Economics & Marginalia: October 6, 2023

Hi all,

Earlier this morning, my laptop, which had developed a suspicious hump in the centre of the keyboard, as if all of the mechanical parts were congregating under the letters f to j and taking a vote to strike, dramatically informed me that it had encountered a 'fatal error' and would restart. They were the last words it communicated to me (though I retain hope that the CGD IT staff can do some computer voodoo to reanimate it). I'm writing this from my personal laptop, which is not hooked up to my tab of links on my work laptop because I don't like my devices to talk to each other lest they collude against me, so a pre-emptive apology for to any brilliant writers whose links I'm omitting having read and loved and to readers for any pearls of wisdom or geekery they miss out on.

1. I try not to use the links for self-promotion too shamelessly, but I'm quite proud of this one: I wrote a long read for Asterisk Magazine on the history of poverty measurement, from Victorian England to the dollar-a-day line and beyond. It was immense fun to read for and to write, and I learned a lot. Measuing poverty requires so many judgement calls, and forces us to accept to many compromises, that if you think too long about it you can't help but focus on its imperfections, imperfections that have been present since the very first poverty lines and added to more than they've been addressed. But keep thinking and you may come to the same conclusion that I did: that for all of those imperfections, its hard to think of anything better. 

2. Apparently, I was born on the year that divides Generation X and the Millennials; I'm told that personality-wise, I'm very much a Millennial, but my cultural references lean very heavily towards Gen X: I grew up with Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites, Nirvana and Soundgarden staring at their navels while bashing out huge choruses and the first 'event' book I can remember was The Information. But according to John Burn-Murdoch (drawing on research from Zack Grant and co-authors), there is more in common between the two generations than typically assumed. It's not all rich and comfortable boomers calling Millennials soft for having been born to more difficult times; indeed older voters are sometimes turning against political parties they see as anti-youth.

3. Last week I accidentally forgot to link to the Tim Harford piece on academic fraud (here it is, thanks to the ONE! ONE! person who noticed); but I will make up for it this week by linking to both the missing one and this: Tim discussing his work habits and the need to find work-free times, which sound very much like looking in a mirror (only not). Like Tim, I tend to work at any spare moment. Part of the problem is that I'm not good at doing nothing, so in empty moments, work happens. But I do have many hobbies; my problem is now finding uninterupted stretches of time to indulge in them.

4. I greatly enjoyed this, by Jim Cust and co-authors, on their research into the impact of state- and corporate governance quality on the environmental impact of oil drilling. The findings, squarely in line with my priors, are that it's state quality that matters most to the environmental damage caused by oil drilling. ESG and related corporate niceties are well and good, but it is no replacement for a functioning state.

5. There are some topics for which you can literally point to one or two people and say "listen to them" if you want to learn (think migration and Michael Clemens, or absurd action movies and Matthew Collin); small business training programmes and David McKenzie fall into that category. The news that he and Eliana Carranza have a JEP on the topic forthcoming should be greeted by heavenly violins; till then they summarize it here.

6. Dylan Matthews is a very good, careful and critical (in some respects) look at the famous Anne Case / Angus Deaton 'deaths of despair' story that has generated so much interest over the last few years. The tl;dr is that there is something real in the divergence in life expectancy among Americans, but it does not appear to be quite the story Case and Deaton have put forward. But really I recommend reading the whole piece. 

7. It's rare that I'm reduced to hysterics in the office, but this video had me in stitches yesterday: David Beckham takes issue with Victoria's definition of 'working class', and really, who could blame him? I had more pop culture lined up for you all on the other machine, but sadly I can't remember a bit of it; that, and I'm still laughing at this clip.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

R