easy borrowing conditions for the government (Temin and Voth 2008). It is no coincidence that government debt service became much cheaper only after 1714, when usury laws were tightened and private lenders were not allowed to charge more than 5% per year Other limitations on private loan contracts, such as restrictions on their maximum duration, worked in the same direction. There is ample evidence that government borrowing crowded out private investment on a large scale. Every time military spending surged, private borrowers were effectively shut out of the loan market (Williamson 1984; Temin and Voth 2005).

Drelichman and Voth also point out the Spain didn't do so well in the 18th century as the UK despite a fiscal policy more responsive to the needs of public creditors since Spains source of borrowing was foreign capital that couldn't be repressed and which could go elsewhere. 

A Very Slow 5K

I ran this morning's 5K with kid #3, so we ended up with times a bit over 33 min.  No issues, but I still can occasionally notice my knee tendinitis in other contexts (especially during long car rides).  Kid #2 actually rand a bit slower than kid #3, in part due to various injuries and pains.  This didn't go over well with kid #2.  My wife also ran pretty slowly, a bit over 30 min, and she's not actually run for weeks either.  Kid #1 ran a bit over 26 min.  A very slow mass start. 

I'm going to start running again, with a very slow build up.  I'll aim for one day of running, one day of biking, one day of walking.  Start with 30 min of running, 30 min biking, 60 min walking for one week, then increase to 40 min running, 40 min biking, 60 min walking.  At some point I'll start replacing walking days with running or biking.  But I do need to increase very slowly.  I assume this will work fine, but you never know.  The real challenge should be getting some speed work in without getting injured.  Or I get injured just by running a normal pace...

Update #1: my wife is now limping around with a sore and stiff knee, trying to start pulling Christmas decorations up from the basement.  I'm feeling fine (but trying to knock off some work for tomorrow...yes, procrastination strikes back).

iPhone Update: no way to automatically add googe places items to contacts? Also some backyard astronomy

Just one rant: why the hell can't you add items you find on google places to your contacts?  You can add the address, but there's no automatic way of adding address, name and phone number!  I assume this is a legal problem, with google not allowing Apple to do this?  Still, there should be a way at least to add the contact to your google contacts -- but maybe Apple doesn't want to do that?  So far I've found the iPhone-google integration better than I expected, but the lack of this feature is just crazy. 

On the other hand, iOS 4 did seem to provide this feature via going to google maps.  Going to google maps now just gets you the address, but drops the name and the phone number. 

I also put the Star Walk app on the iPhone.  It seems useful...I tried it out this evening at 9 pm with some cloud cover, so you couldn't see much.  I was able to identify the brightest star out there as Jupiter...though with very little other stars for context it was hard to tell, since Star Walk does not provide magnitude for planets and I couldn't tell from this app if Jupiter was actually the brigtest object in that segment of the sky.  Looking it up in Stellarium, it turns out that the magnitude of Jupiter at today is -2.63, very bright, close to its maximum magnitude of -2.94 (min is -1.61).  Sirius, the brightest star, is -1.41.  I'd not been aware that Jupiter's magnitude at its minimum is brighter than Sirius.  Pretty shocking ignorance that indicates I don't look at the sky much...obviously, Venus is much brighter.  Magnitudes from wiki. Also, the log scale is here in 100^(1/5) ~ 2.51, so not your typical log scale (i.e. not exp(1)). 

Good Christstollen

My diet is running into some of the usual Christmas problems, but in a good way.  My wife picked up some very good Christstollen made the the Swiss Bakery at the Deutsche Schule Washington Christmas fair today.  It may be the best Chiststollen (by far?) I've ever had.  I didn't expect that...

Where Economists have a Comparative Advantage

via Cheap Talk, Raquel Fernandez writes:

Economists essentially have a sophisticated lack of understanding of economics, especially macroeconomics. I know it sounds ridiculous. But the reason why I tell people they should study economics is not so they’ll know something at the end—because I don’t think we know much—but because we’re good at thinking. Economics teaches you to think things through. What you see a lot of times in economics is disdain for other’s lack of thinking. You have to think about the ramifications of policies in the short run, the medium run, and the long run. Economists think they’re good at doing that, but they’re good at doing that in the sense that they can write down a model that will help them think about it—not in terms of empirically knowing what the answers are. And we have gotten so enamored of thinking things through that the fact that we don’t know anything needs to bother us more. So, yes, it’s true that the average guy on the street doesn’t understand economics, and it’s also true that we don’t understand economics. We just have a more sophisticated lack of understanding than the guy on the street.