Now that Larry Summers has begun to live up to his putative commitment to open, freewheeling inquiry by finally releasing a “transcript of his infamous remarks”:http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html, various people are commenting on it. “Matt Yglesias”:http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/summers_redux.html says

bq. I don’t think you can reasonably expect any given university (or corporation, or person) to singlehandedly shoulder the burden of changing a set of social expectations that’s become very well entrenched over a very long period of time. At the same time, you can’t just do nothing about it, either.

“Bitch, PhD”:http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2005/02/open-mouth-insert-dick-larry.html addresses this issue pretty well, as does “a correspondent of Mark Kleiman’s”:http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/02/larry_summers_redux.php. The main point is the first step toward addressing what Matt properly calls “a set of social expectations that’s become very well entrenched over a very long period” is — contrary to what Summers did in his remarks — to _stop_ treating it as a more-or-less simple result of the expression of individual preferences. Now, in other social-policy contexts, economists will jump all over you for not properly considering the incentives that shape people’s choices and smugly wheel out one-liners like “People respond to incentives, all else is commentary.” There’s a lot to that observation. But in contexts like gender and the labor market, the emphasis instead gets put on individual preferences as the mainspring of choice, rather than considering the social origins of the incentive structure.

“Here is an old post of mine”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000432.html, written in response to something “Jane Galt”:http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/004361.html (aka Megan McArdle) wrote. It addresses this issue a bit, with some pointers to accessible and practical discussions of it by specialists — some of the literature that Summers just baldly ignored, or was inexcusably ignorant of. As I said “back then”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000432.html,

bq. Jane’s initial question — “Should we [women] stay home, or shouldn’t we? It’s a difficult question for professional women” — effectively concedes the case as lost from the get-go. It frames the problem as wholly belonging to the prospective mother. Dad has no responsibility towards his potential offspring, is not required to make any work/family tradeoffs, and indeed has so much autonomy that a woman who chooses kids over career is “taking a huge financial bet on her husband’s fidelity.” … The institutions that structure people’s career paths may have deep roots, but that’s not because they spring naturally out of the earth. Cross-national comparison shows both that there’s considerable variation in the institutionalization of child care, and that this variation can have odd origins. … [They] aren’t immutable, either. In fact, in the U.S. they’ve changed a great deal since the early 1980s … Looking at the problem this way makes one less likely to fatalism about tragic choices, wanting to have it all, and the inevitable clash of work and family. … It also has the virtue — as C. Wright Mills put it forty years ago — of letting us “grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society,” rather than forever being stuck at the level of individual women facing insoluble work-family tradeoffs.

None of that is particularly original, by the way. It’s a well-developed perspective with plenty of empirical evidence and theoretical elaboration, and even a little bit of reading in this area would make that evident. That’s why Summers’ audience was so ticked off. In fairness to the guy, at this stage his perilous position has little to do with the remarks themselves anymore, and has become an ouster by opponents dissatisfied with his Presidency in general.

“Kevin Drum”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005684.php takes a break from politics-blogging to opine on the new series of _Survivor_. It’s shaping up to be more fun than last season, because there are new – and unpredictable – rules; Kevin suggests that the show’s designers ought to make the rules more unpredictable still.

bq. The appeal of the show is in the human interaction. How do you keep from being voted off? How do you make and break alliances? Who gets betrayed this week? That’s where they need to throw in a few curveballs. The contestants need to learn that the standard way of forming alliances and screwing competitors is subject to change.

He’s probably right – although one of the fun things about _Survivor_ is that there has usually been a high level of unpredictability, even under stable rules. Last season’s show was the very dull exception that proved the rule – the producers threw together tribes in such a way as to generate stable, gender-based cooperation for most of the game. They later made a rather desperate _post-hoc_ attempt to mix things up and weaken alliances, but it didn’t work very well. This season, they’ve deliberately generated tribes in a way that mixes up the sexes.

Anyway, I talked about some of these issues at greater length in a long post on my old blog about the applicability of sociology and game theory to _Survivor_ a couple of years ago. I reproduce it below the fold, if anyone’s interested.

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One of the nice thing about being an amateur blogger is that, as soon as I’m five feet away from the computer, none of it matters anymore. Would that all troubles were this simple.

I’m sure that I speak for everyone at Crooked Timber in extending our best wishes to Glenn Reynolds and his wife. May her recovery be speedy, and may they spend many more happy years together.

