prior probability

Toyko update 3/25: I forgot to mention my two favorite papers from this year’s International Adam Smith Society (IASS) meeting at Waseda University in Tokyo earlier this month. One was “Adam Smith’s theory of music” by Tetsuo Taka (Kyushu University); the other was “Smith’s skepticism about the imitative nature of instrumental music: the unconscious recognition of absolute music” by Eiko Yamamoto (Seikei University), who also performed a number of 18th-century musical compositions on the piano at the banquet on the final night of the Adam Smith Tokyo conference. Alas, neither paper is posted online yet, but I will link to them as soon as they become available.

My daughter Adys and I overheard this beautiful ballad the other day while walking along Takeshita street, a crowded and narrow alley in the colorful Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo.

That is the tantalizing title of Brian Frye’s latest work-in-progress. Among other things, my colleague and friend tells the story of Warhol v. Goldsmith — a case I have blogged about before; see here — and how this case might transform (pun intended) the fair use doctrine. Also, check out Professor Frye’s full SSRN webpage. All 112 (at last count) of his scholarly papers are licensed “CC0/public domain”, so his readers are free to use them in any way we want!

Vernal Equinox Day is a national holiday in Japan! More details here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yu-Mex

File under: “transculturation“?

Ronald Coase was an English economist who explained why harms are reciprocal in his oft-cited paper on “The Problem of Social Cost“, which forever changed my view of law, economics, and even morality. (Hat tip to my torts professor Guido Calabresi for introducing me to Coase’s work.) What is Coase’s theory of reciprocal harms and why is it important, you might ask? Read my 2023 Mercer Law Review paper “Coase’s Parable” to find out! (Hat tip for today’s tweet: the Amazing Tyler Cowen.)

Based on the some of the helpful feedback I received at last week’s Adam Smith Tokyo conference, I added a new section to my latest Adam Smith paper, which I am co-authoring with Salim Rashid, and made a few other substantive revisions as well; the latest version of “Die Adam Smith Probleme” is available here, via SSRN.

💚 🇮🇪 🍀 Happy Saint Patrick’s Day from Japan! For this week’s ‘Sunday song’ feature, I shazamed the remix version of this song somewhere in Kyoto the other night …

This remarkable palace was the residence and work area of the last shōgun Tokugawa Yoshinobu. More details about the Tokugawa family clan and their role in Japanese history are available here.