Pez Romana - the value of markets

Way back in the time of the dinosaurs, my parents had a problem. My brother and I had birthdays fairly close to each other and always wanted to play with the other guy's toys. The solution they came up with was to give me a present on his birthday and him a present on my birthday. This at least reduced the sibling rivalry. We instituted this too, once Econolad was old enough to need it.

This year I was super sneaky. Econolad and I had just started watching Star Wars for the first time and he likes C3P0. I got him a Threepio Pez dispenser, recognizing that he might not like the candy (which he doesn't much).

I explained to him that  this was a useful present. His sister, you see, not only loves all things edible, but the #1 way she shows she loves someone is to share her food or ask you to share your food. I told Econolad he could offer to share one of his Pez candies if she would share a toy with him.

The best is that it works. She is willing to trade some, but not all, of her toys and has the ability to say no if his deal isn't good enough. They each feel loved from each other and are happier with the transactions than otherwise. Prices have tended to stay at one candy for renting a beloved toy for 2 hours, but she has sometimes held out for better terms of payment (now vs. later) or rental length.

The other best part is ... markets are great! As an economist I am very geekily happy every time they bargain and see that creating a market has restored peace to our home. 

The lighter side ... parenting as a scientist

There's a wonderful series of bibs for babies of scientists and other very smart people. Very simple, just a few words, but very creative. The link is here, the recommendation is Marginal Revolution's, and my top ten below the fold:

Interesting Sentences

The Economist: The world could be on the verge of a great management revolution: making robots behave like humans rather than the 20th century’s preferred option, making humans behave like robots.

HT: Grandiloquent Bloviator: “If you’re not the consumer, you’re the product.” Also known as: there is no such thing as a free lunch on the internet. If you can’t tell what the website is trying to sell you, they are either selling your eyes to advertisers or your information. 

Beckworth: “money is special: it is the only asset on every other market (i.e. it is the medium of exchange) and thus is the only one that can affect every other market.  Money, therefore, is what makes it possible to have economy-wide recessions.”

Marron: Sometimes, it’s more than $100 lying on the sidewalk: “You can sell 9,999 shares of The Donald …  at $0.52 a piece [on Intrade]. In just that one trade, you can pocket almost $5,200 of free money.” The only question is whether the government decides this is an illegal activity for influencing voting and elections. “For the latest Trump action, click here.”

The Economist: “The [United Arab Emerites] government aims to reduce the rising number of single local women by offering prizes of up to $19,000 to men who marry them.”
 

The history of political cartooning in South Africa: “I tried to define when South African cartooning started … all the way back to a cartoon which was published in 1819 by George Cruikshank who was a leading London caricaturist of the day. I called it the Cruikshank’s cannibal cartoon. It shows the white settlers being devoured by these cannibal figures – these huge, hulking monstrous figures. … For me that became an iconic cartoon, a prototypical South African cartoon.”
 

Yglesias on Chomsky’s denunciation of Osama’s death as an illegal assassination: “International law is made by states, powerful states have a disproportionate role in shaping it, and powerful states have obvious reasons to not be super-interested in the due process of suspected international terrorists or the sensibilities of mid-sized countries. Many people are pacifists and/or strong critics of western military power, and that’s fine. But it’s simply not the case that international law is identical with these policy preferences. On the contrary, one of the main functions of the international institutional order is precisely to legitimate the use of deadly military force by western powers."

Calzadilla, Rehdanz, and Tol: “Trade liberalization tends to reduce water use in water scarce regions, and increase water use in water abundant regions, even though water markets do not exist in most countries “

Easterly and Freschi: “Belief in Hell raised … economic growth potential. … A different twist than the Protestant Ethic: Scared Rich?

Measuring the Unmeasurable II

I do not think we are measuring what we think we are measuring...:

Gallup's Economic Confidence Index improved 10 percentage points in the week after Osama bin Laden's death, May 2-8, resulting in the best weekly confidence level since mid-February. Thirty-seven percent of Americans now say economic conditions are "getting better."

Measurement error in surveys:

Matt reminds us that there are reasons to want husbands and wives together and reasons to want them separate for questioning. Neither way is going to dominate.

Researchers sometimes forget that most of the multitude of questions respondents face in a study are extremely private. Imagine if someone from your city, claiming to be associated with some distant, foreign university, came to your door and started asking you about your detailed household expenditure, or your spouse about their sexual history?

Measuring gender fairness the Dilbert way (ie - Scott Adams said this) (HT: Newmark).

So I propose a simple test to determine if you, individually, are a victim of gender unfairness. If a genie gave you the chance to magically switch your gender, and become a member of the other sex, would you do it? And let's say the new you would be about the same as now on the scale of attractiveness, intelligence, ethnicity, circumstance, and health. The only real change would be gender. Do you take the offer?
If your answer is no, then maybe fairness isn't what you really want. Maybe what you want is all the advantages you have now plus the good stuff that other people have. I totally understand. I want the same thing.

Happy Mothers' Day: Double-dipped Irony

Caplan on raising kids, and why we should have more of them. The short argument is that “The good news of twin and adoption research is that sacrifice is overrated. Parents are “overcharging” themselves for their kids.” How so?

1.      upbringing has a noticeable effect on the vocabulary of young children. But as children mature, this effect largely fades away.

2.      the “depressing” effect of kids, while consistent, is small. Married-with-kids is far happier than single-without-kids, but happiness researchers rarely bemoan the plight of childless singles. Second, kids do extremely well by another plausible standard: customer satisfaction. Over 90 percent of parents say they’d make the same decision if they had a “do over,” and over two-thirds of childless adults over 40 say they wish they had kids when they had their chance.

3.      That’s why the evidence from twin and adoption research is such good news for parents: Parents can make their lives better today without making their kids’ lives worse tomorrow.

4.      In the Ask the Children survey, kids’ main complaint about their parents wasn’t lack of face time, but what I call “secondhand stress” — the fact that their parents were often tired and short-tempered. The upshot: One of the best ways to be a better parent is to give yourself a break.

Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like on why they maybe shouldn’t have more kids:

Be prepared to always play second fiddle unless your EAW romantic partner gets more excitement, satisfaction and a bigger sense of personal achievement out of your relationship than she does out of attending a cluster group meeting, submitting a grant report or going on a community monitoring visit. … Don’t waste your breath saying that his agency must only believe in child rights for other people’s children, since the only time he sees his own children is when they are sleeping. Don’t bring up that you could use a little family reunification or peace and reconciliation or gender equity program at home.

The Partners of EAWs Facebook page heartily agrees