Vedrai vedrai...

An old, but eternal, musical masterpiece to start the week, with a well-preserved Luigi Tenco live performance video clip from the 60's. Lyrics.

Grazie, Elena-- it is indeed high time I was reminded of Tenco's superb voice and style.

PS. Luigi Tenco is yet another of my top five Italian cantautori (earlier, here and here).

Weekend Econlinks

• "Famous economists" easy quiz. In fact too easy, as presented, because you can see the questions before you start the clock. So, in order to seriously test yourselves, just start the clock and then read the questions (you have 3 minutes in total). Took me 1 min and 14 seconds to answer all questions correctly, because I needed three trials for one of them-- yes, yes, I admit I have not read at all that book :-). Cowen claims it took him only 49 seconds. By the way, in case you didn't know of it, here's a great resource on the history of economic thought.

• The Levitt vs. Heckman leitmotive (actually the rest of that Univ of Chicago Magazine article is more interesting; in general, I think people put too many resources into this sort of personalized academic fights). Earlier on the same topic (3rd bullet point). See also an essay on the economics-made-for-fun genre, kind of vague / unfocused, but some parts are well worth your time (such as the beginning summary of the books in this econ-made-for-fun area)

• The three (only?!) habits of highly irritating management gurus: very well written, welcome article from the Economist. We love it!

• A nice recap post of Terry Tao on the "no self-defeating object" argument in mathematical proofs.

• Kahn has an interesting argument, but I find him overly pessimistic. I also think Cowen is somewhat out of touch with what is really going on with academic Economics. Very briefly, here's what I think: nothing is amiss with the current direction of research in Economics (as long as these ideas/ forecasts do not turn into self-fulfilling prophecies...)

• Hwang got rather easily off this (un)scientific mess. The timeline of events and more. Sometimes the academe & research world in general are too forgiving, and wrong (/dangerous?) precedents are set.

• Battle of Agincourt (welcome) controversy.

• Best US cities for classical music, in '09. Worldwide, I would place London, Amsterdam and Vienna somewhere in top 5. Not sure about Tokyo yet, since I was for too little there (and still have to put my impressions on paper... well, blog).

• Pure selection of 100% go-getters, if you ask me.

• Don't forget about the Prediction Markets on the Romanian 2009 Presidential Elections-- some seem to be making already (fictitious) fortunes there! :-)

The new Danish ranking of journals

Ridiculous, if you ask me (needless to state, this is a very personal opinion). Unfortunately, in Economics (you find that category under "Samfundsøkonomi" in the linked pdf), there will be many years till Denmark will catch up with the best places in the Netherlands, for instance (see here an Economics journal ranking of the Tinbergen Institute (TI) , which has its imperfections-- such as Journal of Finance placed in the 'AA' category... -- but it is way way better), in competitiveness, attitude in this context etc. Not to mention the top places in US or UK (NB: the non-existence/ non-marketing of an explicit journal ranking on the (web)sites of those departments does not mean the non-existence of a very strict, informal hierarchy -- decisive in hiring and, especially, promotion decisions--, in many ways similar in spirit to the one of the TI linked above!).

The simple test the folks who made up this hierarchy (there was and still is a lot of disagreement among them apparently, this solution seems to be a compromise solution) should(have) subject(ed) themselves to is the following: if you are in the process of deciding where to submit the best paper you ever produced as yet, i.e. something you are satisfied with and very proud of, would you submit it to Econometrica, AER, JPE, QJE, ReStud, or to any of the other places (yes, some extremely good, much better than others paired with them..., but just somewhat below the very top category), which are placed in the same category in this ranking (if I were them, I would ask this question to any potential candidate I would consider hiring in my Danish Econ department). That first hierarchy level (labeled "2" in the pdf) can/should be further split in at least 3 sublevels (even the general editors of those journals in question would all agree; I doubt they were asked when this ranking was made up...). I won't even touch on assessing the fact that the rest of the journals were all bunched together in a second hierarchical level (labeled "1" in the document). This is not about my being obsessed with rankings, this is about having an idea about scientific quality. And about proper incentives.

PS. The hilarious thing is that some would like to add even more journals that nobody reads/cites to these two categories.