I don’t know if we have any readers who don’t also read Fafblog; if there are any out there, they should check out his “intervention”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_fafblog_archive.html#110870213550100400 in the recent “blogospheric debate”:http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/power_line_spea.html on treason.

bq. Treason isn’t just providin aid an comfort to the enemy. It’s providin not-aid an discomfort to America. Treason is hurting America’s feelings.

bq. Now you may think “oh well Fafnir America’s a big country it can take care a itself” but in fact it is very sensitive. When you say its mom’s ugly or criticize its foreign policy or kick sand on its face at the beach it is just as hurt as if you’d sold its state secrets. Like every emotional young superpower America needs love and care from its citizens. We’ve put together a brief guide to treason so you can understand it a little better.

bq. Q: Which of the following is treason?
1. Not wishing the President a happy birthday even when he is clearly wearing a party hat and a “Kiss The Birthday Boy” shirt
2. Questioning the progress, purpose, or justification of the Iraq war
3. Providing material aid to a hostile enemy of the United States
4. Telling America “Hey America yo mama’s so fat by the time she bends over it’s Daylight Savings Time.”

bq. Answer: All of them are treason but number four is the worst treason of all on account of America is real sensitive about the fatness of its mama.

I just came across some beautiful pictures [link to PowerPoint slides] of synagogues in Budapest most of which I have never seen despite it being my hometown. You will notice that they are tucked away with quite some care in several cases, which makes it easy to miss them. The photographer has many other slideshows available on his Web site.

I have also posted some photos of the main synagogue and my high school, but mostly of communist era statues gathered up in a Statue Park on the outskirts of the city.

Social scientists looking for a conference excuse to see these sights may want to consider submitting an abstract to the annual meetings of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics to be held this summer in Budapest. Abstracts are due March 1, 2005.

There’s a wonderful passage in Colm Toibin’s ‘The Master’, a fictional biography of Henry James, where the hero is on his way to see the house in Rye where he’ll spend the rest of his life. It came to mind when I sat down to list my favourite cookery books.

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My friend “Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas”:http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~pog/ has co-authored a “very interesting paper”:http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~pog/academic/IFA/ with “Hélène Rey”:http://www.princeton.edu/~hrey/ called “International Financial Adjustment.” (Here’s the “PDF version”:http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~pog/academic/IFA/ifa.pdf.) You might think that’s not a title to set the world on fire, but don’t be fooled. A more appealing — though perhaps less responsible — alternative would be something like “Dude! We can predict exchange rates!” Here’s the abstract:

bq. The paper proposes a unified framework to study the dynamics of net foreign assets and exchange rate movements. We show that deteriorations in a country’s net exports or net foreign asset position have to be matched either by future net export growth (trade adjustment channel) or by future increases in the returns of the net foreign asset portfolio (hitherto unexplored financial adjustment channel). Using a newly constructed data set on US gross foreign positions, we find that stabilizing valuation effects contribute as much as 31% of the external adjustment. Our theory also has asset pricing implications. Deviations from trend of the ratio of net exports to net foreign assets predict net foreign asset portfolio returns one quarter to two years ahead and net exports at longer horizons. The exchange rate affects the trade balance and the valuation of net foreign assets. It is forecastable in and out of sample at one quarter and beyond. A one standard deviation decrease of the ratio of net exports to net foreign assets predicts an annualized 4% depreciation of the exchange rate over the next quarter.

Now, I am not a macroeconomist so I should leave further discussion to Daniel and John. The guts of the paper are really beyond my competence to evaluate. But this is a blog, so naturally I will carry on regardless and make three points anyway.

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From the Washington Post, “Blinding Flash of the Obvious” Department:

The insurgency in Iraq continues to baffle the U.S. military and intelligence communities, and the U.S. occupation has become a potent recruiting tool for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, top U.S. national security officials told Congress yesterday.

“Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists,” CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism,” he said. “They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries.”

On a day when the top half-dozen U.S. national security and intelligence officials went to Capitol Hill to talk about the continued determination of terrorists to strike the United States, their statements underscored the unintended consequences of the war in Iraq.

“The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists,” Goss said in his first public testimony since taking over the CIA. Goss said Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist who has joined al Qaeda since the U.S. invasion, “hopes to establish a safe haven in Iraq” from which he could operate against Western nations and moderate Muslim governments.

“Our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment,” Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate panel. “Overwhelming majorities in Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia believe the U.S. has a negative policy toward the Arab world.”

How long before our doughty friends at Power Line realize that Porter Goss and Vice Admiral Jacoby are…ON THE OTHER SIDE!!!!

