Hi Alex,
First, it is my contention that this is JH's view -- not mine. I've been involved
in an E-mail conversation with Judy for a couple of months now about the differences
in our views (I have not pulled rank in the debate with Bryan because my conversation
with Judy hasn't really
Hmm. The quotes seem clear enough to me, but perhaps you need the
context too.
I read the quotes in context. I have the book in front of me now.
How would you interpret this finding that she talks about
- that it is bad for kids to be in fatherless neighborhoods, but not
fatherless homes?
The article did grant that there
remains the strange puzzle of the coincidence in timing of the various
strands of AIDS all being transmitted from primates to humans within a
close period, which I suppose that Hooper will emphasize when backed
into a corner. The article suggests theories of
Sure, some important real world applications exist. But why is that
interesting? I would think that the interesting question is: what's the
*expected value* of the loss, averaging over situations of all
importance levels?
So would you argue that the interesting question about government
Can such games model reality well enough to give interesting results?
Interesting to whom? To game players yes. For certain purposes there are useful models
that can help people understand how systems operate and predict outcomes.
Would economists agree on the meta-rules enough to agree to
So, are professors really underpaid?
A few thoughts. When people say that teachers are underpaid I don't think that they
are mainly referring to professors. I think its K-12 where unfavorable comparisons
are often made between the salaries paid to BA teachers and HS grad semi-skilled
OK, Bryan is right (as was Alex) and I'm wrong. This from the horses mouth
(a note I got today from Judith Harris):
===
My theory is definitely not an excuse for people to throw up their
hands and say "We give up -- there's nothing we can do!"
Bryan wrote:
===
This is almost orthogonal to my original point, but not quite. It
wouldn't be interesting if the expected cost of bad judgment was
$100/year, would it? So even taking a policy perspective, expected
value of error matters.
Agreed, but I think
RE: http://slate.msn.com/economics/00-02-09/economics.asp
I read the Landsburg column, but I haven't read the original study he is commenting
on. Given that, Landsburg's account of the idea seems totally nutz to me. Why would we
assume that the relative price of quality vs quantity should
Hi Alex,
We agree. If I'm right that the changes in the price of quality are profound then
the five year measures should show big changes. Particularly between 1945 and 1970 I
would bet they would be enormous. -- Bill
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 11/27/00 12:03PM
Bill,
As I read Landsburg the
Since deregulation, start-ups come and go. Big airlines seem to survive on the basis
of the monopoly power they derive from their terminal slots at major airports.
Otherwise airlines might be the classic case of a declining cost industry with few
barriers to entry making it impossible for
mples
Cato Institute
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of
William Dickens
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2001 8:36 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Airline firms
Since deregulation, start-ups come and go. Big airlines seem to survive on
This doesn't seem consistent with the usual story that big airlines want
slots allocated by competitive bidding, while small airlines don't. If
the slots are the source of the monopoly power, competitive bidding
would lead to full dissipation of the rents, no?
Not at all. The network economies
And what do you say on the predation thing?
I'm not sure. I wouldn't be surprised if it was true, but I don't think you need any
predation to explain why new entrants would be very unstable and have low survival
rates in a market with significant economies of scale but no effective barriers
Bryan Caplan Wrote:
I don't think we really disagree here.
Less than I thought when I misinterpreted what you were saying. I thought you were
implying that we were government funded and wouldn't bite the hand that feeds us. If
that is not what you are saying then we are closer to agreement
If someone knows of a study showing that homelessness is voluntary I would love to see
it. I've never heard that claimed before for the obvious reason -- how would you ask
about it? I can't imagine that a majority of homeless would say that they would prefer
living on the street no matter what
The report also contains a number of other fascinating statistics. For
example, according to (Schmidt and Hunter, 1998) years of education and
years of job experience correlate poorly with measures of actual
on-the-job performance: 0.10 and 0.18, respectively.
Be wary of numbers like this. As
Thanks for the heads up. If you have a moment, can you point me to one or two
book/review
articles (by someone whose methodology you respect) that covers predictors of long
term on-the-
job performance ?
I don't know of any studies of long-term job performance though I wouldn't be
surprised
There are a number of previous studies which suggest that returns are higher to
attending schools where students have higher SAT scores, but none of these do a very
good job of controlling for the unobserved characteristics of the persons attending
the schools. Krueger does this in a recent
First, on Monday I gaurantee you that if the market functions, there will be a buyer
for every seller. Every transaction has two sides. Whenever you hear commentators
saying there were more sellers than buyers today so the market went down you should
wince.
Second, you don't have to be a
My top management would like an incentive/accounting system which satisfies
both teams, and gets both
teams to cooperate more fully, and to use the advantages of each more fully.
Is there any micro- / game-theory analysis on such internal business
organization?
