UP Links 25 September 2012

+ Brandon Fuller

Next Billion on Costs of Cash

Jon Robinson, who is running the Gates Foundation’s four savings impact random control trials, (see summary here) and co-authors (Lori Beaman and Jeremy Magruder) did a study of 500 or so small and medium sized enterprises in western Kenya. They found that these small informal firms spend an average of two hours per week looking for change to complete transactions. This contributes not only to lost productivity, it means losing 5-8 percent of profits as a result of missed sales – just by not keeping enough change on hand.

Signs of Success in Rebuilding Fish Stocks

Different regions in the United States employ different policies to regulate overfishing. Alaska has long used a “catch share” system, in which fisherman are granted a fixed percentage of the overall haul each year. That system gives the industry a stake in ensuring that the overall fishery remains healthy for years to come. (Evidence suggests that catch shares are very effective at preventing fisheries collapse.)

Dan Neil on Autonomous Cars

This, I think, is an underappreciated point about autonomous mobility: These systems, quietly under development for decades, have long since passed the point of mere driving competence to arrive at something like expert status…By the time this technology is commercialized, robotically operated cars will be safer, probably a lot safer, than manually operated cars.

Drug Smuggling in West Africa

By some estimates, a quarter of all European cocaine arrives via Africa. The commonest of the routes is from Guinea-Bissau to Mali and Niger and onward to Libya and Egypt. Big parts of the terrain are controlled by extreme Islamists. They work with smugglers in order to finance battles for the Taliban-style governments they hope to set up.

Matt Yglesias: Anti-Uber Rules Proposed in D.C.

Uber, the company that lets you summon a black sedan with a smartphone app rather than hailing a cab, has faced a series of legal and political problems in the different cities where it operates. Today’s news comes out of Washington, D.C. where the Taxi Commission is proposing a set of Uber-hostile regulations including a ban on sedan businesses with fewer than 20 cars (so small-scale independent contractors can’t rely on Uber as their dispatch service), a requirement that sedans all install taxi-style meters (to undercut the utility of Uber’s app-based payment system), and a ban on pickups and dropoffs outside of D.C.
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