Category: Tyler Cowen

Tyler Cowen’s new e-book

It’s The Great Stagnation and the Amazon link is here. The basic thesis is that during the 19th and 20th century we (meaning the US) plucked virtually all of the “low hanging fruit” that would increase GDP and we’re just stuck until some serious innovation takes place–innovation that can actually produce revenue and get people jobs (the Net doesn’t do particularly well at either of those).

I’m still reading the book, but couldn’t help a blogpost about one of his prescriptions for fixing things: increasing the status of scientists. Tyler knows full well that I’m biased on this point, but I couldn’t agree more.

I believe that if we’re to see innovations that will make a difference, they are going to come from our investments in basic and applied science. And, to some extent, they will be serendipitous. But, like electricity and railroads, they will get us on the move again.

My top guesses:

  1. Energy
  2. Public health
  3. Privately funded exploration and exploitation of the solar system

Brooks on Cowen: Valuing wealth

David Brooks NY Times column on my colleague Tyler Cowen’s new e-book, The Great Stagnation, seems spot on–here.

The questions are twofold:
1) What is our brain’s definition of wealth–and does it change over time or between individuals?
2) How does our brain value wealth against other things (e.g. health, knowledge, richness of experience etc.)?

These questions are central to the new field of neuroeconomics.

To DOM6 via the North Pole

I’ll be off to Decade of the Mind 6, which is in Singapore on Tuesday. To get there I’ll be taking the longest non-stop route in the world, Singapore Airlines Flight 21 from Newark over the Pole, Russia, China and down into South East Asia. No time over the Pacific. I’ll try to get some good blog posts out from the meeting. My colleague Tyler Cowen, gave me special coaching in the foodie department, so I’ll be ready.

Tyler Cowen’s view of the medium-term future for the US

Is here.  He heads towards Kurzweil I think with this:

People will write profound books and papers on how and why “status quo bias” has strengthened, and then one day some new technological development will change everything.

Read the whole blog entry, it’s really good. I sure hope he’s right about his version of “The Singularity“, because otherwise, I’m afraid climate change or nuclear war will bite us badly enough to rule out a technological fix.

Tyler Cowen weighs in on the tenure debate

Link is above. Money quote:

With the pro-tenure arguments, you might wonder how higher education is supposed to differ from other sectors of the economy.  I believe it is this: given that higher education is in part about signaling and certification, socialization and networking of students, “warm glow” of the donors, and research superstars, the later-period shirking of the typical laggard doesn’t hurt actual productivity nearly as much as the schools themselves might like to think.

Lunch with Tyler

I had lunch with my colleague (also famous blogger) Tyler Cowen today at a new Indian place in Fairfax. Our conversation drifted all over the map –from the economic crisis to health care to what higher education might actually look like 10-15 years from now.

We also talked about what other countries might be reasonable to live in for academic types such as ourselves if, as seems perhaps less likely now, economic Armageddon ensues. Tyler liked both Mexico and Thailand (the assumptions here are perhaps $40K/year–not the $10M that Tyler was talking about a while ago in his blog–i.e. reality). I mentioned the Netherlands because of their superb and stable social welfare system, but Tyler was quick to disabuse me of that idea–if the US goes, Western Europe will most assuredly go also. Forget “decoupling”.
But, if you consider decoupling, well then Brazil begins to look pretty good according to Tyler (and I agree with him). They make all their own food. They are essentially energy independent, and they don’t do a lot of trade with either the U.S. or China. So they would probably be able to continue, although they would be much poorer.
Well, in that case, I’d definitely chose Sao Paolo, the Los Angeles of Brazil. The only problem with that pointed out Tyler, is that the housing costs would pretty much be the same as here in DC–not really possible on $40K a year.
So I ask you, dear reader–what country would you chose, in case the U.S. goes broke?
Jim

Tyler Cowen’s new book

My colleague Tyler Cowen sent along his new book and I’m quite enjoying the read so far. It’s made more interesting by the fact that, having known Tyler for more than a decade, many of the ideas in the book are clearly manifested in Tyler the person–his encyclopedic knowledge of DC area ethnic restaurants comes to mind.

The tag-line of the title “The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World” pretty much conveys the problem and hints at the solution I think. Clearly Cowen is a master-user of the net (at least among us adults born before the Web). As interesting is his notion that small-bits of culture (think i-tune single versus CD album) are equally enriching. I’m not sure that I buy that–although I fully understand his economic argument.
Jim