Some interesting news just in from Ireland. Observers of Northern Ireland politics may remember the “massive bank raid”:http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2004/1222/2122287523HM1ROBBERY.html last December, where the thieves netted UKP 26.5 million. The dogs in the street knew that the IRA were responsible, but when the UK and Irish governments, as well as the body charged with monitoring the ceasefire said as much, they were met with vociferous and indignant denials from both the “IRA itself”:http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2005/0119/109897192HM1LEAD.html, and from “Sinn Fein”:http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2005/0211/287693130HM1NORTH.html, the IRA’s political wing. Now, Irish police “have arrested”:http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0217/cork.html seven men who appear to have been in possession of large quantities of Northern Ireland banknotes; it appears that those arrested include two Sinn Fein members, one of whom is a former elected representative. As the leader of the Irish Labour party, Pat Rabbitte has noted in a statement:

bq. even at an early stage, it appeared that today’s events were particularly significant in the context of the Northern Bank robbery and subsequent denials by IRA and Sinn Féin.

At this stage, one hesitates to make any definitive pronouncements – the possibility exists that these jokers had a perfectly legitimate reason to be carting around UKP 2.3 million in Northern Ireland and British banknotes. But if it does indeed turn out that this is some of the missing cash, it puts Sinn Fein in an extremely awkward position. Everybody knows quite well that they’ve been lying through their teeth about IRA involvement in the bank raid – but there hasn’t been any smoking gun evidence that would put the lie to them. It’s clear to even a casual observer that the IRA and Sinn Fein are organically linked, and there’s very strong reason to suspect that Sinn Fein’s electoral successes in the Republic have been bankrolled in part by the proceeds of crime in the North. This has been having an extremely damaging effect on democratic politics in the Republic. It’s long past time for Sinn Fein to decide whether it’s a normal political party in a democratic system or the political wing of a particularly nasty private army that even during its supposed ceasefire has consistently demonstrated its keenness to maim and cripple innocents.

If the US government is willing, it has a very easy means of signalling how drastically Sinn Fein/IRA’s political options have narrowed. The annual St. Patrick’s Day parties at the White House have been an integral part of the peace process. When Sinn Fein leaders started getting invites as well as democratic politicians, it signalled the US government’s willingness to underwrite Sinn Fein’s role in the negotiations, and any subsequent political arrangements. The gossip around Washington has been that the entire occasion is going to be cancelled this year because the US government doesn’t want to meet and greet terrorists – but also doesn’t want to single them out for disfavor for fear of offending Sinn Fein’s friends on Capitol Hill. If the government wants to send out the right signals it should go ahead and hold the function – but invite only representatives of those political parties that are committed exclusively to democratic politics. This may sound like diplomatic niceties – but it would send a quite powerful signal, and, I suspect, have a substantial chastening effect on a group of people who are in sore need of chastening.

I’m rather proud of a piece I’ve written about a new anthology of essays, Wittgenstein Reads Weininger, for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. (A nice online journal that just does short reviews. They just underwent a redesign. Now smoothly searchable.) I think I did a pretty solid job of covering this modest quadrant of scholarly specialization – this suburb of Wittgenstein’s Vienna, if you will; while also providing some clear views of the city; and some sense of the strange bird who roosts and rules there – this fierce Austrian double-eagle, gripping Frege and Russell in one sharp beak! Schopenhauer, Kraus … and Otto Weininger in the other! Who understands how such an ornithologico-philosophical thing could be? (As Wittgenstein once paraphrased Plato to one of his over-awed followers: ‘I study not these things – e.g. logic – but myself, to learn whether I am a Typhon-like monster, or a simpler sort of creature.’) And so I managed to turn a book review into a modestly original short essay. The editor very kindly let me ramble on twice as long as I was supposed to. But it’s still quite short [UPDATE: I think the word I was reaching for was ‘long’.] The Kraus quote I stuck on at the end is one of my favorites.

Last week, a dozen of the top American law journals announced their commitment to reducing the length of law review articles. The Joint Statement concerning this policy is available “here”:http://www.harvardlawreview.org/articles_length_policy.pdf. A number of journals have already adopted policies to implement the goals behind this statement. The so-called “Virginia Experiment”:http://www.virginialawreview.org/page.php?s=membership&p=announcements#length (see the link on Short-Article Policy), which began a year ago, sets a presumptive word limit at 20,000 words and effectively caps articles at 30,000 words. “Harvard Law Review”:http://www.harvardlawreview.org/manuscript.shtml#length has recently adopted similar language, with a 25,000 word preference and a 35,000 word limit. These policies will have serious implications for what is published at Virginia and Harvard. Far less constraining, but nevertheless significant, are policies adopted by “Columbia Law Review”:http://www.columbialawreview.org/information/submissions.cfm and the “University of Pennsylvania Law Review”:http://www.pennlawreview.com/submission.php, both of which have set presumptive word caps at approx. 35,000 words. Other journals will probably adopt similar policies in the near future.

