BS Convergence Axiom

In due time, different strands of BS will always meet.

Gambetta and Primo Levi

I visited Diego Gambetta's page looking for his papers on the low quality of Italian academia .
With much surprise I discovered that he investigated the death of the author of If This Is a Man, one of my ten favorite books. He argues - very convincingly- that the death of Primo Levi was an accident and not a suicide . Although the two possibilities are tragic, the former seems in tune with his work and life.

Melissa Dell "The Persistent Effects of Peru's Minning Mita"

...Using data from the Spanish Empire and Peruvian Republic to
trace channels of institutional persistence, I show that the mita's inuence has persisted through its impacts on land tenure and public goods provision. Mita districts historically had fewer large landowners and lower educational attainment. Today, they are less integrated into road networks, and their residents are substantially more likely to be subsistence farmers.

The paper is awesome and it is forthcoming in Econometrica.
The CV of Melissa Dell is impressive: she is a graduate summa cum laude at Harvard, has a doctorate from Oxford, Ph.D. candidate at MIT, ultra marathon runner (100 km), founder of a NGO in Peru ... and she has a severe vision impairment.

Gapminder!

Now it has a desktop version. HT Shikida!

Things that you learn at an Economics conference

One presenter closed his (excellent) presentation with this cartoon. Surely I am going to copy the idea.

10th and 11th of September : 3rd International Conference Migration & Development (Paris)

Yep, I am in Paris. I've just presented the paper "How Bodo became Brazilian" written by Irineu de Carvalho Filho and myself. (I must admit that his contribution to the paper was much larger than mine). Soon you will learn more about the paper.

"Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62"

Name of victim: Yang Ecshun. Relationship with Culprit: Younger Brother ... Manner of Crime: Killed and Eaten. Reason: Livelihood Issues.

"Five Unrelated but Interesting Papers"

The program of AEA meeting is terrific. But this time it offers the best name of session ever:

Five Unrelated but Interesting Papers (??)
Presiding: ALLEN SANDERSON (University of Chicago)
Driving Under the (Cellular) Influence
SAURABH BHARGAVA (University of Chicago)
VIKRAM SINGH PATHANIA (Cornerstone Research)
Do Public Subsidies Change Private Vehicle Selections? Evidence from the U.S. Cash for Clunkers Program
EDWARD HUANG (Harvard University)
A History of Violence: The "Culture of Honor" as a Determinant of Homicide in the U.S. South
PAULINE A. GROSJEAN (University of San Francisco)
The Lion's Share: An Experimental Analysis of Polygamy in Northern Nigeria
ALISTAIR MUNRO (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan)
ARJAN VERSCHOOR (University of East Anglia)
MARCELA TARAZONA-GOMEZ (University of East Anglia)
CECILE JACKSON (University of East Anglia)
BEREKET KEBEDE (University of East Anglia)
White Men Can't Jump, But Would You Bet on It?
DENIZ IGAN (International Monetary Fund)
MARCELO PINHEIRO (George Mason University)
JOHN SMITH (Rutgers University-Camden)

The rumors of the death of this blog are greatly exaggerated