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Assorted links
1. Joanne McNeil on science fiction and glamour
2. Taiwan tries to break the liquidity trap
3. The Midwest has the safest weather in the U.S.
4. German woman now the editor of the Michelin Guide; if you are into breaking stereotypes, there was also an article (gated) in today's WSJ entitled "France Credits Deregulation for Cushioning its Economy."
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 17, 2008 at 01:54 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
If you exclude the Sierra mountain ranges... California is incredibly tame. I live in the Bay Area and the worst it gets is an occasional lightning storm every few years.
Posted by: mgunn at Dec 17, 2008 2:29:35 PM
The "Midwest has the safest weather in the U.S." is based on data that incorporates only certain weather-related events--lightning, storms, heat waves--and as a result omits the effect of general cold weather on deaths. In fact, "heat" is apparently the leading cause of death in their study. This is just crazy!
There are more than 23% more deaths in January than there are in August! Hurricane season and heat wave season are the safest months. In the aggregate, cold weather is far and away the most important weather-related mortality risk. There is a paper (on energy programs for low-income households) that shows that most of these winter deaths occur when the temperature falls rapidly for a couple days to temperatures below winter norms. (This is particularly true in southern cities that are unaccustomed to cold weather.) For whatever reason (people don't turn up the heat, they fall on ice, they catch cold, their pipes burst, it's the first time their furnace turns on and they die of CO poisoning...) mortality rates spike in these cold spells. But the data in this paper doesn't count "cold weather" as a hazard (winter weather=snow storms). It just baffles me that "heat" can be the leading cause of death when August, July, and September are the three safest months! I hate that papers like this get so much attention without any scientific scrutiny.
Posted by: Adam at Dec 17, 2008 2:36:35 PM
Adam, you raise an interesting point. Do you have more data on that?
Hailing from the Midwest, I could have told you that it's the safest place to live, weather-wise. The worst natural disaster we get out here is an occasional tornado, and I've never seen a single one in my life.
I'm surprised that California is considered so safe. I guess nobody dies in all of their annual summer forest fires.
Posted by: d.cous. at Dec 17, 2008 2:57:42 PM
Midwestern weather is "safe"? After living in Minnesota for over a decade and driving through my fair share of blizzards, I wouldn't mind disputing that assertion.
Do they count road injuries and fatalities caused by slippery roads as "weather related"?
Posted by: quanticle at Dec 17, 2008 3:41:19 PM
Midwest has the safest weather in the U.S.
They are missing something. Snow and ice increase car crashes, people have heart attacks from shoveling snow, old people fall on snow and ice and break hips and then decline etc.
Posted by: floccina at Dec 17, 2008 4:09:16 PM
He was in NH, not the midwest, but I knew a guy who had his car break down in whiteout conditions and him and his four year-old daughter were stranded. They luckily found a hotel walking down the road, but he was in the hospital for days with pneumonia he caught due to covering his daughter with his jacket.
While the elderly do need air conditioning to survive heat waves, most people can get along just with drinking plenty of water. Nobody can survive sub-zero conditions for any length of time without the right gear, not to mention the accidents and CO2 poisoning which also occur.
Posted by: MW at Dec 17, 2008 4:31:40 PM
Behavioral economists have long suggested that a purchase voucher is a better stimulus than a rebate check or a reduced withholding, even though these should all be neo-classically equivilent. Kudos to Taiwan for giving it a try. I do which they had structured it to be a slightly better-controlled test, e.g. by randomly assigning different stimulus metnods to different households or regions.
Posted by: David Wright at Dec 17, 2008 4:35:42 PM
How many counterfeit vouchers do you think will be produced? And they do not say how the business will be compensated, presumably by a reduction in taxes? I like how other countries are trying the innovative ideas economists are coming up with; "economic experimentation" reminds me of all the other kinds of experiments that the US thought were too risky, so compelled poorer countries to try.
I'd like to read a book about economic experimentation; anyone want to write one?
Posted by: brainwarped at Dec 17, 2008 8:56:35 PM
I'm not economist, but I'm interested in seeing the outcome of Taiwan's "experiment." Logically, it seems as sound as bailing out irresponsible and reckless banks or backward thinking automobile companies.
Posted by: Steve at Dec 17, 2008 8:56:55 PM
If you exclude the Sierra mountain ranges... California is incredibly tame. I live in the Bay Area and the worst it gets is an occasional lightning storm every few years.
Well, there is also the occasional mudslide when a hill absorbs just a bit too much rain and disgorges its contents onto houses below or takes the house above along for the ride. But probably deaths from this are in the single digits.
Posted by: Ricardo at Dec 17, 2008 9:37:51 PM
...and there's the fact that California has some very large cities sitting on top of faults that will eventually, with certainty, produce very large earthquakes (the only uncertainty is when). One of those will make Katrina look like a gentle breeze.
Posted by: efp at Dec 17, 2008 10:45:38 PM
