Coffee and science at Stanford

 Julio Elias is welcomed home by the Universidad del CEMA after a great visit to Stanford.

Julio Elías, Director del MAE, fue Tinker Visiting Professor en Stanford University [Julio Elías, Director of the MAE, was Tinker Visiting Professor at Stanford University]

Featured in the story is this photo of Stanford's weekly market design coffee.

The latest coffee science (and willing suspension of correlation not being causation skepticism)

 The NYT has the good news, for those of us who appreciate getting certain parts of our science from newspapers:

That Cup of Coffee May Have a Longer-Term Perk
A new study of over 47,000 women found links between coffee drinking and healthy aging. Here’s what we know.   By Alice Callahan
 

"Most people who drink coffee appreciate the quick jolt of energy it provides. But in a new study, presented today at the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition, scientists have found that coffee may offer the much longer-term benefit of healthy aging.

"The study has not been peer-reviewed or published, but it was rigorous... 

...

"The researchers found a correlation between how much caffeine the women typically drank (which was mostly from coffee) when they were between 45 and 60 years old and their likelihood of healthy aging. After adjusting for other factors that could affect aging, such as their overall diet, how much they exercised and whether they smoked, those who consumed the most caffeine (equivalent to nearly seven eight-ounce cups of coffee per day) had odds of healthy aging that were 13 percent higher than those who consumed the least caffeine (equivalent to less than one cup per day).

...

"because the benefits associated with coffee have been so consistent, it’s unlikely that they are entirely explained by other aspects of a person’s life, Dr. Zhang said. If anything, drinking coffee is often associated with unhealthy habits, like smoking and less exercise. The fact that you see benefits after accounting for these differences means that coffee is probably helping, Dr. Zhang said.

...

"There are plenty of other, more evidence-backed ways to boost your health and longevity, Dr. Shadyab added, such as following a balanced diet, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep and having an active social life."

Ariel Rubinstein and coffee culture

 Stanford student Chuer Yang appreciates the great economist Ariel Rubinstein in the Stanford Daily:

Cappuccino catalysis  by Chuer Yang

 "I found economist Ariel Rubinstein’s Atlas of Cafes where one can think so long ago that I can’t even recall which rabbit hole I jumped down to get to it. In the vast treasure troves of cartography, this is one of my all-time favorites. The essence of the atlas is in the affix “where one can think.” The quality of coffee is completely irrelevant; the only criteria are the “atmosphere, lighting and noise level,” according to Rubinstein. The atlas is a community of those who like to steep their mornings in the synchronized chaos entailed by a simple cup of Joe. 

 

"Rubinstein puts it best in his manifesto:

“In the University of Cafés, no one demands that research must be useful. From the outset, there is an atmosphere of apparent idleness and lack of purpose at the coffee houses, which is the suitable atmosphere for basic research.”

##########

Here's an earlier post that touches on (outdoor) coffee culture at Stanford

Sunday, December 3, 2023 Photos from the daily market design activity at Stanford

 

Photos from the daily market design activity at Stanford

Two photos remind me of the day to day market design activity at Stanford. 

Tinglong Dai joined our Wednesday market design coffee and sent along this picture. (You can see who came by plane and who came by bike...)  He wrote about his visit here.

And Matias Cersosimo successfully defended his dissertation on Friday, which  included market design experiments like this one.

 Welcome to the club, Matias.

Wild coffee and climate change

 Climate change is threatening coffee crops. But there are some wild variants that show signs of robustness:)

The NYT has the story:

What Climate Change Could Mean for the Coffee You Drink  By Somini Sengupta

"The two types of coffee that most of us drink — Arabica and robusta — are at grave risk in the era of climate change.

"Now the good news. Farmers in one of Africa’s biggest coffee exporting countries are growing a whole other variety that better withstands the heat, drought and disease supersized by global warming.

"For years, they’ve just been mixing it into bags of low-priced robusta. This year, they’re trying to sell it to the world under its own true name: Liberica excelsa.

...

"If it works, it could hold important lessons for smallholder coffee farmers elsewhere, demonstrating the importance of wild coffee varieties in a warming world. Liberica excelsa is native to tropical Central Africa. 

...

"While Arabica and robusta are the two widely cultivated species of coffee, more than 100 species grow in the wild."

Market design coffee m&ms

 Here's an inside joke, for market design coffee (and candy) fans, particularly for regulars at our market design coffees at Stanford.

Here's a clue:

D4	Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
	D40	General
	D41	Perfect Competition
	D42	Monopoly
	D43	Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
	D44	Auctions
	D45	Rationing • Licensing
	D46	Value Theory
	D47	Market Design
	D49	Other

HT: Carmen Wang

Coffee and civilization, at the Museum of Islamic Art in Jerusalem

“Coffee – East and West” is the title of the new exhibition at the Museum of Islamic Art in Jerusalem." Here's the story from Haaretz:

How Coffee Revolutionized Jerusalem Social Life in the 16th Century  by Ronit Vered

"In the mid-16th century, complaints from residents of Jerusalem reached the palace of the sultan in Istanbul: As a result of the new custom of visiting coffeehouses, which was spreading among the city’s Muslim denizens, many of them were not praying five times a day, as prescribed by Islam.

...

"Those first cafés – others were opened around the same time in Gaza, Ramle, Nablus, Damascus and Aleppo – operated all day and all night, a sensational innovation in the pre-electricity age, when people usually went to bed early.

...

