Funniest dating ad ever?

I hate you all. I hate London. I hate books. I hate critics. I hate this magazine, I hate this column and I hate all the goons who appear in it. But if you have large breasts, are younger than 30 and don't want to talk about the novel you're 'writing' I'll put that aside for approximately two hours one Saturday afternoon in January. Man, 33. Box no. 7810.

--David Rose: Sexually I'm More of a Switzerland--

 

What I have been reading

A couple of books I have read within the past few weeks, most of them on my Kindle 3G device(*):

Scott Berkun's "Confessions of a Public Speaker" (get the Kindle edition): the author is a professional speaker, in front of audiences large and small, hence he has got some very helpful tips for anyone who ever needs to engage in public speaking, mostly drawn from his own experiences. These tips range from the a priori preparation for your speech, to engaging your audience, to knowing what to do when you have a too large room and too few people in there etc.What is missing, but understandably so given the author's career, is the treatment of academic public lectures, which can be quite different than any other public types of speech-- nevertheless a series of Berkun's recommendations work perfectly also for academics. The book is at the same time a very fun reading.

***

Jason Zweig's "The Little Book of Safe Money: How to Conquer Killer Markets, Con Artists, and Yourself" (get the Kindle edition): useful advice for small investors (that can be probably summed up by the following quotes "for most small investors, an indexed bond mutual fond is the best way to go" and "[d]on't invest in leveraged and inverse ETFs. Leave them to professional traders" ...) and adapted particularly for the US audience (you do find for instance very helpful info on the so-called '529 plans,' including some online links to compare various such plans, in case you are interested in that). Definitely not for more sophisticated investors (some of you, readers of this blog) or for people who've read much more detailed stuff on financial investments earlier (although I am myself in this category, sometimes it is useful to consult other perspectives at a more elementary level). A tad too cautious and limited on scope and purpose. Anyhow, if you are a beginner and (plan to) live in the US, by all means do read this book.

***

Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's "Superfreakonomics" (get the Kindle edition). I find this better written than their first Freakonomics success (see, e.g., the first bullet point here for some of the huge debate on that earlier book)-- probably experience and learning on the job-- though it contains as little economics as the first one (it is written more in an investigative journalism style: Dubner obviously has the feeling for what sells and what not). That being said, I still think it is eventually a great service even to the economics  academic community (at least in drawing attention to the range of situations/phenomena that economics can be applied to; NB: I personally doubt it would give the/a too wrong impression of what economists do and should do-- if anything, it might convey the idea that some economists know very well how to sell their books,), and probably that writing it in more 'econo-prose' would have reduced its popularity. I would particularly recommend it to any non-economists, for sure (e.g. last winter I noticed the Romanian translation of the book is already out, and made it present to a good old Transylvanian friend of mine-- in function of his reaction I might offer it to my parents as well). By the way, related, the Freakonomics documentary is currently available for instant viewing on Netflix (I correct myself: right now their site is down, but it is the first time I do not see it functioning), if you are in US and have access to that service-- I plan to watch it one of the next days.

***

And now to my two favorites in this set: 

John Adams's "Hallelujah Junction. Composing an American Life" (unfortunately not available on Kindle): this is one of the best autobiographies I have ever read, within the musical realm and beyond. Honest, full of wit, style, and extremely informative-- and that to say the least. As somebody who's listened to a large set of Adams's compositions (and working on the remaining ones...) and who regularly follows his blog, I simply had to read his autobiographical piece in order to have access to Adams's detailed perspective on both his  own work and his general ideas of music (composition, interpretation, intrigues, all the hoopla), politics, life, everything... Highly recommended: one of those books that you simply cannot stop reading once you have started. I'll most likely refer to passages or ideas from "Hallelujah Junction" in many of my future blogposts.

