Re: guess the correlation
My guess is positive because California and New York tend to have a lot of high income people. Around 0.4? Fabio On Thu, 16 Dec 2004, Bryan Caplan wrote: I've calculated the correlation coefficient between per-capita state income and the percent of the vote Kerry got. Guesses? I'll post the answer in an hour. -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] But we must deplore and, so far as possible, overcome the evils of habitual newspaper reading. These evils are, chiefly, three: first, the waste of much time and mental energy in reading unimportant news and opinions, and premature, untrue, or imperfect accounts of important matters; second, the awakening of prejudices and the enkindling of passions through the partisan bias or commercial greed of newspaper managers; third, the loading of the mind with cheap literature and the development of an aversion for books and sustained thought. --Delos Wilcox, The American Newspaper (1900)
Re: Siberia and Canada
Yes - evidence: the population of Canada is highly clustered around the border. I have hunch they would bolt the second the border was opened. Fabio On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, Bryan Caplan wrote: Question: If there were free migration between the U.S. and Canada, would Canada lose a lot of population to California, Florida, and other more desirable locations? Prof. Bryan Caplan
Re: Siberia and Canada
Check out: http://atlas.gc.cas/site/english/maps/peopleandsociety/population/density It's a map of Canadian population density. Highest density around the great lake and the west coast. Otherwise, just a bunch of wawas up there. Fabio On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, Bryan Caplan wrote: Can any Canada experts weigh in? That includes all Canadians. Eric? fabio guillermo rojas wrote: Yes - evidence: the population of Canada is highly clustered around the border. I have hunch they would bolt the second the border was opened. Fabio On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, Bryan Caplan wrote: Question: If there were free migration between the U.S. and Canada, would Canada lose a lot of population to California, Florida, and other more desirable locations? Prof. Bryan Caplan -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] I hope this has taught you kids a lesson: kids never learn. --Chief Wiggum, *The Simpsons*
Re: divided government
I think the argument goes like this: 1. The policies both parties agree on is smaller in size than what each party advocates individually. I.e., the equilibrium of the bargaining game is smaller than the whole policy space. 2. In general, most of what each party wants is un-libertarian and un-libertarian outcomes are evenly distributed across the policy space, so you'd expect the equilibrium set to be about the same quality as the whole policy space. 3. Therefore, divided government yeilds the least un-libertarian outcomes. Why the specific combination of Dem congrees and GOP executive? I don't know. It probably depends on which policies you have a preference for. Fabio On Tue, 24 Feb 2004, Bryan Caplan wrote: Many smart libertarians I've talked to lately have embraced the view that divided government (especially Dem president and Rep Congress) yields the least un-libertarian outcome. Are they right, and if so, what's the theoretical explanation? -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] I hope this has taught you kids a lesson: kids never learn. --Chief Wiggum, *The Simpsons*
Re: spamonomics
Simple - you can anonymously buy impotence treatment over the Internet. No need to tell a real person that you ahve a sexual problem. I've also heard people use v!agra for enhancing sexual experience, not too cure a medical problem. Those people probably want to avoid doctors. Fabio On Tue, 20 Jan 2004, Bryan Caplan wrote: Why is such a high fraction of spam devoted to selling impotence treatments? Are there really impotent guys who make an impulse purchase of v!agra because they got some spam? P.S. I killfile everything spelled v-i-a-g-r-a in the title or body, so let's call it v!agra for this discussion. -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] I hope this has taught you kids a lesson: kids never learn. --Chief Wiggum, *The Simpsons*
Re: Oscar Political Business Cycle
On Tue, 30 Dec 2003, Bryan Caplan wrote: The Political Business Cycle story has not fared well empirically in recent years (though Kevin Grier has done interesting work on Mexico's PBC). But it seems overwhelming in the Oscars. It seems like roughly half of the big nominees get released in December. What gives? Is there any way to explain this other than Academy voters' amnesia? Basically the only way to win an Oscar these days, unless you come up with the insanely good smach hit (a la Titanic), you have to wage an expensive campaign involving massive advertising, video/DVD's sent to academy voters, etc. Thus, you have to include the advertising cost in the calculation you describe. Given the rather strong amnesia regarding Oscars, I'd say it's the best bet to load up on December. F Ro
Re: Economist IQ?
At Chicago, econ math GRE's tend to be substantially higher than other social science Ph.D.'s. Verbal scores are comparable to humanities Ph.D.'s. Also remember that econ depts take a lot of asian students, which probably pushes down the verbal GRE score. More generally, any time you require math, you get higher caliber people. IMHO, the highest quality social science students tend to be in econ Ph.D. programs. By doing well in calculus and statistics, they've singalled a great deal of ability. This doesn't happen in other fields, and many social science undergrad programs tend to be watered down. For ex, the soc dept at Berkeley (my alma mater) does not require a course in introductory statistics. Instead, they require one semester of quantitative reasoning, which can be fulfilled with just about anything. Contrast that with economics, where you simply can't graduate from a top program without about a year of calculus. OTOH, economists are probably lower IQ than many physical science Ph.D.'s. IIRC from the Chicago statistics on GRE's, it was typical for non-biology science Ph.D.'s to have nearly perfect math scores. Fabio On Mon, 15 Dec 2003, Rodney F Weiher wrote: Why not look at GRE scores (or do they still require GREs?) Rodney Weiher Stephen Miller wrote: I doubt anyone has hard data on this, but I'm wondering what people on this list would guess is the average IQ of Ph.D. economists? Would it be much different from the average IQ of Ph.D.s in general?
Re: Economist IQ?
In the book Sociology and its publics, Neil Smelser has a chart comparing GRE's for various disciplines. His point was that sociology, in comparison to other social sciences such as economics, get bad recruits. Fabio On Mon, 15 Dec 2003, Bryan Caplan wrote: Do you have a cite for that, Zach? [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A far cry from perfect, but if you use the GRE as a test of intelligence, economics PhD students are the fourth most intelligent behind physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists - according to the ETS in 2002. Mean scores for engineering (in some forms) are not much lower - but anthropology, archaeology, history, political science, theology, sociology, and communications are all fields with significantly lower scores. I suspect intuitively, due to a number of reasons - mostly the analytical nature of the field and the mathematical rigor - that economists are significantly more intelligent than PhDs in many other fields. But probably not all fields, and maybe not even most. - Zac Gochenour [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: Stephen Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, December 15, 2003 10:40 am Subject: Economist IQ? I doubt anyone has hard data on this, but I'm wondering what people on this list would guess is the average IQ of Ph.D. economists? Would it be much different from the average IQ of Ph.D.s in general? -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] I hope this has taught you kids a lesson: kids never learn. --Chief Wiggum, *The Simpsons*
Re: MVT and policy portfolios
Related to this is the question of whether there really is a median voter. Let's take 10 issues--abortion, gun control, gay rights, trade policy, tax rates, immigration, middle east policy, racial preferences, CO2/global warming policy, and SDI/star wars missile defense. What percentage of the electorate is in the middle quintile (if we could quantify these issues) on all 10? The General Social Survey is online and has a lot of information on public opinion, though not all of these exact topics. At least on a crude measure of do you want more/less/the same level of spending or regulation, the median position is usually the same. Prof. Bryan Caplan Is this an artifact of the survey? Would people say the same just because they don't care or don't know about an issue? In general, I'm a firm believer in the GSS, but I've always been skeptical about this kind of question. Seems like a good case of leading the respondents. Fabio
Re: Levitt article
I couldn't access the article. Could anyone either copy and paste it to me (privately so as not to distrub others) or perhaps just give me a briefy summary? Thank you. David Levenstam The article discusses Levitt's research style: his tendency to ask odd but interesting questions and be clever enough to be able to test the hypotheses with publically available data. It also has some discussions of his career path and a little about his personal life. Fabio
Re: Levitt article
The article discusses Levitt's research style: his tendency to ask odd but interesting questions and be clever enough to be able to test the hypotheses with publically available data. It also has some discussions of his career path and a little about his personal life. Fabio Thanks, Fabio. So what's so bad about that? David Well, the article's style and tone was a little odd. For example, as someone else pointed out, it seemed to imply that Steve Levitt was alone in the economic analysis of crimes and other non-market behaviors. It also has this aw-shucks attitude, depicting a wunderkind who was ignored by the profession until the profession was stunned and surprised by his wit. All in all, not the worst article ever written, combining the story of an interesting economist with some weird framing. Fabio
Do prices exist?
