Half of a Nobel

Certainly Williamson was expected to win sooner or later (sooner rather than later), in fact I predicted him to be winning, yesterday (and a year ago, and two years ago...). But then together with Hart and Holmstrom.... Honestly, I have to say that I have never heard of Elinor Ostrom, before discussing whether I have read anything of what she's written. But perhaps it is high time I found out more about her work-- before I decide to call half of this prize a flop, just as the Literature and the Peace Nobels this year (what happened with these Nobel committees?!...)... Meanwhile congratulations to Oliver Williamson of course; this is a very deserved and, in fact, very delayed honour!

Nobel Econ prediction(s)

After the Nobel flops for Literature (Herta Müller is ok..., but the Eurocentrism of the Nobel Literature commitee remains obvious; e.g. how can you still keep out Philip Roth or Michael Ondaatje, that after having ignored all US & Canadian top writers for the last several decades?! ) and Peace (I guess nobody beats Greg Mankiw in describing that), let us hope for a vindication with the '09 Nobel Economics prize.

It's simple, I will be consistent :-), thus my bet for tomorrow is: Hart, Holmstrom and Williamson for their contribution to the theory of the firm. This despite that others/ more or less official odds would suggest otherwise (see for instance Thomson Reuters, Ladbrokes, Kellogg & Northwestern), and although my personal favourite is Dale Mortensen (for developing search theory, with Peter Diamond and Chris Pissarides). Of course you might know that I am part of Dale's LMDG group in Aarhus and for instance just returned from a great conference program he put together in Sandbjerg, but, bias aside :-), I cannot imagine search theory not being rewarded with the Nobel within the next couple of years.

My whereabouts

From tomorrow till Sunday I'll be attending the Conference on "Structural Models of the Labor Market and Policy Analysis" at Sandbjerg, inter alia meeting once again several friends/ co-authors/ mentors. Ex ante, the program looks great, notwithstanding my non-presenter role this time (unlike the analogous conference last November, in London). Here's more on the Sandbjerg Manor, a close-to-ideal conference location (some say this place is "too dark"... well, duh... we are in Denmark; moreover, I am from Transylvania: darkness is good for my kind).

The connoisseur of prostitution

Likely no good economist, surely a bloody good writer. Gems:


3. "You lie to two people in your life; your partner and the police. Everyone else gets the truth."

2. "The problem with normal sex is that it leads to kissing and pretty soon you’ve got to talk to them."

and

1. "The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less."

Hmm... he might still turn into an Economist :-).

Econlinks

• The Nobel Ig prizes this year. My favourite is the Literature one: "Ireland's police service for writing and presenting more than fifty traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country — Prawo Jazdy — whose name in Polish means 'Driving License'". Almost as good as the Nigerian Literature Ig winners a while ago. At the same time, the Economics Ig for '09 is somewhat forced; the whole Icelandic population should have gotten it: as we know, they were all into banking until rather recently.

• Christopher Caldwell in the Financial Times with the best piece on the Polanski saga as yet. Everybody else is awfully subjective.

• Guardian's list of where to find the best foods in the world. Room for disagreement, but still worth checking out. Unfortunately, I have recently missed the Barcelona and Tokyo places from the list... Plus a nice exposition of the contemporary American cuisine's highs.

• Somebody stop the Viking... ! More. He drew Leko and (again) Topalov in the latest two games, but he is still two points ahead. Let's hope this partnership with Kasparov (5th bullet point) works out and Carlsen stops losing the end games after dominating for most part all recent major tournaments...

• Goolsbee might indeed be the funniest economist alive, via Greg Mankiw. Of course, this was not unexpected: he'd already excelled on the (in)famous Colbert Report.

• The Dutch to the rescue of Scandinavian small towns?

• Writing from Schiphol, after almost 11 hours return flight from Tokyo. Detailed impressions in due time. Now boarding again.

Tallinn highlights. And the egoists.

