Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry notes that the secret behind Amazon’s success is for its founder, Jeff Bezos, to indulge his inner child. Some of his most successful efforts sound like the dreams of an 11 year old, including:

• A bookstore that can beam any book you want into your hand.
• An invisible computer that anybody can access and that is capable of imitating human intelligence.
• (Soon) A Robot Army

To read more examples about the child-like nature of Bezos most successful ideas, and how Amazon plans to become the Wal-Mart of the 21^st century click here.

Source: Business Insider

Via: Marginal Revolution

Since computers are able to beat even the top grandmasters in chess, cheaters often use ‘bathroom breaks’ to consult computers for advice about what moves they should play next. Dylan Loeb McClain reports on the efforts of one Professor to use computers to catch cheaters:

• Calculating the moves that players make which are statistical outliers is difficult due to the small sample size involved. A typical chess tournament only has around 150 moves per player.
• The algorithms also suggest that people have become much better at playing chess. The best players of the 1970s would only rank 40^th today.
• In essence the computer is trying to model human decision making which has several applications beyond chess. Amazon, for example, could use it to advertize particular products to consumers.

To read about how sophisticated the models currently are, what, exactly, is toiletgate, and other applications for the program click here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution

Does income inequality generate financial crises? It rose before the Great Depression of the 1930s and before the Recession of the 2000s. The Economist reviewed the causal mechanisms of several economic models that suggest they do. They include:

• As income inequality rises politicians feel pressured to help the middle class and do so by expanding consumer credit. This leads to unsustainable amounts of debt triggering a financial crisis.
• As the rich get richer the poor feel the need to emulate their lifestyle and so borrow money to buy the finer things in life.
• The government borrows more adding to sovereign debt, with the intention of spending that money to help the low and middle-income people.

To read other theories, as well as why income inequality might not be a problem at all, and what all of this says about the responsiveness of the government, click here.

Source: The Economist

Monkeys in New Delhi have caused havoc for local businesses and have even led to the deaths of individuals. In 2007 the courts ordered New Delhi’s government to transport all wild monkeys to a wildlife sanctuary. Stephanie Nolan reports on why the government has been unsuccessful and other details of the problem:

• The city has tried upping the price paid per monkey caught from $8 to $15 but only one person applied for the job despite extensive advertisements.
• This is partly because of the reverence attached to monkeys due to Hanuman, the monkey form of the Hindu God. But most people are just too scared of the monkeys.
• Companies have taken to hiring individuals to patrol the perimeters of their complexes and throw pebbles to keep monkeys away.
• The city reports that “the monkeys are winning.”

To read more details of the problem, where the monkeys prefer to live, and other initiatives that have been taken to solve the problem, click here.

Source: The Globe and Mail

Via: Marginal Revolution

Should we really be trying to hunt down Kony of Invisible Children fame? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that we should not because:

• The Colombian Civil War demonstrates that if you kill one ‘bad-guy’ then another will come along to take their place.
• The international community should want to not only remove the current Kony, but eliminate the possibility of any future Konys rising up.
• This requires understanding the complex history of Uganda and its politics.

To read more about why Kony exists in Uganda, what Angelina Jolie thinks about him, and the role that colonialism played click here.

Source: Why Nations Fail

Michcael Cooper reported on an initiative by San Francisco to reduce the time spent looking for a parking spot through utilization of the laws of supply and demand. Highlights include:

• San Francisco is slowly implementing variable rate parking meters – meters that raise or lower their prices based on supply and demand.
• Prices could soon reach as high as $6.00 an hour for the most sought after spots.
• The overall aim is to have at least one open spot in each parking area.
• People have raised concerns that this could segregate the poor and the rich since it might close off certain areas from the poor.
• City officials respond that the money raised goes into providing mass transit and so ultimately benefits the poor.

To read more about the Professor that started it all, the role that mobile phones have to play, and what the evidence so far suggests about the effectiveness of the policy, click here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution

The Economist’s Free Exchange blog recently discussed some of the puzzles of the contemporary American economy. They include:

• GDP is growing slower than economists expect.
• The existing rates of GDP growth should lead to around a 2.5% decrease in unemployment. Yet unemployment has actually decreased by 5.1%.
• Inflation is higher than it should be.

Free Exchanges goes onto note that one explanation that would be consistent with all of these statistics would be a permanent long-term reduction in American potential output. While the author is uncomfortable with this explanation because it suggests that Americans woke up one day to “find their left arms had fallen off” the explanation has the advantage of simplicity.

To read other explanations for the phenomena, Japan’s experience, and why the failure to deliver more monetary and fiscal stimulus might have been more tragic than we realized, click here.

Source: The Economist