Steven Landsburg's "The Big Questions" (get it on Kindle): I will only tell you that this book is from my perspective really scary, in that its author appears to think about  crucial stuff --i.e. mathematics, economics, physics, philosophy, tax policies, trade, sex, religion, life, Universe etc.-- in an almost identical way to yours truly (ok: I should maybe phrase it as "I think almost exactly like him"-- after all he was there before me...). In any case, even if you've known all the time and agreed all the way with everything in the book (though he does cover an enormous range of topics, requiring that you'd be an extremely well read person), Landsburg's exposition is one of the clearest I've ever encountered (this is true also for his previous books, some of them recommended earlier on this blog; I will only say here that I even used an earlier quote from him as one of the "propositions" --"stellingen", in Dutch-- to go along with my PhD thesis defence-- see under IX in this list). In particular, he's got the rare ability to explain in few paragraphs, mainly by means of easy examples and analogies, some highly complex material (try explaining quantum physics or deontological vs. consequential ethics to the non-initiated!), albeit he needs to strip them down to the bare essence (but then again this is a popularizing book, aimed for a wide audience). Landsburg's writing style is also something I personally like a lot: he's got just the right amounts of humor, irony, and even the tiny bit of arrogance (why not?) mixed in his book. Check out also Landsburg's "The Big Questions" blog, something I've followed and enjoyed since its very start. I end with a larger quote from the introductory chapter of "The Big Questions" that is likely to give you a good feeling of Landsburg's 'creed' and goal in this book (as well as the similarity with my own academic training and beliefs, c.f. the scary/eerie part from above):

"[...] I went on to a career of research in teaching in both mathematics and economics, with a little dabbling in physics along the way, but I never lost sight of my fascination with the big questions of philosophy: Where did the Universe come from? Why is there something instead of nothing? How is knowledge possible? What justifies a belief? How can we tell right from wrong, and good from evil? How should we live our lives?

Philosophers have useful ways of thinking about these questions, but so do people  who are not philosophers. Physicists know something about the origins of the Universe; mathematicians know something about the patterns of reality; economists know something about how our choices affect the lives of others, which is not distinct from the problem of distinguishing right from wrong. I've come to believe that these disciplines provide some of the best available tools for chipping away at the problems of philosophy.

When a man  with a hammer tells you that everything looks like a nail, you should doubt his objectivity. When a man who knows some math and economics tells you that the problems of philosophy can be solved with math and economics, you're entitled to exactly the same reaction. But in this case I believe the causality runs the other way: I was drawn to math and economics because they illuminate the big questions. I saw the nails and went out to find a hammer. [...]"

(*)which is absolutely fantastic and you must have it, despite 1. the fact that David Letterman cannot find page numbers on the Kindle books -- and hates it because of that; 2. the fact that each Kindle book costs more if you buy it outside US-- function of the IP address from where you log in to your Amazon account when buying it (before investigating and realizing this, I did actually buy quite a few Kindle books during my European winter holidays-- and ended up paying about 50 bucks more than I would have paid, had I bought them here in the US). In any case, I am the owner of more than 100 Kindle books already (yes, Amazon, I expect some loyalty awards!): given my fairly long commuting time between Lakeview, where I live, and Northwestern Univ in Evanston, I can read up to two or three books in good weeks.

George Stigler could do anything--anything but be boring

 [...] I must out of courtesy and caution reserve judgment on any laws that Professor Stigler may unveil. For, as I learned when our friendship began long ago, George Stigler can do anything-- anything but be boring.

-Paul Samuelson-

Here's the Sunday read I recommend to you: a great 1963 dialogue on the "proper economic role of the state" between two intellectual giants, George Stigler(*, **) and Paul Samuelson. More actual than ever. If only all current policy and academic debates had this flavor!

* inspired by Steven Landsburg's recent blogposts on Stigler, here and here. Echoing Landsburg, you must absolutely read Stigler's "The Intellectual and the Marketplace" and "Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist", if you haven't already done so. Indeed, he would likely be the champion of all Econ bloggers.

** read fast Milton Friedman's short biographical essay on Stigler and Stigler's 1982 Nobel prize lecture "The process and progress of economics"

The Manski Critique

Chuck Manski's recent NBER working paper, "Policy Analysis with Incredible Certitude" (non-gated version) ought to be a must-read for anyone doing or interested in policy analysis.

The study is written in an accessible way, such that it can be in principle followed without explicit academic training in Economics/Econometrics (there are plenty of further references for the technical details), and essentially sums up some of Manski's conclusions from his well known research agenda on empirical methods in social sciences such as partial identification, and using decision theory with credible assumptions, for policy inference-- see for instance his books on these topics (which any applied econometrician should have on his/her shelf; though I confess, my copies are currently still in Aarhus, awaiting my shipping/bringing them to Chicago), Identification Problems in the Social Sciences (1995), Partial Identification of Probability Distributions (2003), Social Choice with Partial Knowledge of Treatment Response (2005), and Identification for Prediction and Decision (2007).

