Calling Political Scientists and Mid-East Experts

From the NYTimes:

“We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world,’’ Justice Minister Haim Ramon told Israeli radio, “to continue this operation, this war, until Hezbollah won’t be located in Lebanon and until it is disarmed.’’

Mr. Ramon also raised the possibility of an expanded air assault, saying “all those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah.’’

How does anybody see this ending? Is the war in Lebanon simply a fact of life now for the near future?

Al Qaeda Responds

A day after I read that "Al Qaeda's Sunni ideology regards Shiites as heretics, and it profoundly distrusts Shiite groups like Hezbollah" we have this:

Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader issued a worldwide call Thursday for Muslims to rise up in a holy war against Israel and join the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza until Islam reigns from "Spain to Iraq."

I don't think he ever mentions Hezbollah by name, but it pretty clear these people are united in their hate of Israel and by extention, us.

Have You Seen College Textbook Prices Lately?

NPR is once again shocked by high textbook prices. The mechanism behind high textbook prices is highly analogous to high healthcare costs. The person selecting the product, the person paying for the product, and the person using the product are usually 3 different people. In healthcare the doctor determines the treatment, the patient benefits from the services, and the insurance company pays for it (beyond the deductible). In textbooks the professor selects the book (presumably the newest edition with a CD-ROM, study guide and other bells and whistles), the student is the one actually using it, and the student's parents are usually the shelling out the cash for the books.

The professor has an incentive to assign "the best" textbook. She receives free trial copies and probably doesn't look at the price too much. The students are most likely passing the bill on to Mom and Dad so they are less likely to seek out cheaper alternatives. This is further amplified by the fact that colleges and universities usually have an "official" bookstore on campus that makes it very easy to pass the costs directly onto the tuition bill.

You can find textbooks for cheap if you spend some effort looking which makes me somewhat unsympathetic the people in the NPR story who are "feeling the crunch". However lowering textbook prices in general could be achieved by making it easier for students to find out which books they need without going to the campus bookstore, and making it harder for them to charge their expenses to their tuition bill.

Procrastination

I haven't fully fleshed this out yet, but I'd like to propose a model of procrastination. Suppose my enjoyment of a particular activity can vary with time. An activity may be ardous today, but there might be some point in the future where I actually find this task enjoyable. Utility can be maximized, i.e. it is rational, to put off what I am not in the mood for right now with the expectation that it will become more enjoyable in the near future.

Obviously, self deception is a danger here. Perhaps the task I am putting off will never be enjoyable to me.

Blogging and Careers in Academia

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an collection of articles from the academic blogosphere on the case of University of Michigan professor Juan Cole who was recently denied a tenured job at Yale University. Juan Cole authors a popular blog on current events in the Middle East. The title of the symposium is 'Can Blogging Derail Your Career?'

Mark Thoma over at the Economist's View blog weighs in with his own thoughts. He agrees with Brad Delong (who is one of the contributor's the the Chronicle's collection and a tenured Economics professor/blogger himself) that his blogging is primarily about trying to raise the level of public debate and start of conversation with a wider general audience. What's more is that he feels writing the blog has expanded the set of issues he feels he can write intelligently about and it has even helped him keep up with developments in his very narrow field of study. It has made him happier and more productive.

Where he seems to part with Brad Delong however is on the "commercial gains" to having a blog:

Finally, I don't have any interest at all in using this blog to promote commercial interests, to sell books or anything like that. I'd start a second blog if I wanted to do that. One reason is that I wouldn't want anyone worried that I'm afraid to say something because it might hurt book sales, or whatever else is being peddled. But I don't mean in any way, shape, or form to look askance at anyone using their web log in that way, that's their choice not mine, it's just not for me. I don't want the constraints on my own ability to comment nor the questions from readers about how the commercial intent of the web log interacts with its primary academic mission. And I don't want the public face I present for myself and as a representative of my Department, the University, and more general academic community to be subject to criticisms along these lines. The views I present are my own, not the views that will sell the most stuff.

Whether the blog's purpose is to promote books or not is irrelevant. This blog is now a permanent addition to the Mark Thoma brand and by extention the University of Oregon. As Greg Mankiw puts it, "Have you noticed there are no ads on this blog? That's because this blog is an ad. It's the blogosphere version of the infomercial." The product is the blogger.

