Viking chess

I wouldn't be as worried as Susan :-). The young viking is clearly on the way up and it appears he can't be stopped anylonger. He started Linares with two bangs ( win against Ivanchuk, win against Shirov). Nice, very nice. Though beating Anand today at Linares would indeed be amazing, even if Carlsen won't eventually manage that, he's now got serious chances to show he is already the right challenger of the World Chess Champ. The rest is just a matter of time.

Econlinks for 28-02-'08

• A very nice article about GMU's Econ department. I love for instance the following bit, despite its capitalizing on stereotypes (but we love those sometimes :-)); so here's Arnold Kling: My simple way of describing it is that at Chicago they say, ‘Markets work; let’s use markets.’ At Harvard and MIT they say, ‘Markets fail; let’s use government.’ And at George Mason, we say, ‘Markets fail; let’s use markets.’”

• Barack Obama might be very good at writing books (see here my assessment of his most popular book); however, he fares pretty poorly so far, in his economics policies. Here's one of his worst ideas, for instance, rightly and well criticized on VoxEU. It is rather amazing that with some top economists as his advisors, Obama can actually support an economic proposal that is "reactionary, populist, xenophobic and just plain silly". One can only hope that Obama does all this nonsense economic campaigning for popular votes and he'd eventually get back to his senses if elected President... But could he deliver as President, as The Economist and probably most of us would like to know...?

• An excellent interview with Kip Viscusi, the specialist on individuals' assessment of risk, compensation policies for safety and health hazards, and so forth.

• Since I've been reading The Bottom Billion, by Paul Collier, here's Easterly's review of it, published October last year in the Lancet. Haven't yet finished the book, but so far I tend to agree with Bill Easterly (hmm, seems I often agree with Easterly, here's another recent instance). I saw of course Easterly, Collier, Acemoglu and Duflo (and George Soros, by videophone) debating in the panel discussion on development in Budapest, at the EEA 2007; also there Easterly's speech came forth as clearer (and better!) than Collier's (with Acemoglu and Duflo diplomatically not taking clear sides :-)). Soros was eventually better than I had expected, but promoting Collier's book somewhat too much :-).

Best phrase I've read so far today

[...] Basescu has repeated his insistence that Székelyföld will have no more nor less autonomy than anywhere else. This is not a position with which I disagree in principle, but since he trotted it out two years ago and has done absoultely nothing towards decentralisation in Romania since, it is clear that what he means by "Covasna will have the same amount of autonomy as Calarasi and Constanta" is, in fact, "absolutely none". I know he's fully locked into the Bucharest political scene, being ex-mayor of that city, but I suspect he needs to get out a bit more.

The above is by Andy, on Csíkszereda musings, part of an entry on whether the Kosovo precedent implies anything for Székelyföld. I also find the entire post well written and I disagree, if at all, only with respect to some minor details.

Econlinks for 23-02-'08

• "[...] it is surprising and disturbing that, at a time when the premium for skills has increased and the return to graduating high school has risen, the high school dropout rate in America is increasing. America is becoming a polarised society. Proportionately more American youth are going to college and graduating than ever before. At the same time, proportionately more are failing to complete high school." Read the whole article on education trends in the USA by Jim Heckman and Paul LaFontaine, on VoxEU (with references to the research papers they quote).

• a nice interview in the latest Royal Economic Society (RES) newsletter with one of my favourite economists, Avinash Dixit. The interviewer is Andrew Oswald; since the newsletter is not yet available for download on the RES site, you can download the interview (PDF) from Oswald's site. Here's an excerpt dealing with Dixit's aversion towards reviewing long papers (same here, though, on the other hand, I admit to being guilty of having written some very long papers :-)):

[...] here is my reaction as I read, say, page 50 of the 70 page paper. I am reminded of the character Elaine in the show Seinfeld. [...] She is watching the movie of The English Patient. Finally she bursts out “quit telling your stupid story about your stupid desert and just die”. That’s what I think when I am on page 50 of a 70 page paper. Even a really good one!

• Larry Summers goes into business. Part-time, for now. Probably Summers is one of the few academic economists (top academic economist: this guy is a recipient of the John Bates Clark medal, for instance) to have had quite a wide range of top jobs (the ones outside the typical academic activity as professor at Harvard: Secretary of the Treasury, President of Harvard University, and now managing director of a hedge fund firm).