Manski catalogues the 'incredible analytical practices' and provides examples for each category. His set consists of "conventional certitudes", "dueling certitudes", "conflating science and advocacy" and "wishful extrapolation". I find particularly compelling the sections on the conventional and respectively the dueling certitudes, which are preceded by a concise introduction on the incentives for certitude (wherein, as usually, USA presidents' alleged statements always come in handy). Similarly, Manski pins down very well the "wishful extrapolation" practice, when often very strong, unwarranted, invariance assumptions are made (see his example on the selective incapacitation studies performed by RAND researchers in the early 80s, which gave rise to some hot political debates).

The one section that I find less thorough than the others in Manski's paper is the one on "conflating science and advocacy". Acknowledging that impartiality in social science (in fact, with some contextual caveats, this point is relevant for science in general) is the ideal, and that often research falls far from this ideal, I think Manski's pointing out that conflating science and advocacy is one of the main reasons for incredible policy analysis is absolutely correct. His illustration with excerpts from Milton Friedman's arguments for educational vouchers is also fine; indeed some of the crucial empirical evidence necessary for Friedman's stated policy implications in that context was (and still is, as Manski also states) missing, such as whether there are significant neighborhood (or peer) externalities involved (however, for making that point stronger, plenty of better, and/or more recent examples could have been used...). What I did not particularly fancy is the between-the-lines allusion that Friedman used to do this (i.e., conflating science and advocacy) on a frequent basis or, perhaps, all/most of the time. For instance, Manski states on page 20, "Milton Friedman [...] had a seductive ability to conflate science and advocacy" [...]. See Krugman (2007) for a broader portrait of Friedman as scientist and advocate". That particular NYRB article of Paul Krugman that Manski cites (presumably for other depictions of Friedman seductively conflating science with advocacy, and related-- line which is otherwise not followed up or further substantiated in Manski's paper) has however a considerable number of inaccuracies and misunderstandings, which others very well pointed out in subsequent articles, see for instance Nelson and Schwartz's reply to Krugman's; in fact, many would easily think that Krugman is himself guilty of conflating science and advocacy here (and elsewhere; some do actually substitute 'conflating science and advocacy' with 'ignoring science for advocacy' as practice in many of Krugman's NYT pieces- 1st bullet point...). And yes, ok: I wrote myself a post about that Krugman portrayal of Friedman, shortly after his article appeared. All in all, however, this minor point does not in any way diminish the essence of Manski's thesis; it's only that if it is about impartiality and professionalism in scientific practice (which Chuck Manski is one of the champions of, no doubt), we should make sure that is also the (only) between-the-lines message.

Econlinks: The search and matching edition

• John Kennes has put together quite an impressive resource on the 'economics of search and matching' (on which he's giving a full course this Fall, in Aarhus: if you are a master/PhD student active/interested in the area, you really don't want to miss that). I have to admit I see myself several of those internet-accessible search and/or matching (and beyond) materials (e.g., many YouTube lectures) for the first time. Great job, John: hope you'll keep developing that site!

• In a previous post I mentioned taking part in this year's Macro Perspectives Workshop at the NBER Summer Institute. Ex post, the workshop was indeed host to a number of interesting paper presentations and often lively discussions. In arbitrary order and obviously subject to my idiosyncrasies, I thought some of the finest contributions were: Farhi and Werning's "Insurance and Taxation over the Life Cycle", Kaas and Kircher's "Efficient Firm Dynamics in a Frictional Labour Market", and Cosar, Guner and Tybout's "Firm Dynamics, Job Turnover, and Wage Distributions in an Open Economy".

• I've now read (airtravel is a great means for reducing your pile of must-read research papers) Jean-Marc Robin's paper "On the Dynamics of Unemployment and Wage Distributions", of which I've seen a very stimulating presentation at the EALE/SOLE conference from mid June, in London. I think this is indeed an interesting (if still subject to further empirical validation) alternative, building up from micro- to macro- modelling, to-- this is not entirely correct, but I will try to fit a catch-all term-- 'direct wage stickiness' models advanced over the recent years (and largely embraced since). While wage rigidity remains essentially the main culprit in explaining wage inequality dynamics patterns (varying cyclicality at different cuts in the wage distribution), the underlying mechanism is different than hitherto considered, a combination of worker heterogeneity and aggregate shocks to match productivity delivering both unemployment volatility and different renegotiation process of extreme, as opposed to intermediate, wage levels. Moreover, as Jean-Marc emphasizes in the conclusion of the paper, his benchmark suggests some straightforward, pretty exciting avenues for further research.

