November 14, 2004
test
This is a test.
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test
test
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test
test
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November 13, 2004
Somehow my Movable Type is
Somehow my Movable Type is now working-- but erratically. It I'm not sure what I did to make it come back-- I was all set to delete the weblog and reinstall. Comments are working, too, though now my MT-Blacklist plug-in seems not to be working. It probably needs reinstalling... This makes me wonder whether I should return to my home-made HTML weblog. But I'll keep on with Movable Type for now.
Posted by erasmuse at 09:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cascades in Affirmative Action; Sander Data
Richard Sander of UCLA has written an article on the effects of affirmative action, and has posted his data on a webpage. It is an empirical article with an unusual angle, addressing the question of whether a student who is admitted to a school but knows he has gotten in by non-standard means and will be in the bottom 10% of the class should accept admission or go to a school where he would be average instead. This is a general point, whether a student gets special admission because of the color of his skin or because his father has political connections, but it is especially relevant to affirmative action because students admitted to it are so likely to be at the very bottom of their class.
Law schools are an especially good case to analyze, because law graduates go on to take the bar exam, so we have an independent measure of success. It has long been known in law school circles that many elite law schools have lower bar pass rates than average law schools, and that within an elite law school, law school grades are a good predictor of whether a student will pass the bar. A student at the bottom of his elite law school class will flunk the bar, where if that same student had gone to an average law school he would have passed it. That is because the elite law school teaches courses in a different style and to a different level, suited to their average or top students and not to their bottom students.
Anyway, Sander's article-- which I have not yet read, and post for reference-- looks at how many black students pass the bar exam now and how many would pass if there were no affirmative action programs. Without affirmative action programs, fewer black students would go to law school, but their chances of passing the bar would be better.
I've thought of trying to model the "cascade" effect which is part of this. If we had no affirmative action, black students would still go to law school-- they just would not go to as good law schools as they do now. The student who under affirmative action goes to Harvard would go to UCLA instead; the UCLA student would go to Iowa, and so forth. Thus, when Harvard started using affirmative action, that meant UCLA did not get as high-quality black students as it did before. If UCLA wanted even to maintain the number of black students it would have in a race-neutral world, it would have to use affirmative action, setting lower admission standards for blacks than for whites. This, in turn, would reduce the number of black students at Iowa, and the cascade would go down to the very bottom law school. If schools value having black students, affirmative action by a school imposes a negative externality on all the schools below it. (Though, on the other hand, a school that does not care about race gets a positive externality: Harvard's choice of the UCLA black student means some smarter white student has been denied admission by Harvard, and *that* student will go to UCLA.)
I think it could be the case that even if we accept that it is good for an individual school to have more black students, that every school but the very top one would be worse if schools are free to use affirmative action, because of this cascade effect. Every school would like to be the only one to use affirmative action, but when all do it, only the top school ends up better off. Probably the modelling result would be that in the affirmative-action equilibrium, every school but the top school has the same percentage of blacks but with lower ability than if racial discrimination were not practiced by anybody-- almost a Pareto-worsening from the point of view of the schools.
Posted by erasmuse at 09:45 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 12, 2004
Marsh and McLennan Insurance Brokers: Common Agency
I gave my options paper at Georgia State this week at their
department of risk (a neat idea for a department!), and
talked with some people about the Marsh and McLennan scandal. Marsh is a very large
insurance broker, which companies such as Delta Airlines
hires to find the best insurance deal for them. Marsh was
engaged in fraud, it seems, but another practice, more
common and perhaps defensible, was that it took commissions
from both sides of the transaction-- from the client, Delta,
and from the insurance company that got Delta's business.
Moreover, the commission from the successful insurance
company was based on the ex post profitability of its
contract with Delta, I was told.
Could there be an efficiency reason for this "common
agency" problem-- in which the agent, Marsh, tries to
satisfy two principals, Delta and the insurance company?
