Econlinks

• Always wise thoughts from the one and only Kevin Murphy . If for some reason you haven't heard of him yet, all you need to know is that Murphy holds comparative advantage in all forms of production.

• A quite old, but still interesting and revealing article on Sergey Brin. I like this bit from Eric Schmidt: "Evil is whatever Sergey says is evil".

• Ambition-adjusted (Economics) journal ranking. Some (my) highlights: 1. No matter how you measure it, top 5 is top 5 and has been virtually the same over many years (and, caveat lector, it is certainly not a top 6... or more; in particular maybe somebody from the Finance group(s) at my former Tinbergen Institute reads this and eliminates the Journal of Finance from their current top "5+1": I think it is the only place in the world where they have recently altered the very top by adding this extra field journal, though they would be happy to confirm that their best papers are submitted always to one of the other top 5's...); 2. JEcGrowth, Review of Econ Dynamics and JEEA are the very strong newcomers and they continue to go up the rankings; 3. EJ is a champion of self-citations; 4. Some formerly very prestigious journals recently lost quite some ground, examples being JHumResources, Journal of Credit, Money and Banking, JDynControl etc.

• I concur: this would be by far the best way to organize poster sessions. Particularly if they are in Economics or Social Sciences in general...

• An interesting NewYorker article on Iran's trial-and-error Economics policies.

• Italy outsourcing peer-review to NIH: it could potentially be a solution also for other countries where finding decent referees for grant proposals etc. has been notoriously difficult (think Romania and the like). Via Liviu Giosan, on Ad Astra.

• Sardines (and Sardinistas). Try them grilled with garlic and parsley, indeed!

• The imp of the perverse (or How to Think, Say, or Do Precisely the Worst Thing for Any Occasion)

• "The secret to The Economist’s success is not its brilliance, or its hauteur, or its typeface. The writing in Time and Newsweek may be every bit as smart, as assured, as the writing in The Economist. But neither one feels like the only magazine you need to read. You may like the new Time and Newsweek. But you must—or at least, brilliant marketing has convinced you that you must—subscribe to The Economist. " More about the Economics of The Economist.

My whereabouts

After a full week in very beautiful (and very hot) Seville, where inter alia I presented a paper at this year's ESPE conference (I will dedicate of course a separate post to my Seville experience a.s.a.p, hence further details will be omitted here), followed by a short pit stop of a few hours back in Aarhus, I have just arrived in Os, very close to Bergen. I am staying at this sensationally picturesque place called Solstrand, truly a perfect combination of classic and modern, romantic and pragmatic (e.g., one might have have difficulties deciding which of the several swimming pools or saunas to try out, after having had a perfect walk--or swim!-- along the fjords... :-))..., where for the next couple of days I'll be listening to, discussing and presenting papers within the 2009 Nordic Summer Institute in Labour Economics. Be good, I'll be back!

PS. Some straightforward differences between Seville (or, attempting to generalize: Spain/ Iberia/ Southern Europe) and Bergen (Norway/ Scandinavia/ Northern Europe) really have to do with numbers, ie. temperature degree and, respectively, price differentials. You can most likely sign those differences yourselves :-).

(Many) Econlinks for the Weekend

• A nice, brief VoxEU note of Willem Buiter on negative nominal interest rates (and their potential desirability). Greg Mankiw also tackled the topic earlier.

• If you're at all into arithmetics (and not only) you might like this concise exposé on very big numbers (think Ackerman series, Busy Beavers and the like if you are dubious about what "very big" stands for in this context...). Inter alia, this reminds me that many many years ago :-), when I was starting highschool, one of my life goals was to prove the Goldbach conjecture. I guess meanwhile I started looking for easier life targets :-).

• We absolutely love Blonde Parades -- though I wouldn't necessarily ask a financial crisis as prerequisite :-).

• Harvard in BIG trouble?...

• Pacepa and the former Romanian car industry (that he does get at all WSJ editorial space I find rather amazing in the first place, that he uses it to give advice to the USA gov on the failed car companies is, well... just fantastic :-)...). Hmm, at least he's got an interesting "style", shifting the entire blame on his former superior(s)... There isn't much Economics in there of course, as he after all admits himself..., but I would have liked at least some more precision in the numbers (and no, "billions" in "The Oltcit project lost billions" is not what I would call a good approximation)

• This is the only bullet point connected to the "pathetic" label of this blogpost. Levitt oddly calls it "reasonably interesting" on Freakonomics (I also do not agree with all Levitt's further opinions on the apparent "macro problem", but well, I guess he is well versed in Macroeconomics to know it better :-)), but I find this Guardian editorial "interesting" only inasmuch it shows the difference in Economics education between the "Economics editor" (sic!) of The Guardian and other Economics editors at, say, WSJ, NYTimes, The Economist, or FT... Inter alia, I wouldn't pretend that everybody understands the work of Bonhomme and Robin forthcoming at the ReStud (or for that matter, any other work in a top 5 research journal within Economics, which perhaps is not aimed to really everybody?), but indeed from an "Economics editor" we would perhaps expect a little bit more that the appraisal "divorced from reality" (merely from reading the abstract and nothing further in the text, since else our author would have found plenty of "reality"...). But Economics à la The Guardian it is, now you know what to read :-).

