Competition for Attention

As far from academia as I have been for 40+ years, I find bits like this report from
OrinKerr.com to be interesting, concerning a recent academic conference and referring to the issue of laptops in college classrooms:

"Lots of the professors had their laptops with them, and one or two professors used the wifi to liveblog the conference. But by the middle of the day-long conference, it seemed to me that a large chunk (around half) of the professors in the audience were online checking e-mail, reading blogs, and surfing around to see what was up in Boston that weekend. Most were paying partial attention to the symposium, but they had a lot more going on than just the symposium."

Given the pervasive use of cellphones while driving, this sort of thing is going to be big over coming years. [Not sure what that means, but maybe that measures to mediate the competition will attract innovators.]

Farm Subsidies Good for Africa?

Thanks to Marginal Revolution here's an argument for farm subsidies, at least on food.
Africa does not need more expensive food:

"The trouble is that the truth is a little bit too simple to be credible. Farm subsidies in the EU and USA mean that we sell some kinds of foodstuffs (mainly grains, milk products and sugar) to Africa and other countries cheap. So cheap, in fact, that the Africans etc can buy our imported goods cheaper than they can produce them for themselves. This is good news.

No, stop, yes it is. If you can buy something for cheap, then that is good news. Food being cheap is good news for Africa. It isn't bad news. I promise you it is as simple as that."

Not sure I agree fully. We may be making life harder for African farmers and easier for African city dwellers. There's still many more farmers, see here.

Effects of Ending Farm Subsidies

What would be the effect of ending U.S. farm subsidies? I'm no expert, but when does that stop a blogger?

Economists seem to say that landowners capture farm payments. Their reasoning: if I can profit from growing cotton (for example), then I'm willing to pay more to rent land to grow cotton. If I own the land, then when I sell I can expect a higher price because buyers know they can make money growing cotton. So over time land rental rates and land values adjust to the flow of subsidy payments. That's what economists say anyhow.

The Economic Research Service of USDA studies the costs of production for various crops. As you'd expect, there's a distribution curve (bell curve) from low cost to high cost, with the bigger operators usually being more efficient. My impression is that for every crop, perhaps excluding sugar, low-cost operations can make money at current world market prices.

If that's true, then ending payments should cause U.S. land values and rental rates to fall. Only those (large, efficient) operators who can make a profit without subsidies would be willing to buy or rent land. So in the absence of subsidies we'd still have farms and the acreage of land being farmed might be much the same. But we'd have fewer farms.

Chinagate, Revisited

Remember the flaps during the Clinton administration about leakage of technology to China? Much ado about very little, IMHO. It's interesting to see that GAO doesn't like the Bush enforcement of limits on export of high capacity CPU's. Where are the right wing fearmongers when you need them?

(I tried to understand the report--I think the bottom line is DOD and Commerce realize the law the Republicans imposed on Clinton is foolish and unrealistic so they took some short cuts. GAO never appreciates short cuts. Without knowing anything about the subject except Moore's law, I'd say the law should just enforce a lag time (1 year lag for China, 10 year lag for North Korea or whatever).

Achievement, Genetics, and Gender

Eugene Volokh has had some threads discussing the old topic of woman/man differences in scholarly achievement and their possible basis in genetics. See the last one here.
Because the discussion started when I was still doing catch-up, I'll restrict my comments to these points:

• often such threads assume that one can make points about genetic influences by pointing to American data, as if "women" and "American women" were the same. We need to look across countries, across time, and across subcultures.
  
• one possibility for a genetic influence would be an observed differential in risk-taking behavior as reported yesterday. It says: "Young men all over the world have higher death rates than women because of their riskier lifestyles, researchers said yesterday.Accidents and suicide are the leading killers in men 15 to 34 years old; deaths from heart disease, cancer and chronic liver disease rise sharply in those 35 to 44." So maybe men are more willing to go for broke career-wise by working harder and exploring more risky hypotheses? (Females are more mature?)
  
