Costly Property Rights?

Interesting economic history paper on the Philippines by Lakshmi Iyer of Harvard Business School.

It talks about how the US introduced property rights into the philippines tried to introduce a Public lands policy to encourage ownership. There reforms turned out to be expensive when completely subsidized, and too expensive for tenants to purchase these rights, so take-up was small. Its seems the lesson is that land reform works when the land is bought from the original owners on the cheap, and redistributed with as much subsidy as can be afforded, and that rights be protected even at the cost of being politically unpopular.

Seems to be ‘nigh impossible under a democratic government of a poor LDC.

Moreover, the paper had some preliminary evidence that land reform and agrarian productivity aren’t too tightly tied. Maybe another model for agricultural modernization is needed?

It’s Just Like Telling a Joke

From the O*Net database, i learned something today — oral skills presentation is the most important attribute in an economist is oral communication. We joked about this in seminar today, but in a sense its true. Once you’ve written a paper, you must explain it to people. 

This reminds me of a joke told by Conan O’Brien when he was on Leno’s show. Conan shares something he learned from Stan Laurel (Laurel and Hardy) about telling a joke: ”Always do this. Tell the audience what you’re going to do. Do it. And then tell them it has been done.”

Tell them what you are going to do! How is the paper related to other papers? Lots of people ask this question. You want to reassure people that your work is part of the larger story of scientific advance. This is also a practical thing as well: when you want to come up with new work, you look at whats been done and think of ways to extend them.

 Do it! What is the motivation? Really good papers are of the small model kind — present stylized facts and construct a model as a way to interpret the data, and then test your interpretation. Its good to have some kind of empirical regularity at the heart of your paper. There are exceptions, such as pure theory or pure empirical/econometric work.

Tell the its been done! What is the intuitive interpretation of your model? Relate your model to the motivation you were talking about earlier, and to the results of the papers that inspired you that you copied from.

Criminal Copyright?

Great article on copyright and fairuse. But, this paragraphed called out to me:

This war must end. It is time we recognize that we can’t kill this creativity. We can only criminalize it. We can’t stop our kids from using these tools to create, or make them passive. We can only drive it underground, or make them “pirates.” And the question we as a society must focus on is whether this is any good. Our kids live in an age of prohibition, where more and more of what seems to them to be ordinary behavior is against the law. They recognize it as against the law. They see themselves as “criminals.” They begin to get used to the idea.

That recognition is corrosive. It is corrupting of the very idea of the rule of law. And when we reckon the cost of this corruption, any losses of the content industry pale in comparison.

I agree. Its not the big things, but the small things, where the temptation to ‘rationalize’ rule breaking might happen in a culture of excessive criminalization of copyright violations

Harry and Paul — its not funny

The problem isn’t that it insults filipina women — its not funny.

You can read their defense here. There relevant portions:

The production company behind a BBC comedy sketch that provoked outrage in the Philippines for being racist said Tuesday that the show was “absurd” and should not be taken seriously.

Yup, thats a pretty good defense. Its the same defense that a show like southpark would use.  Insult comedy only works if its true (that some filipina women end up being abused). But its funny only if you are insulting the powerful and the established (politicians, the church, gays, etc), or if its inconsequential (Family Guy’s stewie and brian, make fun of how Wallet and Vallet are spelled the same but pronounced differently), or if its in some level false (this is the Dave Barry definition). 

But there is a problem — filipinas do end up being abused in foreign countries. Hence, it fails all three tests…  1) the person insulted is not powerful, 2) its not inconsequential, 3) its true both literally and figuratively. 

An example of how a good show respects these ideas, see SNL’s latest move.

Dilbert creator also has a few guidelines on how one can write funny.

I’m disappointed in the show. British humor is supposed to be pretty good. This show isnt’. Its crap.

What’s my motivation in this scene?

Rant: I will have a hard time presenting my work. I’ve written 7 iterations of my prospects, and my problem is that i can’t get excited about my topic. Seminars force you to consider what kind of contribution you are making to the field. I want a topic whose motivation goes beyond theory, and actually has the potential of being relevant. Thats the next paper….

Women and Migration

A post from PCIJ on women and migration policies that to me was heavy on women, then policies, but not the two together. Hoisted from the comments:

i read your article hoping to find examples of gender neutral policies that lead to relatively more abuse of women’s human rights.

I didnt find any. It seems that the problems stated above are problems that all share (stereotyping, de-skilling, etc.). Moreover, no policy was tagged as the culprit.

Also, the ILO statistics on relative underemployment of women is interesting. But which country is the ILO referring to? Or is this a world average? Furthermore, you didnt explain how gender neutral policies lead to this state of affairs.

The only example i can read is the ban on migration as a safeguard for trafficking. You give the impression that the ban responsible for the abuse in the black market. I am sympathetic to this argument, but how do we know that the alternative — no ban — is better? again, many arguments can be brought to bear to make the case, but i don’t see it in this blog entry.

Idea’s i’m just giving away #1

A scratchpad for story ideas for movies and such.

 

An woman splits up with her philandering OFW husband. She adjusts to life alone as her kids have also left home, and faces new challenges, living on her own, and the promise of new love.