by Steven Dubner, New York Times, March 20th 2005
''I basically want to figure out where blacks went wrong. One could rattle off all the statistics about blacks not doing so well. You can look at the black-white differential in out-of-wedlock births or infant mortality or life expectancy. Blacks are the worst-performing ethnic group on SAT's. Blacks earn less than whites. They are still just not doing well, period.''
Robert Didge's The Strategist: The Life and Times of Thomas Schelling
The Economist, 5th May 2007
Web link
But these arguments are now succumbing to sheer weight of evidence. Voucher schemes are running in several different countries without ill-effects for social cohesion; those that use a lottery to hand out vouchers offer proof that recipients get a better education than those that do not.
William Sharpe
Presented at the Spring President's Forum, Monterey Institute of International Studies, May 1, 2002
Web link
After costs and taxes, an indexed investor in a market can beat the average active investor.
Robin Hanson
Overcoming Bias, 8th May 2007
Web link
thousands of people randomly given free medicine in the late 1970s consumed 30-40% more medical services, paid one more "restricted activity day" per year to deal with the medical system, but were not noticeably healthier! So unless the marginal value of medicine has changed in the last thirty years, if you would not pay for medicine out of your own pocket, then don't bother to go when others offer to pay; on average such medicine is as likely to hurt as to help.
Hal Varian
New York Times, 3rd May 2007
Web link
An investor who bought a value-weighted portfolio of stocks in the New York Stock Exchange and American Stock Exchange in 1926 and held them until 2002 would have earned an average annual return of about 10 percent.
By contrast, an individual who bought in 1926 but moved his dollars in and out of the market in the same pattern as the average dollar invested in the market would have earned a return of only 8.6 percent a year.
