Week Eight Course Update

Some Things That Captured Our Attention

It Must Be the Logo: “Harvard University is one of the most difficult schools to gain admission to, with the school turning away some 97 percent of applicants every year. But once they get in, many of its students skip class and fail to do the reading, according to the Classroom Social Compact Committee, a group of seven faculty members that produced a report on Harvard’s classroom culture that has been fueling debate since it was released in January. When they do show up for class, they are focused on their devices, and are reluctant to speak out. Sometimes it is because they are afraid of sharing ideas that others will disagree with. But often, they have not read enough of the homework to make a meaningful contribution, the report continued. Rampant grade inflation allows them to coast through anyway, it concluded. That means many students graduate without having benefited from talking very much with their teachers and peers, and they stay stuck in ideological bubbles, unwilling or unable to engage with challenging ideas”

The Mother of All Externalities? Nightmare bacteria.

The Ozone Layer Marches Onward: 2024 healing edition.

A Dead Cat Thwarts the Blue Angels? 57: “Yassine’s cat to death; in response, Yassine and his family posted profanity-laden rants on the Blue Angels’ Instagram page. Whoever ran the account deleted the rants - but Yassine is a lawyer, and knew that First Amendment law says that government-affiliated bodies cannot moderate / selectively delete comments. He sued, his dramatically-written lawsuit went viral, and he takes partial credit for the Blue Angels being a little quieter this year. I’m split on this: I just really hate noise, and I’m happy to see anyone who makes it lose lawsuits. But I’m also not sure who it serves to make all government-affiliated webpages close their comment

sections because they don’t want to have to keep profanity-laced rants up and they’re not allowed to selectively moderate. My strongest opinion on this matter is that Yassine’s law firm’s site is incredible, and I would definitely hire them for all my law-firm-related needs if they weren’t so insistently requesting the opposite.”

Yup, Even the Making of Ice Cubes Was Controversial: “The New York Daily Globe reportedly saying that same year: “There is a Dr. Gorrie, a crank, down in Florida, who thinks he can make ice as good as God Almighty.”

Valuing Mangrove Forests: “The effects are substantial in magnitude, reducing the probability of losing a quarter or more of housing value by 2-7 percentage points, which corresponds to 20-40-thousand-dollar value for a million-dollar property, conditional on a hurricane.”

The Road to Sustainable Aviation Fuel? “The lowest cost policy we study entails replacing all current biofuels policies with a modest carbon tax on fossil transportation fuels paired with a SAF tax credit.”

Permission(less) Innovation? “Permitting requirements are generally written with the assumption that the government will try to get stuff built, and so are designed to prevent the government from going too fast and skimping (perceived) critical steps like environmental review or stakeholder engagement. But there’s nothing that prevents the government from deliberately slowing down the permitting process for projects it doesn’t like. Right now this is getting weaponized against wind and solar projects, but the same tactics can easily be used against oil and gas projects”

Immigration and the Black-White Earnings Gap: “Results reveal remarkable earnings advances among 2nd-generation Black immigrants, opposite to the well-documented widening in overall Black-White earnings gap. Among women, 2nd-generation Black workers have earnings higher than or equal to White women; among men, they earn 10% less at the median, but the gap vanishes at the top decile.”

The Polarization and Profit Death Loop: “Firms’ profits are higher when they cater to workers with extreme preferences. In a competitive assignment equilibrium, firms become polarized and not only reflect but also amplify the polarized preferences of the general population. More polarized sectors exhibit higher profits, lower average wages, and a reduced labor share of value added. Sustainable investing amplifies firm polarization.” Deaths from falls among older adults have more than tripled over the past three decades. “In 2023, more than 41,000 people over 65 died after a

fall. Experts say the cause isn’t just age-related frailty; “fall risk–increasing drugs” prescribed for sleep, anxiety, pain, or heart conditions also play a major role. The proposed solution is “de-prescribing”—cutting back on unnecessary medications. In some cases, the most effective treatment may simply be deleting a few lines from the prescription.”

Why are we building the World’s Largest Transport Plane? “The world’s largest airplane, when it’s built, will stretch more than a football field from tip to tail. Sixty percent longer than the biggest existing aircraft, with 12 times as much cargo space as a 747, the behemoth will look like an oil tanker that’s sprouted wings—aeronautical engineering at a preposterous scale.”

“If the project goes through, it will enshrine Europe as the biggest energy casualty of the geopolitical earthquakes that have befallen the world over the past half-decade. In essence, the Old Continent will have traded cheap natural gas delivered via pipelines for expensive liquefied natural gas (LNG) delivered via cargo ships, predominantly from the US. The spread between those two products is a significant hurdle that will prove difficult for what remains of Europe’s heavy industries to overcome.”