Eric Rasmusen’s Weblog

Professor Drezner has a thorough post on the per capita foreign aid of different countries.

Of course, the United States is also the biggest economy, so the raw dollar term doesn’t mean that much. What about in per capita terms? Here’s the ranking of contries by relief aid per capita per day (in cents, not dollars):

1. Norway 21.04
2. Sweden 11.81
3. Denmark 5.95
4. Switzerland 5.85

5. Netherlands 5.15
6. Belgium 2.94
7. United Kingdom 2.58
8. Finland 2.38
9. United States 2.34
10. France 2.17
11. Canada 2.10
12. Australia 1.93
13. Ireland 1.83

14. Austria 1.23
15. New Zealand 1.18
16. Spain 0.61
17. Germany 0.61
18. Italy 0.42
19. Greece 0.27
20. Japan 0.06
21. Portugal 0.03

…

Even if you factor in private giving, the United States ranks 19th out of 21 rich countries in terms of per capita expenditures, according to the 2004 Ranking the Rich exercise. Here’s a link to the background paper for those curious about the methodology, which factors in the extent to which aid is “tied” (requiring recipients to spend it {inefficiently} on donor country goods) and whether the aid is going to governments that spend the money wisely. For what it includes, the methodology on this dimension is rock-solid.

This figure does not include remittances, but as I’ve argued previously, it’s questionable whether this reflects the generosity of Americans — or, more importantly, whether such an inclusion would dramatically alter the rankings.

This does not mean that the United States is particularly stingy on other dimensions of helping the poor. The Ranking the Rich exercise included aid as only one of seven components — the others are trade, investment, migration, environment, technology, and security. When you aggregate the different components, the U.S. comes in at 7th out of the 21 countries (intriguingly, among the G-7, the Anglosphere countries — Great Britain, Canada, and the U.S. — come in at 1-2-3). It turns out that the U.S. is comparatively more generous on other dimensions.

*A final note: Matthew Yglesias correctly points out that the comment triggering the whole debate was not aimed specifically at the United States:

What the UN official actually said was that rich countries including the US are stingy with aid money. …

“It is beyond me why are we so stingy, really,” the Norwegian-born U.N. official told reporters. “Christmastime should remind many Western countries at least, [of] how rich we have become.”

“There are several donors who are less generous than before in a growing world economy,” he said, adding that politicians in the United States and Europe “believe that they are really burdening the taxpayers too much, and the taxpayers want to give less. It’s not true. They want to give more.” (emphases added)

Here’s a post that I’ve also put as a comment on Brian Leiter’s website, whereJudge Posner raises the question, as a guest blogger,

“4. May a state ban the teaching of evolution, or require teaching of “creation
science,” in its public schools.”

” the state is being asked to enact, in effect, a religious dogma”, which he
seems to think is bad (whether the Constitution really bans states from
establishing religions or, as I think, *protects* those establishments is a
question for another time).

Judge Posner also writes the following, the best paragraph of the post:

“Rawls and others have thought that religious beliefs shouldn’t be allowed to
influence public policy, precisely because they are nondiscussable. But this
view rests on a misunderstanding of democracy. Modern representative democracy
isn’t about making law the outcome of discussion. It is not about modeling
politics on the academic seminar. It is about forcing officials to stand for
election at short intervals, and about letting ordinary people express their
political preferences without having to defend them in debate with their
intellectual superiors.”

And in a later post he is sympathetic to the idea that ethical beliefs should
not be disallowed merely because they are affected by religious beliefs.

I don’t see that banning the teaching of evolution or requiring creationism to
be taught because of religious beliefs is any different from making murder
illegal because of religious beliefs. In all three cases, the voter’s opinion is
based on his religion, and other voters’ opinions are based on their own
background beliefs. Person A believes that the Bible is inerrant, and based on
this believes that evolution is a mistaken theory. Persons B and C believe
the Bible is errant, or that inerrancy does not imply that evolution is wrong. I
don’t see why B’s opinion should be privileged over the others. From the point
of view of A, B wants to teach a false theory, and exclude the teaching of
competing theories. Shouldn’t we be “lettng ordinary people express their
political preferences”?

