Tyler Cowen has a post at Marginal Revolution entitled, “The Effect of European Monarchs on State Performance.” That’s the title of an abstract that makes up the body of the post:
We create a novel reign-level data set for European monarchs, covering all major European states between the 10th and 18th centuries. We first document a strong positive relationship between rulers’ cognitive ability and state performance. To address endogeneity issues, we exploit the facts that (i) rulers were appointed according to hereditary succession, independent of their ability, and (ii) the widespread inbreeding among the ruling dynasties of Europe led over centuries to quasirandom variation in ruler ability. We code the degree of blood relationship between the parents of rulers, which also reflects “hidden” layers of inbreeding from previous generations. The coefficient of inbreeding is a strong predictor of ruler ability, and the corresponding instrumental variable results imply that ruler ability had a sizeable effect on the performance of states and their borders. This supports the view that “leaders made history,” shaping the European map until its consolidation into nation states. We also show that rulers mattered only where their power was largely unconstrained. In reigns where parliaments checked the power of monarchs, ruler ability no longer affected their state’s performance.
By Sebastian Ottinger and Nico Voigtländer, from Econometrica. Here are less gated versions. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
My comment:
For the sake of argument, I am willing to assume that the paper is methodologically sound. Perfect? No. No paper is. And perhaps there are deep flaws, deep enough that the main result will weaken (considerably) upon replication (attempts). But for now, we got what we got. And what we've got is the idea that "leaders made history."
What does that tell us about very different states, states with different arrangements for choosing leaders? For example, China, or the good old USofA. Of course, it's the latter case that I find most pressing. Just what kind of a leader will Trump prove to be? We don't know. And there is the Musk factor. Can't tell how that will work out either.
I didn't vote for Trump, but wasn't at all happy about voting for Kamela. Musk? He's a very mixed bag. I will say this: I think getting rid of the penny is a good idea.
Research grants for universities? Tricky. We've got the best research system in the world. But it's filled with waste of one kind or another. Emergent Ventures addressed one aspect of that in a small way. Indirect costs? What are indirect cost rates at R1s? 50% to 70%, somewhere in there. That looks like a rip-off and needs to be addressed. But cutting off all grants? If that kind of "shock and awe" is really the only way to approach the issue, then we've really got problems, deep institutional problems.
And so on and so forth through a whole list of things.
More on trump
As I said. I didn't vote for him. I really dislike him, I think he's vain, self-centered, cruel, and short sighted. But, unlike many who dislike him, I don't think he's stupid.
Those folks keep saying that, if he'd taken the money he'd inherited from his father and invested it in index funds, that he'd now have more money than he in fact has. For the sake of argument, I'll take that at face value. So he's not a good businessman. He's something else.
Just what he is, isn't clear. But whatever it is, it put him in the Whitehouse made him the legitimately elected leader of a country where many people, perhaps a majority, don't like him. That takes talent. Political talent.
More on Musk
This is from a conversation I had with Claude 3.5 (my words in bold):
I see him as parallel to Walt Disney. Disney originally worked as a commercial artist and he did the animation on some early cartoons. But by the time he’d hired Ub Iwerks he left the drawing board and never did animation again. But he managed all the animation very closely, at least through the first five feature films at the middle of the century. Everything had to meet his approval. He examined story boards and early-stage animation and so forth. So, while he didn’t actually do the animation, he did play a very active role in creating the cartoons. He knew how to work with creatives and the cartoons certainly reflected his aesthetic vision. Is that how it is with Musk and the technical work in his companies?
That's an excellent parallel. Like Disney with animation, Musk maintains strong creative and technical oversight while relying on specialists for the detailed work. At both Tesla and SpaceX, Musk is known for being heavily involved in major design decisions and technical reviews.
Former SpaceX employees have described how Musk would participate in detailed engineering reviews, asking probing questions and sometimes challenging the engineers' assumptions. He's known for pushing teams to rethink traditional approaches - like SpaceX's decision to use stainless steel instead of carbon fiber for Starship, or Tesla's switch to a structural battery pack design.
Similar to how Disney would review storyboards and rough animation, Musk reportedly examines CAD models, prototype designs, and test results. He's particularly involved in aesthetic and user experience decisions at Tesla - like the minimalist interior design philosophy or the decision to use a large central touchscreen.
Also like Disney, Musk seems to have a talent for attracting and motivating top technical talent. Both men created environments where skilled specialists could do their best work while pursuing an ambitious overall vision. And both developed enough technical understanding to make informed decisions without necessarily being the one doing the hands-on work.
At the moment Musk is acting crazy.
Both of them together
They're trying to see how much power they can grab. They don't care very much about how they do it or the immediate consequences. They just want as much power as they can get.
In time, a few weeks or months at most, things will settle down. We'll see where we are then. Just how these guys will exercise the power they've mustered. Who knows? Will they be able to work together without the heat of battle to keep things moving? Who knows?
Mentally ill. Musk.
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