Random links
- Gorilla again outperforms Amsterdam blue chip index
- The second sentence makes this crazier: "The bundle of stocks chosen by Jacko on the basis of bananas rose 12% in value over the year, while the AEX itself rose 10%. It is the 12th year in 13 that Jacko has outperformed the AEX."
- Education, Intelligence, and Attitude Extremity
- Interesting: "Completing high school strongly correlates to reduced extremity, particularly in the upper quantiles. College education increases attitude extremity in the lower tail of environmental beliefs."
- Eyes wide shut
- (RCT = randomized controlled trails - in vogue of late for studying poverty alleviation methods) "Most drug trials are "double blind", where participants do not know if they are in the "control" group or the "treatment" group. By contrast, most RCTs are not double blind. The paper illustrates the point by undertaking two different RCTs on cowpea seeds in Tanzania. ... The traditional RCT shows a significant over 20% increase in yields from the modern seed. But the double blind RCT shows that virtually all of that improvement comes from changed behavior, not from any inherent effectiveness of the modern seed."
- Unfair Rates
- "Canadian mailorder companies pay more to mail their products to Canadians than some of our international competitors do. Even from halfway around the world, our competitors can mail the same products to the same Canadian customers for less -- often for a lot less. Here are actual examples that show just how bad it is for Canadian companies." It's not just lower-income Asian countries to which this applies in my experience. Often mailing US-to-Canada seems cheaper than mailing Canada-to-Canada.