Seriously - consider the use of a pay phone, or a hotel phone. It is often hard for me, and many other customers, to get completely accurate information on phone call prices. When it comes to phone calls, I've always missed some charge or tax, or there is change from when I last got the info. So: (a) how many other economic transactions have this feature, that it is hard to get an accurate price? (b) If there are many such examples, should we think about fuzzy prices or prices-as-sets, or expected prices? A lot of basic micro assumes there is a single number p. Maybe we should think of price distributions instead. Fabio
Re: Levitt article
What I found interesting is that in economics, like in many other fields, there are problem solvers (people who figure out specific paradoxes, empirical facts, etc) and theory builders. Levitt is a supremely able problem solver, a niche that didn't exist 30-40 years ago in the economics profession. Fabio On Mon, 4 Aug 2003, William Sjostrom wrote: It is an annoying piece, even if it shows the public what Levitt is up to, because it strongly indicates that Levitt is an outlier in the profession in his interests. Forty years ago, he would have been a rarity in the profession. Today, he is pretty standard. Bill Sjostrom
Re: Levitt article
and on (including work by ICES colleagues)... On balance I would argue that Levitt is indeed unusually clever (in the sense that he comes up with good questions and also finds interesting natural manipulations to study them), but that his particular approach to economic science is not novel: Vernon Smith has been using it for decades. - Dan Correct me if I am wrong, but a big difference between Vernon Smith and Levitt is that Smith focuses mostly on a single area - experimental econ with a cognitive focus - while Levitt is a bit more wide ranging in his interests. Nothing wrong with that, but maybe that's a reason Levitt is so distinctive. Few people have the cleverness to consistently spot interesting puzzles and then have the tenacity to find data that can actually test hypotheses. Of course, the long term interesting question: will such puzzle solving lead to greater economic insight? I think so. In mathematics, such puzzle solvers are good at showing all sorts of cherished ideas are wrong and the evidence accumulated from such research can force people to think in new ways. Also, puzzle solvers are good at finding tricks that can be used to solve other problems. I wouldn't be surprised if Levitt's long term legacy is like that of Paul Erdos the mathematician who was notorious for solving goofy problems, but whose solutions forced people to rethink a lot of math. Fabio
Re: Senators Denounce Policy Analysis Markets
I help run a large non-profit colocation and hosting center for various groups of which an implementation of this would fit perfectly with our mission. If people are interested in trying this in a fully transparent method I am willing to provide our resources and my time to make it happen. Thanks, davidu Seriously - how hard is it to set up such a market? If indeed it can lead to better prediction of violent events, and if it is something that is relatively easy to set up, then why not? Could this be shut down by the Feds? Under what justifications? Fabio Rojas
Re: Senators Denounce Policy Analysis Markets
Could this not be an opportunity? Maybe a private sponsor could set up the market? Fabio On Tue, 29 Jul 2003, Robin Hanson wrote: That sure looks like the likely outcome. We never really got a chance to correct misconceptions about the project. (For example, it was never intended to forecast specific terrorist attacks, but only overall trends.) They didn't want to hear. At 01:10 PM 7/29/2003 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED]: More likely than not they'll say nothing and the story will quietly go away... conveniently relieving people like reporters and senators from the need to admit they spoke out about something they didn't have much, if any, comprehension of. All of the criticism seems based on the betting on events, not on the use of conditional markets for developing policy. Wonder what they'll say when they figure that bit out FYI, our DARPA project (www.policyanalysismarket.com) has just been denounced by two senators: http://wyden.senate.gov/media/2003/07282003_terrormarket.html Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030- 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
Re: Senators Denounce Policy Analysis Markets
On Tue, 29 Jul 2003, Jeffrey Rous wrote: I seem to remember looking at the Iowa Electronic Market right before the 2000 election and noticing that it had Gore winning the winner-take-all and Bush getting a higher percentage of the vote. And I remember thinking that this was just an indication of how close the race really was. Am I remembering this correctly. Yes, that is correct. I remember making the same observation. I think the Iowa markets seem to do better than most pundits. Fabio
California Recall
Ok - let's put game theory to the test: what is the normal form of declaring your candidcay for California governer-game? What's the predicted outcome? And what would Robin Hanson wager on the answer? Fabio
Re: California Recall
On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, fabio guillermo rojas wrote: Ok - let's put game theory to the test: what is the normal form of declaring your candidcay for California governer-game? What's the predicted outcome? And what would Robin Hanson wager on the answer? Fabio It seems that optimal strategy for Democrats is to choose one candidate and pay off the others not to run, and hope the GOP vote is split. The GOP candidates would like to do the same, but at least 3 candidates (Issa, Riordan, Simon) seem certain to run, suggesting that they think have a real chance in a 4 way contest (3 GOP's, 1 Dem). It doesn't seem that Issa stands a chance against a strong Dem (Feinstein, for ex), and his presence just splits the GOP vote. I'd venture that Issa can afford to be a political bad boy. Given that Issa's already started to run, why would any GOP sign up? They would have to fight Issa and steal centrist Dems. Very up hill battle. Fabio
Re: fertility and government
1. Why is fertility higher in dictatorships? Do dictators like bigger populations, and democrats like smaller populations? Does population growth influence choice of government? Or is there a third factor that affects both fertility and form of government? The question should be: what causes dictatorship and do these conditions encourage high fertility? Well, we have a lot of data and research on both questions. Financially stable nations with democratic institutions tend not to succumb to dictatorships, while nations that explicitly reject capitalism tend to evolve into dictatorships. Ok - what causes high fertility? Low wealth, low education and no access to birth control. The nations at risk for dictatorship probably are poor and do not have good mass education. Fabio
Re: Competition vs. Profits in the NBA
Robin said: The conflict you describe is that some people want more of a fair fight, and others put more weight on wanting my team to win. Of course the second group doesn't want to win via too easy or obvious an advantage. They may want the rough appearance of fairness, but in fact want enough unfairness for them to win. Can we model this behavior as resulting from rational agents, or is some irrationality required to make such a story work? It doesn't seem to require any irrationality. Say insisting on an unfair game brings you benefits but has the cost that people may complain. It seems natural to assume that the costs created by complaint will increase as the unfairness of the game increases. If the complaint-unfairness curve crosses the unfairness-advantage curve, then people will be more more fair. Dictators, for example, have pushed the complain-unfairness curve down by ruthlessly hurting dissidents. In democratic societies, the costs imposed by complaints can be high enough to force people back to the crossing point of the curve. Now that you put it this way, I'd say it's a nice econ 101 problem. Fabio
Re: Marketing vs. Economics
The usual response to someone ought to do X is why not you?. Introductory classes must meet a lot of constraints. They must prepare those who will continue in the tools that are actually used at higher levels. And they must give the rest some tools they can actually use to understand some phenomena around them. Well, first, I am not an economist. Nothing much I say will be taken seriuosly by economists (aside from my friends who have to listen!). I do produce models of rule base behavior, but since they aren't published in econ journals, they'll probably have zero impact in economics. That's ok. That's just the nature of academia. But second, rule based modeling can easily be taught to undergraduates. For example, the Schelling model, as I pointed out in another post, could easily be taught and yeilds simple but important results. Yes, some people are having some success in explaining some kinds of behavior with rules, but such papers have hardly taken over the journals. And I'm somewhat at a loss to think of what particular rules I would teach GMU undergraduates to take up half of an Econ 101 class. Of course one could just grab material from current marketing 101 classes. But is learning to market really that important? I brought up marketing to make a slightly different point. I wasn't arguing that econ classes should become marketing classes. I was arguing that people whose profession is to predict economic behavior seem to do perfectly well without utility maximization theory. A lot of economic behavior seems to be well described by rules rather than searches for optimal behaviors. Couldn't this be a sign that we should consider a fundamental shift in the construction of economic theory? Could it be the case that economic behavior is a continuum? Some large classes of behaviors are probably rule based while others are the result of searching to optimal outcomes. I think the most interesting possibility is to think of some situations as combinations of rules based and classical economic actors (my example was voting - politicians= rational, voters = rule based). Or how about stock markets? Professional investors are probably closer to the rational actor than mompop investors. Small time investors seem to go on gut reaction rules, at leas many of the ones I talked to. How would our understanding of stock markets change if we thought that there was always a mix of rational and rule based actors? Fabio Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030- 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
Re: socialism historical?