Lots! But you would have to be
Fabio,
I just realized that I don't know what the typical rent-to-own contract looks
like. Presumably the original owner retains title, but what if there is a dispute over
the maintenance of the property during the rental period? What does the contract
specify and how are disputes
I will happlily give 5 to 1 that George beats out Janet in getting the Nobel. - Bill
Dickens (the DC one)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/20/01 18:44 PM
Of course, Bill, the right thing to do would be to state some
odds and place a bet.
Fabio
On Thu, 20 Sep 2001, Bill Dickens wrote:
As Fall
I never said that # buyers always and everywhere # of sellers. I specifically said if
the market is operating there is a buyer for every seller. It is certainly true that
specialists on the floor of the NYSE often suspend trading in a stock when there is an
imbalance of orders and that bids on
The argument would have to be that the problem isn't a permanent but a temporary
reduction in demand. That that temporary reduction may make otherwise viable
businesses insolvent and lead to their dissolution and that that will result in the
inefficient destruction of their fixed assets that
I think this is a good EP explanation for men, but there is a problem with it as an
explanation for women. I have to admit that I don't know if women are aroused by
stress as well, but from the woman's perspective it would seem that her offspring
would be most likely to succeed if she waited
around to help
with the kids she does have.
Tom Grey
-Original Message-
From: William Dickens [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2001 4:17 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Disaster Raises Happiness, Trust
I think this is a good EP explanation for men
Indeed, the ease with
which the clever people on this list are able to generate explanations
that go either way seems to me to be a bad sign for evolutionary
psychology.
Hi Alex,
It was a bad sign for EP 25 years ago when that was virtually all there was to EP
(then called socio-biology)
Bryan,
U. A Nobel prize is a slap in the face? I'd certainly turn the other cheek!
- - Bill
William T. Dickens
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: (202) 797-6113
FAX: (202) 797-6181
E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
AOL IM: wtdickens
[EMAIL
But the real question is whether there were any clustering in the
attributes of the minority who consistently beat the market. If there is a
strong clustering of attributes (they ate the same brand of corn flakes for
many many years or went to the same school or followed the principles of
the
But those who bought long-term put options (LEAPs) on Amazon could lose no
more than than their financial investment, and the put options could be held
or others bought until the downturn, with no margin calls.
The Longest term option that was availale wouldn't have gotten me far enough to have
So Bill, are you willing to stick your neck out regarding the January
effect? Thaler says average ROR in January is 3.5%, versus an average
of .5% for all other months. Is this another case of basis points being
exagerated into percentage points?
So if you invest in stocks in January and
This discussion has been assuming that employers look at grade averages. Last time I
looked into this, very very few employers requested university or high school
transcripts or even asked people to report their grade averages on their applications.
Asking for GREs would probably get them into
I posted a note to this list a couple of days ago about this, I'm not sure it went
through. Its been a while since I looked at this, but when I did the information that
I found suggested that employers not only don't get transcripts, but they don't even
ask grade average information on job
Also relevant is quality and availability of service. Previously prices
may have been cheap/falling but the range of offering, customer
treatment or availability may have constrained enjoyment of the service
to a sub optimal level. Deregulation could/should change this. (I think
it has in my
of their looks, you might favor deregulation.
mitch mitchell
- Original Message -
From: William Dickens [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Monday, June 10, 2002 5:08 pm
Subject: RE: Consumer Reports on Deregulation
Also relevant is quality and availability of service. Previously
pricesmay have been cheap
Does anyone answering here know any accounting or are people just guessing? I pulled
out an accounting text I keep as a reference and looked up double entry and single
entry and they weren't there.
My understanding is that the the invention of double entry accounting refers to the
invention
Ie, why do people accept lower returns just for the privilige of
picking the stocks themselves?
Mostly because they believe they are smarter or more knowledgable than average and
will outperform the market. I know some very sophisticated people who believe this
(and at least some of them have
There is another reason howevr. Even the lowest cost index mutual funds have more
overhead then you are going to have if you use a discount broker and buy and hold (and
they hide these costs
Who is the they - mutual funds or discount brokers? And how are they
being hidden?
I've been told by
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/14/02 14:19 PM
If I want to buy shares in the 500 or so companies on the SP 500, I'll be looking at
commissions of at least $3000, right (unless I have a commissionless trading account,
which requires a minimum balance of $500,000 or so)? If I hold those stocks for 20
Bryan wrote:
Right, but if you want to reduce the SD of your return, you've got to
square those numbers - you need 100 stocks to get the SD down by 90%.
And isn't that the measure of risk most people vaguely have in mind?