Maybe. Our first thought is that this is simple corruption--
that Marsh is supposed to be acting just on behalf of Delta,
but secretly takes bribes from the insurance company. But
can we imagine a situation in which the "kickbacks" or
"commissions" to the insurance company are known to Delta,
but Delta still wants to hire Marsh?
Here is a possibility. Suppose Marsh's function is to
warrant that an insurance customer is a customer worth
having--that it has no hidden costs for the insurance
company. When Marsh says that a customer is a "good
customer", the insurance company gives the customer a low
price for insurance, but asks Marsh to back up its claim by
accepting a financial penalty if the customer turns out to
be a "bad customer", by agreeing to take 10% of the profits
from the insurance contract. If the customer is bad, that
10% amounts to nothing; if the customer is good, Marsh gets
some money. Marsh would then accept only good customers,
and good customers would agree to this, because it is a way
they can prove they are good to insurance companies.
I don't know enough about Marsh's particular situation
to know if this fits it, and formal modelling might show up
some inconsistency in my story, but it has at least slight
plausibility.
Posted by erasmuse at 02:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Voting Cycles: A Game Theory Problem
I've just been inspired, on reading a draft chapter of Burt Monroe's Electoral Systems in Theory and Practice, to write up a long game theory problem for the next edition of Games and Information. It gets very technical, but I'll post it in case anybody might be interested.
Uno, Duo, and Tres are three people voting on whether the budget devoted to a project should be Increased, kept the Same, or Reduced. Their payoffs from the different outcomes, given below, are not monotonic in budget size. Uno thinks the project could be very profitable if its budget were increased, but will fail otherwise. Duo mildly wants a smaller budget. Tres likes the budget as it is now.
Uno Duo Tres
Increase 100 2 4
Same 3 6 9
Reduce 9 8 1
Each of the three voters writes down his first choice. If a policy gets a majority of the votes, it wins. Otherwise, Same is the chosen policy.
(a) Show that (Same, Same, Same) is a Nash equilibrium. Why does this equilibrium seem unreasonable to us?
... I continue to have severe Movable Type problems. I can't do Extended entries, so for more, go to Problem 4.7 in this page. When I've got time, I'll think about whether to switch weblog software.
Posted by erasmuse at 03:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 11, 2004
Problems with Movable Type
I'm having problems with Movable Type. For some reason, I can't enter comments now, and even entering new posts requires an oblique procedure. I'm not sure why this problem suddenly started two days ago, so solving it may be difficult...
Posted by erasmuse at 01:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 10, 2004
Who Paid the 9-11 Costs?
RiskProf reports on a RAND Corporation study of who paid compensation for 9-11 damages. Of th 38.1 billion dollars that they quantify, 51% was paid by insurance companies, 7% by charity, and 42% by government. An interesting question is whether the high amount of non-insurance compensation will cause people to rely less on insurance.
Posted by erasmuse at 06:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 08, 2004
Links Recommended by Stromata/Veal
Tom Veal's Stromata has a list of his favorite blogs that is worth noting. Here's a sampling, without his numbering:
- Hoystory -- This guy ought to have his own syndicated column.
- Iraq the Model --The antidote to the American media’s doom and gloom
- Nixatron Blog-Times -- Omnium gatherum of political news and opinion
- Armavirumque -- Group blog of The New Criterion, a great cultural magazine
- Cronaca -- Art, archeology, history, a dash of politics
- Bjørn Stærk Blog -- Imagine what it must be like to be a young, right- of-center pundit in Norway!
- Arthur Chrenkoff -- An Australian who is best known for publicizing the abundant good news from Iraq and Afghanistan.
- Right Wing News -- What the name implies, with a good sense of humor
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November 07, 2004
Wesley's "I Want a Principle Within"; Sensitivity to Sin
We sang the Wesley hymn, "I Want a Principle Within," at church today. It's a good one, because its theme is that it is good for us to be sensitive to sin, not calloused. "I want a principle within of watchful, godly fear, a sensibility of sin, a pain to feel it near." A contrary desire is also common: to numb oneself to sin. Mark Twain had a funny story on this topic, "The Facts Concerning The Recent Carnival Of Crime In Connecticut," in which he meets and strangles his conscience, after making it heavy enough to sink to the floor and catch. But it is usually not so funny. We want to do evil, but we dislike guilt and shame.
