Re: Levitt article

[fabio guillermo rojas]

> 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: Levitt article

[AdmrlLocke]

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

In a message dated 8/4/03 8:07:18 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

>I did not quite mean that most economists were as clever as Levitt.  I
>meant
>
>only that the kinds of problems Levitt works on are now pretty standard.
>
>Crime has been a common topic among economists for decades.  The reference
>
>to Levitt's work on real estate agents is basically just agency theory,
>
>again a topic for empirical work for some years.  I do not mean to denigrate
>
>Levitt's creativity, which is simply huge.  My complaint was about the
>way
>
>the Times told the story.  They made it sound as if economists sit around
>
>all day making vague philosophical observations about capitalism and
>
>socialism, or something like that, rather than working on the small problems
>
>that most of us spend most of our time working on.
>
>Bill Sjostrom

Re: Levitt article

[William Sjostrom]

> In an earlier message, William Sjostrom suggested that Levitt's research
> is typical of the economics field. I am very curious about this statement,
> because it is at odds with my casual empiricism, and I would like to see
> it backed by some concrete evidence. Perhaps this reflects my own
> ignorance of the literature, but I would like to know who
> does such clever, but careful empirical work. If this is true, I'd like
> to read it. Are there people out there that collect interesting data to
> approach previously intractable questions from a new direction?

I did not quite mean that most economists were as clever as Levitt.  I meant
only that the kinds of problems Levitt works on are now pretty standard.
Crime has been a common topic among economists for decades.  The reference
to Levitt's work on real estate agents is basically just agency theory,
again a topic for empirical work for some years.  I do not mean to denigrate
Levitt's creativity, which is simply huge.  My complaint was about the way
the Times told the story.  They made it sound as if economists sit around
all day making vague philosophical observations about capitalism and
socialism, or something like that, rather than working on the small problems
that most of us spend most of our time working on.
Bill Sjostrom


+
William Sjostrom
Senior Lecturer
Centre for Policy Studies
National University of Ireland, Cork
5 Bloomfield Terrace, Western Road
Cork, Ireland

+353-21-490-2091 (work)
+353-21-490-3658 (fax)
+353-21-463-4056 (home)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.ucc.ie/~sjostrom/

Re: Levitt article

[Daniel Houser]

In my own biased view, one such group are experimentalists. The best
experimental work provides extremely clever manipulations that generate data
to address previously empirically intractable questions. The AER is full of
such clever and careful work. Recent AER examples include Henrich et. al.'s
efforts to use experiments to learn about how trust and market performance
are related, Fehr et. al.'s efforts to examine the effect of sanctions on
cooperation, List et. al.'s field experiments with baseball cards, and on
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

- Original Message - 
From: "Dimitriy V. Masterov" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 3:52 PM
Subject: Re: Levitt article


>
> In an earlier message, William Sjostrom suggested that Levitt's research
> is typical of the economics field. I am very curious about this statement,
> because it is at odds with my casual empiricism, and I would like to see
> it backed by some concrete evidence. Perhaps this reflects my own
> ignorance of the literature, but I would like to know who
> does such clever, but careful empirical work. If this is true, I'd like
> to read it. Are there people out there that collect interesting data to
> approach previously intractable questions from a new direction?
>
> The best example of this that I can think of is a working paper that
> estimated the scope of corruption in Indonesia by looking at how the stock
> prices of companies that has close links to the Suharto government reacted
> to news about his health. I can't seem to find this paper to provide you
> with a citation.
>
>
> Dimitriy V. Masterov
>
>
>

___
> Dimitriy V. Masterov
>
> Center for Social Program Evaluation
> 1155 East 60th St. Room 038
> Chicago, IL 60637
> Work: (773)256-6005
> Fax: (773)256-6313
>
>
>
>

Re: Levitt article

[Dimitriy V. Masterov]

In an earlier message, William Sjostrom suggested that Levitt's research
is typical of the economics field. I am very curious about this statement,
because it is at odds with my casual empiricism, and I would like to see
it backed by some concrete evidence. Perhaps this reflects my own
ignorance of the literature, but I would like to know who
does such clever, but careful empirical work. If this is true, I'd like
to read it. Are there people out there that collect interesting data to
approach previously intractable questions from a new direction?

The best example of this that I can think of is a working paper that
estimated the scope of corruption in Indonesia by looking at how the stock
prices of companies that has close links to the Suharto government reacted
to news about his health. I can't seem to find this paper to provide you
with a citation.


Dimitriy V. Masterov


___
Dimitriy V. Masterov

Center for Social Program Evaluation
1155 East 60th St. Room 038
Chicago, IL 60637
Work: (773)256-6005
Fax: (773)256-6313

Fwd: Remedy for TIA? Try GIA...