• Who's a bigger villain for Development: Mugabe or Anopheles/ Sachs or Easterly...? I guess you ought to know by now what I think in this mater, but that should not stop you from making your own opinion :-).

• In a rather vague Reuters article Romania comes 3rd in a top of "new wine regions". A pity they do not mention any Romanian wine de facto in that top, since the variance in the quality of all wines produced in the above mentioned regions is... well, infinite.

• Interesting facts & thoughts by Dan Hamermesh on (incentive...) bonuses for papers with multiple co-authors. Should they be designed as function of 1/N or 1/SquareRoot(N), where N the number of co-authors etc.? Perhaps we should also know what other disciplines do, if anything, in this regard, in Economics indeed there seems to be a (very surprising) heterogeneity of such practices among various Departments/Institutes.

• It might be the first time ever..., but yes, the Historian won against the Economist (my good old friend Daniel, Harvard trained Historian of Science too, will surely be very pleased to hear this:-) ). I would never allow Paul Krugman in such competitions again, this is bad for the whole Econ field :-). The good thing though is that the Historian won with (the true) Economics arguments :-).

• Average citation rates by field (through Ad Astra). One trend not emphasized in the article's discussion following the table is that in some fields the citation impact is very low on the short run (1-3 years), but increases much faster over the the longer run (8-10 years). This is why for instance Economics gets a higher average citation impact than Mathematics or Computer Science overall, though in the short run (eg, the two years span that the Thomson ISI citation ranks are typically constructed on) is equally "de-cited". Consider switching to Molecular Biology if you're after citations :-).

My first (and last) public karaoke performance

...represents the validation of my long held opinion that I have no comparative advantage whatsoever in this area. My team partner for this impromptu exercise, Ian Walker, among other things the current editor-in-chief of Labour Economics, performed rather reasonably, but there was no chance to ultimately rank decently among the brave competitors-- my colleague economists from the Aarhus School of Business, some of them natural born karaoke stars-- precisely because of teaming up with yours truly. As a consequence (and I credit Ian Walker with the quote of the week), "[I] shall remain a referee for Labour Economics forever". Still, there could/would/should be some attenuating circumstances to consider: the event took place in an unlikely hotel restaurant room in Viborg with what looked like improvised (initially malfunctioning) equipment, the choices were from a limited set of (only) Abba songs and, crucially, I was forced in the show without being provided with sufficient wine beforehand... :-)

Anyway: though we butchered the song, we still ought to thank the true masters for the music!

Carlsen and the last game curse

Although he seems in top shape and, inter alia, managed to even win against world champ Vishy Anand both at the Linares and at the Amber (Blindfold) tournaments (through wonderful games)..., there is definitely something wrong with Magnus Carlsen and the final games of most recent chess tournaments he has been participating in-- which is probably more frustrating to his fans than to himself, it seems, given he continues on the same frequence :-).

• January: in this year's Corus tournament Magnus was clearly winning and then he lost unexpectedly the last game to Yue Wang, which sent him to the 5th position, rather than 1st, as I wrongly predicted (at least I am happy that I correctly forecasted Fabiano Caruana winning Corus's Group B; I think we will hear a lot more that name in the future)...
• Feb-March: ok, this is somewhat different, but same in terms of implications: in the Linares '09 Carlsen does not lose the last game, for a change, but loses two games in Rounds 8 and 10, to Aronian and Yue Wang respectively, both while he was playing white; he ends up only third (with both Aronian and Yue Wang behind him...).
• March: after dominating the Amber Blindfold tournament, Magnus loses dramatically the last blindfold game to Radjabov (in fact he lost the last two games here, previously to Kramnik), and thus shares the Amber Blindfold top spot with Aronian and Kramnik, while achieving only 4th position in the Amber Combined (Blindfold+Rapid)...
• May: nothing different at this year's Mtel, in Sofia, where Carlsen usually leads with one to go, but then loses the last game to Shirov and misses again the first spot. Just great... the curse seems impossible to break.

• let us hope things will be different at Dortmund, in July (where currently 44% of the persons answering the poll on the official site predict the Viking to win...). But I keep my expectations low this time :-). Carlsen needs to break somehow the curse of the last game in order to ever become World Champion (or anywhere close enough)...

And there was Alicante

... and with that also my very first time in Spain (though, with Seville and Barcelona to follow within the next few months, this will definitely be my 'Spanish year'). The 'city of lights' was ultimately a pleasant surprise, although, to start with the lows, I thought it was already too hot for this time of the year--however, evenings were perfect--, the architecture of the city is really not my very favourite (I recall here an earlier post of Andy on Alacant--he was way more negative on the city looks-- while I think there are also some nice spots), and if you happen to stay in one of the fancy hotels next to the Casino, the music/noise will not stop until 4:30 AM, only to restart at 7:30 AM with the hyperactive hotel housekeeping ladies... :-).

