Marginal Revolution

The world's best symphony orchestras?

Gramophone magazine polled music critics and here is the top ten list they came up with:

1 Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

2 Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

3 Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

4 London Symphony Orchestra

5 Chicago Symphony Orchestra

6 Bavarian Radio Symphony

7 Cleveland Orchestra

8 Los Angeles Philharmonic

9 Budapest Festival Orchestra

10 Dresden Staatskapelle

You'll find 10-20 here, along with some discussion.  The news, if that is what you would call it, is that Philadelphia does not make the list at all.  Here is another discussion of the results.

Assorted links

1. New econ blog from Harvard Business School.

2. Airline industry woes, and their economic roots, from Air Genius Gary Leff.

3. Halting arbitrage: the "Nebraska put" is now limited to infants.

4. Eric Posner on the new world order to come.

What are the lessons from the New Deal?

This week they put my Sunday column on the web on Friday; I was alerted by the ever-vigilant Mark Thoma.  The intro is this:

The traditional story is that President Franklin D. Roosevelt rescued capitalism by resorting to extensive government intervention; the truth is that Roosevelt changed course from year to year, trying a mix of policies, some good and some bad. It’s worth sorting through this grab bag now, to evaluate whether any of these policies might be helpful.

If I were preparing a “New Deal crib sheet,”  I would start with the following lessons...

The conclusion is this:

In short, expansionary monetary policy and wartime orders from Europe, not the well-known policies of the New Deal, did the most to make the American economy climb out of the Depression. Our current downturn will end as well someday, and, as in the ’30s, the recovery will probably come for reasons that have little to do with most policy initiatives.

Read the whole thing.  For critical responses, perhaps you can try the comments section at Mark Thoma's.  For reasons of space, it was not possible to specify that I was praising the proposed Obama middle-class tax cut.  I do not, however, think it will do much (if anything) to end the current recession, although tax hikes could make things worse.

The Price of Everything

Our colleague, Russ Roberts, will be speaking about his novel novel, The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity on Monday at noon at Cato in Washington, D.C.  More info here - note that the event is free, which seems peculiar!

Larry Summers in the White House

Harvard University professor Lawrence Summers will join the Obama administration with a ready-made sales pitch for substantial economic stimulus and a chance that the role springboards him to the Federal Reserve.  Summers, 53, was Bill Clinton's last Treasury secretary. He will have a wide-ranging portfolio and help craft Obama's economic policies, a Democratic aide said...It also positions him to succeed Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, whose term at the helm of the central bank expires in January 2010, said Vincent Reinhart, former director of the Fed's Division of Monetary Affairs.

Here is the story.

Good news, good news, bad news

The Dow is up 6.5 percent.  And Tim Geithner will be Treasury Secretary.  That's the two pieces of good news.  The bad news is that the market is up because of a political appointment.  That's really very bad news, especially since the other logical candidates for the post were extremely competent.

CEA rumors

From Megan McArdle.  Austan Goolsbee may be going elsewhere.  This could be either good or bad news; in any case the goal is to maximize his influence.  The name Cecilia Elena Rouse is being floated for the CEA position.

Addendum: Alex posted earlier this year about Rouse's important paper finding that education vouchers increase the quality of public schools.  Rouse was also an adviser for Kerry.  MR archives know all!

More book awards: high standards in Iran

Yes, it's that time of year again: they named the winners of the Sacred Defense Book of the Year awards in Iran...

Yet in ten major categories, including "Fiction," no books were deemed worthy of the honor.  The category "Children's War Poetry" was left open as well.  Here is further information.  Here is a photo of the event, plus a list of the books that were honored.  Numerous second prizes were given even though no first prizes were awarded.

Eddy Elfenbein informs me

Goldman is now below its IPO price.

From his blog, here is a charming graph on TIPS yields.  Here is some explanation.

Via Mark Thoma, here is what the 15-year stock price bubble has looked like.

How to give directions

...there are two ways to give directions. One is using a so-called "route perspective", as in the example above. This adopts a first-person spatial perspective and is characterised by references to turns and landmarks. The other is a so-called "survey perspective", which gives directions as if looking down upon a map. This type of direction giving is characterised by references to cardinal directions (North, South, East and West) and precise distances.

And which is better?

When Hund's team used a fictitious model town made of plywood to test the ability of undergraduates to follow directions, they uncovered a curious anomaly. The students reported finding route perspective directions easier to follow and yet they steered a toy car to a destination more quickly and effectively when they were following cardinal directions.

Here is further analysis.  I prefer the survey perspective.  Maybe it is a language issue, but I find it very difficult when most Europeans give directions.  Too often they cite concepts such as "up," "down," "over," "beyond," and the like.  Is it really necessary to say "hoch fahren"?  NESW, please.  Which method do you prefer or perhaps some other?