• finally, the Scientific American runs a story on chess experts which suggests that it's study and more study rather than "genius" that gets you to the grandmaster status.
  

Deja-Vu, Disaster Program Weaknesses--I

Interesting testimony from GAO on the Risk Management Agency's operation of the federal crop insurance program. Briefly put, RMA reinsures private crop insurance companies for the policies they write and losses they take on crops, mostly field crops and fruits.

GAO found a number of problems, which take me back to the late 1970's when ASCS was operating a crop disaster program through its county offices, and I was involved in its administration in DC. The deja-vu ones include:

• farmers getting indemnities in multiple years (sometimes because the coverage levels (yields) are set too high)
• farmers dividing acreages into separate insurable units. There's a rational basis--for example hail on the Great Plains may cut a swath through the wheat. If you have 10 1,000 acre fields each insured separately rather than 1 10,000 acre field insured as one you increase the chances of having a loss on one or more fields. But there's also a reason to cheat. Because wheat is wheat, as Gertrude Stein didn't say, you can shift your actual production among different fields, possibly boosting your yield history (for future years) and/or creating a indemnifiable loss on another field

Shock, Shock--Dems Play Politics

It's not a high point in the history of the Democratic Party when they take umbrage at the Iraqi Prime Minister criticizing Israel. I see Brad DeLong agrees. But since al-Maliki is also a politician he should understand. Every politician has hot button issues among his or her constitutency to which obeisance must be paid [ed.--does one pay a button?]. Hopefully none of the posturing will affect serious issues.

Why Farm Programs--Blame the Founding Fathers

There are a number of reasons for farm programs. One is the Constitutional Convention, with the bargain between the small states and large States that gave us the bicameral legislature. While we no longer are an agricultural country, as we were in 1790, farmers still retain enough influence to affect Senatorial elections in most states. The result is bipartisan support for farm programs. There's no way to build a coalition against farm programs per se. You have to make the case on budget grounds or perhaps as part of the free trade discussion.

Openness in Government--Coburn/Obama as a Cure for Problems?

Senators Coburn and Obama have sponsored a bill that would "require the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to establish and maintain a single public website that lists all entities receiving federal funds, including the name of each entity, the amount of federal funds the entity has received annually by program, and the location of the entity. All federal assistance must be posted within 30 days of such funding being awarded to an organization. " See Coburn's website
(Obama seems less active and he's not much of a blogger). This proposal has been greeted enthusiastically by the NYTimes, and Wash Post. While the Post editiorial commends the proposal in the context of their recent articles on farm programs, it fails to mention that we've had a database of farm program payments for 12 years now. Granted, it's not run by OMB but by EWG,
a private entity, but it's based on USDA data. Not to be a gloomy Gus, but during the time the database has been available, farm subsidy payments have increased, not decreased.

Disaster Aid for Livestock, Wash Post Stories

The Post continued its series on agriculture programs this past week. See the links here.

If I weren't trying to catch up from hardware problems, I'd blog a bit more, but these points strike me (albeit with minimal research):

1. Neither program was a permanent yearly program, authorized by the 2002 farm bill. Instead there was a combination of administration action using the Section 32 authority (an obscure provision dating to the '30's, that's dusted off every decade or so for a one-shot deal) and Congressional action by sticking provisions in appropriations acts. That's different than the programs they covered last week--the continuing ones.
2. Regardless of whether the policy is correct, it's harder for bureaucrats to implement one-shot programs. There are several reasons including: a one-shot program usually is late before it's started, the bureaucrats are scrambling to get it in place but have little or no experience with it, and there's little chance and no real incentive to improve and learn from mistakes. Even if the OIG and GAO look at the program, the bureaucrat will say: "yes, we messed that up. We promise, if those [expletive deleted] in Congress ever give us a similar program to try to do better.
   

I think there's a parallel with Congressional earmarks--