Econometric causality

James Heckman has an excellent paper on the subject (free access).

Protectionism in everything

And at this rate, for ever:

Since the 1200s, South Shields has the right to block rival markets being run less than a day's donkey ride, or six and two-thirds of a mile, away.

North Shields, on the opposite side of the River Tyne, wants its own market, but is blocked by the ancient charter.

"We have been trying for a number of years to get around this, but every time we have approached South Tyneside Council, they say they were given a market charter some time in the 1200 region by King John, so that no one can set up a market within a day's donkey ride."

A spokeswoman for South Tyneside Council said that the ancient six and two-thirds mile exclusion zone referred to the distance a trader was deemed to be able to travel from home, sell for eight hours, then return in a single day.

She added: "South Shields market is [...] of great importance to South Tyneside and, as its owner, the council has a duty to protect it from rivals."

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When Barry met Robert

A couple of days ago, a friend had a 'priceless' moment with one of the world's most celebrated economists. Since anonymity prevents me from divulging any more details, here is a hillarious account of a very similar incident when Barry Ritholtz met Robert Engle. (I emailed the post to my friend and it made him feel a lot better - thanks Barry).

The moral of the story? Always check whether the person you are talking to happens to have been awarded a Nobel Prize.

Anger over £1.99 Tesco chickens

I kid you not. (note to non-UK readers: Tesco's is the biggest and most successful supermarket chain in Britain) This is the story and where the debate is at:

Animal welfare and farming groups have criticised the supermarket giant Tesco for cutting the retail price of its standard whole chicken to £1.99.
The store says bringing down the price of a bird from £3.30 will benefit "shoppers on a budget".

The National Farmers' Union (NFU) says the move is "extremely ill-judged and short sighted. [...] They're devaluing the product and doing it at a time when, overall, the market is strengthening and chicken prices are rising[DC: Wtf?!?]. They're sucking value out of the supply chain and unless Tesco is going to subsidise this, it is not a sustainable price," he said.

Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), which praised the chain in its latest supermarket survey for improving the environment for indoor-reared birds, believes that Tesco have taken the wrong approach [...] "If Tesco is prepared to drop their prices in this way, why don't they decrease it on the higher welfare chickens and make that more accessible to poorer consumers."

The RSPCA, which oversees the "Freedom Food" programme for livestock welfare, said low-price chicken "was not the answer".

Once more, the BBC's coverage of all matters economic is abysmal (not that political coverage is much better - Chris Dillow makes some very good points here). This is decidedly not public service broadcasting; I want my license fee back.

Related: Indiffirence Merv on hating supermarkets.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

A well written and well made movie, based on an extraordinary true story:

At the age of 43, on December 8, 1995, Bauby, editor of ELLE magazine, suffered a stroke. When he woke up twenty days later, he found he was almost entirely speechless; he could only move his mouth a little, grunt, and blink his left eyelid.

Despite his condition, he authored the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by blinking when the correct letter was reached by a person slowly reciting the alphabet over and over again. Bauby had to compose and edit the book entirely in his head, and convey it one letter at a time.

The movie reminded me of Mar Adentro, another true story, as well as the classic Johnny Got his Gun (and read the book, even if you disagree with it's politics. You can buy it for a pound here.)

And it might say something about me, but the thought that kept torturing me throughout watching The Diving Bell and the Butterfly had to do with the communication system devised by Bauby's speech therapist:

The entire book was written by Bauby blinking his left eyelid. An amanuensis repeatedly recited a frequency-ordered alphabet (E, L, A, O, I, N, S, D ...), until Bauby blinked to choose the next letter. This made dictation more efficient. The book took about 200,000 blinks to write and each word took approximately two minutes.

Having someone recite a frequency-ordered alphabet is, of course, not efficient at all - unless your sole purpose is to minimise the number of required blinks, a minor consideration in this case.

I can think of a hundred different schemes to arrange letters so as to make the whole process of communicating letters more efficient, ranging from morse code to a mobile-phone style categorisation of letters.

Keep in mind that Bauby's ability to see, hear and think were not at all impaired, and he could easily master any such scheme very quickly.

So, a little more thinking going into this would have allowed Bauby to increase his speed of communication with the outside world and, yes, his quality of life dramatically. As simple, and as sad, as that.

Killer salt

This is startling:

[The paper] addresses the six-year disparity in life expectancy for blacks versus whites, arguing that much of the gap is due to a single factor: a higher rate of salt sensitivity among African-Americans, which leads to higher rates of cardiovascular disease, stroke and kidney disease.

Furthermore, it seems that the entire difference in salt sensitivity is the result of the transatlantic slave trade and the non-random sample of blacks that made it to America - non-random either because they were deliberately selected by the slave traders or because they were better able to survive the journey and resettlement.

The paper is here (free access), the excerpt is from a NYT profile of economics wunderkind Roland Fryer by Stephen Dubner. HT Tim Harford.