Radio and the Rise of Nazis in Pre-War Germany

How far can media undermine democratic institutions and how persuasive can it be in assuring public support for dictator policies? We study this question in the context of Germany between 1929 and 1939. Using quasi-random geographical variation in radio availability, we show that radio had a significant negative effect on the Nazi vote share between 1930 and 1933, when political news had an anti-Nazi slant. This negative effect was fully undone in just one month after Nazis got control over the radio in 1933 and initiated heavy radio propaganda. Radio also helped the Nazis to enroll new party members and encouraged denunciations of Jews and other open expressions of anti-Semitism after Nazis fully consolidated power. Nazi radio propaganda was most effective when combined with other propaganda tools, such as Hitler’s speeches, and when the message was more aligned with listeners’ prior as measured by historical anti-Semitism.

That is from a new and very cool paper by Adena et al (March 2013). Don't miss the graphs at the end.

The limits of markets?

. . . "markets don't only allocate goods, they also express and promote certain attitudes toward the goods being exchanged." "When we decide," he goes on, "that certain goods may be bought and sold, we decide, at least implicitly, that it is appropriate to treat them as commodities." Which is why citizens can't purchase their way out of jury duty or offer their votes for sale. Or why Catholics can't buy the Eucharist. In many instances, allowing markets to "work" would destroy the "value" of the goods they touch.

That is from Last's review of Sandel's new book What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets in the WSJ. HT: @MarkThoma.

Read a good post on the book by Mostly Economics. 

Tyler Cowen asks how many times this book has been written by now. Many, of course. Broadly speaking, this is another time. 

Book review of the day

The power of habit. by Charles Duhigg.

From Leigh Buchanan, Inc. magazine:

The big idea: Habits can be our making or our undoing. Either way, they are powerful. Canny marketers use cues to activate consumer spending habits, and wise leaders create strong institutional habits. 

Your business on autopilot: Duhigg reminds us that business processes and routines are nothing more than habits practiced on an organization-wide scale. If you can get your kids to brush their teeth every night, you can get your employees to provide great customer service. 

If you read nothing else: Chapter Four recounts Paul O'Neill's turnaround of aluminum company Alcoa. Duhigg uses the example to illustrate how improving a single habit—practicing safety, in Alcoa's case—ripples out to improve an entire organization. If all companies followed Starbucks's lead and trained employees in self-discipline, as described in Chapter Five, customer service and productivity would soar.

Read an extract of the book: "How companies learn your secrets." 
HT: Victor Tejada.  

The Secrets of the African Boom

This a great article by Edward Miguel, where he reviews the book Emerging Africa: How 17 Countries are Leading the Way by Steven Radelet.  

Steven Radelet's accessible and insightful new book, Emerging Africa, joins a growing chorus of voices explaining how and why Africa has turned the corner. 

. . .  

In Radelet's view, five main factors have conspired to turn Africa around. Expanding democratization has opened up governments, bolstering popular accountability. Improved economic policies have curbed the worst tax and regulatory policies that had plagued African households and investors. Debt reduction has freed up resources for education and health care. New technologies (most notably the ubiquitous cell phone) have boosted Africans' access to markets. And the rise of a new generation of energetic leaders, the so-called cheetah generation (in the evocative terminology of the Ghanaian scholar George Ayittey), has brought new ideas and attitudes to the fore. 

. . .   

Radelet also looks beyond government decisions, describing how individual Africans have accelerated these transformations, often at great personal risk. He profiles such visionaries as John Githongo, Kenya's fearless anticorruption crusader, and Patrick Awuah, a Swarthmore College graduate who left a lucrative career at Microsoft to return to his native Ghana, where he founded Ashesi University, a liberal arts college that aspires to educate a new generation of ethical and entrepreneurial African leaders. There is finally enough oxygen in these increasingly free countries for talented Africans to reimagine and rebuild their societies. 

What is the key . . . 

Although all five of the factors Radelet describes have plausibly played a role in Africa's nascent transformation, the essential question, of course, is, which one has contributed the most? Radelet's answer is democratization. The relationship between democracy and economic growth in Africa, he writes, "is crystal clear: democratic governments . . . have been successful, while authoritarian governments have by and large been failures." He goes on to note that 13 of the 17 countries he singles out as emerging success stories have made the transition to more or less full-fledged democracies since the 1990s, whereas the pace of democratic reform has been far slower in both oil-producing countries and economic "laggards." 

