Collected links
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Alex Tabarrok walks through a new political science paper that shows how the Chinese government sponsors social media post to “Distract Rather than Debate” (recommended):
As if this weren’t enough, an early version of KPR’s paper leaked and when the Chinese government responded, KPR became part of the story that they had meant to observe. The government’s response is now in turn used in this paper to verify some of KPR’s arguments. Very meta.
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Thomas Pepinsky writes “Life in authoritarian states is mostly boring and tolerable”:
Democracy has not survived because the alternatives are acutely horrible, and if it ends, it will not end in a bang.
(through the IPA’s excellent weekly links)
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Borjas on a “Wall of Peace”
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It’s called survivorship bias.