• Gary Becker and respectively Richard Posner on corporate philanthropy, more specifically analyzing Gates's speech at Davos. Link this to my previous entry on Easterly's criticism to Bill Gates's new notion of 'creative capitalism'.

A classic Alekhine's Defence and 43 moves

... is all what Magnus Carlsen needed in order to win against Topalov. Wonderful, wonderful, we love it! The kid is back in the game (while, surprinsingly, Topalov has lost two consecutive games since I last praised him...).

PS. Nothing is sure yet in Morelia-Linares, but I think it starts to look as if Carlsen were a very serious candidate to become the youngest World Chess Champion ever (thus beating Kasparov, who currently holds that record). The first opportunity for the Norwegian to do so could be in two years from now. The (only) very powerful player whom he still has problems winning against is Anand, who rightly deserves to be the world champ now and for the years to come (before Carlsen takes the title from him :-)).

Real stakes in the US election

Here's my favourite bit of the best essay I've read today:

The reality is that democracy is a very blunt instrument, and in today’s environment we are choosing between ways of muddling through. We may hear that the election is about different visions for America’s future, but the pitches may be more akin to selling different brands of soap.

We hear so many superficial messages precisely because most American voters have neither the knowledge nor the commitment to evaluate the pronouncements of politicians on economic issues. It is no accident that the most influential political science book of the last year has been “The Myth of the Rational Voter,” by Bryan Caplan. The book shows that many voters are ill-informed or even irrational; many economic issues are complex, and each voter knows that he or she will not determine the final outcome.

Rather than being cynics, we should be realists. Democracy is reasonably good at some things: pushing scoundrels out of office, checking their worst excesses by requiring openness, and simply giving large numbers of people the feeling of having a voice. Democracy is not nearly as good at others: holding politicians accountable for their economic promises or translating the preferences of intellectuals into public policy.

Read Tyler Cowen's entire article, from the NYTimes.


PS. I guess you've started reading Bryan Caplan's book by now ( I mentioned it before, e.g., here or here). If not, hurry up, what are you waiting for?! :-).

Carlsen should do better

After three rounds in the first leg of the Linares-Morelia tournament (the most powerful chess tournament of this year), the Norwegian wonderkid is not yet shining. Standings and results so far can be seen here (with at least one mistake on the site: Topalov's total number of points is 2.5, after 2 victories and 1 draw, and not 2.0). Obviously I still hope Carlsen will repeat what he did at Wijk aan Zee: anything is still possible, theoretically. Meanwhile, however, Topalov seems to be in an excellent shape. You can replay for instance his game won against Ivanchuk.

Econlinks for 18-02-'08

• An excellent (& extensive) interview with Susan Athey, the most recent winner of the John Bates Clark medal. Here's one of the best parts:
  
  

  Finding the applications that resonate with the students or the population in general and then showing them how a little bit of structured thinking can substantially improve their understanding — I think that’s where you get the power of economics. I’m still amazed that in the business world how having a coherent and structured way of approaching problems can allow someone like me to walk into an industry meeting and talk to people who are brilliant people managing large companies and still have unique insights for them. That’s because I have these really powerful tools at my disposal. Economics allows you to think several layers deeper. Without that structure, you just get lost in a muddle.

  
  

• Greg Mankiw rules again with his "Principles of Economics" class at Harvard. Probably Mankiw's is the most popular class of Economics in the world; the Economics world should in that case acknowledge Mankiw as "THE Economics Teacher".
  

• Here's Steven Levitt answering (some of) the criticism of John DiNardo. I've mentioned DiNardo's criticism here (1st bullet point). DiNardo might have been bored indeed :-), but Levitt carefully selects which points to tackle in his reply; he eventually addresses (true, very well) some of the relatively minor ones and leaves the gist of the critique unanswered...
  

• This IS NOT my reason for not using Facebook and declining every invitation to do so (don't even bother). I think the author of this text in The Guardian has little comprehension of economics, freedom to choose and the like, not to mention that at times he borders on paranoia. As long as users are perfectly informed of their rights and obligations, there is nothing to do with, e.g., invasion of privacy, to choose randomly from the 'sin list' of the article linked above. My rationale is much simpler: my opportunity costs would outweigh any eventual benefits from being active on Facebook or related 'social networking' sites. I however see them perfectly justified and a great business idea.