[David A. Ulevitch]

>From the IP list...URL at the bottom to Wired News article.

-davidu

 Original Message 

>Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2003 11:31:55 -0700
>Subject: Remedy for TIA? Try GIA...
>
>
>Though there was an outcry over the Pentagon's terrorism futures market,
a  similar online exchange is in the works to predict what the U.S. 
government is up to.
>
>The American Action Market will offer various Washington "futures" that 
can be bet upon and traded. Examples include:
>
>?Which country will the White House threaten next?
>
>?Who will be the next foreign leader to move off the CIA payroll and onto
 the White House's "most wanted" list?
>
>?Which corporation with close ties to the White House will be the next 
cloaked in scandal?
>
>The AAM will begin registering traders in September and plans to open for
 business Oct. 1 -- the same launch date proposed for the Pentagon's 
terrorism market, until it was shelved.
>
>Like the Pentagon's scrapped Policy Analysis Market, the AAM lets traders
 "bet" on future events by buying and selling futures as though they were
 stocks. The higher the price, the more likely the market believes the 
event will occur. But instead of predicting terrorist strikes, the AAM 
will predict things like the next White House staffer to quit.
>
>"The idea is to answer some of the most pressing questions in the world: 
What will the White House do next?" said one of the founders, Andrew 
Geiger, an American programmer living in Paris.
>
>The AAM market is the brainchild of a half-dozen academics from various 
colleges, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale 
University, New York University and the University of Montreal. Most, 
however, are keeping their identities quiet until they get an
>institutional go-ahead.
>
>The market was organized on Nettime, a politics and culture mailing list.
>
>"It's quite amazing, the Pentagon and the White House are very fertile 
imaginative fields these days," Geiger said. "(The AAM project) sounds 
humorous, but that just shows how far things have gone. We've entered the
 realm of fiction. Things really are Dr. Strangelove."
>
>The AAM project complements another academic project, the Government 
Information Awareness project. The GIA was built in response to the 
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Terrorism Information 
Awareness program.
>
>Its organizers hope the market will attract academics, politicians, civil
 servants and other insiders to provide accurate predictions of White
House  behavior. Geiger said even those who read the newspapers are
qualified to  be traders.
>
>"Our goal is to have people with insight into how the White House works,"
 said Geiger. "There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time thinking
 about what's going on in the world these days. A lot of that thought
could  be transferred into the system, giving you trading data that will
tell you  what's really going on."
>
>Geiger added, "Who knows whether it will reveal stuff? Anyway, it will be
 engaging."
>
>The public, he noted, will be able to follow trades on the market's website.
>
>David Pennock, a senior research scientist at Overture Services, said 
futures markets have proven to be very good predictors of many different 
kinds of events, from the weather to election outcomes.
>
>"It's one of the best, if not the best, way to predict the future," he 
said. "It's a good, well-known method for getting information that's 
distributed around the world."
>
>Bob Forsythe, a University of Iowa professor who helped organize the Iowa
 Electronic Markets, which speculate on election results, agreed that 
futures are reliable indicators of what's going to happen next -- if the 
traders are knowledgeable.
>
>"You have to have informed traders or they don't work very well," he
said.  "Who are the informed traders in an assassination market, for
example? The  same's true for predicting the White House."
>
>
>
>
>
>


   David A. Ulevitch -- http://david.ulevitch.com
  http://everydns.net -+- http://communitycolo.net
Campus Box 6957 + Washington University in St. Louis

Re: Levitt article

[fabio guillermo rojas]

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

[William Sjostrom]

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


- Original Message - 
From: "Alex Tabarrok" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 2:34 PM
Subject: Re: Levitt article


> Here it is.  Fabio, we expect better work from you next time!  :-)
>
> Alex
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/magazine/03LEVITT.html?pagewanted=print&position=
>
> -- 
> Alexander Tabarrok
> Department of Economics, MSN 1D3
> George Mason University
> Fairfax, VA, 22030
> Tel. 703-993-2314
>
> Web Page: http://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/
>
> and
>
> Director of Research
> The Independent Institute
> 100 Swan Way
> Oakland, CA, 94621
> Tel. 510-632-1366
>
>
>
>
>
>

Re: Levitt article

[Alex Tabarrok]

Here it is.  Fabio, we expect better work from you next time!  :-)

Alex

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/magazine/03LEVITT.html?pagewanted=print&position=

--
Alexander Tabarrok 
Department of Economics, MSN 1D3 
George Mason University 
Fairfax, VA, 22030 
Tel. 703-993-2314

Web Page: http://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/ 

and 

Director of Research 
The Independent Institute 
100 Swan Way 
Oakland, CA, 94621 
Tel. 510-632-1366