Something Happened Indeed

Mark Thoma points to an article by Ben Stein in the NYTimes:

Thanks to some fine reporting at The Wall Street Journal, we now know that right after 9/11, as the crushed bodies of heroic firemen were still being pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center, and the nation was in deep, bone-chilling mourning, the smart people who run some of America’s biggest and most powerful corporations may have already figured out An Angle.

Certain officers and directors at companies including UnitedHealth, Merrill Lynch, Teradyne, Black & Decker and Home Depot knew that their stock was way down because of panic about the attacks and whether more were coming. They also knew that their long-term prospects were excellent and that their stocks were a bargain. And right after the attacks, they quickly awarded themselves options priced to strike at the super-low prices their stocks reached when the fires at the Pentagon were still smoldering. In many cases, they went on to make serious money from those options.

That sounds dire, but I fail to see why I should be outraged here. Who did these people make money from? They didn't make money off of the victims of 9/11. They made money from people who, in the aftermath of 9/11 were dumping stocks in these American companies as fast as they could. This isn't some example of the greedy rich taking advantage of the little guy.

The Oil We Eat

Here is a disturbing article about the current state of human population and the energy it requires. Read the article because I cannot summarize it with any justice.

Basically, the food we eat is produced using a tremendous amount of energy. All energy on Earth at some point came from the Sun. The sun gives us a certain, fixed amount of energy each year. For millenia though a lot of this energy was stored. Some of it was stored in bio-matter that died and eventually became oil.

The food we eat today is not produced in an energy efficient way. Our food is processed and transported. This takes a tremendous amount of energy. In fact, it takes many times the amount of energy in fossil fuel to produce the food I eat than the amount of energy in calories that I get out of the food. We are able to sustain this because of the tremendous amount of stored energy on earth.

The implied question is "What happens when we run out?" We can't run a deficit in energy forever can we?

Frankly, I this concern ignores human innovation. The most disturbing thing about this argument is the assumption that a wealthy human being is a poor use of the world's resources. Humans have taken over the planet and displaced countless species in the process. My question is "So what?" Isn't survival and reproduction the goal or any form of life? Why should humans be different?

This is not to say I am closed to arguments about misuse of resources or dangers we are creating for ourselves.

I found the link to this article over at Marginal Revolution.

Private School Advantage Entirely Due to Self-Selection

A study of 4th and 8th graders finds that on average public schools might be slightly ahead of private schools when it comes to reading and math. From the NYTimes:

The report, which compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores in 2003 from nearly 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools, found that fourth graders attending public school did significantly better in math than comparable fourth graders in private schools. Additionally, it found that students in conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind their counterparts in public schools on eighth-grade math.

This study cannot be taken to mean that public schools are better than private schools. The report itself warns against such comparisions, because of the great variation in performance within private schools themselves. But it does show that on average, when taking into account "social and economic backgrounds" public schools do not fall behind private schools. This means the higher test scores seen in private schools can almost entirely be attributed the social and economics class of the students themselves.

Gambling...again

I can hardly believe what I'm hearing from Greg Mankiw. He writes,

In a comment on my previous post on gambling, Jacqueline Passey says:

gambling is distributive justice, moving money from stupid people to smart people.

The utilitarian in me points out that Jacqueline gets things exactly backwards: distributive justice demands moving money from smart people to stupid people. Smart people have the potential to make a lot of money and thus have lower marginal utility per dollar, while stupid people have less money-making potential and higher marginal utility.

I don't think he is actually trying to make the case that gambling (and poker) should be prohibited by the government. The libertarian in him stands in the way of his moralism and utilitarianism. He does wish that people wouldn't "waste" their lives by gambling either for enjoyment or for profit.

In a previous post he noted that playing chess is a more noble hobby than gambling. But isn't Gary Kasprov "wasting" his life as well in the same way? If he had applied his talent to become a software engineer instead of a professional chess player wouldn't he have contributed more to society?

This brings up an interesting question. Do people maximize their contribution to society over their lifetimes? Are our labor resources efficiently used? If the labor market is perfect people are paid their marginal productivity for a job. If they maximize their income over their lifetime then labor, like any other resource would be efficiently allocated by the market.

Is Poker Gambling?

Poker is a form of gambling, but I am sometimes amazed that people do not see the distinction between poker and other forms of casino gambling. In every other form of gambling you are playing against the house and stastically you will lose.

Poker on the other hand is a game played against other players. There is no mathematical certainty that you will lose. If you are better than everyone else you play with and you can cover the amount the casino charges you to play (the rake) then you can make money in the long run.

Greg Mankiw reveals his inner moralist in this post about why he hates gambling.