--- title: "Local Optima & Greedy Choices" description: "Some interesting links on local optima/greediness/risk-aversion/creative destruction (eg. Porter hypothesis or equity premium puzzle), sometimes demonstrated by disasters." created: 2021-03-24 modified: 2021-03-24 status: finished confidence: log importance: 5 cssExtension: dropcaps-kanzlei ... - [Automation as colonization wave](/doc/economics/automation/index) - ["Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy"](https://www.oreilly.com/content/piracy-is-progressive-taxation-and-other-thoughts-on-the-evolution-of-online-distribution/ "Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution"), Timothy O'Reilly 2002 - [_The Luck Factor_](https://www.amazon.com/Luck-Factor-Scientific-Wiseman-Paperback/dp/B00IGYST8M/), Wiseman 2004 - ["OKCupid: The Mathematics Of Beauty"](/doc/psychology/okcupid/themathematicsofbeauty.html "'The Mathematics Of Beauty', Rudder 2011"), Rudder 2011 - **War/Disaster/Collapse**: - ["The great wars, the great crash, and steady state growth: Some new evidence about an old stylized fact"](/doc/economics/1995-bendavid.pdf), Ben-David & Papell 1995; ["Do natural disasters promote long-run growth?"](/doc/economics/2002-skidmore.pdf), Skidmore & Toya 2002 - ["The Economic Impact of Hurricane Katrina on Its Victims: Evidence from Individual Tax Returns"](https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.694.1431&rep=rep1&type=pdf), Deryugina et al 2014 - ["Are Resettled Oustees from the Sardar Sarovar Dam Project Better off Today than their Former Neighbors who were not Ousted?"](/doc/economics/2018-aiyar.pdf), Aiyar & Kaushal 2018 - ["The Benefits of Forced Experimentation: Striking Evidence from the London Underground Subway Network"](https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/63832/1/dp1372.pdf), Larcom et al 2017 - ["Resetting the Urban Network: 117--2012 AD"](/doc/economics/2016-michaels.pdf "‘Resetting the Urban Network: 117‐2012’, TeX 2016"), Michaels & Rauch 2016; ["Monks, Gents and Industrialists: The Long-Run Impact of the Dissolution of the English Monasteries"](/doc/economics/perpetuities/2021-heldring.pdf "‘The Long-Run Impact of the Dissolution of the English Monasteries’, Heldring et al 2021"), Heldring et al 2015/[2021](/doc/economics/perpetuities/2021-heldring.pdf "'The Long-Run Impact of the Dissolution of the English Monasteries', Heldring et al 2021") (see the criticisms of [perpetuities](/doc/economics/perpetuities/index)/[_waqfs_](/narrowing-circle#ancestors) as locking in mistakes) - ["Lehman's Lemons: Do Career Disruptions Matter for the Top 5%?"](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3819317), Fedyk & Hodson 2021 - ["Displacement, Diversity, and Mobility: Career Impacts of Japanese American Internment"](/doc/economics/2021-arellanobover.pdf), Arellano-Bover 2021 - [Fire]{.smallcaps}: - ["Razing San Francisco: The 1906 Disaster as a Natural Experiment in Urban Redevelopment"](https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.248.7497&rep=rep1&type=pdf), Siodla 2012; ["Does Building New Housing Cause Displacement?: The Supply and Demand Effects of Construction in San Francisco"](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3867764), Pennington 2021 - ["Creative Destruction: Barriers to Urban Growth and the Great Boston Fire of 1872"](/doc/economics/2017-hornbeck.pdf), Hornbeck & Keniston 2017 (cf. [_The Limits of Power: Great Fires and the Process of City Growth in America_](https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Power-Process-Christine-1986-04-30/dp/B01F9GNNFI/), Rosen 1986) - ["The Billion Pound Drop: The Blitz and Agglomeration Economics in London"](https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/88694/1/dp1542.pdf), Dericks & Koster 2018 (contrast with [Lin 2020](/doc/economics/2020-lin-2.pdf "‘How War Changes Land: Soil Fertility, Unexploded Bombs, and the Underdevelopment of Cambodia’, Lin 2020b")) - **Decisions**: - ["Making Big Decisions: The Impact of Moves on Marriage among U.S. Army Personnel"](https://docs.iza.org/dp11308.pdf), Carter & Wozniak 2018 - ["Timing is Everything: Evidence from College Major Decisions"](http://www.econweb.umd.edu/~pope/westpointtiming.pdf), Patterson et al 2019 - ["Heads Or Tails: The Impact Of A Coin Toss On Major Life Decisions And Subsequent Happiness"](/doc/psychology/cognitive-bias/2020-levitt.pdf "'Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major Life Decisions and Subsequent Happiness', Levitt 2020"), Levitt 2020 - ["Science Is Shaped by Wikipedia: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial"](https://doughanley.com/files/papers/thompson_hanley_wikipedia.pdf), Thompson et al 2017; ["Wikipedia Matters"](https://www.marit.hinnosaar.net/wikipediamatters.pdf), Hinnosaar et al 2019 - ["The Gift of Moving: Intergenerational Consequences of a Mobility Shock"](/doc/economics/2022-nakamura.pdf), Nakamura et al 2022 - [creative destruction](!W); the "[Porter hypothesis](!W)"; the [equity premium puzzle](!W) - ["Property Is Another Name for Monopoly: Facilitating Efficient Bargaining with Partial Common Ownership of Spectrum, Corporations, and Land"](https://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/upload_documents/Property%20Monopoly.pdf), Posner & Weyl 2016 - ["Exploration in the wild"](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/492058.full), Schulz et al 2018 (an interesting paper, although not clearly establishing suboptimal exploration, which uses an extremely large dataset of restaurant orders by individuals from [Deliveroo](!W)) - ["Evidence for a Conserved Quantity in Human Mobility"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.03526), Alessandretti et al 2016 (people visit few physical locations, and while they do continuously explore new locations & shift, there appears to be an equivalent of a [Dunbar’s number](!W), suggesting limits to human abilities to easily plan/remember activities covering more than ~25 locations regularly) - An amusing fictional example might be the _My Little Pony_ episode ["Applejack's 'Day' Off"](https://mlp.fandom.com/wiki/Applejack%27s_%22Day%22_Off). - ["Eager To Burst His Own Bubble, A Techie Made Apps To Randomize His Life"](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/06/08/531796329/eager-to-burst-his-own-bubble-a-techie-made-apps-to-randomize-his-life) - ["Neural autopilot and context-sensitivity of habits"](/doc/psychology/neuroscience/2021-camerer.pdf), Camerer & Li 2021 - **See Also**: [Evolution as Backstop for Reinforcement Learning](/backstop){.backlink-not}, [Sunk costs](/sunk-cost "'Are Sunk Costs Fallacies?', Branwen 2012"){.backlink-not}, [On Having Enough Socks](/socks){.backlink-not}