Political labels are notoriously contextual. The passage of a few years renders many labels unintelligible. However, there is something more interesting to say. Political parties frequently co-op specific policies, which distorts our association of a label with a policy. Example: the two politial parties in the US have played football with balanced budget. Perot also made a big deal about. So what label would you use? Fabio On Tue, 17 Jun 2003, Fred Foldvary wrote: --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: government money, as it predates socialism, probably doesn't rightly fall under the category of socialism. Does the meaning of socialism include a time frame, so that a policy that is socialist after that time is not socialist before that time? What is socialism, what year does it take effect, and why is the time element involved? Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Charity
I remember a discussion with Bryan, where he claimed that the average proportion of income donated to charity is about 1% or 2%. Say somebody makes $30K, that $300/year. I can easily imagine a religious person giving a few bucks a week to church ($2x52= $110) plus maybe some extra during fund raising drives at church and work ($200 total). So people are willing to give about $30 month to charity. Is that low or high? I'd say it's probably ok, most people can't afford to give much anyway, with mortages, student loans, children, etc. Only the wealthy could give thousands and still pay the phone bill. Fabio On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Jason DeBacker wrote: Why don’t more people give more money to charity? If you asked someone if they would rather see $50 used to feed a child for a month or on another month cable TV (or whatever), I can’t imagine someone not saying that the child should be fed. But almost no one gives $50 a month to charity and many give that to watch cable television (or spend it on other “frivolous” purchases). Why does this happen? A few possible reasons: - The history of charitable money getting into the wrong hands has scared people from donating. - There is some kind of market failure (a la the story of the woman being attacked while the whole block watched and no one stopping it or calling the police). - People really don’t care about helping someone else, but are ashamed to admit that. - People just don’t think about donating. Regards, Jason DeBacker
Re: Theory of Perverse Government Tangents (fwd)
Not sure if this made it... fabio While it may appear that the Warnick Theory of Perverse Government Tangents has thus been born full grown, it is nevertheless recognized that improvements or amplifications may be possible. They are welcome. Walt Warnick Sorry, Walt. You've been beaten to the punch: Read Meyer and Rowan's 1977 article Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony in the American Journal of Sociology. The point of their article is that you should think of a lot of bureuacratic behavior as a signal of legitimacy. The behavior may have no obvious benefit and it's done only to satifsy legal regulation, noisy interest groups or public opinion. Since then, they've scaled down their claims (they originally claimed most behavior was a legitimacy signal) but the basic point is well taken, especially for public administration. Fabio
Re: Personal vs. Political Culture: The Other Box
Absolutely speaking, sure. But e.g. the U.S. and U.K. have been *relatively* more sympathetic to these ideas for centuries. Prof. Bryan Caplan I think my email got crunched, but if you are talking relative levels, then some Latin American countries have semi-decent political culture, but atrocious private. For example, take Colombia - I'm no expert, but Colombia was fairly resistant to socialism and nationalization of industry (compared to other Latin American nations), but it suffers a great deal of crime and drug use. Fabio
Re: Theory of Perverse Government Tangents
While it may appear that the Warnick Theory of Perverse Government Tangents has thus been born full grown, it is nevertheless recognized that improvements or amplifications may be possible. They are welcome. Walt Warnick Sorry, Walt. You've been beaten to the punch: Read Meyer and Rowan's 1977 article Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony in the American Journal of Sociology. The point of their article is that you should think of a lot of bureuacratic behavior as a signal of legitimacy. The behavior may have no obvious benefit and it's done only to satifsy legal regulation, noisy interest groups or public opinion. Since then, they've scaled down their claims (they originally claimed most behavior was a legitimacy signal) but the basic point is well taken, especially for public administration. Fabio
Re: Personal vs. Political Culture: The Other Box
Now Pete Boettke asked me if there are any peoples with the opposite combination: bad personal culture, good political culture. The best Prof. Bryan Caplan Note that insistence on free markets, limited gov't, democracy, etc. is a pretty recent phenomena - so one should find few examples of *any* group that has good political culture. Fabio
Re: Lott
How would one estimate the accuracy of self-reports of self-defense? I know in medical research you can assess the validity of self-reported health by doing follow up medical exams or seeing if the respondent dies or becomes seriously ill shortly after the survey. Is self-defense just one of those issues where we'll never have decent data? Fabio On Wed, 5 Feb 2003, William Dickens wrote: Which is highly suspect. It is computed by projecting the fraction of people in a relatively small sample who say they used firearms defensively to the whole population. Anyone who has ever worked with survey data knows that error rates of a couple of percent (at least) on all sorts of questions are common. Both coding errors and reporting errors substantially increase (in percentage terms) the fraction of respondents giving positive responses to questions with very low fractions of positive responses. Think also about how people treat surveys (for example the number of people who say they have been abducted by aliens). I would bet any money that the true fraction of people who use firearms in self-defense (brandishment or otherwise) is a whole heck of a lot lower (an order of magnitude or more) than what is suggested by Kleck's survey. - - Bill Dickens William T. Dickens
Re: Questions about the stagflation episode...
On Mon, 3 Feb 2003, William Dickens wrote: That is not what I meant. Of course there is. Its thermodynamics. However, to an outsider it looks to impose about as much structure on weather modeling as the notion of general equilibrium imposes on macro-modeling - - that is that the devil is in the details, big models can be less informative than the careful eye of a specialist in Thermo, by itself, is not an example of a paradigm for meteorology. A paradigm, in Kuhn's sense, is (a) a theory, (b) empirical observations that are predicted by the theory, (c) the acceptance of the theory by most practitioners in the field, who use the theory to resolve new cases. The empirical results are the blueprint for future research. It seems that thermo is simply a rule for constructing paradigms within meteorology - i.e., any paradigm must not contradict thermo. Kind of like any macro theory must have correct microfoundations. Of course, I can't say if your depiction of meteorology is accurate, but we can ask if macro satisfies (a)-(c). Is there currently a widely accpeted theory whose legitimacy rests on the successful prediction of a specific business cycle? Is that theory the blueprint for most work in macro? Alex says yes, there is a widely accepted theory, and Brookings Bill Dickens says no. But neither person has provided the model achievement - the business cycle or other economic phenomena whose successful prediction by the theory legitimizes is position as a dominant macro-economic theory. Is there any such empirical example? The stagflation episode overturned the old theory, but is there a new theory that uses stagflation as its main example? Some core parts of physics deal with complexity - how about statistical mechanics? Is there a macro counterpart to statistical mechanics? Not sure what you mean by this, but I suspect that is exactly what the stochastic mechanics of the typical general equilibrium model is about. Adressing the idea that complexity undermines attempts at econ's Kuhnian development as a science, I was simply pointing out that some parts of physics deal with complex systems but still have Kuhn style paradigms. Statistical mechanics is one such example: theory behavior gases - a complex system - has dominant theories. The theory of phase transitions might be another example. But you miss my point. I'm arguing that the phenomena physicists study at the core of the discipline are amenable to sufficiently exact theory and exact measurement that you can have decisive paradigm shifts driven by anomalous research results. Economic theory is not as precise so measurement can't provide the sort of strong evidence that one sees in core physics. Fair enough. Measurement definitely would preclude anamoly driven change because adherent of a theory could always claim that measurements do not capture the real story. [clipped a long discussion on recent history of macro] economics. If you mean neo or new-Keynesians then the differences between them and new-classicals (the heirs to 60s monetarism) is minor compared to their differences with Austrians or post-Keynesians. But so what? Post Keynesians and modern Austrians play absolutely no roll William T. Dickens The point of the thread - at least my goal - was to assess Kuhn's model. If it is indeed the case that general equilibria theory is the paradigm for macro, then schools of economics that reject gen equi. would small time players in the field. So gen eq succeeds as a paradigm because Austrians and post-Keynesians are marginal. However, to satisfy Kuhn's definition of paradigm, there has to also be a classic example and future research has to be derived from the example. I don't know macro well enough to judge, but so far no one has given me an example such an empirical prediction. Altough we know stagflation led to the revision of a given research tradition. Fabio
Re: Questions about the stagflation episode...
IIUC, macro was characterized by multiple schools but there was an outstanding critique that the micro picture was flawed or asbent, which served to undermine one popular school. The anomaly didn't serve to usher in a new macro, but unravel some old science, which still has adherents in a modified version. The new macro is still fragmented and there is no consensus yet. Sounds like an example of science as muddling through. Or in Kuhn's terminology, macro is pre-science - a stage where there is no central idea providing coherence for macro. Fabio On Sat, 1 Feb 2003, William Dickens wrote: None of the above. Macro was already fragmented and remained fragmented after the 70s. Hard core monetarism probably did pick-up some adherents due to the events of the 70s, but the internal dynamic of the profession - - the relentless march of the rational actor model into all aspects of the work of economists - - was probably only speeded by these events. What stagflation did was convince people of the correctness of the Friedman/Lucas critique. This set nearly everyone off on a much more determined search for micro foundations for macro theory. I'll go out on a limb and say we still haven't gotten there. Thus Keynesian theory is still taught to undergraduates and it is what is behind most commercial forecasting models (though they may have some new-classical tweaks here and there). This is why I don't think this was a paradigm shift in the sense of Kuhn because there was no alternative paradigm to take the place of the Keynesian model. Bill Dickens [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/01/03 02:06PM What would be the most accurare description of the economic profession's response to stagflation: 1) Everybody dropped Keynesianism and adopted a new model (monetarism?). 2) Macroeconomics broke up into competing schools, with different concepts and theories. 3) Keynesians kept going, but new economists adopted one or more models. Fabio
Re: Questions about the stagflation episode...