Some handicaps of the book:

But in identifying democratization as the leading cause of Africa's recent economic turnaround, especially in the countries he labels as emerging, Radelet simply pushes the question of causality back another step. Left unanswered is why some African countries, such as Ghana, developed successful democracies in the 1990s, whereas others, such as Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana's neighbor, tried and failed. And why did democracy take root only then, whereas earlier democratic experiments in the 1960s (in Ghana, Kenya, and Sierra Leone, to name a few) collapsed within an election cycle or two? Radelet highlights the role that the end of the Cold War played in creating more breathing room for real political competition in the 1990s. No longer did intervening superpowers distort the political process either directly, as the United States did when it backed the assassination of Congo's first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, or indirectly, through arms sales and diplomatic pressure. But that is only part of the story. After all, democracy was reestablished in much of Latin America in the 1980s, when the Cold War was in full swing.  

Other reasons for current growth:

Radelet convincingly describes another way in which education promotes economic progress, beyond its impact through politics. He notes that there are simply many more skilled economists and policy experts in Africa today than there were in the 1970s and 1980s, as the more educated, younger cheetah generation takes center stage. This sharp improvement in technical capacity is reflected in the academic credentials of many recent African central bankers. Benno Ndulu, the current governor of the Bank of Tanzania, has a Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University, is an internationally respected researcher, and has held high-level posts at the World Bank. Officials like him are willing to engage in more rigorous, independent, and creative policymaking than their predecessors; Tanzania's macroeconomic management during the recent global economic crisis was particularly sound.

The future of Africa looks bright indeed. Miguel does a pretty good job in this review, and it seems that the book correctly explains the "secrets" of the African boom. The current increases in productivity in Africa definitely respond to the factors mentioned in this review [I saw this paper that claims that the recent productivity comes substantially from the informal sector]. 

There is one thing however that is not mentioned: an ideological or cultural change from the values of a "traditional" society towards a market mind-set. In this regard Polanyi's book The Great Transformation is key to understand these cultural transformations in Africa. Africa is going to its own "great transformation."  

I thank Joseph Cole for the pointer. 

A Weird book review of the night

As with many of Godin's books, he takes one of his core messages that you find in his various writings (such as blogs and articles) and expands on it. In Weird, he shows how the Internet has allowed everyone to publish content of interest to them. This in turn allows others with the same interest to find each other and create their own mini-tribes surrounding that shared interest. Add to that his definition of rich (you have time, enough money to meet your needs, and confidence), and you have many more people who have choice, the ability to go beyond survival and follow their own interests. These interests are increasingly diverging from the masses, making people who were once considered "weird" become part of a new normalcy with others of the same bent. The ability to reach and satisfy these "weird" groups is where success lies.

That is from a book review of Seth Godin's new book. HT: @jnovogratz

An ethnographic perspective of Wall-Street

Karen Ho, a faculty member in anthropology at the University of Minnesota, presents a comprehensive portrait of the participants in investment banking on Wall Street during the 1980s and continuing through the 1990s and well past 2000. In exploring how these financial operators thought of themselves, Ho casts a wide net. By Wall Street, she means “investment banks, pension and mutual funds, stock exchanges, hedge funds and private equity funds” (p. 4). Moreover, she shows how Wall Streeters’ imposition of their favorable self-image on businesses around the globe, under the guise of increasing shareholder value, harmed both individual companies and the global economy. Specific actions of investment bankers, rather than “natural” market developments, she persuasively argues, caused the financial crises.

In the first two chapters, she analyzes the biographies of Wall Street workers, documenting their backgrounds and revealing how they understood their positions. The picture of Wall Streeters that emerges is one of smart men and women, who worked hard for long hours. (Most came from Ivy League schools—40 percent of Princeton’s 2005 and 2006 graduating classes entered financial services!) Well compensated, they accepted job insecurity as the norm, accepting job losses and job-hopping as a matter of course, in good times as well as bad. In making her nuanced argument, Ho carefully differentiates among those in the front office who made the deals and were richly rewarded, those in middle-office positions who directly supported deal-making and generally did well financially, and those in the back office who worked mainly on clerical tasks and were viewed as expendable. These chapters, with their detailed look at how investment banking houses operated, are the most valuable part of Ho’s account. Keep reading . . . 

From a book review of An Ethnography of Wall-Street by Karan Ho published in the "Business History Review." 

Great Man: Alexander von Humboldt

Book Review of: Nature’s Interpreter: The Life and Times of Alexander von Humboldt by Donald McCrory
Lutterworth, 242 pp, £23.00, November 2010, ISBN 978 0 7188 9231 9. From the LRB (registration might be required). 

Alexander von Humboldt was once called the last man who knew everything, the last generalist before an age of specialisation definitively set in. His work ranged across geography, geology, mineralogy, botany, zoology, climatology, chemistry, astronomy, demography, ethnography and political economy. When he died in 1859, at the age of 89, he enjoyed cult status as a scientific hero and genius.

In the course of his journey he scaled volcanoes and descended into mines; he witnessed a meteor shower, collected rocks and handled electric eels; he made close studies of the flora and fauna (including the human fauna); he examined everything from the properties of guano to the prospects for sugar plantations. And wherever he went he measured – heights, angles, distances, temperatures.