Consider the following question:

4a. May a state ban the teaching of astrology, or require teaching of astrology
in its public schools.

Surely both of these are in the power of the state, despite the lack of
scientific support for astrology. But why should astrologers be privileged over
Fundamentalists?

In general, we do not let experts overturn voter preferences. If voters want a
minimum wage or sugar import quotas, we do not cite the mass of hostile expert
opinion as a reason to thwart them. Legislatures do silly things all the time.
If we let public schools teach that recycling helps the environment and saves
resources, both clearly false, why should we not let them teach creationism?

The Nov 29, 2004 National Review tells us

On November 2, the day on which Americans gave their verdict on the president,
the people of the Netherlands received, through the murder of filmmaker Theo van
Gogh, a horrific reminder that no country anywhere can be truly be said to be
immune from the threat posed by Islamic extremism. In Amsterdam that day, an
assassin shot Van Gogh, stabbed him, and then butchered him like a sacrificial
animal. By making the film Submission, a caustic attack on Muslim misogyny, Van
Gogh had transgressed the code of the fanaticism that has, alas, made its home
in Holland too. And for that he had to die. In the aftermath, there was tough
talk from the Dutch government, but the best clue as to what will happen next
comes, probably, from Rotterdam. There, a local artist reacted
to the murder by
painting a mural that included the words “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” Fair comment,
you might think. Apparently not. The head of a nearby mosque complained. The
police showed up. City workers sandblasted the inconvenient text into
oblivion.
“Thou Shalt Not Kill.” Erased, obliterated, unacceptable. Much like Theo van
Gogh. R.I.P.

This reminds me of the people in
Saskatchewan and Sweden who got into trouble
with the law for quoting Scripture on the subject of homosexuality. Homosexuals
and Moslems are both good at being pressure groups, using political heft, simple
complaining, and the threat of court coercion. Moslems, in addition, have used
the threat of violence effectively.

(Looking back at my previous posts, I see that I have one on
Canada generally too and that the prominent pro-homosexual politician in this debate, Svend Robinson, is the same man who in 2004 resigned after being caught stealing a valuable diamond ring. )

“Mass-Hysteria Time
Following Black Tuesday –Nov. 2–Europe goes nuts” by David Pryce-Jones, from
the November 29 print National Review says

A long-term policy is coming to a head. When the Soviet Union began to fail 20
years ago, France saw an opportunity to replace it in the Middle East.
Supposedly the Europeans and the Arabs were to come together in
a bloc, a
superpower to counter the United States. As a means to this
end, Chirac was
always glad to give unconditional support to Saddam Hussein.

This theory fits all the facts. Has it been overtly stated by French politicians
or intellectuals?

Suppose a person has X genes. He will share, on average X/2 of those with his
brother. He will share exactly X/2 with his father. There is a 50% chance he
will share less than X/2 with his brother. There is a tiny chance, even, that he
shares 0 genes with his brother, because his brother got the complementary X/2
from their father and the complementary X/2 from their mother.

How many genes will our person share with the average person in the population?
Not zero, but maybe a fraction of 1. It depends on how big X is, and how many
people are in the population. What is interesting is the probability that
there is someone out there in the population who shares X/2 genes with our
person. And what is the probability there is someone with all X genes? It is not
zero.

If the population is big enough, N’, there is over a 50% chance that someone
exists with X/2 genes in common with him. The size of N’ depends on X. We will
assume an even distribution of genes– no matching of male and female by genes.

Human Events tells us of a good example of bureaucratic blockage of the will of the voters and Congress. I’d like to know more; usually the bureaucracy can’t succeed in such obvious disobedence. Probably Secretary Mineta was on telling it what to do.

We’ve had 16 inches of snow over the past couple of days.

My wife asked me a good question yesterday:

Why doesn’t the City shovel our sidewalk when it snows?

The City wants the sidewalks cleared of snow; Bloomington just strengthened its ordinance requiring property owners to shovel their walks. The fine is $75 now, I think. Why do cities generally (always?) require citizens to shovel the sidewalks rather than taxing them and having it done my machinery?

Note that cities do not require citizens to plow the streets in front of their property.