Well maybe macro *is* in a scientific state, from your description. Sticking to Kuhn's terminology, normal scientific activity occurs when scientists use existing models to solve outstanding issues. From one perspective, maco is organized around general equilibria, and the fighting is over the details of money, capital and labor markets, as you describe. The situation is similar in many branches of physics - people often accept very broad ideas (Newton's mechanics) and then squabble over details, which may seem huge to insiders, but small to outsiders. Also: I've never bought the whole social science is too complex argument for why economics and physical science differ. A lot of the life and physical sciences deal with complex systems - ever study turbulence theory? It's prettty friggin' hard and complex. Or ecology - lot's of interrelated parts. But we still consider them sciences. Fabio in macro-economics. Everybody in main stream economic thinking about macro-problems has a general equilibrium ! model with capital markets, labor markets, and money markets in mind. The specifics of how some of those markets should be represented and what the rationale is for the representations used is the main items for debate. - - Bill Dickens
Re: Questions about the stagflation episode...
On Sun, 2 Feb 2003, William Dickens wrote: don't fit easily into Kuhn's categories. We're in the same situation as meteorology (only worse because our subjects have minds of their own). We know that weather systems are chaotic and therefore unpredictable beyond very limited time frames. Same for economics. I'm actually not a Kuhnian on these issues, but I am trying to see how far Kuhn's theory goes in accurately describing economic research. Is it really true that there aren't reigning paradigms in meteorology? I should note that experimental econ seems to be developing in a very Kuhnian fashion. the hallmark of modern physics. Sure there are physical problems where chaos and complexity cause the same sorts of problems that economists have dealing with the economy, but they aren't at the core of the discipline the way they are in economics. Thus I think that a lot of Some core parts of physics deal with complexity - how about statistical mechanics? Is there a macro counterpart to statistical mechanics? Finally, You and Alex both seem to want to classify the state of modern macro as normal science. Personally, I think that the differences between the different approaches within macro are much more profound than either of you apparently do. Although everybody Is the difference between monetarists and post-Keynesians smaller than between post-Keynseians and Austrians? Austrians don't even accept equilibira theory as a starting point of economic analysis. Fabio
Economic anamolies and Kuhn
I'm teaching a course on the sociology of science and we read Kuhn's structure of scientific revolutions. FYI, Kuhn says that science is characterized by paradigms - most science works from basic assumptions justified by model achievements. Scientific change occurs when anamolies - observations contradicting theory - undermine the paradigm and new ideas are adopted. Can someone provide me an example of an anamoly from the recent history of economics that led to a fundamental change in economic theory? Fabio
European Soveriegnty
Is there an economic explanation of why Europeans seem to want to give up soveriegnty to the EU or the UN? Fabio
Re: Grade inflation - an easy explanation?
Also consider the possibility that many departments get budgets based on enrollments - and tough grades scare students away! Fabio On Tue, 14 Jan 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In the Rhetoric Department at Iowa instructors who tried to actually teach writing and therefore generated many student complaints were offered out of their contracts--that is, forced out--because the chair and assistant chair didn't want to deal with student complaints. In a message dated 1/14/03 2:17:30 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Has anybody tested the hypothesis that professors assign easy grades because it sucks up too much time? Consider the costs of tough grading - spending more time correcting papers, extra time spent arguing grades with students and the extra effort it takes to design challenging tests and assignments. Fabio
Grade inflation - an easy explanation?
Has anybody tested the hypothesis that professors assign easy grades because it sucks up too much time? Consider the costs of tough grading - spending more time correcting papers, extra time spent arguing grades with students and the extra effort it takes to design challenging tests and assignments. Fabio
Re: Babynomics
Question: At what can humans engage in economic behavior? Are there studies showing when children learn to trade ? Fabio Humans start to engage in economic behavior as soon as they are born. Trade is not a necessary characteristic of economic behavior. The issue is rather whether infants are consciously choosing their actions. It seems to me that the genetic basis for behavior is the same in an infant as in an adult. Fred Foldvary I think this is a vacuous answer. By that logic, animals are economic actors - animals seem to choose their actions. Perhaps, then, my original question was vague. The question I have is: when do humans start to engage in *sophisticated* economic behaviors not found in animals? For example, at what age are children able to understand the concept of interest? At what age do children understand that exchange can make you better off? Fabio
Re: Babynomics
Oh, come on!! Animals are economic actors only in the most general sense. Animals are economic actors. as to: For example, at what age are children able to understand the concept of interest?- any baby knows that something is better now then tommorrow. That's not the same as interest. Interest is the price one pays for having it now rather than later. When are people able to udnerstand that concept? At what age do children understand that exchange can make you better off?- if you read the popular media, it seems they never do. Jason Well, I was hoping for some better answers. Many somebody knew of psychological research showing when children are able to make tradeoffs and make other economic decisions. Fabio
Re: Babynomics
This is a great page! It's exactly what I was lookign for. Fabio On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, john hull wrote: Fabio- You may profit from visiting the page of an old prof. of mine at Oregon, http://harbaugh.uoregon.edu/index.htm , specifically, his Nanoeconomics? Pedianomics? The Economic Behavior of Children Homepage, http://nanoeconomics.org/ . I'm not sure what help it will be, but it's the best I can do. Best regards, jsh __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Babynomics
Question: At what can humans engage in economic behavior? Are there studies showing when children learn to trade ? Fabio
Re: University overhead
How sticky is the price for university overhead? Fabio On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Rodney F Weiher wrote: As a purchaser of university research, we often bargain with the PI on overhead, who in turn must bargain with their administration. Rodney Weiher fabio guillermo rojas wrote: Do universities compete over the overhead they charge? For example, when wooing senior faculty, is it ever the case that universities offer lower overhead for big projects? Fabio for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Wed, 4 Dec 2002 12:32:46 -0600 (CST) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by midway.uchicago.edu (8.12.5/8.12.5) id gB4GJvCl007013 for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Wed, 4 Dec 2002 10:19:57 -0600 (CST) Received: from julesburg.uits.indiana.edu (julesburg.uits.indiana.edu [129.79.1.75]) by midway.uchicago.edu (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id gB4GJu5C006992 for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Wed, 4 Dec 2002 10:19:57 -0600 (CST) Received: from logchain.uits.indiana.edu (logchain.uits.indiana.edu [129.79.1.77]) by julesburg.uits.indiana.edu (8.12.1/8.12.1/IUPO) with ESMTP id gB4GJro7014681 for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Wed, 4 Dec 2002 11:19:53 -0500 (EST) Received: from indiana.edu (jimerso.soc.indiana.edu [129.79.103.5]) by logchain.uits.indiana.edu (8.12.1/8.12.1/IUPO) with ESMTP id gB4GJtZq015788 for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Wed, 4 Dec 2002 11:19:55 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 11:19:56 -0500 X-PH: V4.4 (uchicago), $Revision: 1.60 $@midway From: Brian Steensland [EMAIL PROTECTED] User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Indiana Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Status: O X-Status: Hi Fabio-- If you still have questions about the Indiana department or Bloomington, I'll be around all afternoon today if it would still be helpful for you to talk to people here. Regards, Brian
Re: Self-assesment vs. Rationality
I presume you mean irrationaly optimistic self-assesment? I'd say quite a lot. But then comes the hard question: what policy implications follow from this conclusion? Yes, irrat self-assesment is a good word for it. Robin, I know you are a fan of taxing people for not using their abilities. How would you tax people here to make them more efficiently invest or make them have more rational self-assesments? A key free market principle is that investors better know how to spend money than the gov't. Should we be in the business of judging who is irrational? Fabio
Re: Economists job market/search costs
Having publications before you go on the market can make a very big difference. At least 10 years ago very few people did and having - - Bill Dickens An article in the Journal of Human Resources about 10 years ago showed that having 1 article had a big effect on landing a job, 2 articles a little more, and then you get diminishing returns. The JHR articled did quality of the journal counts a lot, too. The bigger the better. I'm saddened to hear that the norm of 4 years and yer out is breaking down. Engineering schools still maintain it to no harm. What has happened in the economics profession? Fabio
Theory of Teams
Occasionally, someone mentions the theory of teams. Can someone please tell me what the economic theory of teams is? Fabio
RE: Journal response times