BUT: an early morning walk along the beach, dining in such fine places as La Taberna del Gourmet and César Anca (there are a couple of others I will surely have to try out with my next visit there, but Marco did not miss at all choosing these two, this time)--- tip: try any seafood dishes in either and don't miss the black rice in the first, plus the selection of white wines in these places is really beyond expectation in quality, try e.g. some of the Rueda or the new Penedés vineyards in the lists, to take two very distinct but very fine types--, or a walk through the city center in the evening (evoking here and there images of Tuscany, if you were to ask me for an analogy) should be on your to-do list, if you happen to visit. And did I already mention that the wine/food prices are just lovely (especially if you come from Scandinavia) ? :-).

Oh, I almost forgot: my primary reason for visiting Alicante was to give a seminar at the Fundamentos del Análisis Económico, Universidad de Alicante. Great audience, nice people, charming university campus: I totally enjoyed my visit there!

Sunday night econlinks

• Cheaptalk post on the theory and history of open source software (with link in their text to the very interesting new NBER paper by Schwarz and Takhteyev)

• "A neat project would be to infer the extent of school spirit from the estimate of the price elasticity implied by the prices that different university cemeteries charge"-- very much so, indeed-- though looks only applicable/relevant for a few places in the USA (most likely unrepresentative even of the USA entire university universe, not to even mention Europe or others). Nevertheless, very selective sample aside, this is an interesting idea: read Dan Hamermesh's entire post on Freakonomics.

• Niall Ferguson concise on Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? and the whole craze to re-regulate finance..., via Alex Tabarrok on MR.

• Buffett and Munger seem to like it finance-simple, though they surprinsingly appear to entirely blame the scientists & the science rather than the practioners who learnt and applied the science wrongly, especially so when this science is typically very clear about its assumptions (but could be the journalist's fault here, e.g., by taking things out of the context... hopefully). See also a related earlier article in Wired.

• The Economist's gloomy snapshot of Central and Eastern Europe facing the crisis. Not over yet, but so far not as bad as it could have been...

Budapest redux, with a Cserszegi Fűszeres flavour

My whereabouts: returning to Aarhus after a couple of days in wonderful Budapest, where, inter alia, I had a poster presentation in an interesting 'Wages, Firms and LEED data' workshop, at CEU. The highlight this time was a well organized wine tasting evening at the Szabadság Kávéház (certainly worth a visit if you are around); pity that Ady Endre had to watch but couldn't join in... With this occasion, I have discovered that I just adore the Cserszegi Fűszeres varietal when it comes to white Hungarian wines.

PS. The Danube cruise & dinner went on for somewhat too long this time, relative to a similar event about a year ago : however, I wouldn't mind at all having that every year :-). And wrapping up such an evening with further drinks in Instant should be the rule (thanks to Daniel for the tip!).

Sunday night econlinks

• Bilingualism and early child development: very interesting brand-new research in PNAS (institutional or individual subscription needed, else only abstract is free). And yes, bilingualism clearly pays off, if you were wondering.

• Vienna and the largest Swiss cities top Mercer's quality of living index for '09, while Munich appears to be the winner if you account simultaneously for both quality of living (position 7) and infrastructure (position 2). "München mag Dich" indeed, as they say.

• There are many problems with (some of) these suggestions concerning reforming the academe and pre-academe, but there should indeed be a continuous debate on these issues. Proposals 3,4 and 5 could be ok with me in the current format; the other three are presented in an unnecessary radical perspective, despite being debated many times before and shown not to be that simple as they seem at first sight. Via Gabi Istrate, on Ad Astra. An interesting corrolary here is the following: why not decentralize completely the process and leave it up to each university to organize itself as it fits it best (e.g. by offering tenure or not, by having "generalist" or "specialist" departments etc) ? In the long run the best academic/educational system would win (by attracting the best/most students, by generating the highest-earning/most succesful graduates etc.)? Of course, to some extent these differences exist even now, but more among "unusual" types of academic/research institutes and "typical" universities.

• Going Dutch -- the article would like to give an "American perspective", but ends somewhere midway and misses much of what I would have expected. Oh, and 18 months... come on! After 18 months you know yet nothing about Amsterdam, not to mention the whole of Netherlands (even after long discussions with Geert Mak) ... I'd love to read his opinions after 80 months... As for 'Socialism gone Wild', the author could try his chance a bit more to the North of Europe :-).

New England clam chowder

My whereabouts this week: I'll be presenting two papers (and will do my best not to miss a dozen other very interesting presentations) at this year's SOciety of Labor Economists meeting, in Boston, one of my favourite (& frequent) US destinations. If you're planning a first time visit soon, here's my two cents: New England springs are absolutely lovely, summers can be too hot... , but the clam chowder is always yummy! :-).