What are the odds that the best chess player in the world has never played chess?

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The more general issues are how well the modern world allocates talent and how much exposure you need to something you eventually will be very good at.

My view is that people who are born into a reasonably good educational infrastructure get exposed repeatedly — albeit briefly — to lots of the activities which might intrigue them. If the activity is going to click with them, it has the chance. To borrow the initial example, most high schools and junior high schools have chess clubs and not just in the wealthiest countries. Virtually everyone is put in touch with math, music, kite-flying, poetry, and so on at relatively young ages.

The idea of taking an economics class in college, or picking up some economics literature, strikes most educated people at some point, even if they squash the notion like a bug. If there is some other Paul Samuelson-quality-would-have-been who didn’t become an economist, perhaps he preferred some other avocation even more.

Billions of people are not exposed to quality economics, math, music, etc., but those people also don’t have the nutrition, the education, the infrastructure, or whatever, to excel at world class levels. The infrastructure and the exposure come together and in that sense we keep on mining the pool of potential talent. (Their only modal scenario to #1 for these individuals is an entirely different life altogether; mere additional exposure won’t do it.)

Ernest Bazanye is blogging from Uganda.

Some people get stuck in local genres, such as a brilliant Nigerian learning funk or rap, in his teen years, but not modern jazz and besides he can’t find a Nigerian market for the latter in any case. These “specialization corners” are less of a problem for math or economics, although the unification of those areas is fraying with time.

Magnus Carlsen’s father suggested that if he hadn’t had an older sister, he might not have taken up the game at all. Magnus was uninterested at ages four and five, but grew intrigued at age eight when he watched his father play chess with his older sister. I read this anecdote as suggesting he would have been exposed again to the game, one way or another, probably in school.

Two scenarios militate against my thesis. First, mistreated savants may not receive the necessary exposure to the activity. I am very much a believer in the potential productivity of mistreated savants. Still, I believe they often do best when not trying to be pure #1 in some commonly contested, measurable area but rather by filling unusual and hard to spe…

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Criminal Recidivism after Prison and Electronic Monitoring — by Rafael Di Tella, Ernesto Schargrodsky

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We study the re-arrest rates for two groups: individuals formerly in prison and individuals formerly under electronic monitoring (EM). We find that the recidivism rate of former prisoners is 22% while that for those a€treated’ with electronic monitoring is 13% (40% lower). We convince ourselves that the estimates are causal using peculiarities of the Argentine setting. For example, we have almost as much information as the judges have when deciding on the allocation of EM; the program is rationed to only some offenders; and some institutional features (such as bad prison conditions) convert ideological differences across judges (to which detainees are randomly matched) into very large differences in the allocation of electronic monitoring.

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The Grand Game!

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Sometimes here at KPC someone sends a link that is just SO sweet that we have to examine it, savor it, and then leave it by the side of the road to rot.

While Sweden has a large state and well developed public services, in Japan government social expenditure makes up an unusually small part (compared to other OECD countries) of its Gross National Income. The same contrast exists among US states – even between neighbouring states like Vermont and New Hampshire. Vermont takes the big government route and New Hampshire the small. But despite the contrast in how greater equality is achieved, Sweden, Japan, Vermont and New Hampshire all enjoy good health, lower rates of most social problems – i.e. all the benefits of greater equality.

Here is just such a link, a set of “studies” so noisome, so nonsensical… well, enjoy. Here is the “evidence” page. This is a rare combination of almost painful self-importance and bad social science.

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If Any of Us Showed Up to Work Like This, We’d Get Fired

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Steven Horwitz

The next time someone tries, with a straight face, to tell you that the Senate is the world’s greatest deliberative body and that elected politicians take their jobs seriously, or that reforming health care was a moral imperative that reflected the utmost in careful thought and planning, just show them this clip of Sen. Max Baucus (D – Montana) drunk off his ass debating health care on the Senate floor. Too drunk to drive, but drunk enough to argue for nationalizing a sixth of the US economy. Do we need an interlock system for the voting buttons in Congress?

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Smoking Trials Again

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Recently I talked about checking on smoking skeptics. I described three studies:

1. A randomized trial of 1400 high risk smokers. After 10 years one half had half the smoking rate of the other, and after 20 years it had an insignificant 7% lower mortality (13% less heart disease, 11% less lung cancer).
2. MRFIT randomized multifactor trial of 8000 smokers. After 6 years one half quit 49% (vs. 29%), and after 16 years had an insignificant 6% lower mortality (11% less heart disease, and -15% less lung cancer).
3. A randomized multifactor trial of 1200 high risk men. After five years one half reduced smoking by 3/8 (vs 2/9), but had twice the mortality (10 vs. 5 count).