There is another danger, too: losing sensitivity to sin in other people and in the world. I feel this loss keenly. I do not think I am a better person for having grown more calloused in my maturity, even though I am perhaps better able to deal with the world. I have grown much harder to shock. Perhaps my children will teach me how to again be sensitive.
I Want a Principle Within
Words: Charles Wesley, 1749
Music (via here: Louis Spohr, 1834; adapt. by J. Stimpson, but there's a better "Welsh melody" tune we sang at ECC)
I want a principle within
of watchful, godly fear,
a sensibility of sin,
a pain to feel it near.
I want the first approach to feel
of pride or wrong desire,
to catch the wandering of my will,
and quench the kindling fire.
From thee that I no more may stray,
no more thy goodness grieve,
grant me the filial awe, I pray,
the tender conscience give.
Quick as the apple of an eye,
O God, my conscience make;
awake my soul when sin is nigh,
and keep it still awake.
Almighty God of truth and love,
to me thy power impart;
the mountain from my soul remove,
the hardness from my heart.
O may the least omission pain
my reawakened soul,
and drive me to that blood again,
which makes the wounded whole.
I'll repeat a post from June 12, 2004 that is related.
06.12b. Pope: "Vice is a monster of so frightful mien". . Alexander Pope makes a good argument for not talking too much about vice, even to condemn it, as Pastor Timothy Bayly said to me at lunch yesterday at Noodle Town. From Essay on Man (ep. II, l. 217) (1733):
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated need but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
Posted by erasmuse at 07:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Prostitutution Enforcement Priority Propositions in Berkeley Defeated
Via Prof. Leitzel, the Oakland Tribune reports on the failure of a Berkeley ballot proposition to relax prostitution laws:
After receiving national attention, Measure Q, which would have made enforcing prostitution laws the police department's lowest priority, lost by a 63.9 to 36.1 percent margin. It needed a simple majority to pass.
This is interesting for several reasons. First, even leftwing Berkeley is unwilling to make prostitution easier. Second, this is the first time I've heard of a law that would rank law enforcement priorities. Ordinarily, that is up to the prosecutor and the police chief-- a huge and unnoticed power of those offices. I'm not sure how Measure Q would have been enforced if it had won, though one way is simply by declaring to the police chief, whose job is, I expect, ultimately up to the pleasure of the voters, what his masters' desires are.
Posted by erasmuse at 03:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Unifying Ideas in Game Theory: Symmetric-Player Games vs. Principal-Agent Games
I'm trying to work on a 4th edition of http://www.rasmusen.org/GI/index.html, and thinking about big ideas.
There is one large class of games in which one player moves first to try to get another to do something-- the principal-agent games, broadly construed. These include games of boss and worker, voter and politician, customer and seller. The player in this first class of games are in asymmetric positions-- they choose different sorts of actions. In some of these games-- the "moral hazard" ones-- the problem is that the agent's action is unobserved. In others-- the "adverse selection" games-- the problem is that the agent has some information the principal does not know.
In a second large class of games-- shall I call them "symmetric player games"?-- the players are all in the same sort of position-- two countries at war, or five firms setting prices, or two politicians choosing campaign spending. The idea of strategic substitutes and complements applies to these games, and is a unifying idea I'd like to use more. The idea is that in some games, when the other player does more of his strategy, I want to do more of mine. If my competitor raises his price, I want to raise mine. If my rival for elected office spends more on advertising in Wisconsin, I want to spend more too. We call this a situation of "strategic complements". In other situations, when my rival does more of his strategy, I do *less* of mine. If the rival firm increases capacity, I reduce my capacity. If the other firm spends more on research, I give up on research altogether. This is a situation of "strategic substitutes"....