There was one more great journey, an eight-month expedition to the Urals and Siberia in 1829, approved and funded by the tsarist government, keen to acquire evidence about mineral deposits. This was nothing new for Humboldt, whose South American journey had provided the Spanish crown with information on mines and other resources.

Humboldt and Darwin had in common that their major works stemmed from journeys across the Atlantic, just as they both remained gentleman scholars who never taught at a university. 

McCrory provides a basic but unreliable narrative. He likes his subject, but does no kind of justice to the complex character he is dealing with. Humboldt was generous, selfless and loyal; he was also vain, opportunistic and touchy.

Book review of: "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"

From the WSJ:

The efficaciousness of the D&R approach is evident throughout "The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices." As Mr. Moss notes with evident pride, Media Lab's innovations have produced the Amazon Kindle electronic book, LEGO Mindstorms robotic toys, RockHero music videogames and child-safe automobile airbags. The list's eclectic nature reflects a theme in the book. The lab's Smart Cities group, for example, in which the ultra-compact CityCar electric automobile has been developed, consists of a team whose members have backgrounds in "architecture, urban planning, mechanical engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, systems engineering, medicine, neuroscience, visual arts, business management, science, and sociology." According to Mr. Moss, in one of his "further reflections" that concludes each chapter, "one of the most important disciplines in the twenty-first century will be no discipline at all." That thought certainly invites even further reflection.

The Battle for Egypt: Book Review

From MYRB:

In a series of riveting dispatches, Cairo native Yasmine El Rashidi provides an eyewitness account of the entire 2011 Egyptian Revolution as it unfolded, from its origins in the days leading up to the first January 25 protest in Tahrir Square through the violent confrontations with the regime and the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, to the subsequent military takeover and the March 2011 constitutional referendum. Drawing on her deep knowledge of the Egyptian capital and its underlying social divisions, El Rashidi brings together a vivid story of the uprising itself with subtle insights about the strengths—and limits—of the protest movement and the prospects for large-scale political change in the September 2011 parliamentary elections. With a preface by the Oxford scholar of revolutions Timothy Garton Ash. 

Book Review of the morning: "Scholarship Reconsidered"

Boyer asks the following question: How can the faculty reward system be modified to best meet the challenges of 1) a diverse student body which desires excellence in teaching, 2) a faculty which is not satisfied with the criteria by which it is being assessed, 3) a system of higher learning whose confusion over goals diminishes the sense of community on its campuses, and 4) a changing world with its social, ethical, and environmental issues. He proposes abandoning the old paradigm of research versus teaching for the following new paradigm: faculty should be engaged in the scholarship of discovery, integration, application, and teaching. By embracing these four general views of scholarship, Boyer is challenging us to enlarge our perspective of the priorities of the professoriate.

The scholarship of discovery, says Boyer, "contributes not only to the stock of human knowledge but also to the intellectual climate of a college or university." This tenet of scholarship is very close to what we would otherwise call "research." The scholarship of integration involves conducting research on the boundaries of various converging fields, placing research (your own or others) in its appropriate interdisciplinary context, and interpreting research (your own or others) into "the larger intellectual patterns." Discovery and integration represent the "investigative and synthesizing traditions of academic life." The scholarship of application, which is closely related to what we would call "service", must be closely related to one's own field of expertise and relates acquired knowledge to the larger community. Boyer contends that application need not always follow discovery- the act of application can and should initiate new discovery. Last, but not least, is the scholarship of teaching. Scholarly teaching, says Boyer, "both educates and entices future scholars." The faculty member engaged in this scholarly enterprise must be thoroughly knowledgeable in his given field. Boyer asserts that "teaching, at its best, means not only transmitting knowledge, but transforming and extending it as well." He claims that these four categories of scholarship are inseparable and rest upon the "recognition that knowledge is acquired through research, synthesis, practice, and teaching." Boyer concludes: "We need scholars who not only skillfully explore the frontiers of knowledge, but also integrate ideas, connect thought to action, and inspire students."Source

If there were a Laffer Curve of traditional academic research vs. student performance, I would say the argument of this book makes sense. Probably The US, in general, should reduce the traditional way of doing research (a focus on peer reviewed publications) and increase alternative approaches - although there must be exceptions. In developing countries, however, we are not in that side of the "Laffer curve" yet (in many countries it is almost zero), and much more of the traditional way of doing academic research  is urgently needed. 