• I'll let you figure out the link with the search & matching (or the Economics!): here's John Adams with sufficient reasons to read Gustave Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary' for a second(third,...nth?) time. And if you didn't know (or: know all too well) that Flaubert is for grande prose what Mahler is for grande musique-- think details, precision, Herculian labour-- read Adams's (channelling Vargas Llosa) "Perpetual Orgy" sequel, too.

Weekend econlinks: The quest for perfection

• Gelman writes a useful overview on causality and statistical learning (caveat lector: I have only read through Angrist and Pischke's book, among the three Gelman mentiones; that one is very well written, but aimed at junior graduate students at best: hence, the book's tag "an empiricist's companion" is overselling it; and that has nothing to do with Josh Angrist kindly "advising" me to change my PhD topic/focus, sometime in my beginning graduate years, because 'nobody serious would be interested in structural modelling' :-)). I guess I would position myself more within the “minority view” set, represented here by Heckman (I wouldn’t say that is really a "minority" within Economics alone, by the way), but the usefulness of these debates cannot be questionned. And an outsider's (to Economics) opinion, such as Gelman's, is always more than welcome. Related, the WSJ talks about statistical time travelling to answer interesting counterfactuals; I have a feeling I'll stick to my structural guns for now...

• An excellent article on the junior meritocracy and the perils of standardized testing at very young ages. I share most of the worries expressed therein and indeed agree that the marshmallow test would say at least as much, and probably more, than a standardized intelligence test, in the case of toddlers. My general take is that young humans have much more complex personalities than usually warranted, in ways that elude any catch-all type of tests: after all, some even fall in love at 3 years old.

• The perfect, employer-focused, resume. Uses creativity somewhat differently than its more modern counterparts; I am sure Leonardo would be the one to get all the flyouts and job offers today, as his modern CV were obviously recession-proof.

• The ubiquitous problem with such academic et al rankings (which I brought over and over, including in earlier posts and articles, particularly concerning the academic ranking obsession in Romania, where they also-- still! -- have problems understanding that a publication 'anywhere in ISI' can be total nonsense) is that they try to rank overall, ie. over all disciplines, often over (too) long periods of time etc. The only meaningful hierarchies in science are those done on specific disciplines and, even better, subdisciplines, and over shorter periods of time, thus revealing top new places etc. Then, inter alia, one would not be able to claim that biological sciences are advantaged, since there would be a within-discipline focus. I haven’t heard a single serious (but plenty of marginal) scientist(s) stressing the relevance of the rank of her/his university/institution over that of her/his department/research group. Politicians and journalists should take note, too.

• The perfect chef? That is intriguing enough: I would certainly like to know whether one can trace his whereabouts anywhere around Chicago, in the near future. And the (allegedly) perfect place for the greatest wine-- Rekondo, San Sebastian-- for the far(ther) future.

• Gastronomic sacrilège: where have all the great cheeses gone-- roquefort, camembert, brie de Meaux, Saint-Félicien, gruyère, comté, münster, pont l’évêque, cantal, reblochon, tomme de Savoie, crottin de chavignol?! Worse, together with the cheese, soon gone might be oysters, and epsilon common sense... Quo vadis, France?

• Searching for the perfect chess player, human or machine... Put your money on AI; leave poker for humans.

• The most exciting scientific upshot I've heard about in a great while: explaining the tip-of-the-tongue moments. It comes finally clear (although at this stage I understand it is still just speculative/conjectural, and needs more testing) why polyglots (such as I like to consider myself...) have more of a problem in remembering specific words than people who use a single language: “ […] this kind of forgetfulness is due to infrequency of use; basically, the less often you use a word, the harder it is for your brain to access it." Good, I will feel much better when invoking 'lapsus memoriae' next time :-).

• The quest for the better, simpler, (American) living times: old, but superb Daily Show clip, via Tabarrok, on MR

• Economics research in perfect worlds.


• How very true, though my feeling is that the battle for the brightest junior (and not only) Economists is far from over. It is sadly not Europe overall that might offer an alternative for European economists (not a chance: for starters, Europe needs to cut that embarrasing red tape where academics depend on useless, worthless, ridiculous bureacrats, and to think of attractive real wages... ), but Canada and Australia, which look more and more like worthy competitors to the USA (top; the bulk is way worse than pretty much anywhere in western Europe) places (related, earlier).

