Hundred Pockets

The recession, that is – or so says the National Institute for Economic and Social Research.

Britain’s economy grew for the first time over a three-month period since May last year, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) said today but warned that the end of recession could turn to a period of stagnation.

NIESR’s monthly estimate of economic growth suggests that gross domestic product (GDP) grew 0.2 per cent between June and August, after a 0.3 per cent fall in the three months to the end of July.

However, NIESR added: “There may well be a period of stagnation now, with output rising in some months and falling in others; the end of the recession should not be confused with a return to normal economic conditions.”

Other positive news comes from a survey of recruitment agencies:

The research, produced by Markit Economics, finds “marginal increases” in both permanent and temporary appointments in August.

For permanent staff, this is the first increase since early 2007.

“This is first time we have seen really positive news for the UK jobs market in 17 months,” said Bernard Brown from KPMG, co-sponsor of the survey.

Still, plenty of cause for pessimism, however. Our banking system remains, to a first approximation, a shambles. Households remain heavily in debt. Unemployment (a lagging indicator, admittedly) is as high as it’s been in over a decade. We’re not out of this yet…

You decide, after days of agonising about it, that your blog should be anonymous if you’re going to hang on to your job. And then someone on the other side of the world casually reveals your true identity:

PS – I was somewhat surprised to realize that my dog Pockets maintains a blog. But I was very pleased to realize that while I’m away, she [sic] apparently reads my econ books and blogs out of the UK.

Thanks, Andrew. And, um, woof.

You may have heard about the campaign to secure a posthumous government apology for Alan Turing, one of the most brilliant Britons of the 20th century.

In 1952 Turing was prosecuted for gross indecency after admitting a sexual relationship with a man. Two years later he killed himself…

Alan Turing was given experimental chemical castration as a “treatment” and his security privileges were removed, meaning he could not continue work for the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

“This added insult and humiliation ultimately drove him to suicide,” said gay-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who also backs the campaign. “With Turing’s death, Britain and the world lost one of its finest intellectual minds. A government apology and posthumous pardon are long overdue.”

Turing served his country dazzlingly, as a key member of the team which cracked the Nazi’s Enigma code, and he received forced injections of estrogen in return. A reminder of the staggering homophobia of the British legal system which persisted until very, very recently.

As a mark of how far things have changed, consider Evan Davis’ interview of Peter Mandelson on the Today programme last month. The topic was unemployment, of course, not homophobia – and perhaps it’s beyond crass to note this at all – but here we have one of the BBC’s top presenters, on its flagship current affairs programme, interviewing the man who was (at the time) more or less running the country. Both are openly gay. And the British public don’t appear to give a damn.

The interview itself wasn’t particularly edifying (Mandelson was hellbent on bashing the Tories, Davis struggled valiantly to drag him back to Labour’s own policies) but its very existence tells us something about the retreat of British homophobia.

Andrew Sullivan, from across the Atlantic, also noted Britain’s huge strides, while lamenting America’s lack of similar progress:

When I came to America from Britain, the gay rights movement was way ahead here of the old country. No longer. Here is a list of the most powerful openly gay people in Britain. The whole list is a staggering contrast with the US.

It’s easy to sneer at the mores of previous generations – tougher to fight the injustices in our own. But Britain has made progress, and we should be proud of it.

As for apologising to Turing (the petition is here) – well, yes, by all means. But apologise to every other victim of these vile laws as well – war heroes or not. Wrong is wrong, whoever the victim.

The previous post on cricket auctions reminded me of a glorious post on the Cheap Talk blog, proposing a new set of rules for Scrabble. Instead of choosing letters at random, they bid for them:

The game works roughly as follows.  At the beginning of the game tiles are turned over in sequence and the players bid on them in a fixed order.  The high bidder gets the tile and subtracts his bid from his total score.  (We started with a score of 100 and ruled out going negative, but this was never binding.  An alternative is to start at zero and allow negative scores.)  After all players have 7 tiles the game begins.  In each round, each player takes a turn but does not draw any tiles at the end of his turn.  At the end of the round, tiles are again turned over in sequence and bidding works just as at the beginning until all players have 7 tiles again, and the next round begins.  Apart from this, the rules are essentially the standard scrabble rules.

