Marginal RevolutionSmall steps toward a much better world.China markets in everything fact of the day- July 1, 2008 A Chinese man who set up an online business selling dead mosquitoes says he's received 10,000 orders in just two days. Nin Nan, of Shanghai, came up with the idea of selling mosquitoes he killed to attract visitors to his...http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/07/china-markets-i.html New York City talk, Thursday night- July 1, 2008 The venue is The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, 20 West 44th Street, 7:00 p.m. The speaker is yours truly and the topic is which problems we need to worry about and which not; you probably get to meet...http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/07/new-york-talk-t.html Assorted links- July 1, 2008 1. How bad will things get A symposium. 2. How smart is the octopus 3. Single-factor Gaussian copula. 4. Avner Greif responds to critics. 5. "Stairway to Heaven" revenues: one guesstimate is $562 million. And they don't even put it...http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/07/assorted-links.html Which books to take to Africa- July 1, 2008 Niall writes me: I have an optimization problem that I thought you and other loyal MR readers, like myself, could help me with. The Question: How should I go about selecting books to bring with me for a year of...http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/07/which-books-to.html A Biological Model of Unions- July 1, 2008 That's the title of a paper by Michael Kremer and Benjamin Olken. The bottom line is: ...a union that implements workers' preferences will not be evolutionarily stable. The union that survives must either extract fewer rents for the workers (thus...http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/07/a-biological-mo.html 0.4% of gdp- July 1, 2008 Paul Krugman explains.http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/06/04-of-gdp.html The history of America since 1980- July 1, 2008 Brad DeLong spells it out: The end of the Cold War Other winner-take-all factors that have, in combination with education, pushed American income polarization back to Gilded Age levels. The failure of American taxpayers to support their state and local...http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/06/the-history-of.html |