Does The Music You Listen To Predict Your Personality?

May 23, 2025

Does whether you like rock music rather than pop or country say something about your personality? I would have thought not, but we ran a study, and it turns out yes - in the U.S., your music tastes predict aspects of your personality! Much to my surprise, liking rock and classical music predicts the same things about your personality: having greater "openness to experience" (a personality trait from the Big Five framework) and being more intellectual. Makes sense for classical, but who wo...

When are tariffs beneficial?

April 7, 2025

What is the point of tariffs, in general? Lots of countries have them, to at least a small degree. It's rarer that countries use them to a large degree. Why? My understanding is that there are four main reasons tariffs get put in place: (1) Special interests that benefit from tariffs lobby for them at the expense of everyone else. This is obviously a bad reason to have tariffs. (2) Sometimes countries have an interest in building out capabilities in very specific industries as part of ...