This awesome proposal allowed them to work out which Scrabble letters are over/under-priced in the standard game:

The way to measure this is to compare the “market” price to the nominal value.  If the market price is higher that means that players are willing to give up more points to get the tile than that tile will give them back when played (ignoring tile-multipliers on the board.)  That means that the nominal score is too high.  For example, blanks have a nominal score of zero.  But the market price of a blank in our play was about 20 points.  This is because blanks are “team players:” very valuable in terms of helping you build words.  So, playing by standard scrabble rules with no bidding, if the value of a blank was to be on equal terms with the value of other tiles, blanks should score negative:  you should have to pay to use them.  Other tiles whose value is out of line:  s (too high, should be negative), u(too low), v(too low.)  On the other hand, the rare letters, like X, J, Z, seem to be reasonably scored.

As fun as this sounds to an econo-geek, it makes me wonder… Is nothing sacred to economists?

(I think you know the answer.)

With England eight wickets away from Ashes victory as I type this (or Australia 400 runs from triumph, depending on how you look at it), this seems a good time to talk about cricket. Specifically, the Undercover Economist’s plan to abolish the pre-match coin toss from cricket, to be replaced with (what else?) an auction.

Both captains would ‘bid’ for the right to decide who bats first – by offering free runs (’bid byes’) to the opposition. Say we use a first price, sealed-bid auction – so each captain writes a number of runs on a scrap of paper, they hand their ‘bids’ to the umpire, and the captain who offered the most runs gets to decide who bats first, while conceding his ‘bid’ runs as a head start to the opposition. Tim Harford is enthusiastic:

The advantage should be auctioned off to whoever is willing to concede the most compensation to the opposition. The idea is absolutely equitable, intrinsically more exciting than a coin toss, and puts the emphasis on the judgment of the captains. Thankfully, since not all coin tosses are equally important – especially in cricket – the auction price reflects conditions on the day.

Is this a good idea? Cricket Burble suspects not:

Maybe people want a bit of luck in their cricket games anyway. An MCC sub-committee considered the auction proposal last year and ‘found no enthusiasm’ – just not cricket apparently.

Presumably we could push this idea even further. Let’s say that after losing the auction, the captain of the fielding team can make another offer to the opposition: we’ll give you another 60 runs (say), in exchange for the wicket of your opening batsman. Or 100 runs for your opening pair. Or 350 runs for your entire team, and we’ll just skip to the next innings.

In fact, we could settle the entire match without a single ball being bowled – just a bit of haggling by both captains and a calculator. And wouldn’t that be a glorious sporting spectacle?

Um… No.

With the sun shining in London, and sporty little cars buzzing round the streets near my office, I was reminded of a peculiar fact about the UK. For years we’ve bought more convertible cars than our Continental friends in France, Italy and Spain:

Despite the weather, British motorists are far more likely to drive convertible cars than their Continental counterparts. Sales of soft-top vehicles in Britain, which are now at about 60,000 a year, are twice as high as in Italy and 10 times higher than in Spain.

Whereas Britons have to make do with an average of 51 days of sunshine each year, the Italians and Spanish enjoy nearly 140 days.

Even the Scots have been getting in on the action:

A total of 7,200 convertibles were sold in Scotland [in 2005], up 20 per cent from 2003.

The increase reflects a UK-wide trend, with British convertible sales outstripping those in many sun-drenched European countries, including Italy, Spain and Portugal.

So what on earth’s going on? It’s hard to believe that a nation so famously obsessed with its own weather is full of car buyers oblivious to the climate. Any explanation is going to need to take account of the fact that luxury cars are both consumption goods (they get you from A to B) and signals (they show how successful/daring/fun-loving you are – or at least, you think they do…)

So here are some possibilities:

1. In a truly hot climate, car buyers want a solid roof and air conditioning. Convertibles are actually perfect for a country where even when it’s sunny, it ain’t always hot.

2. Sunshine is so valuable (because so scarce) to the British, that they will buy cars which are less safe, more tempting for thieves, and less structurally sound – all to be able to feel the precious rays on their heads, even when driving.

3. A convertible signals optimism – about the weather, but also about life more generally.

4. A convertible signals that I am affluent enough to go on holiday (with my car) enough to require a soft top.

5. The sporty convertible hits a romantic soft-spot in the heart of any British car fanatic. We had the Lotus Elan, the MG, and the Mazda MX-5 (alright, the last one’s Japanese – but they did explicitly set out to update the classic British convertible sportscar).

I’m sure there are others. Luckily I’m far too rational, far too well-versed in the dark arts of automobile marketing, to fall for the convertible. Way too rational. Definitely.

Although… The guy who passed me in an MX-5 today did look awfully happy…

… and welcome to Hundred Pockets. I’m sure we won’t be short of things to talk about.

A recession (you may have heard), an election (soon), a 150 million year old squid you can use as a fountain pen – it’s a big, wide, wonderful world. So let’s get cracking…