... I realize that my chapters on Bargaining and Auctions can be roughly differentiated in this way. The usual bargaining game is one of strategic substitutes. If my rival is tougher, I will be softer, lest the bargain fall through. The usual auction game is one of strategic complements. If my rival bids higher, I will bid higher too. This is true even though the auction game is a mixed principal-agent/symmetric-player game, the principal being the seller and the agents being the bidders.
This makes me wonder where I should put my Pricing chapter. Already, I've decided to carve up the Entry chapter and move its pieces to other chapters or delete them. Pricing is the lone remaining application-centered chapter. Maybe it should be carved up too.
Another dichotomy is between games in which players take the rules as given, and "mechanism design" games, or "contracting games", in which they start by trying to bind themselves to the rules that will incentivize their behavior later in the game. I am not sure how to incorporate that dichotomy. Contracting games obviously arise most in principal-agent games, with the boss designing a contract for a worker (which, usually but not always, must satisfy a "participation constraint" that the worker be willing to accept it instead of quitting the job), or voters designing a constitution for politicians. In other principal-agent games, however, there is no contracting. Signalling games are the most prominent of these: workers choose credentials to signal their ability, without any formal contract offer beforehand by firms.
But contracting arises in symmetric player games too. Classic mechanism design problems include a seller setting the rules for an auction for lots of symmetric bidders, or a boss setting the rules for promotion for workers in a tournament with each other. Those two examples are mixed principal-agent/symmetric-player games, but mechanism design can even arise in pure symmetric-player games: a cartel chooses rules for punishing members who cut prices, a team of workers agrees to a sharing rule for output, or a group of citizens agrees to a choice rule for choosing how much each person pays for a new streetlight and whether it is built based based on announced preferences.
Posted by erasmuse at 03:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 05, 2004
County Level Election Maps 2000 and 2004, Vanderbei Purple America Maps
Robert J. Vanderbei of Princeton has
posted county-level election maps, blending red
(Republican) and blue (Democrat). Of course the colors
should be the opposite, especially for 2000, when Yale Blue
Bush ran against Harvard Crimson Gore. The first maps are
for 2004. The second one has bumps for where the population
is greatest. The third one has just Red and Blue depending
on who got a majority in the
county.
The second set of maps are for 2000-- one of
Prof. Vanderbei's "Purple America" maps, and one that uses
just Red and Blue depending on who got a majority in the
county.
Posted by erasmuse at 05:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Do Markets Cure Consumer Mistakes? Schwartz paper
Yesterday Alan Schwartz of Yale Law was here to give a talk.
His subject was a good one. People make dumb mistakes. They
are not always "rational" in the economic sense. Some of
these mistakes can be viewed as having poor information--
for example, buying astrology predictions even though they
won't come true. Other mistakes are in processing
information-- putting good money after bad into a business
that won't succeed, for example, because of the fallacy of
sunk cost. We have always known people make mistake, but
recent research, "behavioral economics", has focussed more
on the precise kinds of mistakes that get made.
But does the tendency to make this kind of mistake actually
result in bad decisions? The market has some tendency to
cure mistakes. If I put my antique chair up for auction, for
example, then even if my information as to its value is
poor, I will still get a price for it that reflects the good
information of other people. If I am buying things, then
sellers will endeavor to make sure I understand that the
apparently good offers of their competitors are actually bad
for me.
Schwartz's paper modelled this, in one particular way. He
used a search model, where some people shop and others just
look at one seller's offers, and where one product is best
for sophisticated people and another for mistake-prone
people. It is a tricky problem to get a handle on, though.
Another way to model the situation is with an advertising
model. Suppose no consumer searches, but sellers send them
advertisements, and that some consumers are sophisticated
but others are mistake-prone. Sellers will send three kinds
of messages. First, there will be offers aimed at the
sophisticated buyers. Second, there will be offers aimed to
fool the mistake-prone buyer. Third, there will be offers
aimed to tell the mistake-prone buyer about the deceptive
offers. I'm afraid this model would get rather
complicated, since each seller would want his offer to be
just slightly better than what the buyer is likely to get
from some other seller. Also, someone may well have worked
out this idea years ago. But it has some realism to it, I
think.