Prediction markets for the upcoming Romanian Presidential election

I opened up two distinct markets (with the help of InklingMarkets-- hat tip to Al Roth, on Market Design), both active until November 21st (the first election round is on November 22nd, the eventual second one on December 6th) :

• Who will win the FIRST ROUND of the 2009 Presidential elections in Romania?

• Who will win the 2009 Presidential elections in Romania?

Sign up and trade!

PS1. Hope I didn't make any mistakes; I put these up in less than 5 minutes :-).

PS2. Although you might really not share this opinion, I 'conjecture' that, if the outcome is not clear in the first election round, the future President will eventually be the first round's runner-up. Wanna trade against that? See above :-).

This week

... I am in Amsterdam and The Hague, working with Coen on a couple of great, but demanding, revise & resubmits. Unfortunately, it does not look like I will have much time for any serious cultural immersion, unlike my usual spells in lovely Amsterdam & Holland, in general (for instance).

Long PS. The CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis has a very decent cantine. I would pay the extra 2 euro and upgrade the cantine at the Aarhus School of Business in a similar vein (I believe it is just matter of incentives-- otherwise our Danish cook seems extremely talented); maybe somebody with decision powers in this realm reads this post? :-). Which reminds me that in Spain and Portugal I have experienced the best university cantine food so far, counting here University of Alicante, Pablo de Olavide in Seville, Autonoma and Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, and University of Minho, in Braga. My bet is that neither the Netherlands, nor Denmark can ever catch up on that...

Weekend Econlinks

• Science Q&A with the female Nobelists this year.

• EMH: it really ain't dead. (via Mankiw)

• Harvard's financial report for 2009. And some of the (dire) consequences.

• Head hunting for a (younger than Mas-Colell...legal requirement, apparently) distinguished scientist to be the European Research Council's new Director.

• the NAJ Ain't a Journal of Economics. I can't understand why I find about it only now, this looks extremely interesting (via cheaptalk).

• High time for the Viking to break through! And a funny interview after the Nanjing show off. (via Susan Polgar)

• Levitt did pretty well on The Daily Show (he also did well on the Colbert Report a great while ago). Though I am rather puzzled by his statement "I am not a scientist"; I wonder whether he thinks that a. Economics is not a science, or else b. what he does is not Economics..., or else...?

• Landsburg is blogging. And he's got a couple of great posts already. Here's one of them, on Dawkins, and the origins of complexity.

• Cancer progress might be completely different than known so far.

• Polygamy preferred from any angle. Reminds me of Becker's arguments a while ago (2nd bullet point)-- by the way, they now made a book of the Becker-Posner blogposts.

• The death of the book as we knew it!/? And some nostalgia after book browsing.

Mating, development aid, and the econometrics of it all

I recently helped one of my single male graduate students in his search for a spouse.

First, I suggested he conduct a randomized controlled trial of potential mates to identify the one with the best benefit/cost ratio. Unfortunately, all the women randomly selected for the study refused assignment to either the treatment or control groups, using language that does not usually enter academic discourse.

With the “gold standard” methods unavailable, I next recommended an econometric regression approach. He looked for data on a large sample of married women on various inputs (intelligence, beauty, education, family background, did they take a bath every day), as well as on output: marital happiness. Then he ran an econometric regression of output on inputs. Finally, he gathered data on available single women on all the characteristics in the econometric study. He made an out-of-sample prediction of predicted marital happiness. He visited the lucky woman who had the best predicted value in the entire singles sample, explained to her how he calculated her nuptial fitness, and suggested they get married. She called the police.

Continue reading this brief masterpiece by Bill Easterly.

Timeless Dances (On Fado and Didge Fusion)

... performed by a fantastic crew of the Queensland Ballet, on their European Tour. François Klaus's choreography is pure genius work, while William Barton is a most fascinating didgeridu virtuoso and composer (not to mention that he also proved to possess great vocal skills and to play top guitar). Here's an excerpt-- the only one I have managed to find on YouTube-- apparently from the very premiere of the show a year ago in Australia, identical to what I saw a couple of hours ago at the Musikhuset in Aarhus; this is from the final part, arguably the best, of Klaus's Timeless Dances arrangement, carried out on an electric guitar-didgeridu fusion background. Enter Queensland Ballet & William Barton!

