Marginal REVOLUTION

5 Oct 2026

With surrogacy illegal in China, an industry of agencies, consultants and fertility clinics has emerged to connect clients with women overseas willing to carry their children. While there is no data

5 Oct 2026

What caused the historically unique volatility in American homicides since 2019, driven by gun homicides? While there is no shortage of candidate explanations, a coherent understanding has been

4 Oct 2026

1. New London play about Keynes. 2. Aphantasia, and looking at buildings. 3. AI and job growth in Africa. 4. On Nussbaum, opera, and liberalism. 5. Congress seeks to speed up energy permitting (NYT).

4 Oct 2026

I was asked to blurb it for the AIs, and so this is what they got: Humans like those who appreciate them, and who are not too afraid of them.  Perhaps the AIs are somewhat similar?  Well, my

4 Oct 2026

In December 2025, researchers led by Yazan Alwadi at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health published a paper in Environmental Health that claimed to find that cancer incidence increased for

4 Oct 2026

Americans rarely marry outside their race or class group, a pattern with well-documented implications for inequality and intergenerational mobility. Limited exposure may partly explain these low

4 Oct 2026

The Japanese elderly, to be clear: Population aging and shortages of long-term care workers have increased interest in care-giving robots and information and communication technology (ICT). This

3 Oct 2026

1. Rewarding failure? 2. An excellent Brian Potter explainer on how matrix algebra is used in both LLMs and robotics. 3. Chat with Mircea Cărtărescu. 4. It seems the expansion of remote work

3 Oct 2026

One of the titans, and yes from the BRD. The post Florian Schneider, RIP (https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/florian-schneider-rip.html) appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION

3 Oct 2026

In the past year American markets have digested the largest-ever initial public offering (SpaceX), equity raise by a public company (Google) or a foreign firm (SK Hynix), private-funding round

3 Oct 2026

Volume 23, Issue 2, September 2026 In this issue: “China shock” fragility: According to David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson (2013), the “China shock” hit the United States from 1990

2 Oct 2026

For taxes too: Using administrative data from Scandinavian countries, we provide evidence on international migration responses to wealth taxes and evaluate their aggregate economic implications. We

2 Oct 2026

1. How rich was Anglo-Saxon England? 2. New game theory paper on AI races. 3. Scott Sumner movie reviews, please note he is always correct and thus the greatest film critic in the world, at least by

2 Oct 2026

Computer scientists Arvind Narayanan & Sayash Kapoor wrote AI as Normal Technology The statement “AI is normal technology” is three things: a description of current AI, a prediction about the

2 Oct 2026

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him.  Looking at Wikipedia: Thomas L. Griffiths (born c. 1978) is an Australian academic who is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Information Technology,

2 Oct 2026

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is part of the episode summary: Tyler and Luis start their conversation with Spain — housing, NIMBYism, and the productivity crisis; Spanish

1 Oct 2026

Singapore has launched a dating platform, the latest social-engineering experiment by the city-state’s government to tackle its fast-declining fertility rate. The initiative, known as FirstDate,

1 Oct 2026

1. Cato’s Vision for Liberty award for 50k. 2. Gross output signals an economic surge (WSJ). 3. Echo, a new AI site to mimic the styles of particular writers or writing styles.  Thread on it here.

1 Oct 2026

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him, live at the Roots of Progress event next week.  From Wikipedia: Moxie Marlinspike is an American entrepreneur, cryptographer, and computer security

1 Oct 2026

Here is the link. The post The top private sector employers of economics graduates

1 Oct 2026

We introduce an open-source workflow that enables an LLM to reproduce, improve, and extend an economics article using the article’s published replication package. First, the workflow attempts to

30 Sep 2026

Police in Singapore have charged a man who is accused of posting an AI-generated image of a saltwater crocodile in a popular reservoir. Ye Lin was charged with communicating a false message and

30 Sep 2026

1. It seems there is no evidence for the concept of a fertility rebound. 2. We will tell children nasty stories, but mostly only show them positive images. 3. Deregulation in Idaho. 4. Weather risk

30 Sep 2026

The New Republic writes “President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans.” Yes, but do note that no student is banned from any

30 Sep 2026

The author is Sam Bloch, and the subtitle is The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource.  An interesting book on a neglected topic, here is one excerpt: Shade is not part of L.A.’s modern

30 Sep 2026

That is the topic of my latest Free Press column, here is one excerpt: I do not think the skeptics would put it this way, but as I read Conti, I find he has a pretty bleak fundamental view of

29 Sep 2026

The vulnerability of our shipping routes remains underdiscussed, perhaps that is in some ways a good thing: We study the macroeconomic and trade-policy implications of disruptions to U.S.-bound

29 Sep 2026

1. Comment section arbitrage.  This is what the AIs do too, right? 2. Claims about New Zealand. 3. Good Bryan Caplan post on Effective Altruism. 4. Reported female bisexuality is in retreat? 5.

