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Dave Hill is absolutely right, sadly:
"no big cycling revolution is going to happen here without there being bold infrastructure changes that "the cycling mayor" would never contemplate.
Even my instructor, undoubtedly a prudent and peaceable road-user, said that at times you have to "be a warrior" out there. I can't see that changing much, even if, as some in the cycling community say, motorists in London are becoming more mindful of cyclists' needs. Most of us, I think, don't want travelling round our city to involve the risks and adrenalin of battle."
links for 2009-07-03
04-Jul-09
links for 2009-06-30
01-Jul-09
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"our estimates imply that global climate change would lower the median poor country’s growth rate by 0.6 percentage points each year from now until 2099. Extrapolated over 90 years, the median poor country would then be about 40% poorer in 2099 than it would have been in the absence of climate change …
Our results also inform the older debate over climate’s role in economic development. As noted above, climatic theories of development have a long history and have remained a subject of contemporary debate. Our estimates identify a substantial, contemporary effect of temperature on the development process, not just on important sub-channels but on the aggregate economy. "
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Interesting view on the macroeconomic effects of housing capital gains.
"when people expect housing prices to rise they feel better. They feel better because they have just received an implicit tax cut (sometimes made explicit by falling mortgage rate spreads.) If we rule out the expectation effect we are missing a real effect of rising housing prices. Said another way, rising housing prices and positive attitudes don’t happen to go together and it isn’t just that home prices are rising because expectations are rising. Rising housing prices are driving the positive attitudes."
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"Our estimates suggest that homeowners on average overestimate the value of their properties by 5% to 10%. We also show that the overestimation is primarily due to the large expected capital gains implicit in the self-reported home values, especially since the mid-1980s.
In periods of high interest rates and declining incomes, the buyers are likely to have lower appreciation expectations due to the declining housing prices (see Figures 1 and 2), and end up assessing, on average, more accurately the value of their homes, and even in some cases underestimating it.
All this suggests that in good economic times there is a larger number of buyers who are (eventually) overly optimistic regarding how much their properties are worth."
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"Conventional wisdom has it that for the purposes of US domestic politics it doesn’t make sense to talk about the impact of climate change on the developing world. I’m not so sure. It’s very difficult to imagine Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) wading through the jungles of Vietnam slaughtering villagers and redistributing their possessions to the people of Missouri. It’s easy, by contrast, to imagine her tweeting complaints about Waxman-Markey being unfair to coal-dependent states like Missouri. To an extent, in other words, I think it’s worth raising the ethical stakes around this issue.
Nobody’s quite sure what the solution is for people and countries trapped in severe poverty. But we can be fairly certain that “cause them to drown so we can drive bigger cars” is not the answer."
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“Leiden has a population of only 120,000, yet has supervised cycle parking for 4,500 bikes. Can you guess what the sum total of bike storage facilities are at all of the London terminals put together?” The answer is shaming for the capital's rail chiefs — enough for just 1,200 bikes.
Instead of asking ministry officials to report to him on the situation, Lord Adonis, a rail and cycling enthusiast, got on his bike and spent last Sunday afternoon investigating for himself.
links for 2009-06-24
25-Jun-09
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Good post from Duncan and discussion from commenters. Like Duncan, I don't pretend to understand the dynamics of commodity markets or how they affect food security in poor countries, but it's an area worth keeping on eye on.
links for 2009-06-17
18-Jun-09
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Path dependence in social models: "Equality can multiply due to the complementarity between wage determination and welfare spending. A more equal wage distribution fuels welfare generosity via political competition. A more generous welfare state fuels wage equality further via its support to weak groups in the labor market."
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Worth reading, as always
'The great likelihood is that the world economy will need aggressive monetary and fiscal policies far longer than many believe. That is going to be make policymakers – and investors – nervous…
Last year the world economy tipped over into a slump. The policy response has been massive. But those sure we are at the beginning of a robust private sector-led recovery are almost certainly deluded. The race to full recovery is likely to be long, hard and uncertain."
links for 2009-06-16
17-Jun-09
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You've got to admire the optimism of the spirit that came up with “Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World” as a book title.
links for 2009-06-14
15-Jun-09
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Wonderful visualisations of randomness in numbers. I liked the ones on Bedford's Law and the Law of Large Numbers best.
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Oh, I'm looking forward to this: "This major philosophical work, by one of the world's leading public intellectuals, constructs a new theory of justice, not from abstract ideals or notions of what perfect institutions and rules might be, but from what the results of a system are practically, in the world. It highlights the importance of public reasoning and argues that a system of justice should require the agreement not just of the community which is making laws, but of outsiders who might be affected, or who might have valuable perspectives to offer. The methods and conclusions of the book have implications for many different fields of intellectual activity, not only those connected with justice. It is the most ambitious and wide-ranging book Amartya Sen has yet written. "
Due out in July.
links for 2009-06-04
05-Jun-09
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In short, if temperature goes up 4c, we're mostly screwed.
links for 2009-06-03
04-Jun-09
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Why Do Skilled Immigrants Struggle in the Labor Market? A Field Experiment with Six Thousand ResumesInteresting research by Philip Oreopoulos: "Canadian applicants that differed only by name had substantially different callback rates: Those with English-sounding names received interview requests 40 percent more often than applicants with Chinese, Indian, or Pakistani names (16 percent versus 11 percent). Overall, the results suggest considerable employer discrimination against applicants with ethnic names or with experience from foreign firms."
links for 2009-05-30
31-May-09
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This is rather well put: "By 2002, the New York Times reports that, thanks to changes in the tax code during the Bush administration, an eligible buyer can deduct $34,912 of the $48,800 base price of the Hummer … In retrospect they were the perfect emblem of the Bush interregnum, a totem of entitlement, profligacy, social and personal insecurity, militarism as a form of consumption, and absolute pretension"
links for 2009-05-29
30-May-09
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The BBC 'News' website is apparently now a vehicle for pub marketing campaigns. Good to know.