friend had a paper go three rounds at AER and that took 3 years. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of bad papers get rejected quickly and that would bring down the average turn around time a lot. That is indeed the case. Journals get many papers of low quality, and it's easy to reject the bad ones out of hand. And remember, most papers could be improved, and will go through a round of revision. But that is irrelevant if you are submitting a good paper that is eventually going to be published. Then you care about the time to publish and its disgraceful at nearly all economics journals. - - Bill Dickens William T. Dickens It's not irrelevant at all, and it's not prima facia disgraceful, at least on the part of journals. First, it's not irrelevant because its a signal that your paper is being taken seriously, rather than a curt this is lame. After having seen some lame papers in my day, this happens more than you might think. Second, don't blame journals - blame your colleagues. It is simply impossible to get decent reviews on papers. Take a non-hypothetical example - my recent article in Rationality and Society. This paper is an agent based simulation of an epidemic where agents engage in a very simple signallying game. Now how many of my colleagues could read that paper? Among sociologists, relatively few. Add into the mix that some might lazy, on sabbatical, have family issues, etc. Then it becomes very hard to get reviewers. That happened when I first submitted it to a health journal - nobody they knew was willing to read a technical model. I know one person whose paper was sent to *ten* reviewers. There were promises that the reviews would come in, but they never did. But what can the journal do? I know among sociology journals and some others, turn around times have been cut by doing the following: reject papers if they don't survive the first RR; reject papers based on a single bad review; accept papers one only two decent reviews if they author has a good track record. I know economics journals have setup incentives, but in general it doesn't seem to have worked if the members of this list are to be believed. So let me conclude by observing that the Journal of Artificial Societies and Simulations is the fastest reputable social science journal I know. It's on line, has a cadre of dedicated reviewers and a very smart editor - so you think papers whiz through the review process. Some papers do appear in print in a month or two, but most take about 6 mo-year to see publication. Why? Simple, humans are slow and the editors wants quality. It simply takes time to have people read through a paper and then have the author thoughtfully respond. While there is a lot of nutty stuff in academia, journals do the best they can given the constraints. If you want decent peer review and not have full-time paid reviewers, this is the best you can get. The only thing you can do to imporve the system is to review the papers you get, and encourage your colleagues to do the same. Fabio
RE: Journal response times
The data are average times (measured in months) between initial submission and acceptance at various economics journals in the year 1999. It seems that the long times quoted in this article are something different than what fabio was talking about. I have not read the article but the above Hmmm... seems like the data is censored. Need to sample rejected papers too. Ok, then. I feel better about my original statement. Fabio
Journal response times
Anyone have any idea why the norm in economics allows referees so much time to do a report? Why its so different from other fields? Is this one of those soft vs. hard field things? Its my impression that the physical science journals all want fast turn around on their referee reports. Anybody know what its like with Anthropology, Sociology, or Political Science? I'd say economics has a pretty decent turn around time. I currently work at the American Journal of Sociology and we usually get papers back to authors in less than 90 days, often 60 days. My experience is that top tier journals do better than second or third tier because they often have prestige and staff, which encourage quick reviewer response. Most sociology journals do much worse than AJS. As far as discipline goes, economics and political science is best because their is consensus on what constitutes decent research and you don't have to master every detail of a paper to assess its quality. The worst is mathematics because you really have to understand every symbol in every equation. Humanities are also bad - you don't have to understand every word, but humanities professors are very unresponsive. On another list-serv, I saw one math professor complain that a 5 page research note had spent *years* at one journal. You can get similar complaints from humanities professors. In the middle are engineering, sociolgy, education and other fields. Most journals get stuff back from 3 months to a year and these fields are in-between fast fields like economics and slow pokes like math. Fabio
Re: Traffic School and Vehicle Insurance
It seems to me, that traffic school makes everybody out to be a greater risk than their driving record indicates. If risk is a primary factor in an insurance company's rate determination, doesn't that mean that traffic school makes everybody's rates higher than they otherwise would Be? Michael Giesbrecht Maybe the Median Voter is a bad driver and this is a wealth transfer from good drivers to bad drivers. Fabio
Re: Why does tenure exist?
One possible explanation for tenure is that university departments are to a large degree worker managed firms. One problem with a worker David Friedman David's explanations make sense, but I'm empirically skeptical on two grounds: (1) Why is it that only educational worker managed firms have tenure? I could be wrong, but why don't kibbutzes have tenure? or Berkeley's bohemian co-ops? (2) I am beginning to doubt that worker managed firm describes the university. I'm not faculty (yet!) but from what I understand, the university administration has great power in the university. If they want, administrators can change standards for tenure and cut budgets and they control the physical plant, and other stuff. The worker managed lable applies just to the department. There is no reason the administration has to allow tenure to exist. Fabio
Re: Why does tenure exist?
raise. Government subsidies and private charity give universities the cushion they need to avoid being put out of competition by performance-oriented for-profits. Prof. Bryan Caplan While I share Bryan's skepticism, I don't buy his argument because universities/schools are the only non-government organizations that have tenure. Does the Ford Foundation or the YMCA have tenure? Or how about churhes? Do priests or rabbi's have a version of tenure? There may be de factor tenur, because no one wants to rock the boat, but these institutions have not evolved legal rights pertaining to tenure. Fabio
Why does tenure exist?
Seriously, why does tenure exist at all? I know the motivations for tenure, but why isn't it competed away somehow? I would like to know what economic process ensures its continued existence. Fabio
Re: Feral Children
Diego! Diego! The definitive source on outlandish, but possibly true facts is the weekly Straight Dope Column in the Chicago Reader, written by Cecil Adams. To sum up Cecil's column, yes, there a few authenticated cases of feral children, but most researchers doubt that any of these were raised by animals, a common misconception. Feral children remain stunted most of their lives, unable to acquire a vocabulary of more than fifty words. See the link below. Fabio Check out: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_046.html On Fri, 6 Sep 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Maybe the topic of feral children is a bit of target from the armchair list, but I am curious to see if someone could share their knowedge about this. Do the stories about feral children -lost or abandoned children raised in extreme social isolation, either surviving in the wild through their own efforts or 'adopted' by animals- have any truth behind them or are they just old wives tales? I guess the question should be refined: how much truth is there behind particularly famous stories of feral children (Amala Kamala, Victor the wild boy of Aveyron, Wild Peter, Kaspar Hauser, John Ssabunnya, the Hessian wolf-boy, etc.)? Most importantly, what are the conclusions and findings -assuming there is a general consensus- about them? What are the consequences of extreme social isolation in children regarding their abilities to develope complex forms of reasoning and abstract thinking? Is there a critical period for language acquisition? Diego
Re: Median Voter and Sampling
But I do have a naive question: Is there a median voter for each issue, so that if there n issues, there can be up to n median voters? Or, is there only one median voter who satisfies the vector median as I described above? Can such a person be proven to exist, sort of like a voter version of the Ham Sandwich Theorem? jsh Well, sure. It's just the proof of the regular MVT, but done with multiple integrals. F Ro
Re: Median Voter and Sampling
Another MVT deviation: Marijuana decriminalization Fabio
Re: Nations as Corporations
Imagine that a nation like the US were run like a corporation. To live How would you enforce shareholder rights and monitor managers? For corporations inside nations, one could appeal to the state for law enforcement or start a lawsuit. What recourse do shareholders have in such a worlds? Fabio
Re: charlatanism
Does anyone think, at least in the excerpts we read, that the article attacked libertarian or libertarian-leaning economics as much as it attacked economics generally? David Levenstam It's typical to say that bad science is X, and my political opponents just happen to do X. IMO, it is usually easier to attack an economic theory in this roundabout way than just to confront the idea head on because you really don't have to understand what's going on. Example from my professional life: As is probably obvious, I'm not an economist - I'm a sociologist who takes economics very seriously and I sometimes use economic tools in my research. So I'm always in a position of explaining economic ideas to non-economists and I frequently find that people tend to avoid economic issues. For example, when I explain human capital theory to people, they seem horrified and obsess over whether their sacred cow - education - can be thought of as something as dirty as an investment. Instead of asking whether the idea is internally coherent and has empirical support, they go nuts over just the wording of the theory. Similarly, I find that these articles that trash economics because it is psuedoscientific do the same - they obsess over the wording (the use of math) rather than think real hard about the intuitions behind things. Of course, there is always bad research hiding behind equations - but the equations just express an idea - that can be debated - in a coherent way. Fabio
Re: charlatanism
The real charlatans in academia are the many frauds who build their whole careers by getting their names put on coauthored papers to which they have not legitimately contributed. That's a sort of embezzlement; but `charlatan' implies that the *content* of the papers is fraudulent. Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/ It is a sort of charlatanry about the content of your career - you sort of imply you've done a bunch of original stuff by associating yourself with the successful. Fabio
Re: Nations as Corporations
Are state-enforced lawsuits really what keeps large multinational corporations honest now? If not, then the concept here is to use mechanisms similar to whatever large corporations now use. Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hanson.gmu.edu Multinationals come in different flavors. Those based in Western nations and that have assets that can be seized after litigation are probably kept in line by fear of lawsuits and jail terms. I have no idea how share holders keep faith in firms based in dodgy Third World nations. Probably some kind of trust, where paying out dividends and respecting voting rights signals that future investors will be treated well. But how often does this occur? Are these multinationals not based in 3rd world not trying to avoid shareholder rights? Fabio
Re: Why Compact Cars Identical?
