Collected links

1. From director Wolfgang Herzog’s Reddit “Ask Me Anything”:

   I do traveling for very intense quests in my life. I do that on foot.

2. Paul Romer likes Jekyll (which powers this website). Oh, and he’ll be the next Chief Economist of the World Bank.

3. Robert Shiller on the “Economic Policy Uncertainty” index:

   But do contractions cause uncertainty, they ask, or does uncertainty cause contractions? Given that we know that people are highly reactive to each other, the causality most likely runs both ways, in a feedback loop.

   The deeper and more interesting question concerns what initiates this uncertainty.

4. Paul Romer (again) discusses a paper by Martin Stuermer and Gregor Schwerhoff (pdf):

   It is conditional optimism that brings out the best in us.

   A point similarly made by Peter Thiel.

5. The Economist covers (google for it if paywalled) George Borjas’ reappraisal of the Mariel boatlift.