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"Pupils from the richest neighbourhoods in England are twice as likely to go to university as those from the poorest homes, data analysed by the Conservatives reveals.
The Tories argue this proves the £2.3bn spent each year persuading working-class children to apply to university is largely fruitless."
Classic 'New Tories'. Point to existence of a social problem as proof that anything the state does to try and reduce that problem "doesn't work", then call for cuts.
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"The anti-gay-marriage soundbite, by contrast, makes no attempt at persuasion. It's like saying you oppose the Bush tax cuts because "I believe the top tax rate should be 39.6 percent." You believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman? Okay! But why?
The ubiquity of this hollow formulation tells us something about the state of anti-gay-marriage thought. It's a body of opinion held largely by people who either don't know why they oppose gay marriage or don't feel comfortable explicating their case…"
links for 2009-05-28
29-May-09
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Rob analyses i-Neighbors.org, a website intended to bring together residents of the same real-world neighbourhoods online. This is the kind of thing I'm always saying there should be more of, so it's interesting to see why it didn't work. The main problem as I see it is that in trying to ensure active participation the site effectively discourages passing traffic, which reduces the content available, makes search more difficult and makes engagement more demanding so that the online groups never reach critical mass.
links for 2009-05-27
28-May-09
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First of a series of posts on the proposed redevelopment of Dharavi slum in Mumbai. As Katia says, it's "a microcosm and a test case of whether there will be any space for the poor in tomorrow’s global cities."
links for 2009-05-26
27-May-09
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I think I'm in love.
Climate change: global cause and effect
26-May-09
Two maps of the world. The top one varies country size by the amount of their carbon emissions. The lower one varies country size by the expected increase in mortality rates resulting from climate change. Notice anything?
I’m having difficulty seeing the moral or economic objections to taking the clear, achievable steps necessary to avoid these kind of consequences or something even worse.
Link from Ezra Klein.
links for 2009-05-24
25-May-09
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Easterly asks: Please tell me which you think is more probable:
(A) a country succeeds at economic development, or
(B) a country succeeds at economic development with a wise and capable leadership.But isn't the question ambiguous? If (B) means 'a country succeeds at economic development AND has a wise and capable leadership', then basic probability says (A) is more likely because Pr(A)>PR(A)xPR(B). But if (B) means 'a country succeeds at economic development GIVEN a wise and capable leadership' then we have PR(A|B) which could be higher. Or am I missing something?
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Now there's a provocative thought:
"In his book Intelligence and How to Get It, cognitive psychologist Richard Nisbett concludes that “much, if not most, of the gap in academic achievement between lower- and higher-SES children, in fact, is due to the greater summer slump for lower-SES children”
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"An aide to the mayor said: "It was pretty awful. They were shaken up and Boris was shocked. But it makes the case even more for his super highways.""
It also makes the case for banning that lorry driver and actually enforcing the rules of the road on the rest of them, but I don't suppose that policy lesson is likely to sink in.
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Yglesias on the weird lack of interest in the violence wrought by climate change: "If it were announced that the United States of America was planning on dumping a load of poison on the Carteret Islands rendering them uninhabitable, I think even Sen. James Inhof of Oklahoma would be spurred to action. Certainly I doubt that you'd see a Blue Dog member of the House whining that since the poison factory is located in his district, he doesn't see how we can possibly afford to stop producing the poison. Libertarians wouldn't be arguing that the pristine logic of the free market grants companies the right to poison other people's islands."
links for 2009-05-23
24-May-09
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Findings from neuroscience are starting to reveal how our brains respond to different features of design and architecture.
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Marvellous story about building standards for cat and dog homes: "In their studies, HOK found that daylight was the biggest factor in making dogs and cats calmer and therefore more adoptable. Under LEED, points can be garnered by having daylighting and views. Skylights help dogs know the patterns of the sun. Cats thrive when they have a window to look out of, preferably if there's a bird feeder outside (cat TV)."
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"More Africans want democracy — and more think they're getting it, according to an influential survey co-founded by Michigan State University.
But the latest findings from the Afrobarometer also show the number of African citizens fully committed to a democratic government remains under 50 percent and that demand for democracy still varies widely among African nations."
links for 2009-05-22
23-May-09
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Backhanded progress of a sort.
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Apparently, Bill Easterly thinks all politicians always choose the worst option, everywhere and everyhow. The man is turning into some tenured version of Tim Worstall.
links for 2009-05-21
22-May-09
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Excellent on the pros and cons of cap and trade, and this is a great point: "think about how hard it would be to verify whether China was really implementing a promise to tax carbon emissions, as opposed to letting factory owners with the right connections off the hook. By contrast, it would be fairly easy to determine whether China was holding its total emissions below agreed-upon levels."
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Great post, again. "I remember being initiated into the press lobby at Westminster and being quite shocked by all the etiquette and procedures. To ask the question "why?" was to show yourself up as naive and unworldly."
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Interesting post about using computer simulations to inform planning consultation. I've seen much less sophisticated tools in the past and the effect of being able to see the impact of your choices and having to choose trade off different preferences is really impressive. But as this post says, it's vital that the relationships behind the GUI are transparent.
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Californian politics are a good argument against the value of direct democracy, but then California's status as a very nice place is a good argument against the importance of politics.
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Nice piece about the pleasure garden that preceded the dilapidated Market Estate in Islington.
links for 2009-05-20
21-May-09
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Could see this catching on in London …
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Nice overlay of historic and land-use maps of LA and NYC on Google Maps.
links for 2009-05-12
13-May-09
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The thing about fascists is that very often they are complete fuckwits.