It's $20 per month.  Here are the features I value and use: Others' custom GPTs My own custom GPTs Integration into email (Thunderbird) and word processing (MS Word for Mac OS) In many cases, a custom GPT is nothing more than somebody uploading their documents that become the primary information source.  The creator can also train the custom GPT by giving it queries and then pointing out mistakes or room for improvement.  In some cases, the creator may also work with OpenAI to provide additional capabilities like Wolfram has done.  Regardless, the OpenAI subscriptio ..read more

"Personal Increasing Returns" is a way to describe goods for which consumers can purchase access to a lower price.  An important instance is human capital, where consumers reduce the leisure-opportunity cost of consumption by investing in skills.  Another is consumer financial management, which Sala-i-Martin and I studied in this JPE paper about purchasing access to cheaper future consumption.  The demand for illegal drugs can also be understood in this way.   It's one model with various variable labels.  A marginal cost curve sloping the "wrong" way un ..read more

Between 1 and 2pm local time, young school children were stabbed in Parnell square by a single assailant.  We were less than a mile away at John Mulligan's pub at the time; learned about the stabbing on the news during the afternoon. Not yet aware of events, we went by Parnell Square about 90 minutes later.  A few dozen men aged 20-40 were cursing at the police (gardai).  Presumably they were locals given that several were yelling in Gaelic. About 3 blocks south of Parnell Square is the OConnell bridge, the one nearest Trinity College, where at 8pm two buses and ..read more

“Capitalism is the road to hell, to the destruction of the world.  …it’s the freedom to oppress, to invade, to kill, to annihilate, and to exploit.”  Hugo Chavez, 2009. “Help me become President and I’ll help you get the land back.”  Hugo Chavez, 1998.   The quotes summarize lessons increasingly being taught in U.S. grade schools, high schools, and colleges.  Particularly referenced in “social justice” lessons are indigenous peoples, whose representatives also backed Chavez.  The lessons should be considered with robust reasoning, and compared to data. My purpos ..read more

  The violence seemed like it would never end; bombings, shootings, and kidnappings became so commonplace that they were almost expected, a grim part of the daily news cycle. Even simple tasks, like going to the shop or sending the kids to school, were fraught with uncertainty. The politicians seemed unable or unwilling to bring about meaningful change, trapped in their own ideologies and the weight of history, if not poorly incentivized.   This was Northern Ireland during the four decades of the Troubles, itself preceded by 300 years of conflict between Ireland and Britain.  ..read more

Spot is the dog featured in an eponymous short story by Jack London.  Spot’s owners desperately want to be rid of the dog.  They tried shooting him.  There is an attempt to kill Spot with an axe.  They tie up Spot and leave town.  Spot is set lose on a river ice floe.  Spot always finds his way back. On several occasions, governments (and others) have tried to eliminate private property.  Yet, it finds its way back.  After the Russian Revolution, most of the urban housing stock was nationalized.  The government used its authority over those prop ..read more

In March 2023, I visited Ma'agan Michael Kibbutz and had a meeting with a former Israeli government official charged with managing the government bailout of about 200 kibbutzim.  Both offered empirical lessons about the challenges of communal living.   Background and Description Ma'agan Michael was one of the few kibbutzim not bailed out.  It is one of the wealthier and more populous kibbutzim, with approximately 2000 residents.   In an earlier era, this kibbutz and the others followed a more egalitarian model.  For example, children were once raised communally in dor ..read more

Marshall discusses his Laws of Derived Demand in his Principles of Economics.  Specifically, in Chapter VI of Book V. Marshall listed four “conditions” that result in wage-inelastic derived demand for the corresponding factor of production: “no good substitute being available at moderate price” “stiff and inelastic” final demand “small part of the expenses of production” (i.e., small factor-cost share) Inelastic supply of other factors Putting aside the fourth law, we can discuss the first three in the context of the Allen-Hicks formula for the own-price elasticity of derived ..read more

Mr. John P. Coale was one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers that initiated the first tobacco settlement agreements, which included a historic and ingenious scheme for individual states to levy the economic equivalent of national (sic) excise taxes. The scheme has been a topic in my excise-tax lectures for as long as I have been teaching them. Let’s not forget that Mr. Coale entered the fray when tobacco companies were thought to be invincible in the litigation arena. I met Mr. Coale in Atlanta this year (2022), at an awkward meeting of Republicans – awkward because he is a trial lawyer, which is a ..read more

We now have lots of measures of diversity in the academy, by which I mean heterogeneity in race, gender, geography, political attitudes, etc.  At this weekend's Stanford Conference on Academic Freedom, much discussion focused on the chasm between the political composition of the academy and the general population.  A debate ensued as to whether/how this is related to academic freedom and whether/how public policy should advance affirmative action for "deplorables" (we deplorables use that term affectionately). Such regulation is likely dangerous and imprudent, in part because the inc ..read more