US Government shutdown menorah

...and some of us were worried about Portugal...

At midnight, if the President and Congress have not reached an agreement on funding measures, the U.S. government will shutdown, referred to as a funding gap, until an agreement is reached to either extend a temporary funding measure or a final budget deal is made.

[...] The last time a funding gap took place was in 1995-1996 when the government experienced a 21 day shutdown.

Oh well, some, like Stephen Colbert, can see the positive side of all this: extinguishing one more candle on their government shutdown menorah (and... wishing for a pony).

Econlinks: The 'Economics and Reality' edition

• Harald Uhlig has an interesting recent paper entitled "Economics and Reality"  (intentionally recalling Sims's 1980 ECMA, indeed) . While he discusses the relationship between Economics and Reality (yep, isn't that what you all hope to hear?) mainly in terms of Macroeconomics (you know, the black sheep of the family), I thought he does that in an informative and at the same time very concise way. Hence, highly recommended; I'll quote his end (optimistic, for once...) summary, to get you in the mood: "Reality, i.e. empirical evidence influences economic thinking and theory and vice versa -- but it does not do so in textbook fashion. Jolted by new empirical and theoretical insights and subjected to the fickleness of attention, the frontier of our sciences lurches forward to the unknown territory of ever more profound understanding. If it moves in circles, it hopefully does so on even higher levels. Practical economics and economic policy follows, with considerable distance. Perhaps, this is how it has to be."

• Colbert vs. Mankiw Part 1. Mankiw vs. Colbert Part 2. And here's how it all got started. Obviously we want serious blood, this is just teasing each other. We want more, we want war: we want the Colbert-Mankiw interview! It ain't gonna be easy, after all recall that his Harvard Econ colleague Freeman was a disaster on the Colbert Report (here is an updated link that seems to work)-- albeit his other Harvard colleague Fryer did eventually pretty well (3rd bullet point). But Mankiw is no nonsense, so this could be tough :-). Bets are open!
  

• Hopeless and hapless Romania: well, you do get what you wish for..., where "disappointing" is a euphemism. 
• A must read (also for philosophers and 'other social scientists'): Avinash Dixit's " My Philosophy of Economics, Life, and Everything (Not!)", the sequel to his by now (in)famous "My System of Work (Not!)" . As smart and humorous as always.
• And finally. Off with you, Mr. Pitt: here cometh the Age of the Wimp!

Econlinks: Kamelåså et al

• 
  
  Before I come up with my Econ Nobel forecast -- a week to go, stay tuned-- let us take a look to the 2010 Nobel Ig prizes related to Economics. The Economics Ig Nobel itself is perhaps not very unexpected this year--though not very creative either (I wonder whether Oliver Stone is behind this too; his latest movie gets pretty mediocre reviews-- IMDb, RottenTomatoes-- despite all the hype). The "Management" Nobel Ig reads much better (but I still need to check out that paper): "Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy, for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random. REFERENCE: “The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study,” Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo, Physica A, vol. 389, no. 3, February 2010, pp. 467-72."

• Mankiw's excellent advice for all new college freshmen. Do learn some Economics, Statistics, and Finance, (ok, even Psychology, though this is second order) for your own sake... Couldn't have phrased it better.

• 
  
  He rocks no matter the topic, or context. Colbert for President (Stewart can make an ideal Vice-President).

• 
  
  What would happen if Lars von Trier were in charge with marketing Denmark. Not that the real (at least, intended, later withdrawn) ad  was much smarter. (With thanks to Fred for the links). If you ask me, the Danes should hire these Norvegians for the perfect branding job. Anyhow, good or bad PR, I am heading that way (momentarily with a headache in Schiphol's Crown Lounge). Inter alia, training a bit for future chilly times in Chicago.

• 
  
  And finally, keeping it in Scandinavian context: Magnus beat the world. And he got a date with Liv Taylor: I'd say that's worth the effort. See also his interview on the Pauw and Witteman Dutch TV show, before the world match (partly in Dutch, but you'll manage).



Restoring Sanity vs Keeping Fear Alive

Brilliant!

Rally to Restore Sanity

www.thedailyshow.com

March to Keep Fear Alive

www.colbertnation.com

Xmas Econlinks

• The Economist's books of the year. A few from the 'economics & business', 'science & technology' and respectively, the 'biography' sections are on my to-read list for quite a while now. Nevertheless, I am rather amazed that many are missing among the books I was expecting to find in those three sections...

• Terry Tao, a very practical blogger. As far as I know the first (serious / worth reading /significant) blogger to transform his blogposts in a book.

• Roland Fryer interviewed on the "Colbert Report". Fryer starts rather badly, with the wicked Colbert pulling the strings, but ultimately steals the show. Good one! Via Justin Wolfers, on Freakonomics.