Indignation. Leila. Zigeunerweisen. Leila

For some reason I (once in a while) remember something Supachai Panichpakdi, then-WTO boss, said at a keynote speach in a Rotterdam conference celebrating 100 years since the birth of Jan Tinbergen (earlier on this blog, in Romanian): namely that we, then-PhD students in Economics, should stop reading [all sorts of books, papers etc.] and start writing immediately [papers, books, anything?], without wasting any further time (footnote here: -- which I do not know if Blogger can handle-- next to that, Dr. Panichpakdi, who also appeared to speak more than decent Dutch, had all sort of nice memories involving his PhD supervisor, Jan Tinbergen, and, my favourite part, he had plenty of anecdotes about the intense interactions between himself, Pascal Lamy, the-- ironically-- current WTO boss, then- EU Commissioner for Trade, and Robert Zoellick, current World Bank boss, then-US Trade Representative; Lamy said later that year that 'Panichpakdi talks too much', when I brought that up to him, in a "Young European Citizen Convention" videoconference, where we could ask him questions...). Now, the thing is that I am more and more convinced (despite similar advice from other, call them, "seniors") that Panichpakdi was dead wrong in that particular suggestion: there is simply too much written stuff around, and most of it is worthless (vox populi: crap); you don't need to be part of that. Au contraire, in order to make a(ny) difference (assuming you do not get significant utility from simply writing down stuff, that is, from the action of writing/typing per se...), you'd better take all the time in the world and read sufficiently... before you write anything. I mean, you're still in gain committing the error of too much reading (can one ever err there?), then that of too much writing, all else equal. Some caveats surely apply (some revolve around the slight alteration "live sufficiently", instead of "read sufficiently.. before you write anything"), but no more space for those here: I wrote too much already :-).

Anyway, what I actually wanted to bore you with is that I have recently returned from home, i.e. Cluj, Transylvania, Vampire Empire, which nowadays happens to be part of Romania (more), a country where in order to get a new, biometric, passport, you have to wait no less than 20 (twenty! and they stress: week)days. In the Netherlands or Denmark (or any other sane country) you get the same, biometric, passport in 5 (five) days. And there they also do not (implicitly or explicitly) ask if you agree to be fingerprinted because (as in my country, the default assumption is that) you, as in you-citizen, might believe there is some connection of fingerprinting/digital photography/anything involving a biometric passport to a peculiar 666 number, or some-- whatever-- religion, or to both. Pathetic. And still (what a child, ain't it?), I insist: I want to have my Romanian (biometric or not) passport. I am by now 99% sure that Marcus Messner's so perfectly displayed indignation (hopefully they get back to their senses in that Nobel Literature committee and give the next prize to Roth, rather than persisting in rewarding mediocrity) is simply a most natural feeling, with or without Olivia (or Bertrand Russell) in the background.

Maybe it is better to talk/write about what we love. So here she is once again, Leila: this time together with Sarasate and his Zigeunerweisen (earlier). More about Pablo de Sarasate's masterpiece (including an incredible 1904 recording of Sarasate himself playing it!). More on Leila's Zigeunerweisen. Fabulous!

What I've been reading

• Jay McInerney's "Bacchus and me", one of the best books I've read within the past two years or so. Informative, witty, provocative (even for me: I clearly disagree with the author in several places!, but that only adds to the spice...). Don't miss it even (or especially if...) you don't know much about wines (earlier).
  

• "Elephants on acid: And other bizzare experiments", by Alex Boese: somewhat overrated. It does have quite some (catalogue) informative value, indexing indeed rather unusual (public "crazy"/"taboo") research within the last century or so, but the scientific studies mentioned are a strange highly selective sample from two or three disciplines (with a dominant preference towards psychology experiments); (accordingly) the writing style is very commercial, paying much more attention to the (ex ante) declared research target, than to the often unmatched (ex post) quality of the cited study; finally, we could perhaps do without the forced 'jokes' at the end of every chapter. Nevertheless, this could be used as light evening reading for those of you not involved much with (academic) science in daily life...
  

• "Economics: A very short introduction", by Partha Dasgupta. Interesting and perhaps desired goal in this series: a very short and concise introduction to a specific discipline, meant particularly for outsiders. Dasgupta's book is well written, very solid in what it discusses, but far from exhaustive or even general enough in coverage (both in portraying methodology and subfields etc)... In order to "shortly introduce" this topic to non-economists, I would ideally prefer a very short version of Mankiw's "Principles of Economics" (e.g., take the 10 principles and expand in the typical 'short introduction' series book length...), or else something in the spirit of Wheelan's "Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science" (see also earlier, 2nd bullet point).