That makes sense for the cars all made by the same company, or which share subcontractors. But Toyota, Honda, Subaru, and Ford all make cars with virtually the same shape and layout. Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hanson.gmu.edu Among management theory/organizational sociology types it's commonly believed that firms just copy each other once someone has innovated a solution to a problem (making cheap cars for the masses). It has to do with management fads. Why bother to come up with a totally different approach to small cheap cars when you can copy the competition and compete on labor costs and marketing, which are easier than coming up with new ideas? Or to rephrase in economic terms, risk averse managers prefer copying a proven strategy (low risk/low payoff) than engaging in RD (high payoff/high risk). Fabio
Re: Why Compact Cars Identical?
Or to rephrase in economic terms, risk averse managers prefer copying a proven strategy (low risk/low payoff) than engaging in RD (high payoff/high risk). reduce drag coefficients to increase fuel economy. The summer I sold cars (1997 at a Pontiac-Mazda-Jeep-Eagle dealer) one of the young salesman pointed out that Mazda still used the aero styling, while everyone else had abandoned it, giving the Mazadas a bit of an out-of-date look. David Let me add that some have speculated that industries are chasing moving targets. Fads get set in motion, and firms play catch up until the next fad comes along. Easier than being original and persuading customers about your product. Fabio
Re: taxi transitional gains trap
Is there really a transitional gains trap? If a majority of NYers seriously wanted free entry in cabs, wouldn't it happen regardless of the opinions of cab companies? Prof. Bryan Caplan Uh-oh. The Median Voter Theorem rears its ugly head again. Couldn't we just say that taxi cab owners are a small well organized group with huge incentives for the status quo, while NYers are a large group with weak preferences? Ie, why can't just invoke Mancur Olson here? Fabio
Re: cultural cues and queues
Alternative hypothesis: people will accept money only if other people are accepting money. Fred - next weekend, I want you recruit a person who will get in line before you. When you arrive, announce that you will give $20 to somebody who will let you cut in line. That planted person will then accept the offer. Then have your fake person make the same offer. I bet somebody will take the money. Fabio
Re: Public Opinion On Spending
In other words, all of the main items in the budget are popular and indeed if anything the public wants them to be larger. (Presumably views Question: could public opinion be endogenous? Ie, maybe there might be some status quo bias? Would people before the New Deal or the Great Society have approved of specific programs before they existed? Isn't it folk wisdom that many gov't programs start with promises they'll stay small (income tax, social security, medicaid) but once they exist, they become popular? Fabio
Re: New article on cooperation the brain
When I play the prisoner's dilemma in class, I see very little cooperation. I know one researcher who has repeated a trust game (not prisoner's dilemma) with many classes of students and groups of business men. He finds that students are remarkably untrustworthy and businessmen tend to give their trust quite frequently. He thinks that students are socially isolated from each other and have little experience in social worlds were trust is common, unlike business men. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a similar difference when you P.D. Can anybody confirm or reject this claim about students? Fabio
Re: New article on cooperation the brain
The part about students being socially isolated from each other and lacking social experienceis interesting. Are there any studies that might confirm this? I teach at a community college, so the students probabl mix with each other less than they do at other colleges. If I recall correctly, I did obsverve more cooperation when I played this game at a small liberal arts college that I used to teach at. Cyril Morong Interesting. I should note that isolated doesn't mean literally isolated (college students do live in dorms!) but that acheivement in college is mainly through individual effort, while sucess in business really is a team effort. Fabio
RE: Republican Reversal
In the real world we have almost 600 in Congress, dealing with innumerable matters more or less simultaneously. One of the things each CongressCritter does is to decide what to do not about, say, farm subsidies generally, but about SB1234, sponsored by Sen. This and Sen. That, which goes through specific committees with specific members, at specific times, during which times specific other things are happening, and other things are reasonably foreseeable (to happen or to avoid). Let me add a very non-economic note to this discussion. The economic approach to studying policy outcomes is essentially some combination of median voter theorem and public choice - ie, how much can the politician screw the voter before getting fired? Some political scientists have taken the approach outlined the above post. They understand policy outcomes as the result of institutions, networks of politicians,lobbyists and gov't bureaucrats and exogenous events (Ie, the terrorist attacks, Enron) that frame policy. The focus here is on the stuff that happens between the voter and the politicians. I don't think these approaches are really in conflict but what they do is capture different parts of the political procss. The median voter thing seems to capture the broad outlines of politics. America won't turn into Sweden just cause Tom Hayden read Robert's Rules of Order one day. Public opinion and honest elections set the broad paramters for what politicians can accomplish. OTOH, the gov't does so much stuff that politicians have to depend on committees, lobbiests (sp?) and gov't agencies to get anything passed. How can a semi-comprehensible law on uranium mining or Alaskan fishing rights be passed without consulting a million committess, the GAO or affeced parties? Furhtermore, all sort of random events may abruptly change how people percieve a law and add to this mix ths interactions between politicans and voters. Remember, you can do anything you want - if you can convince the median voter it was ok! If you buy this second story, then it's quite easy to see how individual policies may deviate greatly from the median voter. Fabio
Autism, brain damage and cooperation
In any case, all of the deficiencies in children's brains you point out more or less sound like extensions of their low absolute IQ. Not really. One listed deficiency is memory. That might be correlated with IQ, but it's certainly not the same as IQ. Analogy: a computer with a small storage capacity might have sophisticated software (analogy with low memory/high IQ). Real world example: Autistic children. Their behavior is described as misbehavior because they simply can't learn how to interact with adults. However, they can perform very complex tasks such as math problems and some autistic people have been able to score well on IQ tests. Abother real world example: In the book Descarte's Error, a well adjusted rail road worker in the 19th century is injured on the job. He recieves a severe trauma to the head which results in localized brain damage. According to the author, the part of the brain which was damaged many scientists believe is responsible for producing emotions, which may conflict with detached rationalist thinking. Once the railroad worker recovered from his injury, he abandoned his job, started to consort with criminals and lived the rest of his life as a con-artist. As far as people could tell, he retained his cognitive abilities but his personality completely changed. My conclusion from such facts is that the ability to conduct normal social interactions is a combination of learning, IQ, percpetion, memory and other mental abilities. You really can't bundle them all together. Child misbehavior is not reducible to IQ, but might be a result of one or more of a deficiency in one or more of these mental abilities. A simple economic model really seems to leave a lot out. Fabio
Re: Autism, brain damage and cooperation
Come on, Fab - pointing out examples of brain differences explaining behavioral differences is hardly convincing evidence that brain differences are the right explanation in this case. My point is that behavior is more than cost-benefit calculations with IQ as an intervening variable. My purpose in citing this kind of evidence is that behavior depends on cognitive faculties which are dependent on well developed parts of the brain. Damasio's book shows some evidence that brain differences *might* lead to behavioral differences. I'm not an anatomist, but I wouldn't be surprised if children's brains simply didn't have all the parts developed for correctly learning social behavior. Yes, there are cognitive abilities with low g-loading, and memory is one. But now that I think about it, I shouldn't have let you get away with citing memory differences in the first place. Children in fact seem to have much *better* memorization ability than adults in numerous respects. Prof. Bryan Caplan It's well documented that long term memory is nil for children less than five years of age (doctors call it pediatric amnesia) and is very spotty until about 12. Maybe children can remember strings of numbers well in labs, but they can't remember things from a year or two ago terribly well. And it's this long term learning that's needed for socialization. Social behavior draws from a large pool of past experience, not the short term memory tested in laboratories. (Do a real world test: ask a 7 year old about how they misbehaved two years ago. If you get anything remotely accurate, I'll buy you lunch.) Also, while were at it, I think you overinterpret the G-loading thing. A G-loading is essentially a factor analysis of responses to a standardized test. Statistically, you estimate a linear model. G - response to Question 1 G - ... Question 2, etc. G is often called a latent factor that is *unmeasured*. See any non-economics statistics book (economists rarely use this and it's not in Golderger, Amimiya or Greene). Then you can test alternative models like G1 - Q1, Q2, Q4 G2 - Q3, Q5, etc. and do model comparisons. IIUC, the psychometric literature has found that the first model has a really good fit while other models have poorer fits for tests of abstract thinking. What is this G? It's a *construct* from the test, not a direct measurement of anything. Which means to assert one single process called IQ is really strecthing it. What you can safely say is that G is the dimension along which test responses vary. This dimension can be the consequence of a bunch of other things and you can collect data to test hypotheses about these more complex models: F1, F2 -- G -- Q1, Q2, Q3. My whole point is that obsessing over G might lead one to ignore the stuff that leads to G. In a lot of these IQ/behavior debates people seems to take extreme positions that IQ is this all powerful explanatory device, or that it is meaningless when it's neither. I really think that some people are more intelligent than others and that this matters alot, but explaining everything in terms of G seems a bit dicey to me. Fabio
Why do people pick stocks?
