Following up on my post responding to his question about that controversial claim that high genetic diversity, or low genetic diversity, is bad for the economy, Kyle Peyton writes: I’m happy to see you’ve articulated similar gripes I had w/ the piece, which makes me feel like I’m not crazy. I remember discussing this with [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Economics category.
That controversial claim that high genetic diversity, or low genetic diversity, is bad for the economy
Kyle Peyton writes: I’m passing you this recent news article by Ewen Callaway in the hope that you will make a comment about the methodology on your blog. It’s generated some back and forth between the economics and science communities. I [Peyton] am very sceptical of the reductive approach taken by the economics profession generally, [...]
The effects of fiscal consolidation
José Iparraguirre writes: I’ve read a recent paper by the International Monetary Fund on the effects of fiscal consolidation measures on income inequality (Fiscal Monitor October 2012, Appendix 1). They run a panel regression with 48 countries and 30 years (annual data) of a measure of income inequality (Gini coefficient) on a number of covariates, [...]
Back when fifty years was a long time ago
New Year’s Day is an excellent time to look back at changes, not just in the past year, but in the past half-century. Mark Palko has an interesting post on the pace of changes in everyday life. We’ve been hearing a lot in the past few decades about how things are changing faster and faster. [...]
Statistical modeling, causal inference, and social science
Interesting discussion by Berk Ozler (which I found following links from Tyler Cowen) of a study by Erwin Bulte, Lei Pan, Joseph Hella, Gonne Beekman, and Salvatore di Falco that compares two agricultural experiments, one blinded and one unblinded. Bulte et al. find much different results in the two experiments and attribute the difference to [...]
Fixed effects, followed by Bayes shrinkage?
Stuart Buck writes: I have a question about fixed effects vs. random effects. Amongst economists who study teacher value-added, it has become common to see people saying that they estimated teacher fixed effects (via least squares dummy variables, so that there is a parameter for each teacher), but that they then applied empirical Bayes shrinkage [...]
Sexism in science (as elsewhere)
Solomon Hsiang sends along this from Corinne Moss-Racusin, John Dovidio, Victoria Brescoll, Mark Graham, and Jo Handelsman: Despite efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender disparity persists within academic science. . . . In a randomized double-blind study . . . science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a [...]
The Möbius strip, or, marketing that is impervious to criticism
Johnny Carson had this great trick where, after a joke bombed, he’d do such a good double-take that he’d end up getting a huge laugh. This gimmick could never have worked as his sole shtick—at some point, Johnny had to tell some good jokes—but it was a reliable way to limit the downside. For the [...]
Two reviews of Nate Silver’s new book, from Kaiser Fung and Cathy O’Neil
People keep asking me what I think of Nate’s book, and I keep replying that, as a blogger, I’m spoiled. I’m so used to getting books for free that I wouldn’t go out and buy a book just for the purpose of reviewing it. (That reminds me that I should post reviews of some of [...]
Postdoc positions at Microsoft Research – NYC
Sharad Goel sends this in:
“I coach the jumpers here at Boise State . . .”
Jeff Petersmeyer writes: I coach the jumpers here at Boise State and as a fan of the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis (the book that got my brain initially wired to look further than just recruiting the “best” jumpers out of high school (as listed by Track and Field News, etc), I have tried to [...]
GiveWell charity recommendations
In a rare Christmas-themed post here, I pass along this note from Alexander Berger at GiveWell: We just published a blog post following up on the *other* famous piece of evidence for deworming, the Miguel and Kremer experiment from Kenya. They shared data and code from their working paper (!) follow-up finding that deworming increases incomes ten [...]
The consulting biz
I received the following (unsolicited) email: Hello, *** LLC, a ***-based market research company, has a financial client who is interested in speaking with a statistician who has done research in the field of Alzheimer’s Disease and preferably familiar with the SOLA and BAPI trials. We offer an honorarium of $200 for a 30 minute [...]
There are four ways to get fired from Caesars: (1) theft, (2) sexual harassment, (3) running an experiment without a control group, and (4) keeping a gambling addict away from the casino
Ever since I got this new sound system for my bike, I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts. This American Life is really good. I know, I know, everybody knows that, but it’s true. The only segments I don’t like are the ones that are too “writerly,” when they read a short story aloud. [...]
A lifetime supply of . . .
This story reminded me of when I was planning my short course for Procter & Gamble: The question in my mind was: should I take the consulting fee they offered or should I try to get a voucher for a lifetime supply of P&G products (assuming, of course, that such a voucher exists)? Wouldn’t that [...]
More consulting experiences, this time in computational linguistics
Bob wrote this long comment that I think is worth posting: I [Bob] have done a fair bit of consulting for my small natural language processing company over the past ten years. Like statistics, natural language processing is something may companies think they want, but have no idea how to do themselves. We almost always [...]
What is expected of a consultant
Robin Hanson writes on paid expert consulting (of the sort that I do sometime, and is common among economists and statisticians). Hanson agrees with Keith Yost, who says: Fellow consultants and associates . . . [said] fifty percent of the job is nodding your head at whatever’s being said, thirty percent of it is just [...]
Outta control political incorrectness
Tyler Cowen points to an interview with economists Ronald Coase and Ning Wang: We are now working with the University of Chicago Press to launch a new journal, Man and the Economy. We chose our title carefully to signal the mission of the new journal, which is to restore economics to a study of man [...]
Incredibly strange spam
Unsolicited (of course) in the email the other day: Just wanted to touch base with you to see if you needed any quotes on Parking lot lighting or Garage Lighting? (Induction, LED, Canopy etc…) We help retrofit 1000′s of garages around the country. Let me know your specs and ill send you a quote in [...]
Real rothko, fake rothko
Jay Livingston writes: I know that in art, quality and value are two very different things. Still, I had to stop and wonder when I read about Domenico and Eleanore De Sole, who in 2004 paid $8.3 million for a painting attributed to Mark Rothko that they now say is a worthless fake. One day [...]
Statistical discrimination again
Mark Johnstone writes: I’ve recently been investigating a new European Court of Justice ruling on insurance calculations (on behalf of MoneySuperMarket) and I found something related to statistics that caught my attention. . . . The ruling (which comes into effect in December 2012) states that insurers in Europe can no longer provide different premiums [...]
“Intrade to the 57th power”
David Pennock writes: http://PredictWiseQ.com is our (beta) prediction contest which aims to estimate not just the marginal probabilities of election outcomes this November, but millions of correlations among outcomes as well, like the chance Obama will win both Ohio and Florida, or the chance Romney will win if the September jobs numbers are negative. It’s [...]
Using economics to reduce bike theft
Rohin Dhar writes: While bike theft is an epidemic in major US cities, most people seem resigned that it’s just a fact of life. . . . at Priceonomics, we thought we’d take a crack at trying to reduce bike theft. Could we use software to help people fight back against bike thieves? Professional bike [...]
High temperatures cause violent crime and implications for climate change, also some suggestions about how to better summarize these claims
Solomon Hsiang writes: I [Hsiang] have posted about high temperature inducing individuals to exhibit more violent behavior when driving, playing baseball and prowling bars. These cases are neat anecdotes that let us see the “pure aggression” response in lab-like conditions. But they don’t affect most of us too much. But violent crime in the real [...]
Job!
Faten Sabry writes: We are looking to hire full time analysts at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The work involves extensive econometric analysis and handling of large databases. The analysts will be part of a team working to address various empirical microeconomic issues. I worked with Faten and her colleagues on a consulting project once, [...]