From the perspective of academics in non-legal disciplines, these words caps may seem absurdly generous. Most peer-review journals won’t accept articles over 10,000 words. And, to be clear, these limits are ceilings. Most law reviews regularly publish “essays”—really just normal length articles—that are far below these numbers.

One would think that this is all relatively uncontroversial and rather long overdue. And there has been some positive feedback from legal bloggers. “Orin Kerr”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_02_07.shtml#1108060955 quotes the Joint Statement rather approvingly, and Larry Solum gives it a characteristic “very interesting!”:http://lsolum.blogspot.com/archives/2005_02_01_lsolum_archive.html#110788056452294809

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It’s all happening in Dublin these days. In January, Michael Ignatieff gave the first annual Amnesty lecture in Trinity College – since published by The Dubliner magazine. Ignatieff tried to explain and in some sense justify American exceptionalism in matters multilateral, particularly the ‘judicial narcissism’ that prevents US judges from incorporating foreign jurisprudence and international legal norms.

Meanwhile, no less a personage than Antonin Scalia put the idea of judicial isolationism to the test only last Friday night, which he passed in the company of a horde of boisterous Dublin barristers.

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The New Statesman has “an excellent leader on the Ken Livingstone row”:http://www.newstatesman.com/nsleader.htm . Read the whole thing, but here’s a taste:

bq. The demand for ritual recantation and punishment whenever someone expresses themselves “inappropriately” (itself a prissy, nannyish sort of word) has become an inhibition on free speech. A football manager loses his job when he “insults” disabled people; an editor’s career is endangered when his magazine “insults” Liverpudlians; a commentator is thrown off the airwaves when he “insults” tsunami victims with a feeble pun. The worst sin of all (and rightly so) is anti-Semitism; but to place Mr Livingstone’s remarks in that category is another example of trivialising the genuine article.

Indeed. The second part of the Statesman leader is about Michael Howard’s disgraceful pandering to the racists with his proposed “health checks” on migrants. Unfortunately this (and the recent competitive bidding by Tories and Labour alike for the xenophobic vote) doesn’t receive nearly as much attention from the “left” blogosphere — a point “well made on John Band’s blog”:http://www.stalinism.com/shot-by-both-sides/full_post.asp?pid=788 .

Fans of the Hotelling/Downs Median Voter Model will be truly gratified by the latest two policy initiatives to be chucked in the general direction of the National Health Service. From the Conservatives (NB to non-UK readers: they are our right-wing capitalist party, which means that they are in favour of socialised medicine and abolishing university tuition fees).

” We will bring back matrons to take charge and deliver clean and infection-free wards”

And from the Labour Party (NB to non-UK readers: they are our left-wing socialist party, which means that they are in favour of privatisation of local government services and identity cards)

” Matrons will take the lead in setting standards for hospital cleanliness”

Three reasons why I find this particular piece of policy-by-Daily-Mail-editorial-page rubbish particularly disspiriting.

1. Some nurses are men; if I was one, then I think I would be pretty cross at the idea that a senior position was being created whose name came from the Latin for “mother”.
2. A “matron” in the NHS today is a ward sister with extra managerial responsibilities; ie a quite senior medical professional. If I was one, I think I would be quite cross that in the view of my political masters, my real role in life was to be a comedy battleaxe running a finger over the dusting.
3. This whole business is a response to a stream of tabloid hysteria about MRSA. MRSA is a bug which colonises the noses and skin of lots of human beings, and becomes a problem when transferred to burns or wounds patients through poor quarantine or lack of handwashing. It’s a problem completely unrelated to “dirty wards”, as anyone who ends up spending an hour or two reading the free leaflets in hospital waiting rooms can confirm. If you put every hospital in the UK into a big pot and boiled them, there would still be an MRSA problem as colonies of it are endemic in the population and it is spread by people, not wards. Apparently, the manifesto-writers for our two leading political parties either don’t know this, or do know it and have decided that what the Mail thinks (plus the opportunity to pander to the turn-back-the-clock tendency in British public life) is more important than the facts.

Like I say, democracy isn’t working.