Explain this equilibrium, or as the errant economist Tyler Cowen likes to say, solve for the equilibrium you see in the video …
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Why is there still no slave-trade compensation fund?
Now that Black History Month is officially over, let’s get down to real business and talk about reparations for slavery. Does the Statute of Limitations apply to major injustices like slavery? Why can’t we create the equivalent of a 9/11 Victims’ Compensation Fund for the descendants of the victims of the slave trade? For example, when the British Parliament voted in 1833 to abolish slavery in Britain’s colonies, the government agreed to compensate slave owners for their economic losses … but the slaves themselves received no compensation for their suffering. Is that fair? Shouldn’t the countries that profited the most from slavery and slave trade, countries like the US, UK, and Spain, be required to pay reparations to any person who can trace their ancestry to a slave? (By the way, reparations for the injustice of slavery need not be in the form of a transfer payment. Reparations could consist of an education trust fund.)
Bill Gates (White) vs. Magnus Carlsen (Black)
Below is a play by play of their chess match of 24 January 2014 in algebraic notation:
1. e4 Nc6
2. Nf3 d5
3. Bd3 Nf6
4. exd5 Qxd5
5. Nc3 Qh5
6. 0-0 Bg4
7. h3 Ne5
8. hxg4 Nfxg4
9. Nxe5 Qh2#
(First-order hat tip to Rollin Bishop; second-order hat tip to Max Ehrenfreund.)
Puerto Rican Statehood Bill
Since 1898, Puerto Rico has been a colony of the United States. But two weeks ago (12 Feb. 2014), Senators Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) introduced Senate Bill 2020, the Puerto Rico Status Resolution Act, which would pave the way for Puerto Rico’s admission into the Union as the 51st State. (A majority of the electorate in Puerto Rico, however, would still have to vote (yet again) in favor of Statehood, or “annexation” as the Statehood option is derisively referred to by proponents of the status quo.) So, what is the probability that Puerto Rico will become “Estado 51” by the year 2020? Is it greater than 0.5?
An Academic Turing Test?
Check out the Turingesque website arXiv vs. snarXiv, which presents the titles of two science papers, side by side, but only one of the titles is “real”, i.e. is an actual title selected from a paper posted on a popular electronic science journal (arXiv). The other title, by contrast, consists of a random series of words and symbols generated by a computer (snarXiv). Can you tell, for example, which academic title below is the fake?
First-order hat tip: Richard Van Noorden. Second-order h/t: Tyler Cowen (item #3).
Another form of sports betting
Should NFL coaches or Major League Baseball managers be required to pay a fee in order to protest a bad call? They would be if football or baseball were an Olympic sport. Here is an excerpt from this fascinating report in the Sunday Times:
Unlike major professional sports like soccer, baseball or football, protests are relatively common in Olympic sports, and each sport’s governing body has strict rules about the protocol. There are time restrictions. There are guidelines on whether the protest can be oral or must be in writing. And there is, ultimately, the bill.
And don’t try to pull out a credit card at the protest table.
“It has to be cash,” said Ivor Lehotan, the vice president for information for the International Biathlon Union. He added, dryly: “It’s like a processing fee.”
Depending on the sport, the fee varies: for luge, it is 50 euros (about $67). Cross-country skiing, like snowboard and Alpine skiing, demands 100 Swiss francs (about $112) but stipulates that all protests must be submitted in English. Bobsled and skeleton are among the most expensive: they require a deposit of 100 euros before any protest will even be considered.
Notice that this system converts official protests in Olympic sports into mini-wagers, since the Times’ report goes on to explain that you get your money back if the judges rule in your favor.
Reasonableness = Random Adjudication*
* This “micro-law review article” was revised and updated on 25 Feb. 2014–
Like Richard Epstein [1], prior probability agrees that “reasonableness,” standing alone, is an open-ended and indeterminate legal standard. Yet, at the same time, this legal standard permeates many areas of the law, especially torts and contracts. The law of torts, for example, imposes on all actors a duty to act reasonably (i.e. a duty to avoid creating unreasonable risks). Contract law, too, incorporates reasonableness in many of its rules. Reasonableness, in short, is a well-worn road in the path of the law.