One reason is that shovelling the sidewalk is not too onerous for the property owner. He has his driveway and front steps to shovel anyway, so he has a shovel or a snowblower (as appropriate to his property and latitude) already.

But there would still be economies of scale in having the city do it.

I bet in some subdivisions the neighborhood association hires someone to plow the walks, just as in some of them the lawns are mowed for the owners (who pay a sort of tax for it).

In most cities any ordinance the city has requiring shovelling is not enforced. Maybe the result is that people only plow if it is efficient to do so, because of traffic in front of their home and their own desire for a cleared sidewalk. If the city did it, the city, with less information, might plow everywhere, including places where it does not matter.

But that answer does not satisfy me.

Your instructor has wandered into a dangerous bar in Jersey City. There are six people in there. Based on past experience, he estimates that three are cold-blooded killer and three are cowardly bullies. He also knows that 2/3 of killers are aggressive and 1/3 reasonable; but 1/3 of cowards are aggressive and 2/3 are reasonable. Unfortuntely, your instructor then spills his drink on a mean- looking rascal who responds with an aggressive remark.

In crafting his response in the two seconds he has to think, your instructor would like to know the probability he has offended a killer. Give him your estimate. Your instructor has wandered into a dangerous bar in Jersey City. There are six people in there. Based on past experience, he estimates that three are cold-blooded killer and three are cowardly bullies. He also knows that 2/3 of killers are aggressive and 1/3 reasonable; but 1/3 of cowards are aggressive and 2/3 are reasonable. Unfortuntely, your instructor then spills his drink on a mean- looking rascal who responds with an aggressive remark.

In crafting his response in the two seconds he has to think, your instructor would like to know the probability he has offended a killer. Give him your estimate.

After writing the estimates and discussion, the story continues. A friend of the wet rascal comes in the door and discovers what has happened. He, too, turns aggressive. We know that the friend is just like the first rascal– a killer if the first one was a killer, a coward otherwise. Does this extra trouble change your estimate that the two of them are killers?

This game is a descendant of the games in Holt, Charles A., \& Lisa R. Anderson. “Classroom Games: Understanding Bayes’ Rule,”
{\it Journal of Economic Perspectives}, 10: 179-187 (Spring 1996), but I use a different heuristic for the rule, and a barroom story instead of urns.
Psychologists have found that people can solve logical puzzles better if the puzzles are associated with a story involving people’s identities. (See Dawes, Machiavellian intelligence theory).

I have the instructors’ notes, which explain the answers in detail, at http://www.rasmusen.org/GI/probs/2bayesgame.pdf

From
"http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3502385">The
Economist, , via "http:
//www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/12/iraq_economic_p.html">
Marginal Revolution, we learn why there are gasoline shortages in oil-rich
countries.

THE queue of angry motorists stretches for miles. Baghdad’s petrol stations are
drier this month than they have been since just after the American-led invasion
of Iraq in 2003. Some drivers wait for as much as 24 hours, sleeping in their
vehicles. When told that there is no petrol, some have lost their tempers and
started shooting. How, asks a furious driver, can an oil-producing country run
out of fuel?

Ask an insurgent, and he will assure you that the American army steals the oil
for its tanks. Others might blame the lack of capacity at Iraqi oil refineries
or the fact that the insurgents keep blowing up the pipelines. But the most
important reason is that the government has fixed the price of petrol at
approximately zero–barely one American cent a litre.

ShortageOfficials and petrol-station owners with access to subsidised petrol
have a choice. They can do the proper, legal thing and give the stuff away. Or
they can let it leak onto the black market, where prices are between ten and 100
times higher. Or they can smuggle it out of the country where, global oil prices
being rather steep at the moment, it sells for a tidy sum. …

In ten minutes, a guerrilla can scrape back a few inches of dirt, uncover some
pipe, attach a bomb made from one of the country’s abundant abandoned artillery
shells, and thereby wreak havoc in Baghdad. Between August and October this
year, pipe-raiding by terrorists (and oil thieves) cost the country $7 billion
in lost revenues, says the petroleum ministry.

