On Sun, 2008-10-05 at 14:06 -0400, Bill O'Connor wrote: > Shane Mage <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > And just how does one "test" for the existence of an inherently > > unobservable entity? > > > > I see that astronomers can "see" planets circling far away stars by > observing the wobble of the star cause by the planet's gravity. But > really, what we're talking about are not unobservable things, they're > things like unemployment.
Unemployment (as defined by economists) is not observable. Men aged 25-54 have no cultural reasons to be unemployed (except for rentiers but I don't think they're significant), so here is a little fact: """ In 2004 according to OECD, normalized unemployment for men aged 25 to 54 was 4.6% in the USA and 7.4% in France. At the same time and for the same population the employment rate (number of workers divided by population) was 86.3% in the USA and 86.7% in France. This example shows that the unemployment rate is 60% higher in France than in the USA, yet more people in this demographic are working in France than in the USA, which is counterintuitive if it is expected that the unemployment rate reflects the health of the labor market """ Each country as 5-10 levels of "unemployment", as shown above even normalized by OECD the "measure" is a total joke. Yet it is used blindly by economists. Hours worked is also hard to observe so is hourly productivity. Payroll is observable, detailed distribution (sex/age/income per period) should be easy to collect and distribute, but of course economists prefer to keep this data secret just like they do for detailed price data and subjective quality adjustements. Laurent _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
