GrafoDexia

2009-06-26T21:38:00.001-04:00

Simpsons more per viewer online than on air. Vindication for the more progressive movie/TV industry. It's curious that neither music (Pandora) or newspapers have seen this inversion.

2009-06-22T08:40:00.000-04:00

From "The Healthcare Economist" Shafrin's Healthcare Manifesto:

Reduce patent length. I have mulled over supporting the elimination of patents all-together, but as of now I’ll at least strongly support the reduction in the length of patents. Patents give producers a monopoly over certain goods produced for a given amount of time. This creates short-run inefficiencies, which may be outweighed in the long-run if companies increase innovation. So why should we shorten patent length? Boldrin and Levine provide some compelling arguments.
- Patents do not increase innovation: Before Italian patent protection 1961-1980: Italy discovered 9.3% of the world’s new active chemical compounds. After Italian patent protection: 1980-1983, Italy discovered only 7.5% of the world’s new chemical compounds. India also has limited patent protection, but is generating many of major pharmaceutical advances. Another study shows that strong copyright protections also do not increase innovation.
- Innovation Chains: Patents prevent innovation by disallowing other firms from building on the work of others
- Rent Seeking: Patents give companies an incentive to higher lawyers (to extend patent length and increase the scope of the patent) rather than researchers (who invent and innovate).

2009-06-21T22:49:00.000-04:00

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/06/21/1945216/Kindle-Zune-DRM-Restrictions-Coming-Into-Focus

2009-05-31T14:23:00.002-04:00

Interesting side-effect of Hulu, from talking to TV-less friends: If you're downloading the episode each week because you don't have a TV or you prefer to watch on the computer, you have a complete collection at the end of the season--you're building it in small chunks. Post-Hulu, there's no collection-building, and therefore you may be more likely to buy the DVD set rather than download for days straight. There also may be a psychological aversion to downloading something that is available for purchase in physical form (a collection) rather than something that is not (an episode).

Of course, the plural of "anecdote" and "speculation" is not "data"....

2009-05-23T07:31:00.002-04:00

From the Elsevier Reviewer's Packet:
"Elsevier shares the view of many that all scholars who wish to contribute to publications have an obligation to do a fair share of reviewing."

I don't disagree necessarily, but it seems a bit self-serving coming from one of the major publishers of toll-access journals--journals built by academics who seek to publish in them, academics who provide free labor in reviewing for them, and academic libraries who purchase them.

2009-05-02T21:20:00.001-04:00

A Stitch in Time: The Rise and Fall of the Sewing Machine Patent Thicket

Scholarly interest in how anticommons theory applies to patents has skyrocketed since Professor Michael Heller first proposed a decade ago that excessively fragmented interests in land can frustrate its commercial development. There is now a vigorous debate on whether anticommons exist in patent law, and, if so, whether these patent thickets impede innovation in patented products. As Professor Heller writes in his recently published book, The Gridlock Economy, "the empirical studies that prove - or disprove - our theory remain inconclusive."

This article contributes to this debate by analyzing the rise and fall of the first patent thicket in American history: the Sewing Machine War of the 1850s. The invention of the sewing machine in the antebellum era represents many firsts in the American legal system - the first patent thicket, the first "patent troll," and the first patent pool. Significantly, this case study verifies that patent thickets exist and that they can frustrate commercial development of new products. But it also challenges widely held assumptions in the patent thicket literature. Many scholars believe that this is largely a modern problem arising from a host of allegedly new issues in the patent system, such as incremental high-tech innovation, excessive litigation, and the rise of "patent trolls." Yet the sewing machine patent thicket exhibited all of these phenomena, revealing that patent thickets have long existed within the historically successful American patent system. The denouement of the sewing machine patent thicket in the Sewing Machine Combination of 1856, the first privately formed patent pool, further challenges the widely held belief that patent thickets are best solved through new statutes, regulations or court decisions that limit property rights in patents. To the contrary, the Sewing Machine Combination was formed against the backdrop of the strong protection of property rights in patents in the antebellum era. Thus, the story of the invention of the sewing machine is a striking account of early American technological, commercial and legal ingenuity, which heralds important empirical lessons for how patent thicket theory is understood and applied today.

2009-04-07T22:38:00.002-04:00

Perl code to convert SAS code to Stata code. This works if a project provides SAS statements to read in their fixed-width text file data format, as is reasonably common. Wrote this up to convert MEPS data without using SAS, and thought someone out there might find it useful. It fails if the value labels aren't all numeric, but that should be easy enough to fix.
--Ari

Usage:
./SAS_to_Stata.pl <> outfile.do

Code:
#!/usr/bin/perl

print "* Convert basic SAS file to read in fixed format into Stata equivalent\n";

# Initialize variables
$input = 0;
$label = 0;
$value = 0;
$format = 0;

# Loop through each line
while() {
my($line) = $_;
chomp($line);

# -- INPUT -- #
# If it's an INPUT statement, put us in a receptive state
if ($line =~ /(INPUT)/) {
$input=1;
print "infix ";
} elsif ($input==1 & $line =~ /;/) { #Take us out of receptive state at the ";"
$input=0;
print "using ____.dta, clear\n";
}
# If we're in a receptive state and the line is parseable as an input line, parse it
if (($input==1) & ($line =~ /\s+\@(\d+)\s+([A-Z\d]+)\s+([\$\s])(\d+).+$/)) {
$startcol = $1;
$varname = $2;
$endcol = $startcol + $4 - 1;
if ($3 eq "\$") {
$str = "str";
} else {
$str = "";
}
print "$str $varname $startcol-$endcol ";
}