Subsidised petrol in Iraq is a hangover from the Saddam era, but two changes
have made the system unworkable. One is that more Iraqis now seem to have cars
than under Saddam. The other is that the country is more lawless….

Saddam’s regime used to pay tribes to protect the pipes on their land. American
and Iraqi officials have followed suit, but sometimes find that if they pay one
tribe, a rival blows up the line and then claims to be more deserving of the
protection money.

In an oil-rich country, people expect gasoline to be cheaper, even though
its value is just as high as in an oil-poor country. This is a good example of
the idea of opportunity cost. If Iraq could not export oil, gasoline would be
very cheap there. But it can, so gasoline should be priced at the world level.
The opportunity cost of burning up a gallon of gasoline in your car in Iraq is
that that gallon can’t be sold on the world market.

The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture tells us that the top countries for U.S. beef and veal exports in 2003, in millions of dollars, were

 Japan 1166
 Korea 749
Mexico 604
 Canada 321
 Taiwan 70

I came across this kind of number in a student paper and was surprised by Korea’s high position. I was struck in my short visit there, though, at how much meat was sold by street vendors and in restaurants compared to in Japan.

That Japan is so high is no surprise. Mexico and Canada are close and trade is free. Europe might show up on the list if it allowed free trade in agricultural goods.

A National Guardsman was prompted by a reporter a week or so ago to ask Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld the embarassing question of why his unit had to drive with unarmoured trucks. People have been calling on Rumsfeld to resign over this.

I don’t think it was so bad that the reporter suggested a question to a soldier, except that now it appears that the premise was a lie. That soldier’s unit doesn’t have any unarmoured vehicles.
Via Instapundit, I find that
Powerline reports on a press conference in which it comes out that 810 of 830 vehicles in that soldier’s unit were already armoured, and the other 20 were scheduled to be armoured the next day.

Q At the time of the question — summarize this, now — that unit that the kid was complaining about was mostly armored?

GEN. SPEAKES: Yes. In other words, we completed all the armoring within 24 hours of the time the question was asked.

Q If he hadn’t asked that question, would the up-armoring have been accomplished within 24 hours?

GEN. SPEAKES: Yes. This was already an existing program.

Of course, it might be that General Speakes is lying. But he is very specific, and any lie is easily checked.

A
" http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/vidino-stakelbeck200312030840.asp">National Review article from last year brings up the subject of allowng Islamic marriages in Italy.

In Italy, mainstream Muslim groups have asked for the
introduction of Islamic marriages with no legal effects
under Italian law, a de facto subtraction of the wedlock
from the control of authorities. This request is aimed at
creating a situation where two different legal systems
regulate the lives of two different groups of citizens
within the same state. In European legal history, it would
represent a jump back to the Middle Ages, when different
laws applied to different ethnicities. In practical terms,
it would mean that Italian citizens of Muslim faith would be
subtracted from the guarantees that the Italian legal system
provides to its citizens. Therefore, while Christian Italian
women would have the same rights as Italian men, Muslim
Italian women would have very few rights. While a Christian
woman would have the right to obtain a divorce simply by
filing papers, a Muslim woman would have to go to great
lengths to prove ill treatment at the hands of her husband.

I think the introduction of Islamic marriages is a good idea, depending on how it is done. It should not be simply that if you are Moslem, you must have an Islamic marriage. Rather, it should be structured to allow choice. Anyone–Moslem or not- would be allowed to enter into a Moslem-style marriage, indicating so at the time of the marriage. People who did not so indicate should probably be assumed to want an ordinary marriage, but it might be a good idea to assume that if you are Moslem, married in an Islamic service, you want a Moslem marriage. This would not be a dimunition of rights, but an increase– by allowing people to enter into a more traditional kind of marriage than the Italian state currently allows. When someone enters into a contract, he imposes obligations on himself, but that does not mean that allowing people to make contracts hurts them.

Of course, Italy should go further and allow Christian marriages too, which I bet it does not now. Roman Catholics, for example, should be allowed to enter into marriages that do not allow divorce. For more discussion, see my 1998 paper with Jeffrey Stake, “Lifting the Veil of Ignorance: Personalizing the Marriage Contract.”

Photos enliven a blog, and this one seems appropriate.