My other absolute highlight (naively attempting to further differentiate somehow: every part in the program was a highlight!) from tonight's ballet agenda was Klaus's perfectly choreographed and superbly executed pas de deux in Chant d'Amour; music-wise, a succession / combination of two songs from Madredeus's O Paraíso album (ironically, this album is thought to be the one that marks Madredeus's split with its fado roots; I would say that it is debatable to what extent each individual track still claims that heritage), "A Andorinha da Primavera" and respectively "Coisas Pequenas", interpreted by the one and only Teresa Salgueiro (earlier on Madredeus; more on Portugal & fado). Timeless indeed!

Sunday econlinks

• An interesting debate in the latest issue of Capitalism and Society on the current status of Economics and other Social Sciences, worth reading especially for the two comments to the leading article on the theme. Unfortunately, Jon Elster, in his "Excessive Ambitions", otherwise a welcome (and relatively informed) outsider's critique, does not manage to rise up to his declared ambitions of debunking the status quo / portraying "the persistence in the economic profession and elsewhere of these useless or harmful models", and eventually falls easy prey to his commenters: Pierre-André Chiappori (who, very elegantly, but unmistakenly, tackles most of the points raised by Elster in his criticism of economic theory and testing its predictions) and respectively, David Hendry (who virtually destroys Elster's line of reasoning and conclusions on empirical modelling in Economics). To add up to that, beyond the many (surprising!) fallacies that Elster commits in his scientific criticism (not even half of them acknowledged, e.g. his sole reliance on third-party sources in the discussion of the criticism to the empirics is somewhat revealed, however the very selected sample of those sources --strategy common also to his earlier sections-- does not seem at all problematic to the author), what strikes me throughout his text is his often bringing up the lack of "humility" of economists (e.g., "The competence of economists may not be in question, but their humility is"), although in reading his piece I was rather intrigued by Elster's own absence of humility whatsoever in his strongly opinionated, though insufficiently argued, assessment... I was really hoping for something more serious.
• Solving the public-goods free rider problem using neuronal measures of economic value. Looks super interesting!
• "[D]oes conspicuous consumption fall and efficiency increase in a society in which income is conspicuous?" or some of the potentially positive implications (research-wise only...) of Norway's recent crazy move to make public all tax records of its (tax-paying) residents...
• Even Robert Parker can make a total mess of himself when it comes to wine blind tasting (via cheaptalk). And a short review of a new wine book by somebody who really doesn't like Parker (thanks to Fred for the link).
• "Wellicht komt er ooit een nieuw paradigma dat voor de economische wetenschap net zo revolutionair zal zijn als kwantummechanica is geweest voor de natuurkunde. Tot die tijd is het beter om te blijven schipperen met de kapstokken die we hebben in plaats van alles jassen op één grote hoop te gooien." door Wouter den Haan, op MeJudice
• An older interview with the foremost cafeteria Keynesian (Part 1, Part 2). I only agree with about 50% of what he's saying here... And I think some are just too fast in dismissing Milton Friedman, but... on verra.
• Norman Manea on Herta Muller's Literature Nobel. Though ultimately there isn't much in there about her Nobel..., which might actually be the whole idea of that post.
• Brinkmann, Ehrman and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Very interesting, all news to me.
• Is shouting the new spanking? Hopefully not.
• I generally agree, though, for instance, Econophysicists seem to have a hard time both on the Economics and on the Physics academic/ publishing market. Not that I wonder much why that is the case, but others may...
  

New Renaissance in European Research...

The First Report of the European Research Area Board.

Now, overall this looks like a great step ahead and I would like to see it indeed as a commitment (by the ERAB, the Commission, the relevant decision makers). It is easy to note the pros, so I shall highlight briefly what I see as major cons therein. They [the ERA Board] do cite Schuman, "Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity" (emphasis added), but some of their proposals/ intentions/ targets are anything but concrete/ focused/ rational. One also hopes that the list of "six broad areas in which [they] believe action must be taken" de facto starts with "the encouragement of excellence", on paper only item number 5... And that the gender affirmative action envisaged really means equality of opportunity and never gender choice prevailing over merit... And that the multi-disciplinarity so much talked about is supposed to arise naturally, not to be imposed a priori... I guess they still need that serious research appendix to the "New Renaissance".