Austin Vernon on drones (from my email)
The offensive vs. defensive framing seems wrong, at least temporarily. It should be motivated vs. unmotivated, with drones favoring the motivated. A competent drone capability requires building a...
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Trump City
Donald Trump wants to create Freedom Cities. It’s a good idea. As I wrote in 2008, the Federal Government owns more than half of Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Alaska and it owns nearly half of...
View ArticleGender Composition and Group Behavior
Evidence from city councils: How does gender composition influence individual and group behavior? To study this question empirically, we assembled a new, national sample of United States city council...
View ArticleTetlock on Testing Grand Theories with AI
Testing grand theories of politics (or economics) is difficult because such theories are always contingent on ceteris paribus assumptions but outside of a lab, all else is rarely the same. The great...
View ArticleThe Effects of Gender Integration on Men
Evidence from the U.S. military: Do men negatively respond when women first enter an occupation? We answer this question by studying the end of one of the final explicit occupational barriers to women...
View ArticleJennifer Pahlka on DOGE
An excellent piece, one of the best I have read all year. Here is the concluding paragraph: We can wish that the government efficiency agenda were in the hands of someone else, but let’s not pretend...
View Article*The Triumph of Politics*
The author is David A. Stockman, and the subtitle is Why the Reagan Revolution Failed. This is for me a re-read, all DOGErs and aspiring DOGErs should give this book an initial read, as it covers why...
View ArticleIncarceration sentences to ponder
My analysis reveals a significant change in political beliefs since being incarcerated. There is an increased effect of changing political beliefs for women and people of color incarcerated. The effect...
View ArticleThe show so far, DOGE edition
Round one is over, and so far no progress and indeed steps backwards: President-elect Donald Trump’s last-minute demands for a congressional funding package were rejected by dozens of Republicans this...
View ArticleJefferson’s DOGE (that was then, this is now)
Jefferson swiftly undid twelve years of Federalism. He allowed the Sedition Act to expire and adopted a more catholic naturalization law. He reduced the federal bureaucracy — small even by today’s...
View ArticleFull-length documentary on the life and legacy of Rene Girard
Very well done. The post Full-length documentary on the life and legacy of Rene Girard appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
View ArticleIs there an intermediate position on immigration?
It is a common view, especially on the political right, that we should be quite open to highly skilled immigrants, and much less open to less skilled immigrants. Increasingly I am wondering whether...
View ArticleWhen should DOGE scream in public and push for maximum transparency?
Here is a tweet from Elon, I won’t reproduce it directly on MR. Suffice to say it is strongly worded on the visas issue. Here is a summary of that debate. Much of it is about who should rise or fall...
View ArticleJoseph Walker on Australian migration (from my email)
I argued a few days ago that attacks on less skilled immigration might spill over and through contagion effects cause negative attitudes about immigration more generally. At which point I received the...
View ArticleSome Jimmy Carter observations from the 1970s
Usually I am reluctant to criticize or even write about the recently departed, but perhaps for former Presidents there is greater latitude to do so. I never loved Jimmy Carter, and I saw plenty of him...
View ArticleCovering immigration is a mixed bag
This paper investigates the effect of media coverage on immigration attitudes. It combines data on immigration coverage in French television with individual panel data from 2013 to 2017 that records...
View ArticleMy podcast with Reason
With Liz Wolfe and Zach Weissmueller: The link here contains the YouTube video, text description, and links to audio versions at reason.com:...
View ArticleThe Greenland debates
I would say we have not yet figured out what is the best U.S. policy toward Greenland, nor have we figured out best stances for either Greenland or Denmark. I am struck however by the low quality of...
View ArticleThe Borda Count is the Best Method of Voting
It’s well known that the voting methods we use are highly defective, as they fail to meet fundamental criteria like positive responsiveness, the Pareto principle, and stability. Positive responsiveness...
View ArticleSome game theory of Greenland
It is commonly assumed that the U.S. “acquiring” Greenland, whatever that might mean, will result in greater U.S. control of the territory. Along some dimensions that is likely. But it is worth...
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