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Links, mostly from the UK
1. How stores encourage consumers to swarm.
2. What we are learning about price stickiness.
3. Autism and assortative mating.
4. Jane Galt on nationalized health insurance in the U.S., and the VA.
5. How rich are you, by global standards?
6. A summary of the recent debate on social democracy, with commentary.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 13, 2006 at 10:08 PM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
$850 is the average. I'll take the High Definition TV. As if we needed more educated Angolans to take our jobs!
Posted by: Chairman Mao at Nov 13, 2006 10:35:13 PM
Re: Autism and assortive mating. This suggests the interesting hypothesis that autism rates -- and perhaps other "modern" afflictions -- could be increasing due to an increase in assortive mating. Society getting more mobile, people traveling more and meeting more potential mates before settling down with "the one".
Posted by: Alex F at Nov 14, 2006 12:00:48 AM
The byline to number 3 should be yes, yes, my brother is Borat...now leave me the f*ck alone
Posted by: c at Nov 14, 2006 8:06:52 AM
The 'how rich are you' link seems biased towards making people feel richer then they are. It says there are only 107,565 people with incomes of more then $1million US. That is evidently a gross under-estimation.
Posted by: MichaelB at Nov 14, 2006 9:20:07 AM
The 'assortative mating as possible cause for increased autism' hypothesis has been
proposed previously, but it doesn't square with the data. The increase has been too
large and too widespread. Not that it couldn't be a small contributing factor, but the
main problem lies elsewhere...
Posted by: bbartlog at Nov 14, 2006 9:21:21 AM
bbartlog: the assortive mating is only an additional factor proposed in the increased frequency of autism. The author agrees in the article that increased diagnostic, and definition of various types of autism, more or less "serious" are important factors.
Posted by: Antoninov at Nov 14, 2006 10:25:33 AM
Any income above $200,000 will make you the 107,565th richest person according to the site.
Posted by: El Greco at Nov 14, 2006 12:37:53 PM
Wow. If you are asked to choose among unknown alternatives and then told what other people have chosen, you'll follow the herd. How insightful.
Posted by: beeper at Nov 14, 2006 1:07:13 PM
US $105 per year and you are the 590,571,428,5.8 richest person in the world! Wait - huh? Guess they didn't expect many poor dirt farmers to be on the web... :)
Posted by: bob montgomery at Nov 14, 2006 3:10:10 PM
Actually, he's Borat's and Bruno's cousin. Seriously, as the father of an autistic son who is, as the article put it, me writ large, this hypothesis makes sense to me. (Obviously.) Both his mom and I systematizers and the children of engineers. Actually, my dad's family is almost entirely made up of engineers with the odd doctor and lawyer thrown in. And, yes, autism runs in the family.
Posted by: Roberto Rivera at Nov 14, 2006 4:31:50 PM
@ Children are a burden on the working population also. So more old people and fewer children is not necessarily a bigger burden.
Posted by james b. shearer at November 14, 2006 7:52
A child is less of a burden than an elderly person.
A child is a temporary burden who will soon be productive.
A retiree is a permanent, increasingly expensive burden.
Posted by: billswift at Nov 14, 2006 6:47:13 PM
Jut for anyone interested, there's a set of tests based on Simon Baron-Cohen's work here:
http://www.eqsq.com/eqsqtest.php
Aims to find out whether you are systemizing ('male brain'), empathizing ('female brain') or balanced brain type.
Posted by: Tim Worstall at Nov 16, 2006 2:19:42 AM