29 Sep 2026

Also known as Why I Do Not Believe in the Housing Theory of Everything: Development accounting is the search for proximate sources of cross-country income differences. This article describes how

29 Sep 2026

We measure how artificial intelligence (AI) affects the economy through its impact on software engineering productivity. We use information from financial markets to develop a forward-looking measure

28 Sep 2026

When it comes to bear encounters in or near the wild, dogs are the aggressors in 54 percent of incidents, according to a recent study conducted by bear experts at Brigham Young University and other

28 Sep 2026

1. Should more men move to Alaska? 2. The world’s oldest known peace treaty found. 3. In praise of Joyce, Whitman, and Crane. 4. Background explainer on the Chinese AI ecosystem. 5. YIMBY working

28 Sep 2026

Here is the NYT obituary. The post Mighty Sparrow, RIP (https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/09/mighty-sparrow-rip.html) appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION

28 Sep 2026

An updated version of our Marginal Revolution University (MRU) video on defining the unemployment rate. Free to use for anyone but goes best, of course, with Modern Principles of Economics, the best

28 Sep 2026

At times we forget what an amazing wonder the Bundesrepublik Deutschland was.  At the end of the World War II, Germany was one of the sickest and cruelest human societies in history, ever.  Not too

27 Sep 2026

Scientific progress is a key driver of economic growth and prosperity. There is great excitement- but also concerns- about the impacts of AI on science, but so far little data. We provide early

27 Sep 2026

1. AI-related efforts in higher education in Morocco (ChatGPT). 2. Intelligence explosions are social. 3. The speech-processing skills of dogs. 4. Kalshi market in economics Nobel. 5. Why are Indian

27 Sep 2026

The shortages have gone on for so long that they are aggressively driving down how much carbon is being released into the atmosphere, a Washington Post analysis of data from the International Energy

27 Sep 2026

The US federal government owns and administers 472,892,659 acres or 21% of the land area of the lower 48 states, the country’s largest landowner. The resource is held and managed as a collective

26 Sep 2026

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  And he has a new book coming out Six Math Essentials.  So what should I ask him? The post What should I ask Terence Tao?

26 Sep 2026

1. One way to use screens less, will it catch on? 2. Roon as cultural critic. 3. The Greenland deal sounds pretty good for America? 4. The cultures that are New England? 5. Yet newer results on

26 Sep 2026

Here, in five waves of panel data (N = 1,966 US adults), we examined associations between life satisfaction and self-reported use of ten common social technologies measured every 3 months on a

26 Sep 2026

That is the title of my latest Free Press column, here is the closing bit: Sick and elderly Americans will go to Chinese companies for their AI-invented and AI-tested medical devices and drugs.

25 Sep 2026

It pains me to say this, but if we actually “get AGI,” the resulting boom in industrial capacity from robotics and massive society-wide wealth creation will look like a total vindication of

25 Sep 2026

1. “We find a significant and highly robust empirical relationship between gender conservatism and protectionism. That relationship has been evident since 2008 and it decidedly is not a product of

25 Sep 2026

By Egana Djabbarova of Azerbaijan.  A wonderful short novel, and as described by Olga Grjasnowa “An extraordinary novel that translates corporality and estrangement into language.”  Here is the

25 Sep 2026

I strongly recommend a trip to Armenia, now is a great time to go.  Here are a few things I noticed: 1. The country remains intellectual.  The book fair is well attended.  The classical music

24 Sep 2026

Lots of fresh material, one of the very best Peter Thiel outputs. The post Peter Thiel on AI and tech stagnation and democracy

24 Sep 2026

An average of 72 percent of respondents said they felt curious, happy or excited about A.I., compared with 41 percent who felt worried, sad or angry.’@nytimes‘s Damien Cave uses @Gallup data to

24 Sep 2026

1. Shruti on Coltrane. 2. On the drop in Pisa scores.  Quite exaggerated, it turns out. 3. Hope you all reoptimize your views accordingly, on AI agreements with China. 4. Dutch economy is picking