Posted by erasmuse at 02:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 04, 2004
2000 Bush-Gore County Election Map
I've found this County Election map for 2000: Bush vs. Gore, but not for 2004 yet.
Posted by erasmuse at 07:38 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
"Recycling is garbage" by John Tierney (1996)
John Tierney's well-crafted ``Recycling Is Garbage," New York Times Magazine, June 30, 1996, states the case against recycling very well. Recycling can, of course, be a good idea, but only when it is profitable. City programs lose money, and when people spend time sorting garbage, it is a waste of resources, not thrift. If you simply throw all your recyclables in one garbage can and your other garbage in another, private labor costs are small, but the city still must pay extra. If you must sort carefully, home labor costs become the biggest part of the cost.
Here are extensive excerpts, reformatted by me and without ellipses, for the most part:
The simplest and cheapest option is usually to bury garbage in an environmentally safe landfill.
Since there's no shortage of landfill space there's no reason to make recycling a legal or moral imperative.
Mandatory recycling programs offer mainly short-term benefits to a few groups -- politicians, public relations consultants, environmental organizations, waste-handling corporations -- while diverting money from genuine social and environmental problems.
Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America: a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources.
[of Charles City Council, which imports New York City garbage to its landfill] ... thanks to its new landfill, the county has lower taxes, better-paid teachers and splendid schools. The landfill's private operator, the Chambers Development Company, pays Charles City County fees totaling $3 million a year -- as much as the county takes in from all its property taxes. The landfill has created jobs, as have the new businesses that were attracted by the lower taxes and new schools. The 80-acre public-school campus has three buildings with central air conditioning and fiber-optic cabling. The library has 10,000 books, laser disks and CD- ROM's; every classroom in the elementary school has a telephone and a computer. The new auditorium has been used by visiting orchestras and dance companies, which previously had no place to perform in the county.
Why should New Yorkers spend extra money to recycle so they can avoid this mutually beneficial transaction?
Why make harried parents feel guilty about takeout food?
Why train children to be garbage-sorters?
Why force the Bridges school to spend money on a recycling program when it still doesn't have a computer in the science classroom?
Are reusable cups and plates better than disposables? A ceramic mug may seem a more virtuous choice than a cup made of polystyrene, the foam banned by ecologically conscious local governments. But it takes much more energy to manufacture the mug, and then each washing consumes more energy (not to mention water). According to calculations by Martin Hocking, a chemist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, you would have to use the mug 1,000 times before its energy-consumption-per-use is equal to the cup. (If the mug breaks after your 900th coffee, you would have been better off using 900 polystyrene cups.)
When consumers follow their preferences, they are guided by the simplest, and often the best, measure of a product's environmental impact: its price.
Polystyrene cups are cheap because they require so little energy and material to manufacture -- without reading a chemist's analysis, you could deduce from the cup's low price that it's an efficient use of natural resources. Similarly, the prices paid for scrap materials are a measure of their environmental value as recyclables. Scrap aluminum fetches a high price because recycling it consumes so much less energy than manufacturing new aluminum. The low price paid for scrap tinted glass tells you that you won't be conserving valuable resources by recycling it. While price is hardly a perfect measure of environmental impact, especially in countries where manufacturers are free to pollute, an American product's price usually reflects the cost of complying with strict environmental regulations.
Posted by erasmuse at 03:22 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 03, 2004
Post-Election Thoughts
1. Bush has an actual majority of the popular vote, the first time this has happened since 1988.
2. My last-day electoral forecast is looking good. So far I've no states wrong, and it looks like I was right to call New Mexico for Bush.