• Architecture-wise, the Old Town is a combination of Brasov+ Cluj + Sighisoara centres (Transylvanian cities), including a mirror image of the Taylor's Bastion from Cluj (despite my guide's insistence that Tallinn is the only city with a Bastion in its very centre). Much better preserved, though. In a nutshell, a most modern medieval town. Plus a seaside. Lovely, lovely (we wouldn't want it off the UNESCO World Heritage list, oh no)!

• Free wireless everywhere in the city. No kidding. I think it was in a single spot in the Old Town where my Ipod could not trace any free network. Admirable!

• Power to the youth: Estonian newspapers are being sold by kids; the Government minister who addressed the EALE '09 audience was in his early thirties (possibly reason why he apologised a zillion times for having to leave as soon as done with his talk...); a/the Central Bank governor (gave the shortest and smartest address I have ever heard from EALE organizers/hosts/sponsors... ) was in his early forties etc. Something other countries in Eastern Europe should learn from?...

• Egoist was absolutely fantastic. And, well... egoistic... from all points of view (ex post non-egoistic complaints/regrets/remorses from real Swedes and Taiwanese were obviously ignored :-)...). Anyhow, the Foie Gras Escoffier was the second best I ever had, while the Estonian Elk Noisette paired with a 2006 Clos des Papes Châteauneuf-de-Pape (which some believe to outrank even the legendary 2005 version!) was sheer perfection. A total bargain at that price!

• And, of course, once more congrats to Juanna for winning this year's YLE EALE prize. Wishing at the same time that she stayed a pure "egoist". Potential others seem to complain all the time :-).

PS. And yeah..., there've been already two weeks since I am back: had to fight off a stubborn Estonian flu acquired under the most unclear circumstances.

Econlinks

• A summary of the debate "What's wrong with macroeconomics?" The debate goes on.

• Terry Tao's presentation of Perelman's solution to Poincaré's conjecture. There are chances you still won't understand much, but this is way better than attempting to directly digest Perelman's original articles :-).

• Here's Paul Graham's rule of thumb for recognizing (publishing) winners and losers: "When you see something that's taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn't have before, you're probably looking at a winner. And when you see something that's merely reacting to new technology in an attempt to preserve some existing source of revenue, you're probably looking at a loser" . He's also got an entertaining piece on the cheeseburger of essay forms.

• "So long as you use a knife there's some love left" or a(nother) glimpse at Norman Mailer's life & oeuvre. Controversy might be his nickname, but Mailer is one embarassing omission of the Literature Nobel Prize Commitee.

• The Chess Dreamteam?

• "The paradox is this: it's best to engage with your opponents' strongest arguments--but your view of what their strongest arguments are is not necessarily their view." This quote (valuable on its own) is from a must-read post of Gelman on (strategic) citation practices.

Klausenburg, anno 1865

WHEN you leave Szamos Ujvár, the road passes straight over a plain, with little or nothing to relieve the monotony. A Hungarian village or two, a nobleman's mansion with the surrounding farm-buildings,-that is all, until the tall spire and the various towers of Klausenburg rise before you. The town takes you by surprise, entering it from the north; the main street is broad, with many stately buildings in it, and the square with the Catholic church in the centre, seems to belong to a larger town than Klausenburg really is. Though it has but 25,000 inhabitants, which is less than the population of Kronstadt, its general appearance makes it seem the more considerable town of the two. The capital of the Barzenland is neat and compact, the houses are none of them high; and owing to its position among the hills, which gives it such enviable beauty, there is no possibility of broad streets and an open square in the centre of the town, as is the case in Klausenburg. Here there is plenty of room and to spare, and it would seem as if the Saxon founders-liking spacious dwellings, and needing them probably for their families and servants--had determined to make use of it.

All the old buildings are essentially German in their architecture and arrangements. The ironwork before the windows, the balconies, railings, the spouts for the water running from the gutters of the roof,-each bears its own unmistakable impress; the hand and skill of the German handicraftsman is everywhere to be recognized. Those first settlers were evidently well to do in the world,-comfortable citizens, who, if they did not care for luxury, valued at its full a good substantial dwelling, giving evidence that its possessor was also a man of substance.