"http://www.rasmusen.org/x/images/04.12.Christmas.tree.balsam.fir.small.jpg" align= left>

When I was at Yale from 1976 to 1980, I don’t remember the kind of unseemly classroom bias reported by the "http://www.yale.edu/yfp/archives/november04/november04_classroom.htm"
>The Yale Free Press, of which these quotes are sample:

“My teacher came into class the day after the election proclaiming, ‘That’s it. This is the death of America.’ The rest of the class was eager to agree, and twenty minutes of Bush-bashing ensued. At one point, one student asked our teacher whether she should be so vocal, lest any students be conservatives. She then asked us whether any of us were Republicans. Naturally, no one volunteered that information, whereupon our teacher turned to the inquisitive student and said, ‘See? No one in here would be stupid enough to vote for Bush.’ “

“Last year, my Spanish teacher only presented readings against Bush’s trade policy in Latin America. My Economics professor this year mocked Bush. My Spanish teacher also actively silenced people who disagreed with her. I could list many more occasions, but I have to run to class.”

“In my German class, the teacher was expressing her political views and said, ‘They [people who vote for Bush] are sheep! They’re blind sheep!’ When someone protested her comment, she said in front of the class, ‘How could you vote for him?! He’s so scary!’ The following assignments were translating German articles that bashed G.W. I’ve had other experiences in my chem class as well.”

I could well believe that political correctness has gotten much worse over the past 25 years. One part of it may be the increased use of non-tenure-track faculty. I can imagine this kind of behavior much more from my foreign language teachers– often part-timers hired and fired casually– than from professors.

Classroom bias must be looked at carefully. These examples seem to be ones in which it is unrelated to what is being taught. What is less of a problem, even if the bias is as extreme, is when the bias is integral to what is taught. We want to have faculty teaching subjects on which they are experts, and they will have opinions on the right and wrong way to think about those subjects, and even about policy conclusions. Thus, I don’t mind the Marxist teaching sociology as much as the Marxist who lets his politics come into his engineering class.

I am browsing through data sites for next semester. Free stock and macro data
is well represented on the Web, but business data is a little harder to come
by, except in the fee-based services to which my university subscribes.

"http://www.rasmusen.org/x/images/inflation.gif" width=
" 480 " align= left>

One good site for macro data is
Economagic, which allows easy
construction of Gif charts like the
inflation one I’ve put here.

It’s interesting how the monthly rate zigs and zags. Is this measurement
error– that when one month is high due to positive measurement error, the next
is low due to negative error? Or, perhaps, Fed corrections? This is the sort
of things time-series econometricians study, and they no doubt have answers.

Every year I send out with my Christmas cards a list of good things I have come
across during the year. I’ll post these one by one here. You can get to the
whole list a here
and to all my lists since 1988 "http://www.rasmusen.org/_amazon/amazon.htm">here.

12. "http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/incredibles/index.html"> The
Incredibles, 2004. An aristocratic and bourgeois
animation movie combining Toy Story
with James Bond, about a family of superheroes. It teaches
elitism and devotion to honor against the whines of the mediocre, yet
the family is perceptively 1950’s American.

The aristocratic element is the stress on heroism and the special talents
of a minority who are obligated to use those talents for the community. The
superheroes are proud of themselves, but in a fitting way, and their pride is
not combined with any need or desire for recognition from the masses. Buddy, the
villain, only has the talent of high intelligence and creativity, and he burns
with envy. What he wants above all is recognition from others. He has an
inferiority complex, and he is indeed inferior, morally if not in terms of his
overall power. Nothing he does can overcome that. What he ought to have done
was to accept his place in the world, because we do not create ourselves. When
you are born without superhero powers, you cannot make yourself a superhero, any
more than a man can become a wife or a dog a man.

Yet these are American aristocrats. That is one reason they feel duty to the
community, which is perhaps not strictly speaking a universal aristocratic
trait. They work for a living; they have secret identities; they like blending
in; they behave the same way as the rest of us most of the time, and it is a
bourgeois lifestyle. They are not looking for gigantic challenges; they just
want to do good, a even a mere fire or mugging is enough of a bad to call forth
their effort.