• The World's Best Symphony Orchestras, as of 2008; one reason to spend part of the next spring in Amsterdam! Via Tyler Cowen, on MR.

• I am sure this could happen also within Economics... and I have a few ideas in which "peer-reviewed" conferences it might work just fine... Via Gabi Istrate, on Ad Astra.

• Wouldn't you like some more parmigiano...?

And Happy Holidays of course! :-)

Business syphilis after credit orgy

... or just Stephen Colbert and his Formidable Opponent getting drunk on Dr. Pepper ... "It was a steaming pile of hot slapping assets", indeed :-).

This and Jon Stewart's Loan interview with Paulson and Bernanke are the best depictions of the 'financial mess & bailout' so far :-).

Richard Freeman as the 'blue-collar brute'...

... in the Colbert Report show. Wonderful, just wonderful, this time Colbert rules! You cannot miss this interview, whether you like unions or you hate them :-).

Thanks to Justin Wolfers, guest blogger on Freakonomics.

And Nicole says...(plus the song of the day)

Ok Seb, okok! I've got to admit it. You've earned it deserve it u'r da man, I owe you this one! :) [...] Nico, at your service...

(of course I only took the relevant parts from Nicole's corresponding comment to this previous post of mine)

She might not be Paulina Porizkova (and after all I am not Steven Colbert :-)), but I promise you: you would not be ashamed with her :-). This is Nicole (turning into Ms. Turner, above :-)). And I swear I did not even have sex with that woman (unfortunately...yet... allright, allright, I stop right here, you did not read my last phrase), to echo somebody whom we all know.

Oh, wait, let me paste that once more (Colbert forever!) :-). For future reference :-)

Ok Seb, okok! I've got to admit it. You've earned it deserve it u'r da man, I owe you this one! :) [...] Nico, at your service...

Nicole, muchas gracias, I really feel flattered! (should stop though, it starts getting too much to my head already...). And looking forward to reading the first posts on your blog!

PS. And why not, let's make Tina's (and Nicole's) song of the day for today. "Simply the best", once again...

Econlinks for 07-11-'07

• "Cheap talk" incentives for better grades. You never know, it might actually work; let's see if Bloomberg actually implements this.

• Ed Glaeser with a very interesting piece on gender differences in aggresiveness and policy ideas. And yes, as things currently stand, Greg Mankiw might be very right that Glaeser just said goodbye forever to the Harvard Presidential chair :-).

• Surprinsingly, by the slimmest of margins, I am not a quant... (thanks to Greg Mankiw for the pointer)

• Colbert dropped his bid for the White House (though he only announced it some days ago): "Although I lost by the slimmest margin in presidential election history — only 10 votes — I have chosen not to put the country through another agonizing Supreme Court battle[...] It is time for this nation to heal" ; nevertheless, he claims it is not over :-)

• Heel goed, Wendy (interview on YouTube, in Dutch)! My friend and former Tinbergen Institute colleague Wendy Janssens is very briefly describing the research undertaken in her PhD thesis (with focus here on the importance of social capital in a development program from India). The latest prize her thesis won is the "Societal Impact Award" for 2007 (this after she won already the Amsterdam Institute for International Development/World Bank dissertation award) . Gefeliceteerd en ad majora!

Econlinks for 01-11-'07

• The RePEc blog appeared recently. Looks interesting at first sight, though some ideas in very recent posts do not appear so sensible (such as this one).

• 100% Gary Becker: an entry by Steven Levitt, with further links. One could not have enough space and time to discuss all Becker's contributions to Economics (and to science, in general) in one post: suffice to say here that some of my economist friends call him "The God" :-).

• My friend and former Tinbergen Institute colleague Otto van Hemert made it on the Marginal Revolution blog, where Tyler Cowen introduces his latest (co-authored) research on subprime mortgages in the USA (skimmed through the paper for now, will have to find more time to read it thoroughly). This surely should give him some attention beyond the academe :-).

• Spinning ballerina: the KO (via Freakonomics). Blogged about that also here and here.

• "After nearly 15 minutes of soul searching" he "heard the call" and decided to enter the Presidential election for the USA: "Nation, I will seek the office of the president of the United States. I am doing it!". So, Americans, vote for Steve Colbert!