Chinese (Couch) Potato

"Tudou.com" (="Potato", in Romanized Chinese) is one of the several Chinese "Youtubes", seemingly the largest one at present (possibly larger than YouTube itself in some dimensions). Tudou's stated goal is "to move couch potatoes from the TV screen to computer screens, a process very much under way in China". Here's their wiki entry. While this might be not very exciting yet, what might knock you out is the fact that you can watch on Tudou an amazing number of excellent (whole) movies, both recent and old, in very high definition media format (typically split in several parts). For instance, you can find entirely the top 5 movies (and probably most of the rest, as well) from my 25 favourite movies list (which needs an update). Thus, if you have the time (even if you are not per se a couch potato), go for it: they've got an impressive collection. You can search for the titles of the movies in English: don't be put off by the Chinese, should you not understand it :-). It might be of course just a matter of time before Tudou will also have to start removing some of its material because of copyrights infringement (I am not sure to what extent that is a problem already, but at least concerning recent movies such as Sweeney Todd, the likelihood of foul play is very high...), but the Chinese legislation in context appears to be more than lenient for the time being.

What I've been reading

Lately I've got about 5 books started at all times and I largely read them in parallel (unless I like one too much to let it out of my hands before I finish it). This seems to be an excellent strategy against getting "too much" of something in a short while and eventually deciding to drop it too soon (which, by the way, you should not shy away from doing anytime if you really--but really-- do not seem to find any merit in reading a particular book). Below some brief impressions on some of the books started by end '07-beginning '08 that I've finally finished:

• Stephen Greenblatt's "Will in the World. How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare". This is a book once suggested to me by my good old friend Daniel, probably the only person in the world who can read even two-three books a day :-). You'll learn more about Shakespeare (both life and creation -wise) than you've ever known before. Greenblatt, probably best known as father of the New Historicism, combines his comparative advantage as literary critic with a great biographer intuition and manages to almost deliver Will Shakespeare in person (I strongly doubt one can do better than this, based on the current, scant evidence on Shakespeare's life etc.). A book you should not miss.

• "Why beautiful people have more daughters [with too long of a subtitle...]" by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa. I once had a post related to research covered in this book, which was also when I decided that I had to read it. One good point is that you'll find out about a number of extremely interesting fertility or demographic empirical facts that you might have not known. For explaning most of these facts the authors try to fit an evolutionary psychology story. Unfortunately, there's also where you should be extra cautious: although they seem to be careful with presenting clearly the conclusions reached scientifically versus others that might be speculated upon, but cannot be given clear scientific backing, my opinion is that the book is still not satisfactory from that point of view. In fact I am very curious whether this is an opinion solely of people acquainted with scientific research/statistics/econometrics or it holds more generally. For those of you who'd like more details, some of the explanations in the book are simply taken over from several articles published in, e.g., the Journal of Theoretical Biology by one or the other of the two co-authors (Kanazawa most often), which have been already criticized on several grounds, see for instance the 'statistical' criticism by Andrew Gellman, published in the same journal. Somehow both the book and the previous articles on which the research therein is based, try to oversell, without always giving proper scientific foundations (though this does not mean the given explanations can be invalidated). This is not to say that you should ignore this book; once again, it can fill you up with facts you had no clue about (tip: facts that can be used in most colloquial discussions, since people seem to particularly like such topics: now you know which book to read if you want to get in the center of attention every time).
  

• Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope". Steven Levitt was the one who convinced me to read this book, as I've mentioned before (post in Romanian, with links to Kakutani's review of the book in NYTimes and to Levitt's admission that he "was blown away at how well written it is"). While I am far from being "blown away" after having read Obama's book, I agree that the book is well written, perhaps unexpectedly so for an active politician. One of its strong points is that pretty much all of the author's ideas are conveyed in parsimonious, common sense language; this is essential for a politician aiming to engage and completely clarify his position in front of a mass audience (with electoral power, where applicable). For those of you who want a shorter version, you can watch on YouTube the two parts (part 1, part 2) of Obama's 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech (the book extends and expands on the themes touched on in this address). This was the talk that essentially launched Obama as a key player in US politics. Whether you'd eventually like this fellow in the White House or not (hopefully that decision would not be solely based on the most appealing book written by the candidates), you will only gain from reading his book.

More to follow soon. Meanwhile, you can also check my "books" blog-category for other books I've read and/or talked about in previous posts.