National intelligence really is the best predictor of economic growth
This is the sister post to the one on Anglo Reaction’s Substack. We published a new paper of high significance, and we didn’t agree about how to summarize it for…
Cognitive and income inequality: the relationship that wasn’t
The theoretical prediction seems straightforward. If income is a function of intelligence (and other factors), then all else equal, a country with more inequality in intelligence will have more inequality…
Book review: Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy by Richard Hanania
The ever-funny Richard Hanania has published his first book: Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy: How Generals, Weapons Manufacturers, and Foreign Governments Shape American Foreign Policy. You…
How bad is low level lead poisoning? Probably not that bad
For some months, I've had a window open with some lead poisoning studies by economists. We know generally not to trust economist work without carefully checking out their tables and…
The big Black patent decline, or how not to use composite datasets
Twitter user AnechoicMedia has an amusing new example of research incompetence in economics. The paper in question is: Cook, L. D. (2014). Violence and economic activity: evidence from African American…
Immigration economics for economist dummies
Some time ago, I published a 50 minutes long video walkthrough of some research on economics effects of immigration for Nordic countries. Since some people don't really watch videos, I…
Comments on “The Inheritance of Inequality” (Bowles & Gintis, 2002)
Some anon sent me this paper, asked if there was a rebuttal somewhere. It's a well cited economics paper, 1248 citations on Google Scholar. I wasn't familiar with it, but…
Bryan Caplan’s Open Borders book: considerations
Not intended as a proper book review. I didn't read this book yet. Back in 2019, Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith published a serious comic book Open Borders: The Science…
New video out: Country Well-Being: National IQ Vs. Time Preference
The companion video for the paper, published back in December https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5OjZ2BK99Q
FIGURE 1.6. Conventional versus surname estimates of status persistence.
Gregory Clark videos
Prior posts touching on Gregory Clark: What does money buy? Selected readings from lottery studies, Thinking about intergenerational stability of socioeconomic status Updated 2020-02-23: Actually, cancellation comes for Gregory Clark…