The Screwworm

by  Alex Tabarrok in

The Atlantic: Screwworms once killed millions of dollars’ worth of cattle a year in the southern U.S. Their range extended from Florida to California, and they infected any living, warm-blooded animal: not only cattle but deer, squirrels, pets, and even the occasional human. In fact, the screwworm’s scientific name is C. hominivorax or “man eater”—so named after a horrific outbreak among prisoners on Devil’s Island, an infamous 19th-century French penal colony in South America.

For untold millennia, screwworms were a grisly fact of life in the Americas. In the 1950s, however, U.S. ranchers began to envision a new status quo. They dared to dream of an entire country free of screwworms. At their urging, the United States Department of Agriculture undertook what would ultimately become an immense, multidecade effort to wipe out the screwworms, first in the U.S. and then in Mexico and Central America—all the way down to the narrow strip of land that is the Isthmus of Panama. The eradication was a resounding success. But the story does not end there. Containing a disease is one thing. Keeping it contained is another thing entirely, as the coronavirus pandemic is now so dramatically demonstrating.

To get the screwworms out, the USDA to this day maintains an international screwworm barrier along the Panama-Colombia border. The barrier is an invisible one, and it is kept in place by constant human effort. Every week, planes drop 14.7 million sterilized screwworms over the rainforest that divides the two countries. A screwworm-rearing plant operates 24/7 in Panama. Inspectors cover thousands of square miles by motorcycle, boat, and horseback, searching for stray screwworm infections north of the border. The slightest oversight could undo all the work that came before.

A reminder that civilization takes work. Excellent piece by Sarah Zhang. Read the whole thing.

Hat tip: Stone Age Herbalist.

Did Norwegian schools actually ban cell phones?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Some commentators are suggesting no real ban was in effect.  I went back to the Sara Abrahamsson paper to confirm the following:

Schools where students are required to hand in their phones in the morning, and therefore cannot access them during breaks, are considered to have a strict policy against smartphones. Schools where students are allowed to access their phones during breaks but are required to have them on for instance silent [mode] during lectures are classified as having a lenient policy toward smartphones. For mental health, the effect between schools with a more lenient and strict policy is relatively similar, as shown in Figure 10.17. Four years post-ban, girls experience 3.48 and 2.3 fewer visits for specialist care related to psychological symptoms and diseases at schools with a lenient and strict policy respectively (p-values 0.036 and 0.068).18 For bullying, there is not much difference dependent on the type of policy implemented when it comes to bullying, neither for girls as documented in Figure 11, or boys as shown in Appendix Figure A21.

However, girls attending a middle school introducing a strict policy against smartphones, experience an increase by 0.12 standard deviations in GPA. This estimate is significant four years post-ban at the 5% level (p-value 0.032). Additionally, girls attending a middle school with a strict policy have significantly higher teacher-awarded test scores by 0.08 and 0.14 standard deviations, three and four years post-ban (p-values 0.075 and 0.011). These results, shown in Panel A and B in Figure 12, show that both GPA and average grades set by teachers for girls improve after strict smartphone bans in schools are implemented.

…However, there are no detectable differences in the likelihood of attending an academic high school track between schools with strict compared to more lenient policies

In other words, there were strict bans and they had only modest effects, including relative to the less strict bans.  On p.34, Figure 2, you will see that 200 schools had strict bans, somewhat less than half the total (not every case is easy to classify).  Note also that if smart phone bans could help with mental health problems in a big way, we still should see a change in mental health diagnoses, following the bans, yet we do not.

Here is my original post on the topic.

Emergent Ventures Africa and Caribbean, fifth cohort

by  Tyler Cowen

Mwigereri Dorcas, Kenya, for research using machine learning techniques for solar energy distribution optimization.

Mmesomachi Nwachukwu, Nigeria, to support the Special Maths Academy which prepares teams for competitions including the International Mathematical Olympiad.

Mohamed Haoussa, Senegal, for the Pan-African Robotics Competition in Dakar which has had over 2800 participants from middle school to university from 37 countries since inception.

Santiago Eyama, Equatorial Guinea, to support the production of YouTube videos on life and society in his country.

John Anthony Francois, St. Lucia/California, PhD Candidate at Stanford, to support his research on Immune Checkpoint Blockade.

Caroline Ochieng, Kenya, PhD candidate at Jomo Kenyatta University, for research into the molecular characterization and transmission dynamics of Chikungunya and Dengue viruses.

Mohamed Diouf, Senegal, for his startup idea of doing merchandise loans (instead of money) to small scale vendors in West Africa.

Kemar Stuart, Barbados, for the production of YouTube videos on Caribbean politics.

Tyrique King, UAE/UK, for developing an AI coding instructor which can train and upskill talent without prior coding experience within 100 days in Africa.

Kurtis Lockhart, US/Tanzania, for developing an economics focused degree program in Zanzibar.

Daniel Alabi, Nigeria/US, Postdoc CS researcher at Columbia University, for Naija Coder, a summer program teaching Nigerian high school students computer science in Abuja and Lagos.

Joshua Walcott, Trinidad/Poland, University lecturer in politics in Poland, for research and writing on existential risk and Caribbean geopolitics.

Nikita Greenidge, St. Lucia/UK, PhD candidate at University of Leeds, for research on surgical robotics.