3. As usual, almost all the incumbents were re-elected. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. After all, we'd naturally find a close fit between a representative and his district-- that's why he was elected in the first place, and that's why he votes the way he does.
4. There was massive opposition to same-sex marriage in the ballot propositions. See Clayton Cramer on this.
5. Why don't we stamp people's hands with invisible, indelible ink, as in third-world countries? Maybe the cost isn't worth it. Or maybe live double-voting is not a problem. Absentee ballots are no doubt where the biggest fraud is.
6. I'm surprised that it was so close. Not only is Kerry the most leftwing Senator, with few accomplishments and a lot of votes he'd rather not have anybody remember, and not only is the economy in good shape, but there were at least four scandals in his campaign this summer:
(a) Advisor Joe Wilson turned out to be lying about his mission to Niger.
(b) Advisor Sandy Berger was caught stealing secret government documents.
(c) Kerry himself was caught having very dubious grounds for the war medals he boasted so much about.
(d) The Kerry campaign and CBS was caught using obviously forged documents to try to discredit Bush's war record.
Add to this Kerry's refusal to release his war records (except selectively) and his wife's tax returns (except the first two pages).
And what scandals came out about the Bush campaign? Nothing, despite intense attempts to find something damaging about his National Guard record or Swiftvets connections or Halliburton. There was constant abuse and insinuation, but nothing ever panned out.
I think this shows the power of the mainstream media. They are growing ever more aggressive in their bias. Also, it may be that all the money flowing into the get-out-the-vote effort has paid off, and that the new voters don't really know anything about the candidates except that their recruiter has endorsed one of them.
Posted by erasmuse at 02:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 02, 2004
Bush: "if you have political capital, you should spend it"
Update, November 4: Bush says: "I earned capital in the campaign - political capital - and now I intend to spend it," he said at a news conference 24 hours after securing his second term.
The Wall Street Journal had an editorial yesterday,"The Bush Record: How much leadership do the voters want?" (R) . It made me think about use of political capital, and about whether we really do want principled leaders. Here is an excerpt:
Of our handful of meetings with George W. Bush, the one that lingers as a harbinger of his Presidency is lunch in Austin, Texas, in late 1999. One of us asked the then-Governor what lesson he had learned from his father's White House experience. Without missing a beat, Mr. Bush replied that he'd learned that if you have political capital, you should spend it ....
We also recognize that Mr. Bush has shown he is capable of some crass political retreats, notwithstanding his campaign theme as a leader who never bends a principle. Steel tariffs, McCain-Feingold, the farm bill, Medicare prescription drugs, and most recently his surrender on intelligence reform--these have not been profiles in political courage.
Yet in the larger arc of the Bush Presidency, all of these are also of secondary importance. A leader's first priorities are peace and prosperity, which in our time mean keeping the U.S. economy competitive amid the emerging challenge from India and China, and of course the battle against terrorism.
A frequent lament among journalists, and often voters, is that politicians always take the easy way out; they never risk their personal popularity or re-election chances for the sake of longer run gains in the national interest. In Iraq and the Middle East, Mr. Bush has done precisely that.
Has he gauged it successfully or not? Actually, in his case, I don't think it was a case for close calculation. His big risks were in going into Afghanistan and into Iraq, and I think he would have taken those gambles out of responsibility even if political calculations were against them.
Nonetheless, that initial quote is very good: "if you have political capital, you should spend it". In my 4 P's Theory of Motivation the motivations are Place, Pride, Policy, and Power. Bush is willing to give up Power, and maybe Place, for Policy.
Of course, my hope if Kerry is elected President is that he will be completely interested in Place and Power, and will not use any of his political capital to achieve any of the things one might expect from the most left-wing member of the U.S. Senate. Clinton was a relief that way, though he started from pretending to be a centrist.
It's interesting that in practice Americans seem to like their politicians to be unprincipled. Clinton did not lose much by his immorality; many, perhaps most people thought that it wasn't too important that the President had committed perjury and adultery or that he lied constantly. A man without principles is more dependable, in a sense-- he can be counted upon to do what other people want him to do.