"The presence of the clients, some of whom would be seated in the street, attracted peddlers, who offered skewers of roasted meat, another nuisance and source of dirt. Tobacco was another new pleasure that the authorities and clerics tried to fight – again unsuccessfully – and the smoke of water pipes, sometimes mingled with the aroma of opium, became an inseparable part of the new coffeehouse experience. And because all the clients of these new institutions were men, for whom the public space, both religious and secular, was exclusively reserved in the Ottoman Empire – the coffeehouses were also accused of encouraging homosexuality and of generating an atmosphere liable to give rise to sexual harassment.

...

"“The story of this country is singular, because two coffee traditions coexisted here over time: Ottoman-Turkish-Arabian coffee that is cooked; and Western coffee, which is filtered and prepared by a variety of methods and in different utensils,” says Yahel Shefer, the exhibition’s co-curator (with Noa Berger), who spent the past five years studying the subject and collecting rare items associated with the material culture that sprang up side by side with the social etiquette that accompanies coffee consumption.

...

Coffee, she adds, “also gives rise to a unique institution dedicated to it, which becomes the most popular gathering place in the world. In Palestine, coffeehouses were established in the Ottoman-Arab tradition but also in the European-Western tradition, which was brought by the [German] Templers and by Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe. In the early 20th century, people in Zion Square in Jerusalem would drink Turkish-Arabian coffee in the morning, and in the afternoon hang out in the famous Café Europa.”

...

"The owners of the Jerusalem cafés opened by the mid-16th century were for the most part Muslims, though they were frequented by Jews and Christians as well. Jewish clerics joined their Muslim colleagues in expressing misgivings about the popular new beverage and the social institution that was springing up around it.

“The first Hebrew mention of a coffeehouse appears in Safed in the 1560s,” says Prof. Yaron Ben-Naeh from the department of Jewish history at the Hebrew University. “The Safed café is mentioned as having a dubious reputation, or in the words of the text, it was a place of ‘frivolous company.’ The religious arbiters of Judaism, like their Muslim counterparts, are undecided about whether it is permitted to drink coffee. Isaac Luria, the holy ‘Ari’ [“Lion,” his epithet], the greatest of the kabbalists, rules that drinking coffee is forbidden, but the believers simply ignore it. No one abides by the prohibitions.”

...

"Early evidence for the institutionalization of a local coffee culture is the existence of the coffee-sellers’ guild, which appears in the records of the Muslim court in Jerusalem in 1590."

Coffee is good for you, and how it became a worldwide market--Ashok Rai at Williams College

First the good news from coffee science, via the NY Times

Is Coffee Good for You?
Yes! But it depends on the kind of coffee and the quantity.

"In moderation, coffee seems to be good for most people — that’s 3 to 5 cups, or up to 400 milligrams of caffeine.

“The evidence is pretty consistent that coffee is associated with a lower risk of mortality,” said Erikka Loftfield, a research fellow at the National Cancer Institute who has studied the beverage."
**********

And for those of you interested in the coffee market, here's a lecture by Ashok Rai that I would go to if I were near Williams College today:

Ashok Rai to Lecture on the Globalization of Coffee

"Ashok Rai, associate professor of economics at Williams College, will present a lecture titled “From Muslim to Christian: How Coffee Went Global.” The second of six talks in the college’s Faculty Lecture Series this semester, the lecture will take place on Thursday, Feb. 20, from 4:15 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Wege Auditorium. A reception will follow in Schow Atrium. The event is free and open to the public.

"Rai’s current research examines the globalization of coffee, drawing on history, literature, ecology, and on fieldwork in Central America and East Africa. "

Coffee for personal data

Inside Higher Ed has the story:
Café Swaps Espresso for Personal Info
A Japanese café chain plans to spread among Ivy League and other top campuses, offering free coffee and tea in exchange for students' personal information and consent to be contacted by companies.

"The cashless Shiru cafés give out handmade coffee and tea drinks for free. In exchange, students flash a university ID and, in the bargain, hand over a small cache of personal information: name, age, email address, interests, major and graduation year, among other details. They also agree to be contacted by Shiru’s corporate sponsors, who underwrite all those cappuccinos, matcha lattes and iced Americanos.
...
"Starbucks, meet LinkedIn … with extra foam.
...
"[at Brown University]...“I don’t get the feeling from my classmates that they’re trying to reduce their data footprint.”

AEA signaling, and coffee, viewed from Stockholm

At a dinner hosted by the Economics Prize Committee in Stockholm, conversation turned to the signals just transmitted by the American Economic Association, from new Ph.D. economists to potential employers. Each of the Swedish universities represented by those sitting nearest to me, including the Universities of Stockholm and Uppsala, had received signals, and had decided to interview at least one candidate based on having received a signal.

Incidentally, 1,285 candidates sent their two signals to 666 employers this year, and these signals were sent out on Dec 3, and confirmation emails were sent to candidates on Dec 4. If you were one of those candidates, good luck, and please fill out the attached survey.

 Dinner was held in the "Ghost Castle" of the University of Stockholm, which houses two impressive art collections, of paintings, and of glassware.  Here's a picture I like, showing that coffee has long played a role in serious discussions.

Market for coffee

I wonder what a recession will do to high end coffee shops. Will Americans back away from $4.00 cappuchinos? Or will those seem like a still-affordable luxury--just as luxurious (in their own way) as a Rolls Royce, but cheaper... The NY Times reports on high end coffee shops in NYC: Bean Town