If it is common knowledge that picking stocks is no better than using an index, then why is stock picking so popular? Ie, why do people accept lower returns just for the privilige of picking the stocks themselves? Fabio
Re: double vs. single entry
Double entry means that you have one column for money going out of an account and one column for money going into an account. Thus, it very easy to keep track of cash inflow and outflow (just add up the columns). With single entry, there is more error because you mistakenly count a debit as a credit. The advantage is huge when you have to do things by hand. It also helps you track errors more quickly. Fabio On Thu, 27 Jun 2002, Bryan Caplan wrote: What exactly is the advantage of double-entry accounting over single-entry accounting? -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand it. Leo Tolstoy, *The Cossacks*
Re: double vs. single entry
What's wrong with negative numbers?! Prof. Bryan Caplan Bryan - it's not mathematical. It's book keeping. Keeping the two columns separate is simply easier for finding mistakes. With spreadsheets its easy, but if its teh 13th century and all is done by hand, then it makes a big difference. F
Re: double vs. single entry
On Thu, 27 Jun 2002, William Dickens wrote: Does anyone answering here know any accounting or are people just guessing? Just enter double entry accounting into google and you can easily find some answers. It hard for us modern people to understand, but simply accounting techniques can make a world of difference of semi-literate people like medieval Europeans. Bryan asked about negative numbers, and as any historian can tell you, it took a long time for negative numbers to become widespread. Fabio
Re: Republican Reversal
These are all good comments on the Republican reversal. Thus, I take it that the list agrees that democracy works pretty well in reflecting the wishes of the voters. Alex I'd say democracy reflects general trend in voter opinion pretty well, although some policies may be way out of whack. For example, who would argue that either Bush or Gore is very far from the median voter (except on abortion)? Or that conservative states like Idaho tend to have more conservative policies? Fabio
Re: Not such a fantastically entertaining paper
Let me also add that the basic assumption of Frey's article is also wrong - the assumption that editors slavishly follow referee's. My take is that it's editors choose referees, so the editor's really do choose the articles because they choose referees and indirectly choose the outcomes. Fabio
Re: In Praise of Pay Toilets
Plausible, but then the question is: *why* do people have a disutility of paying for toilets? Does this fit into any pattern of the sorts of things people have a disutility of paying for? As noted earlier, people did pay for toilets before and it is common in Europe. So it seems we are trying to pay for a rather specific fact, not a general disutility for paying for toilets. Let me also add a peice of anecdotal evidence that retailers offer free toilets to attact customers: A recent NPR show interviewed Hong Kong residents who said they would congregate in McDonald's in the 1960's becuase it was the only place open in the evening that was public, you could hang out and use the facilities. Eventually many such hang outs popped up all over Hong Kong. Fabio
What is a market?
Imagine that an alien arrives on planet earth and asks you what is a market? What kind of economic system would count as a market? I know this can be a sticky question, but how would you describe the economy of Russia or China, and why doesn't it count as a market? Is it just the lack of the state, or the presence of a state supported system of law, or would the economy of a place like Sweden count? Fabio
Re: nafta
I recently visited a web page by a political scientist that seemed to suggest that NAFTA was a failure. I'd -jsh Could you summarize the evidence he/she presents? Fabio
Re: Economists' views
Why don't you email Bryan Caplan, this list serve's moderator and founder? He's published stuff on exactly these issues. Fabio Rojas On Sat, 20 Apr 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is there a website that might have data on the opinions of economists on general questions like the role of government, minimum wages, macropolicy, etc? Cyril Morong
Re: Grade Inflation
The effect of this is to draw students away from math, science and economics and towards the softer social sciences. Similarly, within departments students are drawn away from harder graders and towards softer graders. Budgets go where students go! Thus grade inflation causes a *misallocation of resources* (measured in student time or in budgets.) Alex Alex, were you reading the New York Times this morning? Seriously, how much misallocation is occuring? Why is better to have more math and physics majors, and less English majors? Maybe this is in some sense optimal. Why should people who can't do math clog up math classes? English professors are cheaper and more numerous, so maybe lax grading is a way of allowing people to get the degree while not burdening the big money generators of the university. Fabio
Re: PhD Gluts
2) To attract good thinkers to become historians, schools must keep the wage high enough to compete with other disciplines and occupations that require intelligence. Therefore, I think this is a big part of it. Compeitition to get into the best humanities programs is as fierce as law school. It's common for humanities Ph.D.'s from good places to jump to law school if academia doesn't work out. Consider the following fact. There are some nations where many faculty are paid badly, where they could be paid better. In Latin America, there are entire departments and universities that are treated the way we treat adjuncts in American. Consequently, they don't attract the best, and are considered frequently to be not very good institutions. Fabio John-Charles Bradbury, Ph.D.
Re: economic history question
Most observers have always been very surprised that there never was a big demand for socialism in the United States - even at the height of the depression. The New Deal was very much driven by the Executive branch not by Congress - thus I think things could have been quite different had we not had FDR. Alex I don't share that interpretation. I think the American party system was able to absorb and ameliorate the demand for socialism. My take is that the American labor movement was quite like the European socialist movement, and was quite prominent (remember Eugene V. Debs?). But the big parties were able to produce concessions - for ex, TR's trust busting or FDR's New Deal. Fabio
RE: Ph.D. proliferation
orientation. Thus, as we become wealthier as a society, we are more able to support children who pursue such uselss topics at the graduate level. Why, this could mean that the wealthy feel some sort of urge to preserve civilization! Michael You are a very deluded person if you think the average English Ph.D. is in a rush to preserve civilization. I'm persuaded that half of them are dedicated opponents of standard written English. Fabio
Panic Room and Beautiful Mind
Talking about game theory movies - does anyone remember if the game depicted in Beuatiful Mind accurately capture the Nash eq? Fabio David Fincher's new movie *Panic Room* may be the finest artistic expression of game theory around. Beautiful illustrations of commitment problems, subgame perfection, focal points, backwards induction... And its pure entertainment. Prof. Bryan Caplan
MBA's for senior exec's
Why do older executives desire MBA's or B-school Ph.D.'s? They don't need to signal brains because they have a track record, and they won't learn much useful stuff. It can't terribly useful credential when you are in mid or late career. Any takes? or is this just consumption on the part of execs? Fabio
Re: Campaign finance changes
Hypothesis: John McCain. Campaing reform has been a favorite to talk about but not to pass for many years. I think that when you had a charismatic cadidate adopt an issue, it can really change things. I bet a lot of congressmen saw little John McCains in their night mares if they opposed campign reform one more time. Fabio On Sun, 3 Mar 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Armchairs, What can legislators possibly aim at when changing campaign finance laws? What determined the 70s wave of campaign finance reforms... what changed in the meantime, and why the issue regained interest again? I know that contributors intentions are also a bit puzzling, but how can one explain the rationality of legislators limiting their own funding abilities? -ja
Re: Economics of rank vs. Economics of the most money
Maybe the real puzzle is under what conditions do people maximize rank or total stuff. F It doesn't have to be complicated, but it does have to be specific. A business trying to maximize market share is pretty specific, though with multiple product lines and sets of consumers there remains the question of how to weigh these different market shares. An employer wanting only to minimize the wages of workers of some race is also specific, though we have to distinguish that from them wanting to minimize the consumption of those workers, to minimize the regard in which those workers are held by associates, or to maximize their mating with potential partners who these workers might compete for. Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hanson.gmu.edu Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030- 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
Economics of rank vs. Economics of the most money
This week's Economist magazine reported an experiment where subjects could pay to decrease the income of other subjects in the experiment, which they did with some frequency, although it didn't increase their income from the experiment. The article's author suggest that this was evidence for people's desire to put others down, even when they incur the costs of doing so. Question: How would economic theory change if we assumed that people would are trying to maximize their relative rank in a group, or had a taste for decreasing other's utility? Fabio
Re: privatize parking spaces - market failure?