Posted by erasmuse at 07:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 01, 2004
Bates College Students Buying Pollution Permits
I'm teaching pollution control methods today, and came across this interesting story about
Bates College econ students buying and retiring sulfur dioxide permits:
In 2001, 2002 and 2003, at the rate of one permit per year, students in the "Environmental Economics" course at Bates bought and retired government permits for the atmospheric release of a pollutant that causes acid rain.
This year, in one fell swoop, the 49 students in Econ 222 quadrupled the amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2) that Bates is keeping out of the nation's air. A $1,200 challenge grant from an environmental organization in Colorado spurred the students to submit winning bids for nine permits in the annual U.S. Environmental Protection Agency SO2-allowance auction....
...The Bates students bid $292 for each of the permits in this year's auction, held March 22....
"He asked if our class could match his $1,200 and buy a total of eight permits, as well as educate others about the program," Lewis explains. "My students designed informational fliers, sold T-shirts that they designed and had a booth in Commons," the college's dining hall.
Several campus organizations and many individuals at Bates contributed to the grant-matching drive. "We sold SO2 by the pound," Lewis says. "Five pounds for a buck -- you can't beat that!" In the end, the students even came up with enough money to top Udall's challenge by one permit.
I'm not sure that there is really that much social value to reducing sulfur dioxide pollution further, but I applaud the exercise in learning about property rights-- and in using your own money to control pollution rather than political power.
Posted by erasmuse at 05:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Ellipses and Page Numbers for Web Quotes
I'm going to switch to using ellipses (...) in a more condensed way. I won't indicate whether I've omitted complete paragraphs or not. This will make my posts slightly shorter and more readable, I hope. It's interesting how proper documentation changes with the Web. Since I give you a link to easily get to the original document, the niceties of fomratting in quotation are less important.
The Web makes giving page numbers for quotes less important too, since the reader can go to the original document and do a search on one of the phrases in the quotation and get to it more quickly than if he had a page or line number. Were the canto and line numbers in my Sunday quote from Pope's Essay on Man necessary? I suppose not.
Posted by erasmuse at 05:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Electoral College Prediction
I am usually too optimistic in elections. My September prediction was Bush 328, Kerry 210, based on polling history and voter misperception of Kerry's leftism. Below is an excellent analysis of the state-by-state vote by Joshua Davidson. I agree with him, except that I'd give Bush New Mexico-- the polls are in his favor there, after all, and Bush's hawkishness plays well with Western voters. That would make the vote Bush 279, Kerry 259, as in the map above. Here is the Davidson analysis (I've added some boldface):
Every four years I write my prediction for the presidential election. Usually I do so much sooner in the campaign but this year has been unbelievably close with polls conducted on the same day showing vastly different results.
Here is my track record: In 1992 I predicted Clinton over Bush 331-207; he won 370-168. In 1996, I predicted Clinton over Dole 312-226; he won 379-159. In 2000, I predicted Bush over Gore 290-248; he won 271-266. You will thus notice an overestimation of the Republican's chances. I don't claim not to be biased but that bodes ill for Bush.
A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win.
Let's look at the states that are solidly for Bush: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina (Edwards no help here), North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming. That's 191.
Kerry's solid states are: California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. That's 160.
States that I think are likely to go to Bush are: Arkansas (Bush leads in almost all polls, he won in 2000), Colorado (he leads in all polls, has gone Democrat only once since 1980 (1992) - and it doesn't seem the proposal to split the electoral votes is likely to pass), Missouri (he leads in all polls, he won in 2000, culturally conservative state), Nevada, and West Virginia. That's 36, which gives Bush 227.