We recently had an epiphany, however, during our frequent travels on this well-worn road. (We teach torts, and one of our best friends teaches contracts.) Our revelation is that “reasonableness” is just a code word or euphemism for random adjudication. In summary, our argument has two steps. First, notice that reasonableness and juries go hand-in-hand in most Anglo-American legal systems. Whether a given person has acted reasonably is ordinarily a question for the jury to decide.
So, why are we equating a jury’s finding of reasonableness or non-reasonableness to a random decision method, like a coin toss or the spin of a roulette wheel? Our answer to this question takes us to the second step of our argument: Because no one can forecast the actual outcome of a coin toss until after the coin has landed, just as no one can accurately forecast a jury verdict until after the verdict has been rendered, particularly in those cases in which the issue of reasonableness is in dispute. [2] In other words, both a coin toss and the application of the reasonableness standard are purely probabilistic events. Or in the immortal words of Col. Nathan R. Jessep (played by Jack Nicholson) in A Few Good Men: “You want to investigate me? Roll the dice and take your chances …”
Therefore, when a judge instructs a jury to decide whether a given defendant was reasonable or not, or whether the State has proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, what the judge is really doing is no different than tossing a coin or using some other random mechanism for deciding this question. [3] The jury is not required to explain its decision. It’s just required to decide, and different juries will often reach different decisions based on the same or similar facts. (Note: we do not mean criticize juries. Instead, we are criticizing legal rules based on “reasonableness.”)**
[1] For a critique of the risk-utility balancing version of the reasonableness standard, see Richard Epstein, “The Risks of Risk/Utility,” Ohio State Law Journal, vol. 48 (1987), pp. 469-477.
[2] The existence of a “legal process prediction market,” however, might in fact be able to produce accurate forecasts of jury trials, but this particular idea is something we will blog about in more detail in future posts.
[3] Of course, we are only talking about a small number of events, since only a tiny fraction of all cases (civil and criminal, State and federal) go to trial. See, e.g., Marc Galanter, “The Vanishing Trial,” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, vol. 1, no. 3 (Nov. 2004), pp. 459-570.
** Why can’t most law review articles and comments be this short?
Time Out for Black History Month
According to David Becker (from the website Jazz in America), the first recording by an all-black band occurred in 1921 when Edward “Kid” Ory and his Sunshine Orchestra recorded the songs “Creole Trombone” and “Society Blues.” Kid Ory had a prolific musical career, but he is often overshadowed by other famous jazz musicians of color, such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, so we are giving Kid Ory his props here. Above is another of our favorite Kid Ory’s compositions. Enjoy!
Law School Prediction Markets?
Why don’t law professors try using “mini-prediction markets” to forecast the outcome of Supreme Court cases or the outcome of bills pending before Congress? That is, why don’t law professors let their students, colleagues, and friends bet on the future outcome of cases and legislation? This tantalizing possibility is one of the future goals of this website (*), and Microsoft, Google, and a few other companies have already experimented with internal prediction markets, but to our knowledge, this idea has not really been tried in academia. Why not? (Here are some possible answers.)
(*) We need some help, though.
Why are prediction markets illegal?
Because regulators — the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in particular, which has the legal authority to regulate commodity markets — have declared prediction markets to be “contrary to the public interest”. But if the “public interest” is the open-textured standard that applies to prediction markets like Intrade (which the CFTC effectively shut down in late 2012), then shouldn’t the courts also apply the same standard to the operations of the CFTC itself? That is, why don’t Intrade’s lawyers sue the CFTC (perhaps under a “regulatory taking” theory) and request an injunction or cease-and-desist order preventing the CFTC from acting against the public interest? My larger point is this: shouldn’t the government be required to play by the same rules as the firms they are regulating?
