An Economist Reads Jane Austenania

Tyler Cowen's screws seem considerably looser than usual this morning:

Marginal Revolution: Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict: That's the title of Laurie Viera Rigler's new and fun book.  The basic premise is that a pouty L.A. girl "wakes up" in the body of a character in a Jane Austen novel; here is the book's website.  She also finds herself courted by an ardent suitor, Edgeworth, who wants an answer to his marriage proposal and soon.  My wonderings were skewed as usual:

1. Would I, at first, have to act sick and crazy so as to cover up what are in fact more systematic lapses from accepted codes of social behavior?
2. If I am a rational Bayesian, what percentage of "transported people" should I expect to find in my new world?  (It is indicative that our heroine thinks she is very special and isn't much concerned with this question.)  Would such people be natural allies or enemies?
3. If I met another transported person, could I figure this fact out?  How long would it take and what are the best hints to drop?  Should I just mention "the Boston Red Sox" and see what happens?
4. Living in such a world, how useful is it to know how the novel ends?  (This is a theme in the story.)  Could such knowledge compensate for not understanding the non-articulated rules of this world very well?  What rate of interest should I pay on borrowed money, given the presence of speculative opportunities?
5. Being a rational Bayesian, how should I revise upwards my estimates that the world is ruled by an evil Demi-Urge, and what does this imply for the optimal degree of ethical behavior? It is a sad commentary on our educational system that Courtney, the heroine of the novel, never ponders such a question.
6. At what percentage of "transported people" would we expect to see an impact on real GDP, and would this impact be positive or negative?

Readers, what other questions should I be asking?

Of course, the biggest question of all, IMHO, is not asked. It is:

Just how confident can I be that I should buy British long-term Treasuries on June 15, 1815?

Comments

[rea]

Just how confident can I be that I should buy British long-term Treasuries on June 15, 1815?

Given a hypothetical world in which people from the present are transported back into the bodies of people living in that era, not confident at all. What if, on June 16, the day of Quatre Bras and Ligny, Gen. D'Erlon's body was occupied by a time-traveler familiar with the historic outcome of the campaign?

[jonfernquest]

"What rate of interest should I pay on borrowed money, given the presence of speculative opportunities?"

Why not just wager everyting on a crap shoot?

Whoops wrong simulated universe that's the Balzac universe where every male character wagers his future on a turn of the roulette wheel (peau de chagrin) just hook yourself with a gal from a good family lugging a load of cash in her dowry that should be the intersection of the Austen and Balzac worlds good luck

[andres]

Well, some advice:

1. If the initials of your Edgeworth-surnamed suitor are F.Y., run away screaming for all you're worth, even if it's into the arms of that dastardly foreign-sounding mountebank Ricardo (Ok ok, Edgeworth was a Victorian, not a Georgian, but it's still a fun thought).

2. On June 15, 1815, you bet the house on British Exchequer bonds (not Treasuries, Brad!) regardless of the positional dynamics of the Waterloo campaign. You do this on the knowledge that (1) Napoleon has started to develop a George W. Bush complex that is rapidly starting to piss off intelligent Frenchmen, and (2) the manpower and military resources of the Holy League (Austria, Prussia, Russia, and the Royal Navy) are much larger than a war-weary France can hope to overcome, even with victory in Waterloo.

3. The Reverend Bayes is a decent sort of chap, so if you do use Bayesian analysis to solve your problems you do not mouth off about it until after he has published his path-breaking paper.

Hope this helps, Tyler.

[aretino]

Having been subjected to one transportation (sounds like being set to Australia!), how much would one have to increase one's estimate of being subjected to another, and as a conseuence how much more would one discount the future of one's new present.

[ajay]

I would travel to Bath and have a word with Jane Austen. If she existed, it would sort out the question: have I been transported into the real historical 1815, or into a simulation of the 1815 of a novel? The answer to this question would determine much about my future behaviour. A simulation might not have a Battle of Waterloo at all. It might have a French victory, or a British one assisted by Jonathan Strange, or Rawdon Crawley, or Major Richard Sharpe, or the dragon Temeraire.

Alternatively, I could just get hold of a gazetteer and look up telltale places like Pemberley.

[Doug]

"Just how confident can I be that I should buy British long-term Treasuries on June 15, 1815?"

Ask Jasper Fforde.

[Details]

If you can manage such delicate timing, sell them short. When Nathan Rothchild dumps his the market will collapse. Cover your short position and go long the whole house. If this works, your financial worries are over.

Alternatively, since the universe you're in obviously has different laws of nature than this one, who knows what you should do? Does Baysian analysis help when you have no idea what the prior should be?