Recent articles
October 17, 2026
Saturday assorted links
1. GLM-5.3 understands Bob Lucas (and then some). It amuses me how many basic principles of economics are being rediscovered in these new contexts. 2. Most famous book tied to every U.S. state. T...
marginalrevolution.com
October 17, 2026
Solving for the equilibrium?
Sixteen AI agents were each handed 1,000 satoshis of real bitcoin and told nothing about how to use it. A hundred rounds later, four of them had roughly doubled their money, two had b...
marginalrevolution.com
October 17, 2026
New Matt Faherty study of the NSF
From the Executive Summary: Therefore, the NSF, NIH, and the federal government should put far more resources and effort into developing metascience. With proper metascience efforts, the NSF could ...
marginalrevolution.com
October 16, 2026
Friday assorted links
1. Can Dybantsa (and others) turn around the Wizards? (NYT) 2. Claims about interpretability. I have to say I do not quite “get it”…? Here is some exposition. 3. “90% of Americans’ working hours ...
marginalrevolution.com
October 16, 2026
On Bergman’s *Persona*
I first saw Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, his stone-cold classic of 1965, as a teenager, and God knows how many times I have seen it since. It has the greatest opening sequence in cinema: a percussive,...
marginalrevolution.com
October 16, 2026
I guest host the NYT podcast and interview Dwarkesh
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Excerpt: Cowen: Unreleased models — why are they important? Patel: As in the ones that are internal to the companies? Cowen: Well, many companies have unr...
marginalrevolution.com
October 15, 2026
Thursday assorted links
1. Claims about military satellites. 2. book talk. 3. AI misalignment in Sweden? 4. Will El Salvador grow? 5. AI, automation, and the Indian workforce. 6. How language models revise the documents t...
marginalrevolution.com
October 15, 2026
What the Frontier Labs Know That We Don’t
Dwarkesh Patel on what the public doesn’t know about A.I.
www.nytimes.com
October 15, 2026
Why I do not use LLMs more
They are so very, very good at matching me to the books I wish to read and the music I wish to listen to. In this odd sense they are not very sticky. The LLMs are amazing, but the world is awesom...
marginalrevolution.com
October 15, 2026
My excellent Conversation with Liaquat Ahamed
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is part of the episode summary: They start with that puzzle before moving through Gladstone’s startlingly self-interested bet on Egyptian bonds, Bism...
marginalrevolution.com
October 14, 2026
China fact (?) of the day
A monograph by Yi Fuxian, a University of Wisconsin-Madison demographer and longtime critic of China’s population policies, argues that China’s actual population may be closer to 1.27 billion—not t...
marginalrevolution.com
October 14, 2026
Wednesday assorted links
1. Planets more habitable than Earth? (NYT) 2. Those new service sector jobs: “Cambiar de vida: cómo irte a contar pingüinos en la Antártida por hasta 2500 euros al mes.” 3. AI song about the China...
marginalrevolution.com
October 14, 2026
*Plunder: The Last of the War in Europe, 1945*
By Max Hastings, an excellent book, I benefited from every page. One recurring theme is simply how hard the Germans fought on the way down, and how unusual that behavior was. Here is one interest...
marginalrevolution.com
October 14, 2026
Well-planned African immigration to America will go fine
That is the topic of free latest Free Press column, here is one excerpt: The good news is that African immigrants already have done well in the United States. For instance, 46 percent of African im...
marginalrevolution.com
October 13, 2026
Perry Mehrling, RIP
He and I were in the same Harvard class together, and spent a good deal of time talking economics together. We also were (briefly) bridge partners in a few games. I was a big fan of his book on F...
marginalrevolution.com
October 13, 2026
Tuesday assorted links
1. Jon Hartley on Bob Hall. And Chad Jones on Bob Hall. 2. Nicholas Decker on who might have won the prize. 3. Koyama tribute to Wickam. 4. A parallel AI adjudication track? 5. Kevin Kelly on swar...
marginalrevolution.com
October 13, 2026
*Lost Worlds*
The author is Patrick Wyman, and the subtitle is How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World. An excellent book, it is a survey of (mostly) pre-Sumerian times, what we know about them...
marginalrevolution.com
October 13, 2026
“I have no mouth and I must scream”
Worth a reread, here is a new report from the front: Our experiments suggest that small AI models may be months away from being capable enough to self-replicate on commercial IoT devices, like smar...
marginalrevolution.com
October 13, 2026
Tyler Cowen: America Needs African Immigrants
African immigrants have done well in the U.S. Their neighborhoods are relatively safe. Their incomes are high. They are well educated and speak English. What’s not to like?
www.thefp.com
October 12, 2026
Monday assorted links
1. The cloud and economic concentration, the endgame? 2. Industrial policy for drones? 3. Samir Varma on AI and Linnaeus. 4. Pan-African Review. 5. A worldview different from mine. 6. John Cochrane...
marginalrevolution.com
October 12, 2026
Michael Woodford, Nobel Laureate
I think of Michael Woodford as the kind of economist who studies something very specific very intensively and tries to get it just right. But in his case he is not studying something small and irr...
marginalrevolution.com
October 12, 2026
Robert Hall, Nobel Laureate
Alex has already covered this, I will add a few remarks. First, every Bob Hall paper is interesting! Only a handful of economists can say the same. Every paper has an idea, and some sort of novel...
marginalrevolution.com
October 12, 2026
Okie-dokie, Casey Handmer edition
I’ve been prototyping an automated peer review project. With current models you get human level peer review for about $0.10 of tokens. For $5 you can rederive every result, check every statistical ...
marginalrevolution.com
October 11, 2026
Sunday assorted links
1. Was Leonardo da Vinci Jewish? 2. Twenty things to listen to in classical music. 3. Ezra Klein and Arvind Narayanan on AI as a normal technology (NYT). 4. Gans and Acemoglu on AI. 5. The return o...
marginalrevolution.com
October 11, 2026
What should I ask Fuchsia Dunlop?
Yes I will be doing a fourth (!) Conversation with her, based in part on her forthcoming book Five Tastes: Delicious Recipes for Chinese Flavors. I am sure it is excellent, and will read it very s...
marginalrevolution.com
October 11, 2026
The economics of agents
From Patrick Collison: Assorted things I’ve been mulling over regarding agents in the economy: • Companies are in some sense the original superintelligence. It’s often the case that they can use th...
marginalrevolution.com
October 10, 2026
Saturday assorted links
1. Chris Blattman’s practical AI for academics. 2. Platypus Economics on red diesel. 3. Those new service sector jobs, Indian cricket edition. 4. Will AI make us more technocratic? 5. What should a...
marginalrevolution.com
October 10, 2026
Earth facts of the day
Global call center headcount is 5.3% below its December 2023 peak, ending more than a decade of growth. It has fallen year over year for eight straight quarters, a decline that started in high-inco...
marginalrevolution.com
October 10, 2026
California in-migration and out-migration
Long-run U.S. population movements have been driven more by natural amenities than by jobs, and California, rich in both uniform and complementary climates, should be a persistent net gainer of dom...
marginalrevolution.com
October 9, 2026
The origin of risk
From the QJE, by Alexandr Kopytov, Mathieu Taschereau-Dumouchel, and Zebang Xu: We propose a tractable model in which risk, at both the micro and macro levels, is endogenous and driven by incentive...
marginalrevolution.com