Well what I suppose we should be using isn't either the SD or the Var,
Do you seriously find this exercise helpful? Couldn't you just as
easily back out the (von Neumann-Morgenstern, I presume) utility
function you need to get an introspectively plausible answer? In other
words, if you feel nervous with a SD of 20% of the mean, could looking
at utility functions
Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: (202) 797-6113
FAX: (202) 797-6181
E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
AOL IM: wtdickens
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 08/12/02 15:38 PM
William Dickens wrote:
Gale and Sabelhaus do not answer the question that you ask but they do look at
the question
(does anyone in econ still
talk about the old concept of aggregate supply and demand?),
Judging by the best selling textbooks yes. Most certainly. I haven't looked in the
last couple of years, but the last time I did there still wasn't a really good text
book that presented undergraduate
Obviously the supply side of the academic labor market values this and is willing to
forgo some money compensation to get it. Evidently the cost of producing this amenity
for academic employers is generally less than the value to the employees so there are
very few schools that don't promise
I think Harsanyi is still at Berkeley. Also, I think Friedman is now at
Stanford. - - Bill
William T. Dickens
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: (202) 797-6113
FAX: (202) 797-6181
E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
AOL IM: wtdickens
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Freedman and Medoff looked at effects on profits (and concluded that the
profit effects almost exactly offset the productivity differences), but
I don't know of any study of bankruptcy. I've seen a study that showed
that union firms have higher debt-equity ratios. - - Bill
William T. Dickens
The
Hi Alex,
Congratulations and thanks for a very useful report on your
experience with BE. I have never read any articles in BE. I hadn't even
gone to their website before this. However, I'm a technological dinosaur
who still gets hard copies of journals. My RAs barely know what the
inside of
OK, but I've never had a paper turned around in less than 6 months (and
often it has taken up to a year) at any journal except the QJE. Also,
you can't divide time to publish by 3 since most of the time there is
only 1 revise and resubmit and in my experience more papers are accepted
on the first
As I remember the standard neo-classical answer to this is that the main
source of endogenaity isn't ability bias but discount rate bias - - that
people with below average discount rates get more schooling. So if the
question you want to know is the effect of attending high school vs.
only going
But controling for IQ isn't warranted if years of schooling is
endogenous. Kevin Lang has written extensively about these issues. - -
Bill
William T. Dickens
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: (202) 797-6113
FAX: (202) 797-6181
E-MAIL: [EMAIL
because
I strongly suspect that 1) people have almost no idea how much it
will
be worth for them to continue in school,
Gee, now you're sounding Austrian! No idea? Come on. Just look at
how parents groan when their kids talk about the low-earning majors
like
sociology, and rejoice when
The history majors knew they'd make less with a
history degree, on average, but placed a higher value on doing
something they
enjoyed then on having a higher income.
Yes, but did they know how much of a difference it would make? I once
did a survey of students in one of my undergraduate
Of course, very few people, if any, are profoundly rational optimizers,
but they are approximate optimizers.
This is always the response of mainstream economists when one points out that people
obviously are not behaving as models predict. Unfortunately, for a lot of people that
is where the
That's Freeman of course. Not Freedman. - - Bill
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/11/02 01:27PM
Freedman and Medoff looked at effects on profits (and concluded that
the
profit effects almost exactly offset the productivity differences),
but
I don't know of any study of bankruptcy. I've seen a study that
If the decision is literally a no-brainer, then failing to consider
alternatives is rational.
??!!! Not if they make the wrong choice! OK, I suppose you are going to argue that
all the people who didn't have a clue what the return to continuing their education
was are the ones for whom it was
I should note that all my answers are based on 12 years experiencing
advising Berkeley graduate students. I'm not sure how well it translates
to GMU students. Also, my info is 10 years old.
1. Once you are almost ABD, what is the opportunity cost of prolonging
your
graduation one more year, as
Can your friend explain why vaccines are different from other drugs?
Everything has side effects. Precisely because the Democrats have such a
stake in pushing the interests of trial lawyers the Republicans have the
opposite incentive making just about any pronouncements on this topic
highly
I have to agree with Alex Bryan. Here is a graph of the SP 500
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^SPXd=ct=5yl=onz=bq=l
About a third of the drop occurred before 9/11, a third occurred immediately after
9/11, and the other 2/3rds occurred in the first half of last year. Why 4/3rds?
Because most of
I'm quite sure that if this happened with a Brookings scholar he would be fired. It
will be interesting to see what AEI does. Hats off to Sanchez at Cato for discovering
this. - - Bill Dickens
Scholar Invents Fan To Answer His Critics
By Richard Morin
Mary Rosh thinks the world of John R.
Writing under a pen name while creating no lies
regarding the actual issues involved is a fireable
offense?!
He represented himself as someone who had taken courses from himself and presented
testimonials about his character from that persona. That isn't lying? More to the
point. Allowing a
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
I disagree on the second point. John Lott's children are just as free
to submit reviews as anyone else--and lots of people use false names
on Usenet. The more interesting question is whether his son had read
the book--but I gather his mother helped with the review, and she
surely has.
