Economics is easy

Law is hard. Amartya Sen poses the dilemma:

Suppose three children—Anne, Bob, and Carla—quarrel over a flute. Anne says it's hers because she's the only one who knows how to play it. Bob counters that he's the poorest and has no toys, so the flute would at least give him something to play with. Carla reminds Anne and Bob that she built the darn thing, and no sooner did she finish it than the other two started trying to take it away.

Who should get the flute? Tough, isn't it? I guess that I am going to stick with Economic History and Regional Economics.

"Lazy Japanese and Thieving Germans" Ha-Joon Chang

I do not agree with Ha Joon Chang's (conspiracy) theory on the relationship between protectionism and development. But now he got it right: culture does not precule long term development.
HT Brad Delong.

World Digital Library

Impressive and the interface is great. Check out this 1865 Brazilian map .
HT Rafael.

Qgis

Qgis is an open-source alternative to Arcview, specially when you install the plug-ins.

Cliometrica

A new number of the French journal. I have not read it yet (as usual), but the titles of the papers called my attention (e.g. "Fallacious convergence? Williamson’s real wage comparisons under scrutiny")

More or less

Is there any other radio show where you can listen to Hal Varian (talking about statistics) and Andrew Gelman ("Do beautiful parents have more daughters?")?
Now the full archives of the show are available on-line!

I envy Ed Glaeser

I confess. In one year he has posted ten new (and excellent, I am sure) papers in his web page! Besides, he is a great writer. Check out his review of the book on the quarrel between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs.

Air Pollution Visualisation

Air Pollution Visualisation: Nitrogen Dioxide, London from digitalurban on Vimeo.

HT my friend Rafael Pereira.

Cofffe and Sugar

Hans-Joachim Voth and Jonathan Hersh estimate that the introduction of coffee and sugar led to a 10% increase in welfare. They say that the stagnant wages before 1800 is a distortion caused by the exclusion of these goods from price indexes. Their method of estimation seems very interesting. Two phrases:

"Half of all spending was on beer and bread, and fully three-quarters of all calories came from these two sources alone."
"The reason why seemingly mundane goods like sugar, coffee and tea made a big difference to living standards is that life was not just “nasty, brutish, and short” at their time of introduction – it was also (in culinary terms) grey, boring, and bland."

I will not tag this post as "Humor"

Via Mankiw

Napoleon in Russia

Drawn by Charles Minard (1869), the thickness of the lines indicates the size of Napoleon's army on his way to Moscow (1812-1813). Quite macabre, but it is a beautiful graph anyway.

The best abstract ever

The prize goes to:

"What - or Who - Started the Great Depression?
Lee E. Ohanian

NBER Working Paper No. 15258
Issued in August 2009
NBER Program(s): EFG

---- Abstract -----

Herbert Hoover. I develop a theory of labor market failure for the Great Depression based on Hoover's industrial labor program that provided industry with protection from unions in return for keeping nominal wages fixed. I find that the theory accounts for much of the depth of the Depression and for the asymmetry of the depression across sectors. The theory also can reconcile why deflation and low levels of nominal spending apparently had such large real effects during the 1930s, but not during other periods of significant deflation. "

Latin America's Decline: A Long Historical View

One more paper in my Sisyphean reading list:

by Sebastian Edwards

Abstract:
In this paper I analyze Latin America's very long term economic performance (since the early 18th century), and I compare it with that of the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the countries
of Western Europe. I begin with an analysis of long term data and an attempt at determining when the region's decline really began. The next section deals with the relation between the strength of institutions since colonial rule and the region's economic performance. Next I move to an analysis of Latin America's long history with instability, crises and debt defaults. I show that currency collapses have been a staple of the region's economic history. In the Section that follows I analyze the long term evolution of social conditions, including poverty and income inequality. This analysis shows that a high degree of income disparity and poverty have a long history in the region. The paper ends with an analysis of the way in which Latin American intellectuals and scholars have seen the increasing economic and
income gap with the United States and Canada.

Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences: Research in an Age of Info-glut

Following Tyler Cowen's suggestion, I bought Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences: Research in an Age of Info-glut at Amazon. When it arrived, I sadly realized that it had no tables, graphs or equation and it was full of references to Foucault.

To my own suprise, I loved the book. It is an amazing guide to serious qualitative research in the social sciences and Kristin Luker is a terrific writer. Strongly recommended.

Supply creates its own demand in Dehli

Well, sort off ( text and audio).

Potatoes

"The introduction of potatoes can explain 22% of the rise in population and 47% of the rise in urbanisation during the 18th and 19th centuries."

Do not complain when you are stuck on an airport

In 1850:
- The cost of a coast to coast trip in the USA was around US$200 (about US$ 5000 in 2008 dollars), around half of the income of an unskilled worker. The trip took between 4 and 6 months. (On the other hand, a ticket from Sweden to New York was around US$ 17-25 and took less than a couple of months.)
Source: Clay, Karen e Jones, Randall Jones. Migration to Riches from the California Gold Rush. The Journal of Economic History, v.68, n.4, Dec 2008, p. 997-1027

On vacation

A two-week break. I am going to be off-line, unplugged and disconnected until the end of July.

All the best!

French Revolution and Napoleon as natural experiments

Acemoglu, Cantoni, Johnson e Robinson state that the regions invaded by the French grew faster than other areas . ( Maybe an Olsonian mechanism could explain this fact...)
BTW, bon 14 juillet à tous!

Racial segregation: Easterly versus Schelling

An irresistible idea falsified.