I understand that some toll roads charge more during rush hour. It's not as sensitive a mechanism as Fred suggested, but it's not bad. Fabio I was looking for, but such a system would be hard to implement. Can you think of an existing analogous system in a similar market? Would there be a bound to the charge per time? The parking spaces would be more attractive if they offered some sort of guarantee. Gustavo
Re: Decision Markets
be informative for decisions. Anyone want to give odds that I'll be able to keep the term meaning what I want it to mean? :-) According to Stigler (the statistician, not the economist) almost every named scientific term is in error. So I'd say the odds are huge that your name will be incorrectly attached to something, and somebody else will get the credit for what you invented. Fabio
Re: drink prices
Actually, I've dealt with this situation and it's quite different than the drink at a bar. When you hire a (decent) carpenter, they will tell you what additional labor cost, should it be required. A reputable contractor will have this written out before hand, and you will have signed an agreement saying you know extra work might be reuqired @ $X per hour. Contracts are used to control uncertainty. However, when you order a drink/make a hotel call, there is often no menu, or its hidden. People seem to operate with a price range in mind that is acceptable to them. Fabio There are also many situations where the price can change, and alter prior price agreements. Suppose you hire a carpenter to fix a stairway. He quotes you a price. But halfway thru the job, the carpenter discovers rotten pieces that were not previously known, that have to be replaced, and the price increases. You have already contracted and paid some of the expenses; most folks will just go along with reasonable price changes. So often, in such cases, we really don't know the final price. Fred Foldvary
Re: drink prices
Are you sure this is what happened? I'd guess that the woman expected a range of price, and was shocked when when she found out the drink was $13. (1) Where else do people buy things without knowing the price first? (I've been thinking and have been unable to come up with any examples.) People are drunk and/or trying to have a good time. I think it's an example of people with very short time horizons caused by drunkeness or distracted by other events (televised sports, pool, flirting, music, etc) If you wanted a biological explanation, I'd guess bars are places where people's adrenaline goes up, they get excited and lose their patience. (2) Why does this happen in bars? - Joel
Spam: Legal, economic or technical problem?
When faxes were invented, people got pissed off when their valuable fax line was used by unsolicited advertisements. Thus, in many places fax spam is now a legal offense punishable by a large fine for each unwanted faxed message. Ie, the conflict was resolvd simply by having the practice banned, rather than some economic mechanism. What about e-mail spam? The technology seems to prohibit an effective ban on spam, yet neither an economic nor legal solution seems available. Any thoughts on whether spam can be reduced via some sort of economic or technical mechanism? Fabio
Re: The Median Voter Theorem and Adoption Law
You are misinterpreting the function of these little issues. Little issues don't build up. Little issues tend to be signals to certain constituencies. For example, nobody has ever lost the vote due to rap music, but Clinton in 1992 signalled to many in the democratic party that he wouldn't be held hostage by the Civil Rights wing of the party by bashing rap star Queen Latifah. It's a low cost signal. Nobody will really care if you bash a rap musician. Same for the community investment act (I forget what this even is). I'd guess that few people are explicitely against it, and it's a cheap way to signal to political moderates that urban issues won't be forgotten by either Gore or Bush. Consider a similar move for adaoption law. Unlike rap, adoption workers are considered experts in their field. They could bash you on the talk shows. A politician who goes for adoption law as an issue might get smeared as someone breaking up black families. How do you counter that? Well, you could argue that having any parents is better than no parents, but then you'd get into an emotional, difficult argument with people who think that children get unintentially hurt by different ethnicity parents, and that adoptions are moves by wealthy whites to steal kids from blacks in financial straits. Basically, like most family issues, it's messy and emotional issue that probably wouldn't yeild easy points for a politician. Fabio But politicians spend a lot of energy working on issues that no one has ever lost an election on. To take one tiny example, both Bush and Gore made a loud point about their support for the Community Reinvestment Act. Who votes on that? The logic, I presume, is that positions on a lot of little issues add up. And it isn't the absolute size of the issue, but the size relative to the effort that counts. Prof. Bryan Caplan
Re: The Median Voter Theorem and Adoption Law
Build-up has two meanings in this context. 1)Politicians could send a series of signals to win small groups of voters. 2) Politicians could send a series of signals to large group of voters who need repeated re-assurances that the politician really means what he says. Ie, build up of votes vs. build up of perception. My claim is that the adoption of campaign issues a) does not build up the # of votes because the class of people for whom this is the most pressing issue is small and b) if you try to build up perception on the adoption issue, there is a very good chance you will get whacked because adoption workers can easily mobilize to change public opinion, since they are recognized experts on adoption. And the point of sending that low cost signal is to ... get more votes! And if you send a lot of them, that adds up. care if you bash a rap musician. Same for the community investment act (I forget what this even is). I'd guess that few people are explicitely against it, and it's a cheap way to signal to political moderates that urban issues won't be forgotten by either Gore or Bush. So do the political moderates care or not?! A little. You claim Gore/Bush made a big deal over the Community act, although I see very little compared to other issues. I think they could care less. Translation: Pre-public debate, the median voter wants a different policy; post-public debate, the median voter will want the status quo? That's an interesting story, but it's different from your earlier ones. Prof. Bryan Caplan Incorrect interpretation of what I said. My claim was that adoption workers are well established authorities over adoption, thus it requires effort to combat them. I also claimed that because they are well established experts, they can smear politicians, imposing high costs over them. They change the terms of the debate from does the child have a home? to are we breaking up black families and damaging the child's identity? This is NOT a claim about changing preferences, it's a claim that adoption workers are quite able to change the terms of the debate. I know economists are genetically incapable of understanding the role that rhetoric plays in politics, but adoption is a great example. If you ask a voter if a black orphans should have white parents when there aren't enough black parenets, they'd say yes. If you ask a voter whether black orphan's personality be messed up because his white parents can't relate to him, then many will say no. A lot of politics is jockeying for the median voter, but remember that the median voter is defined by preferences defined over a set of issues. But of course, you can always try to argue with what the choices are, and that's what I'm talking about. Fabio
Re: The Median Voter Theorem and Adoption Law
I think the median voter has the following preferences concerning adoption: same race parents parents different race no adoption. Bryan's point is that adoption workers seem to prefer: same race parents no adoption parents different race. The MVT would predict otherwise. I claim that capture of the adoption business prevents the MVT result. Is there survey evidence that the median voter and adoptions workers have the same preferences? Fabio In this case I don't think the adoption workers preferences are very far from the median voter's preferences regarding general adoption policies. Yes, I think: people are basically afraid of someone taking their kids, and people are not in fact very comfortable with trans-racial adoption. Fabio wrote: A more probably chain of causation is: adoption workers get legislation passed giving them jurisdiction over adoptions (called usurptation in some academic circles), then set up self-perpetuating mechanisms that enforce unpopular policies. Since little is to be gained from combatting these policies, few people bother to fight it.
Re: The Median Voter Theorem and Adoption Law
fabio guillermo rojas wrote: I don't think you should focus so much on the median voter theorem. The logic of median voter theorems is that politicians offer policies that closely resemble the median voter's desires. This assumes that politicians have direct influence over the policy in question. They could have a direct influence if they wanted to. Neglecting a situation you could affect is just as easy for voters to punish as anything else. Prof. Bryan Caplan I still think you are missing the point. By itself, politicians could influence adoption laws and practices. But there are costs imposed by many things: the ability of adoption workers to wage a political campaign for the status quo, the mobilization of allies, the opportunities lost while fighting adoption laws and the fact that not a single major electoral victory as ever been won over adoption law. It's as simple as this: people don't vote over adoption law. If someone tried to campaign on it, I bet they'd get trumped by somebody campaiging over issues that are proven vote getters. Fabio
Local news
Why is local news done by television stations when most other local programming (soap operas, game shows, talk shows) is contracted out? Or to phrase the question differently: why do local tv stations do *any* of their programming? Fabio
Re: Austrians and markets
Don't you think there is a difference between efficiency in the intellectual arena and truth? I think that intellectual institutions are fairly good at allocating resources to efficiently produce normal science - ie, science that refines and explores a given view of the world. Truth may require abandoning a whole viewpoint - and that seems on the surface, at least, to be a very inefficient activity. Fabio On Mon, 26 Nov 2001, Alex Tabarrok wrote: Hello? If the history of the twentieth century is not an undeniable argument against the hypothesis that the market for social science is not efficient then what is? Alex
Haggling:
Mike Kinsey on Slate notes that KMart employees are now allowed to haggle over prices. He notes that with the Internet, merchants can instantaneously raise or lower prices to meet demand instead of industrial revolution style fixed prices. I've posted once or twice about haggling and standard prices and how in developing nations you can haggle over anything. Kinslet's article essentially argues that standard prices are a historical anamoly - if you are in an undeveloped nation, then you don't have the technology to develop reasonable standard prices. If you are in a high tech society, you have the ability to quickly change prices and still derive enough income to stay in busines. In the middel, like the US 1850-2000, prices are standardized. Fabio