I’ve now had time to look over seven more studies:

1. A randomized trial of 6000 smokers with “asymptomatic airway obstruction”, i.e., weak lungs. (HT Karl.) After 5 years in two-thirds, 22% (vs 5%) stopped smoking, and after 14.5 years they died a (3% level significant) 15% less (20% less of heart disease, 15% less of lung cancer, and 50% less of “respiratory disease other than cancer.”) (More details here, which I don’t have.)
2. WHO collaborative multifactor randomized trial of 61,000 men. After six years one half had 2% fewer smokers, 7% among highest risk men, giving an insignificant 5% lower mortality (7% in heart disease).
3. Gotenborg multifactor randomized trial of 30,000 men. After ten years one third had 9% fewer smokers (32.5 vs. 35.4%) than the other two thirds, and an insignificant 2% lower mortality (0% heart disease, 15% cancer).
4. Norwegian multifactor randomized trial of 1200 men. After five years one side had 1/8 less smoking, and after 28 years it had 46% more mortality (95 vs 65 count).
5. Oslo mulitfactor randomized trial of 1200 men. After 8.5 years one side had 45%(?) less smoking, and 40% less mortality (19 vs. 31 count). (This just from abs…

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Animal Smoking Studies

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Some seem to think experiments show smoking causes cancer in animals. Not so, for mice or rats:

I review the results of a representative selection of chronic inhalation studies with rats and mice exposed to mainstream cigarette smoke. … Smoke-induced epithelial hypertrophy, hyperplasia, and squamous metaplasia were reported in the conducting airways in most of the studies, along with increased numbers of intra-alveolar macrophages that were occasionally associated with alveolar metaplasia. Lung adenomas and adenocarcinomas were reported in only a few of the studies. No statistically significant increase in the incidence of malignant lung tumors was seen. …

The 14 studies reviewed … [showed] significant increases in the numbers of malignant tumors were not produced in the respiratory tracts of rats or mice exposed chronically by inhalation to cigarette smoke. The studies clearly involved the inhalation of very large amounts of smoke (usually from unfiltered, high-tar cigarettes) … The results of this work clearly indicate that maximal amounts of smoke were inhaled into the lungs of the animals (blood COHb concentrations very close to those associated with lethality) daily for up to 2 yr with no carcinogenic effect noted.

Nor for hamsters, dogs, or primates:

This paper makes an identical evaluation as before, but, restricting the species being evaluated to representative studies of smoke-exposed hamsters, dogs (both by tracheostomy and by direct inhalation), and nonhuman primates. As was seen previously, no statistically significant increase in the incidence of malignant tumors of the respiratory tract was found in any of the 3 species, even though very long exposures and high doses of smoke were used.

Now the number of animals in these studies is a few thousand at most, and their duration is less than decades, but experimenters did have complete control over making animals smoke heavily. Yes this review author works for a tobacco firm, but his papers seem professional.

Searching for “animal smoking experiments,” I found many sources admitting we haven’t found much evidence smoking hurts animals, and none saying the opposite. Here is a ‘97 Scientific American article “Animal Research is Wasteful and Misleading”:

In a striking illustration of the inadequacy of animal research, scientists in the 1960s deduced from numerous animal experiments that inhaled tobacco smoke did not cause lung cancer (tar from the smoke painted on the skin of rodents did cause tu…

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The Lesson of Ebenezer Scrooge

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(December 25, 2009 09:41 AM, by David Henderson) When Scrooge wakes up, he realizes that indeed he can change. In my favorite scene in the movie, Scrooge dances around in his nightshirt like a kid in a candy store, celebrating his power to change. And what is the…

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Should we cut the minimum wage?

Should we cut the minimum wage?

Reinterpreting Slave History

Preserving Slave Families for Profit: Traders’ Incentives and Pricing in the New Orleans Slave Market

“We find large price discounts for families which cannot be explained by scale effects, childcare costs, legal restrictions, or transport costs. Because family members cared for each other, sellers found it advantageous to keep some families together.”

http://www.nber.org/papers/w14281

Also:

Time on the Cross: http://www.amazon.com/Time-Cross-Economics-American-Slavery/dp/0393312186

Roll Jordon Roll: http://www.amazon.com/Roll-Jordan-World-Slaves-Made/dp/0394716523

Drug Busts and Forfeiture Laws Research

http://www.jstor.org/pss/30026428

http://www.nber.org/papers/w10484

Automobile “Safety” Inspections Research

http://www.jstor.org/pss/30027176

http://www.jstor.org/pss/30025852

http://www.jstor.org/pss/2487049

Hanson on Random Smoking Trials

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/what-anti-smoking-evidence.html

Rothbard: The Mantle of Science

http://mises.org/rothbard/mantle.asp

Boettke on Samuelson

http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2009/12/paul-samuelson.html

Caplan: Philosophy and Rational Irrationality

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/12/philosophy_and.html

“(1) Principle of Epistemic Rationality: (PER)- It is not epistemically rational to believe something just because it is interesting, original, or controversial.

