Recent articles
April 10, 2026
South African discussions
These days South Africa is one of the best places to go to have interesting conversations. Obviously an English-fluent country does have many people following Trump, Islam in Europe, and so on. B...
marginalrevolution.com
April 9, 2026
New Emergent Ventures tranche on science policy and communication
American science policy is now more important than at perhaps any previous point in history—how science is organized and funded (or not funded) in this country continues to rise in significance. I ...
marginalrevolution.com
April 9, 2026
Thursday assorted links
1. The “estrangement” from philosophy of economics. 2. Investing in scientific instruments. 3. New book coming on Carlsen vs. Niemann. 4. Houston economy growing at more than ten percent (and that ...
marginalrevolution.com
April 9, 2026
LDS fact of the day
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has grown 66% this century, fueled in part by a record-breaking number of convert baptisms in 2025. The church had 10,752,986 members at the end of 1...
marginalrevolution.com
April 9, 2026
Financial Regulation and AI: A Faustian Bargain?
Important work is just flowing these days, and much of it (of course) concerns AI: We study whether AI methods applied to large-scale portfolio holdings data can improve financial regulation. We bu...
marginalrevolution.com
April 8, 2026
Wednesday assorted links
1. Waymo rollout in NYC is halted. 2. Back “plus” is the better answer (NYT). I am glad this is now settled, Alex T. can attest I have been insisting on this for a while. Note my earlier predicti...
marginalrevolution.com
April 8, 2026
Mythos assorted links
Here is Dean Ball on Mythos. And now more from Dean. Here is John Loeber. While I am seeing some likely overstatement, probably this is a real turning point nonetheless, and we need to think fur...
marginalrevolution.com
April 8, 2026
Herbert Hoover is still underrated
We study the effects of large-scale humanitarian aid using novel data from the American Relief Administration’s (ARA) intervention during the 1921-1922 famine in Soviet Russia. We find that the all...
marginalrevolution.com
April 8, 2026
Stephen Pimentel has an excellent review of *The Marginal Revolution*
Here is one very good paragraph of many: Cowen is excellent on the question of why the marginalist insight had to wait so long, and why it eventually came in a simultaneous eruption across countrie...
marginalrevolution.com
April 8, 2026
Two assorted links
1. Claims about the role of China, and its economics. And there is a lot of remaining uncertainty, but here is one of the saner Iran war takes.
The post Two assorted links appeared first on Margin...
marginalrevolution.com
April 7, 2026
Andy Hall advice on AI and economic research
Here is the document, excerpt: In January, I released the results of an experiment showing how Claude Code could helpfully extend old papers “automagically.” It was pretty astonishing to me. Claude...
marginalrevolution.com
April 7, 2026
Tuesday assorted links
1. Natasha Sarin on slow motion bank runs? (NYT) 2. The Moon. And the colors. 3. How free market is Hungary? 4. “Where no human hand has touched the refereeing process.” 5. Is Clavier-Übung III th...
marginalrevolution.com
April 7, 2026
Ludwig Straub wins the Clark medal
Here is his home page: Ludwig Straub is a professor of economics at Harvard University. His research areas are macroeconomics and international economics. Among his topics of interest are the recen...
marginalrevolution.com
April 7, 2026
*The Drama* (no real spoilers)
An excellent and highly original movie, I cannot say much without infringing upon the surprise of the basic premise. Exquisitely choreographed in its timing, scene by scene. So anti-Woke that it ...
marginalrevolution.com
April 7, 2026
Solve for the equilibrium
Trump: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” Here is the rest of the message.
The post Solve for the equilibriu...
marginalrevolution.com
April 7, 2026
Why do Americans No Longer Work So Much More Than Non-Americans?
In the 1990s, Americans used to work much more than non-Americans. Nowadays, about half of the gap in hours worked has reversed. To evaluate the convergence of working hours, we develop a tractable...
marginalrevolution.com
April 7, 2026
Interpreting Polygenic Prediction of Cognitive Ability
The subtitle is Evidence for Direct, Reliable, and Portable Genetic Effects, and the authors are Tobias Wolfam, et.al. The abstract: The interpretation of polygenic scores (PGS) for general cognit...
marginalrevolution.com
April 6, 2026
Wow Nepal
Wow Nepal, 10728 Fairfax Blvd, Fairfax, VA, 703-880-9898, open 11-9 every day. The “Wow” here is exactly right, as it is wonderful to have a new great restaurant around. Most Nepalese restaurants i...
marginalrevolution.com
April 6, 2026
Monday assorted links
1. Distill your Chinese co-workers? (speculative) 2. Creating artificial gravity in space? 3. Good news for your testicles? 4. The contingencies of the South African economy. 5. AI aggregation and ...
marginalrevolution.com
April 6, 2026
Migrant Income and Long-Run Economic Development
We study how international migrant income prospects affect long-run development in origin areas. We leverage the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis exchange rate shocks in a shift-share identification str...
marginalrevolution.com
April 6, 2026
Does this have implications for higher ed in particular?
Declining fertility and population loss pose significant challenges for state and federal local governments responsible for providing a range of services to citizens, including education, health ca...
marginalrevolution.com
April 5, 2026
Auden on Iceland
If you have no particular intellectual interests or ambitions and are content with the company of your family and friends, then life on Iceland must be very pleasant, because the inhabitants are fr...
marginalrevolution.com
April 5, 2026
Good sentences
This leads us to the next of Freud’s major contributions to neuroscience: his realization that cognition is, at bottom, wishful. That is from the new and notable Mark Solms, The Only Cure: Freud an...
marginalrevolution.com
April 5, 2026
Sunday assorted links
1. Josefina Aguilar Alcantara, RIP (NYT). 2. Move abroad so you can default on your student debt (NYT). 3. History of golf course bunkers (WSJ). 4. Four reasons why possible aliens might make you m...
marginalrevolution.com
April 5, 2026
Emergent Ventures winners, 53rd cohort
Elif Ozdemir, Ankara, align satellites. Lily Zuckerman, University of Austin (and NYC), painting and general career support. Benjamin Unger, NYC, AI to measure the performance of New York governmen...
marginalrevolution.com
April 4, 2026
Economic growth and the rise of large firms
Rich and poor countries differ in the size distribution of business firms. This paper shows that the right tail of the firm size distribution systematically grows thicker with economic development,...
marginalrevolution.com
April 4, 2026
Saturday assorted links
1. Nyege Nyege Tapes. 2. Does it help poets to be religious? 3. Martin Jay on Habermas. 4. U.S. prime age employment rate is near an all-time high. For a different perspective, here is NYT on AI a...
marginalrevolution.com
April 4, 2026
Advice for economics graduate students (and faculty?) vis-a-vis AI
From Isiah Andrews, via Emily Oster and the excellent Samir Varma. A good piece, though I think it needs to more explicitly consider the most likely case, namely that the models are better at all ...
marginalrevolution.com
April 4, 2026
How should you change your life decisions if we are being watched by alien drone probes?
I’ve asked a few people that question lately, and get either no answer or very exaggerated answers. Rep. Burchett recently raised the possibility of being terrified and not sleeping at night if UAP...
marginalrevolution.com
April 4, 2026
NSF update
The White House seeks to slash the NSF budget by nearly 55%, to $4 billion. The proposal also cuts all funding for the NSF division that funds research on the social sciences and economics. At an i...
marginalrevolution.com