The funniest paper ever published in "American Economic Review"

In fact, only cliometricians (and their enemies) will laugh:

"Shatter and Filth (1975) consider "what if Fogel had never written his article" and projected that economic historians would have turned to cocaine use instead of counterfactuals."

"The new economic geography, now middle-aged" by Krugman

Krugman's talk at the Association of American Geographers. (It happened two days ago. Oh boy, I do love the internet). Highly interesting, especially when he argues that NEG is still useful to understand contemporary issues:

"... new economic geography has a kind of steampunk feel, so that the stories it tells seem more suited to the U.S. economy of 1900 than that of 2010. Well, China is an economic powerhouse, but it’s still quite poor; .., China today appears to have roughly the same level of per capita GDP as the United States at the beginning of the 20th century.
And guess what? Chinese economic geography is highly reminiscent of the economic geography of advanced nations circa 1900 – and it fits gratifyingly well into the new economic geography framework."

(Via Brad Delong)

Hydraulic Keynesianism

The Philips' machine (yes, himself ) at work. Amazing!

The Future of Regional Economics

A special issue of the Journal of Regional Science. Everybody is there: Duranton, Overman, Puga, Glaeser, Storper, Thisse...
I haven't read the papers, but the best title is: " The data avalanche is here: shouldn't we be digging?".
(HT Bruno Cruz)

The Red Water Ordeal

Nathan Nunn on the many ways to produce slaves in Guinea-Bissau

The chief of the Cassanga used the “red water ordeal” to procure slaves and their possessions. Those accused of a crime were forced to drink a poisonous red liquid. If they vomited, then they were judged to be guilty. If they did not vomit, they were deemed not guilty. However, for those that did not vomit this usually brought death by poisoning. Their possessions were then seized and their family members were sold into slavery.

"The Long Term Effects of Africa's Slave Trade" Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 123, No. 1, February 2008, pp. 139-176.

Avoid this if you enjoy the song "Stand by me"

Happy Eastern!

via Brad Delong.

The new applied econometrics

The Credibility Revolution in Empirical Economics: How Better Research Design is Taking the Con out of Econometrics by Angrist and Pischke. Experiments and good instruments are the way to go.

IVth World Conference of the Spatial Econometrics Association

Here.

North Korea, the worst place on Earth

• The former chief of the planning and finance department of the Workers' Party was executed;
• Reality X Fantasy.

(Via boingboing)

Brazilian spatial dynamics in the long term (1872–2000): “path dependency” or “reversal of fortune”?

The Journal of Geographical Systems has just published my paper . (In the same issue there is a very interesting study "From locational fundamentals to increasing returns: the spatial concentration of population in Spain, 1787–2000" )

The future of Microeconomics....

The brain is a multi-system entity (with conflicting objectives, restricted information, etc.) and therefore the decision-maker must be modelled as an organisation.

A Neuroeconomics manifesto...

Google Public Data Explorer

Here. World Development Indicators are available!

Natural Experiments of History - Diamond and Robinson (ed.)

Jared Diamond ("Guns Germs and Steel") and James Robinson ("Reversal of Fortune" with Acemoglu and Johnson) have edited the book. The table of contents is impressive!:

1. Controlled Comparison and Polynesian Cultural Evolution
Patrick V. Kirch
2. Exploding Wests: Boom and Bust in Nineteenth-Century Settler Societies
James Belich
3. Politics, Banking, and Economic Development: Evidence from New World Economies
Stephen Haber
4. Intra-Island and Inter-Island Comparisons
Jared Diamond
5. Shackled to the Past: The Causes and Consequences of Africa's Slave Trades
Nathan Nunn
6. Colonial Land Tenure, Electoral Competition, and Public Goods in India
Abhijit Banerjee and Lakshmi Iyer
7. From Ancien Régime to Capitalism: The Spread of the French Revolution as a Natural Experiment
Daron Acemoglu, Davide Cantoni, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson
* Afterword: Using Comparative Methods in Studies of Human History
Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson

More on the chinese ghost town

Built in a breakneck five years, Kangbashi is a state-of-the-art city full of architectural marvels and sculpture gardens. There's just one thing missing: people. The city, built by the government and funded with coal money, its chief industries energy and carmaking, has been mostly vacant for as long as it has been complete, except for the massive municipal headquarters. It's a grand canyon of empty monoliths. In a paradox only possible in today's economic system, Kangbashi manages to be both a boom town and a ghost town at the same time.

Kangbashi represents a particularly destructive economic force at work in China today: an obsession with GDP that ignores all other metrics of progress or human capital.
...
Officials (...) say the population reached 50,000 last year, which seems improbable given that pedestrians on the street were outnumbered by street sweepers.

Physics envy

"Any scientist who doesn’t have physics envy is an idiot."

J.M. Epstein in REMARKS ON THE FOUNDATIONS OF AGENT-BASED
GENERATIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE. (HT Bernardo Furtado)

Economics of scale in one picture

By Edward Burtynsky (HT: Rafael Pereira)

The first law of development

There is no street children where tap water is safe.

Magic roudabout

Scary!

Magic Roundabout

New movies

• Moon (2009)-a retro sci-fi movie. Kevin Spacey is the voice of the computer Hal Sam.
• The invention of lying - At first glance, it is another feel-good movie from Hollywood. It is not. Thanks, Ricky Gervais.
• Flood with love for the kid. A one man remake of do Rambo First Blood (!?!?!?). The critics say it is great.

Bonus track: how to watch Daily Show and the Office outside the US.

Netbook and Windows 7

Surprisingly, Windows 7 runs quite well in my new Lenovo S10-3t with only 1G of RAM.