--
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
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?
That is not what I meant. Of course there is. Its thermodynamics. However, to an
Indeed, the main finding from the surveys is not the brandishment result
but the fact that guns are used defensively several million times a year
(according to Kleck's survey and several others.)
Which is highly suspect. It is computed by projecting the fraction of people in a
relatively small
While she was Attorney General, Janet Reno commissioned a study to try to
prove that private firearms ownership does not deter crime. The commission
concluded nonetheless that Americans use firearms .5 to 1.5 million times a
year to deter crimes. Given the obvious bias of the study, this
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.
Well one thing one can do is
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/06/03 10:30AM
I'm quite sure that if this happened with a Brookings scholar he
would be fired. It will be interesting to see what AEI does. Hats
off to Sanchez at Cato for discovering this. - - Bill Dickens
A few years ago, Michael Lerner, the Editor of Tikkun (a very
Utter and complete nonsense. The reason the press doesn't discuss the
issue is because it is a non-issue. The only necessary harm done to the
US by the Euro becoming the world's primary reserve currency (or sharing
the status with the Euro) is a loss of a few hundred million in revenue
for the
Depends on what you mean by used in making policy. As far as I know
there are no decisions which are based solely on cost-benefit analysis.
Budgeting is done by legislatures so if CBA plays any role there it is
in influencing the decisions of legislators. CBA is most commonly used
in making
Hi Alex,
I cannot point with conviction to any example of a Giffen
consumption good and I don't consider it to be a very important
consideration. My claim was not that any demand curves _do_ slope up,
but that you want your students to know that it is a logical possibility
and what is required
.
- - Bill Dickens
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/13/03 05:37PM
On Thu, 13 Feb 2003 15:52:43 -0500, William Dickens
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
Any CBA is better than no CBA - - even a badly skewed one. Its the
same
argument for formalizing theory in economics. It makes clear what
your
assumptions and logic
. But that is another
story... - - Bill Dickens
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/13/03 11:23PM
From: William Dickens
Fred,
You completely misunderstand my point. If a cost benefit
analysis
is presented it makes very clear what the assumptions are that lead
to
the policy conclusions.
Bill,
I don't think I
David Levenstam wrote:
Yes, the BLS series uses CPI-u to deflate the nominal wage series.
Since
CPI-u doesn't account for changes in the quality of goods or the
market basket,
and overstates inflation more the higher the actual rate of inflation,
for the
inflationary period from roughly 1968-1983
This is completely wrong. The CPI-u is, and the CPI-x was, adjusted
for
quality changes (see http://www.bls.gov/cpi/home.htm ). The CPI-X
doesn't exist anymore.
So what price statistic wasn't adjusted for quality changes?
They all are. No one (who knew what he was talking about) has ever
. And I
don't think they just said it was inadequate.
William Dickens wrote:
This is completely wrong. The CPI-u is, and the CPI-x was, adjusted
for
quality changes (see http://www.bls.gov/cpi/home.htm ). The CPI-X
doesn't exist anymore.
So what price statistic wasn't adjusted for quality changes
aren't going to do well at the box office. - -
Bill
Bryan Caplan [EMAIL PROTECTED] 01/05/04 01:14AM
But this wouldn't explain the clustering of *plausible prize-winners* (many of which
are not big grossers) around Xmas.
- Original Message -
From: William Dickens [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date
aren't going to do well at the box office. - -
Bill
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 01/05/04 01:14AM
But this wouldn't explain the clustering of *plausible prize-winners* (many of which
are not big grossers) around Xmas.
- Original Message -
From: William Dickens [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Saturday
Those
guys are Marginal Revolution already got to that Economist article:http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/05/iq_hoax.html
So your claiming that the data in the article in the economist can't be
found in the Lynn book? I would be very surprised at that. The Economist is
Hi Cyril,
Actually I wrote a review article on this literature over a decade ago.
You can find it in my book with Laura Tyson and John Zysman _The Dynamics of
Trade and Employment_ Ballinger 1988. I'm sure there are better and more recent
reviews, but I haven't kept up with the literature.
I'm just wondering if it is even
possible for the supply and demand curves to be shaped shaped in such a
way that the Laffer curve does not apply to some market.
Since you asked...
Take an income tax and the very standard constant elasticity formulations for
demand and supply (they are called
Without understanding the parts I snipped
I would like to point out that if *my* tax rate was .94, I
would need no more incentive to derive 100% of my income from the
underground economy. Or is this just one of those counter-intuitive economic
conclusions?
Throw me a bone here. ;-)
Perfectly
Does the following have any bearing on the Laffer Curve discussion?
Hammermesh estimated that a 10-percentage point reduction in payroll
taxes would lead
to a short-term 3 percent increase in employment and a long-term 10
percent increase in
employment United States.
It sure does. A ten
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