Book review of the day: "Alone Together"

From he NYT -- this is a pretty good review:

In Turkle’s latest book, “Alone Together,” this optimism is long gone. If the Internet of 1995 was a postmodern playhouse, allowing individuals to engage in unbridled expression, Turkle describes it today as a corporate trap, a ball and chain that keeps us tethered to the tiny screens of our cellphones, tapping out trite messages to stay in touch. She summarizes her new view of things with typical eloquence: “We expect more from technology and less from each other.”

I certainly don’t expect Turkle to have all the answers, but her ethnographic portraits would have benefited from a more probing investigation of such questions. The teenagers she quotes complain about everything — phones, texting, e-mail, Skype. And yet, virtually none of them seem willing to turn off the digital spigot.

A 2007 study at Michigan State University involving 800 undergraduates, for instance, found that Facebook users had more social capital than abstainers, and that the site increased measures of “psychological well-being,” especially in those suffering from low self-esteem.

One recurring theme to emerge from much of this research is that most people, at least so far, are primarily using the online world to enhance their offline relationships, not supplant them.

In the end, it’s just another tool, an accessory that allows us to do what we’ve always done: interact with one other. The form of these interactions is always changing. But the conversation remains.

Inspiration and struggle in the book review of the day

From the WP:

But the bulk of this extraordinary book vividly recounts a lost childhood, a Dickensian adolescence and a chaotic struggle in adulthood to establish an identity that doesn't depend on alcohol, drugs or the machinations of PR.

Book review of the day: "The Great Brain Race"

The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities are Reshaping the World.

Ben Wildavsky, the author of "The Great Brain Race," has been to Education City. In fact, while researching this comprehensive and fascinating book, he seems to have been everywhere. Formerly in charge of college ratings for U.S. News & World Report and now a fellow at Brookings and at the Kauffman Foundation, Mr. Wildavsky has toured the horizon and conducted dozens of interviews along the way. He reports on American universities, notably NYU, branching out internationally; on foreign governments, like China's, spending vast sums to improve their own institutions, partly to attract scholars and students from abroad; on for-profit businesses, like Laureate and the Washington Post Co.'s Kaplan Inc., planting campuses in remote global locations; and, perhaps in too much detail, on the attempt to rank international universities. (According to Times Higher Education, a London-based magazine, Harvard is No. 1; Peking University, No. 52.). Source: WSJ.

Book review of the day

Initial Beliefs + Recent Objective Data = A New and Improved Belief. Here

Book review of the day: Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International

Kenneth Anderson writes:

This anthropological approach to AI works in large part because, as Hopgood notes, AI is a kind of secular religion with a distinctive culture all its own. It has a body of quasireligious beliefs, a mission and a mandate that would seem largely familiar, in attitude at least, to the long line of British moral and religious reformers of the previous two centuries.

AI has struggled with the fundamental question of how far should a supposedly universal, mandatory, essentially Kantian categorical agenda, extend in a world characterized by tradeoffs, resource constraints, plural and conflicting values, and different conceptions of the good. 

Hopgood shows the ways in which AI has largely given up trying to keep the idea of a body of universal human rights – applicable in all circumstances categorically – separate from distributive prescriptions for society.

Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach

This is the book [review] of the book with the fresher insight I found today:

In Creating Capabilities, Martha Nussbaum argues that our dominant theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic human needs for dignity and self-respect. For the past twenty-five years, Nussbaum has been working on an alternate model to assess human development: the Capabilities Approach. She and her colleagues begin with the simplest of questions: What is each person actually able to do and to be? What real opportunities are available to them?

I wonder how can individuals, who do not have their basic need covered, can build dignity and self respect?

The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World

From a book review of Spence's latest book

Spence argues that poor countries grow through two primary mechanisms. First, they acquire knowledge from rich countries. Second, they specialize in producing goods that are demanded by other countries, so that they can sidestep limited domestic purchasing power and the divergence between what locals demand and what the country is good at producing. Put simply, success requires that countries educate their populations and integrate into the global economy.

The role of innovation seems limited . . . but in Economies like Brazil it seems to be the key . . .

[Update]: I apologize because I did not include the link to the book review. It is there now.

Micro book review of the day: "Moving Out of Poverty: Success from the Bottom Up"

The most valuable contribution of this book is its novel approach, instead of studying poor people themselves, it studies people who have escaped from poverty. Very important conclusions to take home:

[N]GOs were mentioned as a cause of moving out of poverty by only .03 percent of our respondents . . .

[o]verwhelmingly, poor people in their narratives do not see themselves as trapped. Again and again our respondents told stories of overcoming obstacles by using their freedom to seize opportunities.

While there is no question that people have needs, reducing people to their needs undermines their ability to help themselves. People have needs but they also have drams, ambitions, plans, skills, ideas, and preferences -- and people experiencing problems are no exception.

Despite their experiences, poor people still believe in markets and governments that are equitable and just.

From the book Moving out of Poverty: Success from the Bottom Up (2009).
See a book review, Here.