Masahiro Kubo, PhD candidate at Brown University, for research on how Catholic missionary work contributed significantly to the accumulation of human capital in Africa/

Fiona Moejes, to assist the Mawazo Institute based in Kenya, which supports early-career female scholars and thought leaders in Africa.

Tobi Lawson, Nigeria, to assist in the production of the Ideas Untapped substack and podcast focused on African development.

Samukai Sarnor, Liberia, for research focused on monetary policy in Liberia.

Chipo Muwowo, Zambia/UK, for Capital Markets Africa, a subtack and podcast focused on listed companies and the regulatory environment for finance in Africa.

Peter Courtney, South Africa/Netherlands, PhD candidate at Stellenbosch University, for research on implementing Georgist land value policies in Africa.

Led by the excellent Rasheed Griffith.

Free Trade with Free Nations

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Alec Stapp points out that Canada is the only NATO country that has a free trade agreement with the United States. That’s quite remarkable if you think about it. NATO allies are bound by mutual defense commitments, support for military cooperation, and a dedication to democratic principles. Despite these shared commitments, the U.S. still enforces tariffs and quotas on our NATO allies including France, Germany, the UK, Denmark, Portugal, and Spain. This is like getting married and not having a joint checking account. If they are good enough partners to commit to their defense then surely NATO allies are good enough partners to commit to free trade?

Free trade enhances the economic strength of countries, thus free trade should be a strategic asset in self-defense. Let’s be rich and safe together.

There are many reasons to have free trade agreements with countries that we don’t have a defense pact with but free trade with free nations should be a minimum standard. It’s not just the United States, of course, NATO allies don’t all have free trade agreements with fellow NATO members. So how about a North-Atlantic Trade Organization? You could call it NATO for short.

Restriction of output for me, but not for thee?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Is this ultimately an issue of women not always wanting to serve immigrants?

The decline in labor’s share of national income

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:

There is some bad news afoot for workers. Labor’s share of the US gross domestic product has been falling for a long time, by seven percentage points since World War II. The labor share for 2022 — depending on exactly which measure is used, it comes in at slightly more than 60% — is the lowest measured since 1929.

And it’s not just America. Globally, the labor share, which is the fraction of an economy’s output that goes to workers, has declined by six percentage points since 1980. The numbers suggest that the share of labor is declining in 13 of the 16 wealthiest countries in the world.

Note that is a share, and very often real wages still are rising.  Still, why this regularity?

One possible explanation for labor’s declining share is simply that the cost of capital has been falling for decades in most countries. That development benefits capital income very directly: It’s cheaper to raise capital, which benefits workers only indirectly. Of course, with real interest rates higher recently, it will be possible to test whether the labor share of income will make a comeback. In any case, this stands as one of the most plausible hypotheses.

Globalization and automation are two other trends that may have made labor markets more competitive, at least as compared to capital markets. Yet it is not obvious why those forces would lower labor returns more than capital returns. Is labor more mobile internationally than capital? Even if you think US companies have benefited from buying cheap manufactured goods from China and then reselling them at the expense of US workers, that doesn’t explain why labor’s declining share has been so widespread across countries and decades. If globalization were the culprit, labor’s share should be rising in China and other major exporting countries — but the opposite is true.

There is much more at the link.  And I do recommend this Karabarbounis piece from the latest JEP on these topics.

Monday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. U.S. foreign aid allocation across nations, based on one specific measure of foreign aid.

2. Singapore writers don’t want the government to train an AI on their work.

3. Most rapidly-selling British novels of the 19th century.

4. Will building companies in the AI era become more expensive because of the Jevons paradox?

5. The rise in reported maternal mortality rates in the US is largely due to a change in measurement.

6. Predicting police misconduct — evidence for the bad apples theory?

7. More evidence for mental health interventions in poorer countries.

The reserve currency and the liquidity demand for safe assets

by  Tyler Cowen in

I propose a dynamic model of the reserve currency paradigm that centers on the liquidity demand for safe assets. In global recessions, the demand for the U.S. safe bond increases and raises its convenience yield, giving rise to a stronger dollar and a countercyclical seigniorage revenue. The seigniorage revenue raises the U.S. wealth and consumption shares in recessions, despite the U.S. suffering portfolio losses from its external positions. This asset demand channel also connects exchange rate dynamics to the marginal utility over bond holding, which provides new perspectives on exchange rate disconnect and on the relationship between exchange rates and capital flows. Under this safe-asset view, exorbitant privilege does not require exorbitant duty.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Zhengyang Jiang.  And here is some relevant data on the increase in dollar holdings around the globe.

Organize your life?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Ben Lang didn’t expect to get so much hate just for being organized. For the past three years, he and his wife, Karen-Lynn Amouyal, have been using Notion, a popular software tool, to optimize their household and relationship. His version of the tool, commonly used by businesses to manage complex projects, functions like a souped-up Google Doc, with sections for a grocery list, to-do lists and details of upcoming trips.

More unusual is a section Mr. Lang, a venture capital investor who previously worked at Notion, created about principles (“what’s important to us as a couple”). Another section, called “Learnings,” outlines things the couple have discovered about each other, such as their love languages and Myers-Briggs test results. There’s a list of friends they want to set up on dates. They also maintain a log of memories from their date nights. Mr. Lang, 30, was so proud of the creation that last month, he started promoting a template of the setup to others. “My wife and I use Notion religiously to manage our day-to-day life,” he wrote on X. “I turned this into a template, let me know if you’d like to see it!”

Here is more from Erin Griffith at the NYT.