(2) Publishability Fact: (PF)- In order to get regularly published in philosophy, you need to be able to say things that are interesting, original, and controversial.

(3) Perverse Incentives: (PI)-The practice of philosophy incentivizes non-rational motives of belief formation; specifically, it incentivizes believing things that are interesting, original, and controversial whether or not they are true.

(4) Sad Truth: (ST)- Almost all claims that are interesting, original, and controversial are false.

(5) Unfortunate Conclusion: (UC)- The practice of philosophy encourages philosophers to believe and to publish things that are false.”

The Monopoly of Violence: Evidence from Colombia — by Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson, Rafael Santos

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Many states in Latin America, Africa and Asia lack the monopoly of violence, identified by Max Weber as the foundation of the state, and thus the capacity to govern effectively. In this paper we develop a new perspective on the establishment of the monopoly of violence and the formation of the state. We build a model to explain the incentive of central states to eliminate non-state armed actors (paramilitaries) in a democracy. The model is premised on the idea that paramilitaries may choose to and can influence elections. Since paramilitaries have preferences over policies, this reduces the incentives of the politicians they favor to eliminate them. The model also shows that while in non-paramilitary areas policies are targeted at citizens, in paramilitary controlled areas they are targeted at paramilitaries. We then investigate the predictions of our model using data from Colombia between 1991 and 2006. We first present regression and case study evidence supporting our postulate that paramilitary groups can have significant effects on elections for the legislature and the executive. Next, we show that the evidence is also broadly consistent with the implication of the model that paramilitaries tend to persist to the extent that they deliver votes to candidates for the executive whose preferences are close to theirs and that this effect is larger in areas where the Presidential candidate would have otherwise not done as well. These results illustrate that, consistent with our model, there appears to be a symbiotic relationship between some executives and paramilitaries. Finally, we use roll-call votes to illustrate a possible ‘quid pro quo’ between the executive and paramilitaries in Colombia.

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Steve Chapman on Obama’s Losing Bet in Afghanistan

“Obama’s new Afghanistan policy is a clever attempt to reconcile the two sides of the debate, one favoring escalation and the other recommending withdrawal. He proposes to do both: ramp up now and start to leave in 18 months. But as Steve Chapman writes, betting on a substantial withdrawal in 2011 is like betting that Tiger Woods will become monogamous.”

http://reason.com/blog/2009/12/14/new-at-reason-steve-chapman-on?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+reason/HitandRun+(Reason+Online+-+Hit+%26+Run+Blog)&utm_content=Google+Reader

Smoking Bans? Why Not Football Bans?

An average smoker loses 11 minutes of life for every cigarette.

An average NFL football player loses 1,460 – 2,190 minutes of life for every minute of football played (if my calculations are correct).

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/football-decimation.html

Miron: To Create Jobs, Stop Destroying Jobs

http://jeffreymiron.blogspot.com/2009/12/to-create-jobs-stop-destroying-jobs.html

Hasnas on the Right to Die

http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/WorkshopDraft.pdf

Hasnas on “The Mirage of Product Safety”

http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/SafetyFinalDraft.pdf

The Depoliticization of Law by John Hasnas

http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/TIL.PDF

More on Smoking Bans

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2487

“The totalitarian method to resolve the conflict is through political power and guns. In other words, the group with the greatest power to organize government’s brute force decides whether there’ll be smoking or no smoking in restaurants. Totalitarians might justify their actions by claiming that bars, restaurants and workplaces deal with the public, and thus the public should decide how they’ll be used. That’s nonsense. Just because an establishment deals with the public doesn’t make it public property.

The liberty-oriented method to resolve conflict is through the institution of private property. In fact, conflict resolution is one of the primary functions of private property, namely it decides who gets to decide how what property is used in what way. Put another way: Who may harm whom in what ways? In a nutshell, private property rights have to do with rights held by an owner to keep, acquire and use property in ways so long as he doesn’t interfere with similar rights held by another. Private property rights also include the right to exclude others from use of property.

Under the liberty-oriented method of private property, as a means to conflict resolution, we’d ask the question of ownership. If the owner wishes his restaurant to be smoke-free, it is his right. Whether a smoker is harmed or inconvenienced by not being allowed to smoke in his restaurant is irrelevant. Similarly, if a restaurant owner wishes to permit smoking, it is his right, and whether a nonsmoker is harmed or annoyed is also irrelevant. In the interest of minimizing possible harm either way, it might be appropriate for restaurant owners, by way of a sign or other notice, to inform prospective customers of their respective smoking policy. That way, customers can decide whether to enter upon the premises.

