The next thing is to inquire whether the saints are listening...

The empirical conclusion from this analysis is important. A little prayer does no good and may make things worse. Much prayer helps a lot.

If Jim Heckman says that, it's gotta be true.
So, either stop praying altogether, or pray 24/24, nothing in between helps...

PS. Andrew M. Greeley's letter attached at the end of Heckman's paper deserves praise on its own.

The Phelps Games

And he did it: 8 Golds, with 7 World Records. Ave Michael, morituri te salutant!

Econlinks this week

• Interesting article (via Tyler Cowen, on MR) on the economics of the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn, by C. Bohanon (written a while ago). The recent obituary for him in The Economist seems to openly ignore some of the conclusions emerging from Bohanon's analysis...

• Learn how to manage your (research) time, from Terry Tao. Not only for Maths nerds!

• Increasing motorcyclists' death rate in USA. What happened to that proposal making them sign to become organ donors if they do not wear helmets...?

• The death of the Renaissance man: "If knowledge accumulates as technology advances, then successive generations of innovators may face an increasing educational burden. Innovators can compensate through lengthening educational phases and narrowing expertise, but these responses come at the cost of reducing individual innovative capacities, with implications for the organization of innovative activity - a greater reliance on teamwork - and negative implications for growth." This is from a super interesting, forthcoming ReStud paper, by Benjamin Jones.

• an older NYTimes article on The Economics of an Eye for an Eye. Interesting, though I think they mix a lot of sources in the NYTimes article, not all of the same degree of credibility. Generalization is quite cumbersome... By the way, I think the Romanians' willingness to punish (cited in the newspaper article) is hump-shaped on the gravity of the crime... But that being said, I still haven't had time to read Naci Mocan's original NBER article on the topic, that might be much clearer.

• Ex post on Einstein and the peer review system (via Gabi Istrate on Ad Astra). I realize this detail somehow escaped Isaacson's careful analysis; otherwise his recent book on Einstein is absolutely great, I warmly recommend it to everybody-- and will say more about this book, once I will have read also its last two chapters.

Quantifying artistic value

This is about a very interesting, though quite controversial at the same time, project of David Galenson, economic historian at the University of Chicago: quantifying 20th century artwork based on market and visual citations. While I think his proxies for art quality can be debated, Galenson is clearly onto something important-- and that despite the fact that I do not take Clement Greenberg's statement (used as motto within Galenson's forthcoming book) ad litteram (though I am also far from a 100% disagreement with it): "Quality in art is not just a matter of private experience. There is a consensus of taste."

Details:

• short recent article on Galenson's project, in the NYTimes.

• the (preliminary) chapters of Galenson's new book, "And Now for Something Completely Different: Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Art", as NBER articles.

• the 8 top artworks of the 20th century (hail Picasso and Duchamp!), according to Galenson (described in more detail in chapter 3 of his forthcoming book).

• official website and link to Galenson's previous book, on the life cycles of artistic creativity (obviously very much related to his new project)

PS. This should probably be an extremely interesting theme for my good old friend, Daniel. I wonder what he makes of this new attempt of Economists to take over other fields :-).