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A request for requests
A very loyal MR reader in New Orleans asks for more space to make requests. What would you like to read about?
This time I disavow "three times is the charm" as a rule of collective choice. I do promise, however, that my response to your requests will embody the property of monotonicity, namely that more asks for a topic won't lower its chance of being covered. Comments, of course, are open...
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 30, 2006 at 06:26 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
The extent to which government should support academic research that is not expected to have any material benefits, in both the arts and sciences. That one should support a variety of research because we don't know what will have benefits may be a fair argument, but is disallowed.
Posted by: Anonymous at Apr 30, 2006 6:38:17 AM
Serious theory on free markets, beyond the perfect competition caricature. I'm sick of people like Stiglitz saying stuff like: oh, well, free markets are swell, but they're imperfect so f**k them, with the implicit assumption that the value of the free market is predicate on perfect competition.
Is there any serious scholarship on free market, beyond the application of the welfare theorems in perfect competition, we should know about?
Coarse comes to mind. If you take transactional costs into the picture then The Planner looks less sexy. Anything else?
Posted by: Gabriel Mihalache at Apr 30, 2006 7:25:54 AM
BRIC.
Posted by: Pat L at Apr 30, 2006 8:04:22 AM
Comments on the Mexican government move to allow possession of small amounts of recreational drugs, including cocaine, peyote, and heroin. Be sure to cover "the spring break effect" and border effects with the US.
Posted by: mc at Apr 30, 2006 8:44:15 AM
The economics of farting in public.
Posted by: Paul N at Apr 30, 2006 8:53:32 AM
Come on Tyler, that's WEAK monotonicity at best!
Posted by: Anonymous at Apr 30, 2006 10:57:10 AM
The future of college tenure systems when the growth of enrollments via expansion to a larger portion of the population loses ground to dropping fertility rates.
Posted by: Maria at Apr 30, 2006 11:15:50 AM
Private property rights and national parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite.
Also, anything on monopilies & Standard Oil.
Posted by: Christopher at Apr 30, 2006 11:21:52 AM
Darnit, spelling gets me again. ;-)
Posted by: Christopher at Apr 30, 2006 11:22:35 AM
I'm shopping for a philosophy---can you sell me philosophical pragmatism? (Include jibes at other philosophies if possible).
Posted by: Lee at Apr 30, 2006 11:29:09 AM
Maybe you've covered this, but I'd like to see some commentary on why box office movie prices are uniformly set; that is, why do movie tickets cost the same whether a film is just opening or has been in release for several weeks? And why are ticket prices unaffected by bad reviews, attendance, geographic appeal, audience demography, etc.
Posted by: Chip Smith at Apr 30, 2006 11:33:19 AM
The economics of good men getting married young, also, why more people don't use life insurance as a retirement planning tool.
Posted by: Shmuel Melamed at Apr 30, 2006 11:48:23 AM
the past and the outlook for the price of Google's stock, beginning with its IPO.
Posted by: EclectEcon at Apr 30, 2006 11:54:19 AM
Any chance of significant economic growth in Africa in our lifetimes? How and When?
Posted by: joshg at Apr 30, 2006 11:59:51 AM
I second Africa.
also
I'd like to know what you think about Utility Curves, including
a) is the concept still normatively useful in light of prospect theory and happiness research or do we have to accept revealed preferences?
b) if the concept remains useful, what is a realistic shape for most people's utility curves and how much does this shape vary.
c) should economic policy be intended to maximize societal utility?
Finally;
I'd like to hear your ideas about why economic growth rates and per capita GDP in all developed countries are so close to one another despite large differences in history and policies.
Posted by: michael vassar at Apr 30, 2006 12:12:12 PM
Video games, from your economics of culture perspective. I'd go into more detail about what I'm asking or, but that would take all the fun out of it.
Posted by: Zac at Apr 30, 2006 12:12:35 PM
economics of feudalism!
Posted by: jt at Apr 30, 2006 12:42:44 PM
You've said that we usually can't trust economic impact studies that show the importance of the arts to a community. Tell us how to perform an economic impact study that would be trustworthy.
Point to examples of good and bad studies, and explain what makes them noteworthy.
Posted by: Mike G at Apr 30, 2006 1:17:39 PM
I had an idea recently. I'd like to know what you think.
You can read my comment here:
http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2006/04/a_rerun.html#comment-16716794
The idea is this: I believe there will be robots within 5-15 years that can do almost any job currently done by manual labor. Picking strawberries, dusting a china cabinet, building a home, stocking shelves & checkout at a Wal-Mart, driving any vehicle, etc...
This isn’t an armchair-roboticist’s view. I work in robotics, and the barriers in that time frame are not technological. This also isn’t based on a super-long extrapolation of Moore’s Law. 5 more years would suffice.
But let’s assume that what I’m talking about is technologically feasible.
Today it is hard to show many people that free trade is good. Some people hate outsourcing. Many folks are convinced immigrants are bad because they “take jobs”. Others want companies that aren’t actually making much profit on the long term to be punished (oil).
What will happen when there is no face to the “replacement labor”? When it is just a robot that can do the job better and cheaper, the sob stories of folks loosing their jobs might appeal to more people. The evil company benefits and the humans are hurt. The story writes itself. And, it will write itself millions and millions of times as automation moves out of the realm of manufacturing.
I am of the opinion that the resources saved when productivity is increased will greatly outweigh personal/individual/temporary losses. The ultimate resource in the humans who used to do a now-automated job is freed. Robots should work. People should think.
But I am concerned that economically illiterate arguments will hurt research and development into further expanding the capability of robots.
What do you think?
Posted by: Ivan Kirigin at Apr 30, 2006 1:22:11 PM
The top things "everyday people" get wrong about economics and economists.
Posted by: Macneil at Apr 30, 2006 1:56:16 PM
Slavery laws seem to restrict freedom in some sense. Why can't one's labour be used for collateral? What are some possible social and economic impacts of allowing the liquidity constrained to use their labour as an asset?
Posted by: Josh at Apr 30, 2006 2:14:54 PM
Economics of international development. Fair trade? Free trade? Does aid help or hurt? What international organizations are working effectively to improve the lot of the world? What insititutions do we wish for? Microcredit?
Posted by: Lace Andrews at Apr 30, 2006 2:16:57 PM
The internet, social networking, myspace.
Generational differences in how we use and view technology - my parents are horrified that I use my credit card to buy things online, or send strangers on ebay my address. On the other hand, I don't understand why people used to pay people to type things up (isn't typing always faster than writing anyway?) and only vaguely remember life before AIM let alone before cell phones.
Posted by: Sarah at Apr 30, 2006 5:16:39 PM
Why the gini index for US has increased so much in the last 20 years, while it has been nearly constant in most developed countries.
Posted by: joan at Apr 30, 2006 6:07:56 PM
Ivan Kirigan: I'm pretty sure that globalization invokes nationalistic tempraments and the roboticization will invoke less illiberalism.
Posted by: michael vassar at Apr 30, 2006 6:50:16 PM