Econlinks for 22-04-'07

• Susan Athey is the new winner of the John Bates Clark Medal. I had her on my potential list of winners, of course, but I really put Ed Glaeser highest on that list since he was at the age limit of the candidates for the medal (40), while Susan Athey could have also been nominated in 2 years from now, in principle. So I lost that bet :-). I think Susan Athey totally deserves this prestigious award. What is special about this year's prize is that Athey is the first woman to receive the medal and possibly one of the youngest winners, as well.
• an entry on what sociologists learned about economists. Looks pretty interesting, I'll follow up on those links. And rather negative, but that's no news from our sociologist colleagues...
• a nice article in the Economist (from a few editions ago) about the 'frowning clown' that both Democrats and Republicans are terribly afraid of, Stephen Colbert. It comes at the right time, since I've just posted an entry on a hillarious "hot Stephen" clip (this previous one about the 10 commandments, that the Economist article linked above also mentions, was equally funny- I talked about it here, but the corresponding YouTube was removed... ).
• The NY Times has published today a very interesting guide to "affordable Europe". 15 major cities are overviewed. The intention is excellent (and very welcome!), but at first sight I find the guide quite rough, missing a lot of information (for the cities from that list where I've been living for quite a while, like Amsterdam or London). Unless Americans really have different tastes, there are much better places (equally cheap) where to go in these cities...

And this is my 300th blog post! That calls for celebration. Though I'll probably postpone a proper celebration for the next weekend.

Update, May 11th, '07: I've just discovered that Steven Levitt has a different idea (well, speculation) of who might have been the runners up for the John Bates Clark Medal (all Chicago economists, of course :-)).

Hot Stephen Colbert and cool QJE

These days are very busy, but I can't pass on this one. Stephen Colbert has the best comic moment of the months! Among other things, he is so hot that he was on the cover of the Quarterly Journal of Economics (that's the best part of the clip :-), Greg Mankiw rightly picks on that part) but, particularly, even Paulina Porizkova admits that - now, is there anything else to desire ? :-)

Levitt (and Krugman) on the Colbert Report: the video(s)

Yes, I found it in the end, I found the recording of Levitt's interview from the 5th of December on Colbert's show (I was also talking about it here )! I must admit that I thought Levitt was "winning" a few times from Colbert, so no doubt the latter must have been very serious when he said in the end of the talk that he does not want any other winners (aka John Bates Clark medal laureates) in the Colbert Report show. A bit more about that below.

Part 2 of Levitt's interview starts automatically after Part I, which has the link in the text and in the title. If you've got problems with that, here's the direct link to Part 2. They've both got some short publicity clip before starting.

Below you can see the other John Bates Clark laureate that preceded Levitt on the Colbert Report show, Paul Krugman. I point out that Colbert made a mistake (ok, if this was deliberate, I did not get it: maybe one of you does...) because Jeffrey Sachs is not a John Bates Clark medal winner as Colbert claims in the very last part of his talk with Levitt, and thus there were not 3 but only 2 economists who won the John Bates Clark in his show (unless he mistook the 3rd one for Jeff Sachs). On the other hand, apparently Sachs was indeed guest in Colbert's show, but I could not find that recording in the ComedyCentral database any longer. Which might mean that only the relatively recent interviews are accesible there (Krugman's was on the 22 of August, Sachs's on the 2nd of March), hence in a few months you might not be able to see the Krugman and the Levitt ones either (watch them now!). But here's Paul Krugman (with direct link to the second part if that does not start automatically after the 1st). He does not perform badly, but definitely far below Levitt; he let himself often dominated by the wicked Colbert...

Update 9th of December: Greg Mankiw apparently found the Levitt video in only one piece on YouTube. And he also notices Colbert's mistake about Jeff Sachs.

Test on the 10 Commandments

Steve Levitt is talking about his own very recent experience (and more than that) as guest on the Colbert Report show (unfortunately, I don't think there's any way I can see that unless somebody posts a video footage of it somewhere- please let me know if you find anything like that anywhere). Among other things he also mentions that at least he knows he did better than this guy (try to stop laughing; I didn't manage). And then it struck me: wouldn't it be just wonderful to have a Colbert Report version in Romania as well, particularly given all the fuss about keeping the religious symbols in schools or getting rid of them and so on and so forth. I'd particularly like to start by havíng Mr. Roncea invited in the show...

See also an interview with Mr. Colbert himself invited that I recently blogged about (where you have the unique opportunity to meet Stephen and Steven at the same time).

UPDATE: the youtube video for the 10 commandments was removed (because of Viacom...), but I found the link to an edited version of it in the Comedy Central database.

Steven Colbert at Harvard

Via Greg Mankiw's blog: a great video of a very recent interview (1st of Dec) with Steven Colbert at the Kennedy School of Government. It starts after about 4 minutes of Colbert intro clips. Inter alia, he's talking about (and answers many questions addressed to him by Harvard students) the official invitation he got to visit Hungary and the possibility of naming the Magyar Bridge after him; about Sacha Cohen's Borat character and its role beyond comedy; about craving for drama (with the ideal: Bush running for a third term); about not excluding the idea of himself running for President in 2008; and much more.