# -- LABELS -- #
# If it's a LABEL statement, put us in a receptive state
if ($line =~ /(LABEL)/) {
$label=1;
} elsif ($label==1 & $line =~ /;/) {
$label=0;
}
# If we're in a receptive state and the line is parseable as a label line, parse it
if ($label==1 & $line=~/([A-Z\d]+)\s*=('.+')$/) {
print "label variable $1 $2\n";
}

# -- VALUE LABELS -- #

# If it's a VALUE statement, put us in a receptive state
if ($line =~ /(VALUE) (\$?)([A-Za-z]+)\s+$/) {
$value=1;
print "label define $3 ";
} elsif ($line =~ /;/) {
$value=0;
print "\n";
}
# If we're in a receptive state and the line is parseable as a value line, parse it
if ($value==1 & $line=~/\s*'?([-.]\d)'?\s*=\s*('.+')\s*$/) {
print "$1 $2 ";
}

# -- APPLY VALUE LABELS TO VARIABLES -- #

# If it's a FORMAT statement, put us in a receptive state
if ($line =~ /(FORMAT)/) {
$format=1;
} elsif ($format==1 & $line =~ /;/) {
$format=0;
}
# If we're in a receptive state and the line is parseable as a value line, parse it
if ($format==1 & $line=~/\s+([A-Za-z\d]+) (\$?)([A-Za-z\d]+)\.$/) {
print "label values $1 $3\n";
}

}

2009-04-01T14:39:00.000-04:00

"The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common;
But leave the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose."
~ English Folk Poem

2009-01-19T16:42:00.002-05:00

I ran across this book by Boldrin and Levine while perusing the Penn Bookstore the other day. Haven't read it yet, but I'm particularly enthusiastic that they use a term other than "intellectual property." As far as alternative terms go, Intellectual Monopoly isn't half bad.

--Ari

2008-11-28T17:02:00.000-05:00

Interesting discussion on the economics of a low but non-zero marginal cost good. "Therefore a small drop in demand causes a huge price collapse." It's curious how different this is from music production, because music is not an undifferentiable commodity and I imagine also because there's far less competitiveness in the music market (in terms of number of firms, homogeneity of thinking, and communication between firms).

2008-11-21T15:10:00.000-05:00

Modeling media sales, from my favorite statistical polisci blog.

--Ari

Awesome

2008-11-16T09:11:00.000-05:00

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/11/net-neutrality.html

2008-11-14T20:50:00.001-05:00

Another DRM mishap.

2008-10-27T21:29:00.000-04:00

A reasonably detailed explanation of peering and transit arrangements among internet providers. Good background for the perennial debates over net neutrality, who should pay to transport content, and so forth.

--Ari

2008-09-15T20:23:00.001-04:00

Just saw these on the OpenEconomics Data Store:
http://www.openeconomics.net/store/copyright_registrations_us
http://www.openeconomics.net/store/5f014cc2-e1d1-11db-aac4-00145101c316

--Ari

2008-09-11T23:04:00.000-04:00

Random tidbit from a forum I read:
"US Government statistics indicate the following percentages of foreign ownership of American industry:
• Sound recording industries - 97% "

I personally have no problem with this; given the statistic, however, the recording industry making the argument that long-duration high-protection copyright laws are necessary to "support American industry" seems disingenuous.

--Ari

2008-08-30T18:04:00.001-04:00

The failures of DRM.

--Ari

2008-07-21T10:16:00.001-04:00

The Economist on piracy as good for the content controller.

Ari

Quoted in the WaPo

2008-06-14T06:42:00.001-04:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/11/AR2008061101570.html
Right at the end, plus I was at least one of the 'experts' (ha!) in, "The two trends -- overall national improvement, with certain subgroups doing worse -- are not incompatible, experts noted."

Ari

2008-05-10T16:29:00.000-04:00

LA claims copyright crimes are a public health nuisance, among other things. I love how the first commenter justifies copyright exports as a universal good by citing the weapons industry!

Ari

2008-05-10T00:08:00.000-04:00

Real-world complications of impenetrable copyright laws.

--Ari

2008-05-08T17:58:00.000-04:00

Another beautiful Times graphic. They're on a roll lately.

Also, this is a pretty awesome classroom lesson.

Ari

2008-04-22T18:17:00.001-04:00

The article I've spent nearly two years on is finally out, 700+ million draws from the binomial distribution later.

The WaPo article is probably the best. It also showed up in:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/health/research/22life.html
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4700405&page=1
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN2146521720080422
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-04-21-life-span-study_N.htm
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_9011215
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/22/MNBB10843L.DTL
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iq_F2tT6KLMTalRIjYvjBKTLKYrAD906LK9O0
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/359985_dyingsooner22.html?source=mypi
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2004364803_lifespan22m.html

Majid and Chris have been doing most of the quoting, but I've been handling some of the radio coverage. The SoCal NPR affiliate's public affairs show recorded my ramblings live for ten minutes or so. Exciting stuff.

--Ari

2008-04-15T10:25:00.000-04:00

Please don't make all research results CC-BY. AFAIK, collections of data are not subject to copyright under US law (the original case had something to do with phone books), but IANAL. Claiming that copyright applies to them, even if your intent is to make the results available, just normalizes the claims of malicious actors who would like data assemblages to be subject to copyright.

For alphabet soup clarification, check out the IAD.

--Ari

2008-04-09T12:51:00.000-04:00

"When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied." Wisdom for the content industries.

--Ari