Indiana Prof. L. Lenkowski has "http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110006033 ">an op-ed in the WSJ on
violating the will of someone who left paintings to set up an art museum.

This week’s decision by Judge Stanley Ott of Montgomery County Orphans’ Court to
approve a request by the trustees of the Barnes Foundation to relocate its
multibillion-dollar collection of artworks to downtown Philadelphia from
suburban Merion, Pa., would seem to put an end to a decadelong legal battle over
the organization’s future. But the repercussions may continue to be felt for
some time to come.

The court proceedings involved a challenge to the will of the foundation’s
benefactor, the pharmaceutical magnate Albert C. Barnes, which stipulated that
the collection’s arrangement embody Barnes’s own, unconventional ideas about how
art should be viewed. In fact, Barnes looked upon the foundation as more of a
school for teaching about art than a museum, and he limited access to it
accordingly. But longstanding financial problems, coupled with poor management,
endangered its survival.

That is why its trustees, backed by the Pennsylvania attorney general (who is
responsible for overseeing charities in the state), sought to move the
foundation from the suburbs to become part of a new museum that would be more
accessible to ticket-buying visitors. Three Philadelphia foundations also
pledged $150 million to help erect a new building and create an endowment for
its masterpieces, if the Barnes were allowed to move.

Like the increasingly frequent cases of cities using their power of eminent
domain to force sale of property by one private landowner to another, the Barnes
case seems to pit efficiency against property rights. I feel unhappy about not
being able to come down solidly for one or the other– as an economist, I should
be able to advise people about precisely this sort of hard case. Whatever the
legal arguments may be, the essence of the Barnes case is that people think
Barnes imposed inefficient restrictions on the museum he set up, and they want
to get rid of them. This is not too far different from someone doing silly
things with his property while he is alive, and we taking it away from him as a
result. I suppose that forcing the takers to go through a formal public process
helps a lot to make sure that the takings are desirable. But some of the
eminent domain cases I’ve heard about do not seem to present clear efficiency
gains, and smell more of government failure.

My apologies to anybody whose comments do not show up on this weblog or whose comments I seem to have ignored. I just discovered an entry that said “Comments (0)” but nonetheless had a comment. I don’t know what is going on with that, but be aware of the possibility of glitches. Also, if you comment on entries older than a week or so, the anti-spam software requires that I approve your comment before it appears, and I might not see that right away.

Social sanctions don’t work with spam, since there is no way to show disapproval to the spammer. That makes the case for government laws much stronger.

Somebody was asking me about moving from Movable Type 2.6 to Movable Type 3. I
think it was worth it, but it took some time, and a number of things still don’t
work right.

Benefits:
1. Comments are easier to view and delete.
2. There is a good search engine that comes with it.
3. MT-Blacklist, the standard plug-in for dealing with spam comments, has
important features that work only with MT 3.

Costs:
1. I had to re-do my customizations, and didn’t get all of them to work.
2. I couldn’t get the Upgrade to work, and had to do a completely new
installation.
3. Extended entries– where the reader sees only the first part and clicks fo
more– don’t work.
4. For some reason, not all comments get listed where I can see them, and some
entries with comments still say “Comments (0)”.
5.The Notifierplug-in that
lets people know about comment threads doesn’t really work with MT 3.
6. Since the new, good, search engine doesn’t pick up my pre-movable type
entries, I need to have a separate search engine for those.

Overall, I recommend moving, I think. I am spending less time on blogging now,
though, which is one reason I haven’t fixed up the problems with the new
installation. It’s probably worthwhile having the MT people do your installation
for you, too, or even using Typepad (though then you are at their web address).

From a Wired article on internet sales and how titles that are not hits are
still profitable, "http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html?pg=3&topic=tail&topic_set=">
“The Long Tail”:

…The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of
Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the
implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that
are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those
that are…

Demand is being diverted from the most popular titles to this “long tail”. Is that good? The economist’s answer is “yes”. If people are given to fads, it is even better. The only cause for discomfort is that if it is the “maximum” of creative output that is the most valuable for a society, our maxima, in terms of popular appeal, are going to be less rewarded.