In today’s America, the successful anti-tobacco campaign has become a template for conflict resolution through the forceful imposition of wills through the political system. It’s part of a continuing trend of attacks on private property rights. Private property rights are the bulwark for liberty, and should be jealously guarded and not be sacrificed for the sake of expediency.”

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6835

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2006/10/25/smoking-ban-without-government/

Total indoor smoking ban and smoker behavior

“Conclusion. A total indoor smoking ban had little effect on overall institutional quit rates. Heavy smokers will, predictably, experience the greatest difficulty complying with a total indoor nonsmoking policy.”

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WPG-4BNG6BB-146&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1133868543&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=1505e246bc555348c9547671a52bacdd

Why You Shouldn’t Buy Fair Trade Products

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/12/facts-about-fairtrade.html

Science and Government: Food Pyramid

http://www.google.com/searchhl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS322US322&q=william+butos+government+and+science&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

http://econ.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/10119/Butos_NEW_Science_Funding-1.pdf

Malthus vs. Malthusian Population Scares

http://aidwatchers.com/2009/12/malthus-vs-malthusian-population-scares/

Theory, Evidence and Examples of FDA Harm

http://www.fdareview.org/harm.shtml

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/economists-against-the-fda/

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/abolishing-the-fda/

Wiley and the Whiskey Industry

Another example of how regulation is passed with under the pretenses of helping consumers, but really only advances private interest groups.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/3116002

Why Does the U.S Rank 29th in Longevity?

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/why-does-the-us-rank-29th-in-longevity/

“Yes, the U.S. healthcare system is full of inefficiencies which lead to bloated costs. But no, that’s not the reason that U.S. longevity ranks only 29th in the world.

That’s the gist of a working paper (abstract here; pdf here) by Samuel H. Preston, a health demographer at Penn, and Jessica Y. Ho, a health economist.

As summarized in the NBER Digest:

The authors demonstrate that mortality reductions from prostate and breast cancers have been exceptionally rapid in the United States relative to a set of peer countries. They argue that these unusually rapid declines are attributable to wider screening and more aggressive treatment of these diseases. Screening for other cancers also appears unusually extensive, and five-year survival rates from all of the major cancers are very favorable. Survival rates following heart attack and stroke are also favorable (although one-year survival rates following stroke are only average), and the proportion of people with elevated blood pressure or cholesterol levels who are receiving medication is well above European standards.

These performance indicators pertain primarily to what happens after a disease has developed, though. It is possible that the U.S. health care system performs poorly in preventing disease in the first place. Unfortunately, there are no satisfactory international comparisons of disease incidence. Some researchers report a higher prevalence of cancer and cardiovascular disease in the United States than in Europe, and biomarkers confirm that many disease syndromes are more prevalent in the United States than in England and Wales, for example. Higher disease prevalence is prima facie evidence of higher disease incidence, although those high incidence rates also could be produced by better identification (for example, through screening programs) or better survival. The history of exceptionally heavy smoking and the more recent increase in obesity in the United States suggest that a high disease incidence cannot be laid entirely at the feet of the health care system.

Evidence that the major diseases are effectively diagnosed and treated in the United States does not mean that there may not be great inefficiencies in the U.S. health care system, according to the authors. A list of prominent inefficiency charges levied against the system include: fragmentation, duplication, inaccessibility of records, the practice of defensive medicine, misalignment of physician and patient incentives, limitations of access for a large fraction of the population, and excessively fast adoption of unproven technologies. Some of these inefficiencies have been identified by comparing performance across regions of the United States, but the fact that certain regions do poorly relative to others does not imply that the United States on the whole does poorly relative to other countries. The authors also note that many of the documented inefficiencies of the U.S. health care system simply add to its costs rather than harming patients.

They conclude that the low longevity ranking of the United States is not likely a result of a poorly functioning health care system.

This doesn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who’s dug a bit into the healthcare data (which is vast vast vast), but I don’t believe the public thinks of the issue this way. Many politicians also probably don’t — and their positions are further compromised by the fact that, politically, it can be very hard to blame bad health outcomes on their voters’ overeating, smoking, and other personal choices.

While we don’t have a dedicated healthcare chapter in SuperFreakonomics, healthcare is probably the single most prominent topic throughout the book. A lot of the stories we tell point to failures that could be easily corrected if the existing incentives were aligned less perversely than they are. There are huge gains to be made, for instance, in decreasing hospital-acquired infections and paying attention to the inefficacy of many types of chemotherapy. Also, it may be that less interaction with the healthcare system in general would be a very good thing.”