The above is a fragment from Chapter XXVII of Charles Boner's "Transylvania. Its Products and Its People", published in London, in 1865. The whole book is available online, part of a very welcome research project at DXARTS/CARTAH, University of Washington-- which collects, inter alia, a bunch of other, old(er), books/translations about Romania et al, in digital format.

Weekend econlinks

• The other side of scientific publishing: the Editor's perspective. In this case nothing to complain about (au contraire: e.g., see earlier): if only most editors (cross-disciplinary) would follow on McAfee's steps... unfortunately, plenty of counterexamples around, such as the editors involved here

• Steven Shreve on working with models in the finance world. Shreve on a similar topic, earlier.

• Troubles in the adult entertainment industry...

• Econblogs doing great.

• One of the few things Romanians could/should copy from their Moldavian neighbours

• Bill Easterly reminding us about the gains from specialization.

• They might be having a slow, if any, economic recovery, but the Japanese are way ahead than anybody else technology-wise: Isaac Asimov would have loved this restaurant in Nagoya, Japan. Related, earlier.

• The hot waitress economic index.

• The Google Translate service: not a bad job (though things can be improved: e.g. "how are you, friend?" is translated in Danish "how are you, ven?" and in Hungarian "how are you, barátom?"; in most other languages I can check it seems to work fine :-)). See also a Google Research Blog recent article on the theme.


• The race to hire economists. Or statisticians. Or their combination?

• A new business hype (?): Investing in lawsuits.

Back from Catalunya

My Iberian experience (previous episodes here, here and here, some still incomplete) continued with 10 great (although unbearably hot...) end August days in Barcelona, around the EEA-ESEM conference this year, excellently hosted by the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, in its two campuses at Autònoma and Pompeu Fabra. Keeping it very brief, my (very selective) highlights:

• conference-wise, I have seen several excellent paper presentations and invited talks, but ultimately enjoyed most Pinelopi Goldberg's Marshall lecture on the effects of global patent agreements for pharmaceutical companies, talk partially based on this paper. The results were quite surprising (at least given my priors...): this is definitely worth reading/considering very carefully.
• I had to check out some of Barcelona's famous restaurants; hence, I shall warmly recommend to anybody, foodie or not: i) pretty much any of the tapas dishes (perhaps a random selection would be best for your first visit!), accompanied, for instance (their wine list is not very large, but counts some excellent wines), by an unforgettable Santiago Ruiz Blanco, at Paco Meralgo -- without exaggeration one of the best tapas places I have ever tried; ii) Sagardi Euskal Taberna (in the beautiful Barrio Gótico) is obviously not Catalan-cuisine..., but I've found beyond delicious their baby squid in ink sauce, accompanied by the perfect Basque Country cider (guess which side of Spain I must visit next...); iii) I would not really compare, overall, this restaurant to the first two mentioned above, but if you try the monkfish at Can Ramonet (ask for the 'monkfish in Can Ramonet sauce', obviously), and accompany that with their superb Gramona Sauvignon Blanc, that'll surely make a perfect evening. The only regret is that I did not have time to try all the places on my list; inter alia El Bulli will have to remain for some future time... and some future budget :-).
• if you thought I ignored all that, not a chance: Barcelona is, perhaps first of all, Antoni Gaudí's city. Obviously you should find plenty of documentation (and/or impressions) about Sagrada Família, Casa Batlló, Casa Milà or the Parc Güell (the latter my favourite Gaudí-related spot in Barcelona), so I'll just say that you will be forever impressed, even if Art Nouveau is not necessarily your favourite architectural bite-- Gaudí's style is unique (delayed confession: I guess I am totally into Bauhaus, especially after admiring Walter Gropius's amazing 1938 house in Lincoln, with the occasion of my earlier visit this year to Boston)
• last, but never least: essential for my Barcelona visit, my good old friend Joop is to be thanked for being a great host, guide, and... cook! That fresh monkfish ceviche was truly fabulous-- I think I just chose it one of my very favourite dishes, though for now I hesitate attempting to prepare it myself (even considering solved the problem of finding very fresh el rape) :-).