States that I think are likely to go to Kerry are: Hawaii (usually an extremely Democrat state, Bush is doing unusually well at the polls, perhaps because Hawaii has a popular Republican (Jewish female) governor), Maine (without splitting the electoral vote, which can happen in Maine), Michigan (Kerry is ahead in most polls, union state with Democrat governor, hasn't voted Republican since 1988 - but could be close), New Jersey (you hear some talk how it is tighter than expected but I think Kerry will win big here), Oregon (Bush had high hopes here but isn't close), Pennsylvania (Kerry wins pretty much every poll, went for Gore in 2000). That's 68, which gives Kerry 228.
Now for the really close states:
New Mexico: The most Hispanic state in the nation, Clinton won it twice, Gore won by less than a thousand, but Bush ahead in most polls. But I am giving it to Kerry. Kerry now at 233.
Minnesota: Supposed to be real close, but hasn't voted Republican for President since Nixon (of course, Mondale was on the ballot twice). I think Minnesota will trend Republican (and it elected Norm Coleman over Mondale two years ago), but this year will more likely than not stay Democrat. Kerry now at 243.
Iowa: Kerry has done slightly better in the polls and Iowa is one of the most dovish states. It went for Dukakis in 1988 (Dukakis only won 10) and it went for Clinton over Dole in 1996, although you might have thought Mr. Ethanol could have taken that state). Therefore, I put Iowa in Kerry's camp. Kerry now at 250.
Florida: It will be close, but I think Bush will take the state. He has done slightly better in the polls; Jeb is popular and won handily 2 years ago, even though a lot of people thought the Republicans would pay for the 2000 fiasco. W got a lot of credit for timely assistance after the hurricanes. I think the Jews will be a little less supportive of the Democrat ticket this time (no Lieberman, Bush clearly the more pro-Israel candidate). The new generation of Cubans is less anti-communist and therefore more likely to support Democrats, but the Republican candidate for senator, Mel Martinez is Cuban, which might help Bush keep those younger Cubans. Bush now at 254.
New Hampshire: Bush did win this in 2000, but this state is in Kerry's backyard and Kerry leads in a majority of the polls. Therefore, I give it to Kerry. Kerry now at 254.
Wisconsin: Kerry is 8 points ahead in the latest Zogby poll although Bush was ahead in most polls a week ago. Wisconsin has seen movement toward the Republicans but I am not sure enough to give this state to Bush. Therefore I give it to Kerry. He is now at 264.
Ohio: Obviously, under my analysis, it is now down to Ohio which is really too close to call. The Realclearpolitics.com poll consensus is a dead tie. However, Bush has done better in the most recent polls (probably outdated by the time you read this). Bush won in 2000, not by much. The state has two Republican senators and a Republican governor and in recent years has only voted for Democrats when they are from the South (Carter, Clinton). When I am feeling optimistic, I give the state and thus the election to Bush; when I am feeling pessimistic, I give the state and thus the election to Kerry. I am going to give it to Bush, partly because I have given most of the really close states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Iowa, New Mexico) to Kerry. If Bush loses Ohio, he can still win by winning either Michigan or Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin and Iowa or Wisconsin, New Hampshire and New Mexico. If Kerry loses here, he has lost (unless he wins Florida). A real possibility, however, is that Bush loses Ohio but wins Wisconsin and either New Mexico or New Hampshire, in which case we will have a 269-269 tie.
What happens in a tie: The correct question is what happens if no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes (cast by the electors - there is always the possibility of a "faithless elector", especially in a tie). In that case, the House of Representatives, voting by state, with each state getting one vote, decides among the top three vote-getters (thus, if there is one faithless elector who votes for McCain, for example, the House could choose him). How a state votes is dependent on how its representatives (the ones chosen in this election) vote. Right now the Republicans control a significant majority of the house delegations and we can assume that probably won't change. Thus, Bush would probably win if the House decided. The Senate would choose the Vice-President based on a majority vote of the new Senate - which could go either way. Theoretically, they could choose Edwards.
Obviously there are a lot of factors that I couldn't take into account (the effects of voter fraud (or intimidation), any event that occurs between now and election day, the inaccuracy of polls, weather, and most importantly, post-election litigation.
Posted by erasmuse at 03:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack