A spoof paper holiday reading list
And a non-so-subtle reminder that entries are open for the AI spoof paper competition
The Asymmetric Information competition for the best spoof economics paper awaits your entry!
To keep you motivated, and to offer a holiday season distraction, I’ve put together a list of a few of my favourite spoofs. Enjoy!
Taxing tall people
As someone on the tall side, I’ve always thought of tightly spaced aircraft seating as a tax on tall people, extracted in non-monetised units of discomfort.
But, according to Gregory Mankiw & Matthew Weinzierl, US wages are positively correlated with height. In the optimal taxation of height: a case study of utilitarian income redistribution they report data supporting a substantial height tax — a tall person earning US$50k should pay US$4500 more in tax than a short person.
Interstellar trade
The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to
in 2008 for his work on trade theory and economic geography. Sadly, the Nobel Committee overlooked what is perhaps his most original contribution — a 1978 paper on the theory of interstellar trade. In that paper, he investigated the problems that might arise with cargo transport at relativistic speeds, where the source and destination star systems do not share a common time reference.Christmas’ deadweight loss
Joel Waldfogel, in the Deadweight Loss of Christmas, estimated that ill-chosen gifts (those the recipient neither wants nor needs) represent a deadweight economic loss (DWL) to society of between $4bn and $13bn a year (1993 values). His argument was a tongue-in-cheek defense of the freedom of individual choice:
… the best a gift-giver can do with, say, $10 is to duplicate the choice that the recipient would have made … it is more likely that the gift will leave the recipient worse off than if she had made her own consumption choice with an equal amount of cash. In short, gift-giving is a potential source of deadweight loss.
Based on a survey of Yale undergrads, Waldfogel estimated the DWL of holiday gift-giving to be around 10–33% of the value of gifts, depending on who the gifter is: friends and significant others are most efficient; non-cash gifts from members of the extended family are least efficient.
A little prayer does no good …
James Heckman’s The Effect of Prayer on God's Attitude Toward Mankind used data from the National Opinion Research Center's survey on religious attitudes to evaluate the effect of prayer on the attitude of God toward human beings. Heckman took the unknown variable Y as "God's attitude towards mankind" and X as the intensity of prayers among population, the distribution of which is known, to explore the relationship between Y and X. He concluded that a "little prayer does no good and may make things worse. Much prayer helps a lot."
Quantifying lateness
I’ve recently posted on why public infrastructure projects arrive late and cost more, but wasn’t aware that late arrivals were quantified by Philip Musgrove in 1985. He explains in Why Everything Takes 2.71828 ... Times as Long as Expected ($ — JSTOR access required).
The welfare of salmon
2022 was definitely a big year for artificial intelligence, though machine capabilities still fall well short of that required for “artificial general intelligence” (AGI).
But perhaps it is time for economists to start thinking about hybrid economies in which AGIs have their own preferences and property. Fortunately, there is an existing literature to build on. Andrew Keeler wrote a modest proposal for the extension of non-market valuation methods in 1992, considered the welfare of chinook salmon and found opportunities for Pareto-improving trades between salmon and Californian agricultural and hydropower interests.
Welcome to 2023
It has been just 6 months since the launch of the Asymmetric Information substack. Since then we’ve posted more than 30 articles, and 200 people have signed up as free subscribers. Thank you for your support in 2022.
Have a great holiday break!
By Dave Heatley
P.S. And get to work on your entry for the great spoof paper competition.