• "Einstein: His Life and Universe", by Walter Isaacson. Probably the best biography on Einstein as yet. The author is, inter alia, using autobiographical material only recently available from Einstein's family etc. I started quite a while ago reading it (see earlier, last bullet point) but wrapped it up only recently. In particular, and rather uncommon to previous Einstein biographies, the author does a great job in portraying Einstein's personal life(s) with all its ups and downs, and a good job in presenting (and at points giving plenty of detail) Einstein political/social/economic views (particularly in the latter stage of his life), including (my interest here) what academic economists would consider naive economic perspectives (some of which Einstein himself revised or re-nuanced, to his credit).

• "Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism ", by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller. I have just started this book, and I think there is much more to it then the following..., but, before we all turn behavioural economists (sic), I suggest we all read its very recent review, by Richard Posner. In fact it is this criticism I wanted to advertise here: you might have issues with Posner's comments here and there, but else it really gets down to the fundamentals (the animal spirits, here, if you will). Here's a bit to get you going, the one bit that involves this profession: "Some of these mistakes of commission and omission had emotional components. The overconfidence of economists might even be thought a manifestation of animal spirits. But the career and reward structures, and the ideological preconceptions, of macroeconomists are likelier explanations than emotion for the economics profession's failure to foresee or respond effectively to the crisis." Nonetheless, I will still finish reading the book :-).

Oysters

You start with an oyster. You put it inside a large olive. Then you put the olive inside an ortolan (a wee bird called ‘the garden bunting’, in case you are among the underprivileged), and the ortolan inside a lark, and so on and so on. In the end you have a roasted oyster. Or perhaps a social revolution.

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, "Consider the Oyster"

McInerney's wine world

You probably know, even if you have never tasted them, that Lafite is synonymous with elegance, Mouton with power. Lafite is fragrant and ethereal, Mouton loud and fleshy. Lafite is Leonardo to Mouton's Michelangelo. If they made clothes, Lafite would be Armani and Mouton, Versace. "If Lafite was an artist, it would be Chagall", Eric Rothschild once told me. "If a musician--Mozart."

Jay McInerney, "Bacchus & Me"

What I've been reading

I've started many books and haven't finished yet most of them..., but slowly and steadily, mainly during my many & long forthcoming travels (NB: Transylvania, here I come!), I'll get there...

Anyway: a book I've just finished is Nick Hornby's "Fever Pitch" (wiki link; audio link with Hornby answering questions about the book). There are apparently two movies made after it already, but I haven't seen either, so I'll be silent in that respect. But the book... the book is definitely not to miss.

Whether you are are a (Arsenal/UK...) football fan or not, this is likely the best book about football (or for that matter: sports fan passion) you've run into so far... certainly my best such book, though I confess I am not a big fan of football or of sports fiction & co, for that matter... so this could be most about its literary value, in the end. Here's a blurb that manages to somehow catch the main part of "Fever Pitch" in a phrase: "For many people watching football is mere entertainment; to some it's more like a ritual; but to others, its highs and lows provide a narrative to life itself. For Nick Hornby, his devotion to the game has provided one of the few constants in a life where the meaningful things--like growing up, leaving home and forming relationships, both parental and romantic--have rarely been as simple or as uncomplicated as his love for Arsenal". What I personally like a lot in Hornby's style here is the self-deprecating humor, which works perfectly in the context, and the attention to detail, again functioning very well given the theme.

To get you in the mood, I selected two of my favourite quotes from the book below (though I ultimately disagree with both of them); by the way, Hornby has plenty of those: paragraphs I simply hate I didn't/couldn't write myself :-)

• "You just can't find this outside a football ground; there is nowhere else you can be in the entire country that will make you feel as though you are at the heart of things. Because whichever nightclub you go to, or play, or film, or whichever concert you see, or restaurant you eat at, life will have been going on elsewhere in your absence, as it always does; but when I am at Highbury for games like these, I feel that the rest of the world has stopped and is gathered outside the gates,waiting to hear the final score"

• "I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring..."

PS. In order to make a link to my typical Econ academe world: the fan(s) portrayed in this book reminds me in a way of LSE's Chris Pissarides: I recall a short discussion a while ago, probably at the NBER Summer Institute in Boston this year, where he confessed that he cannot miss any game of (several) UK football teams (in the sense that he would shorten his conferences, maybe miss keynote speeches etc, just to make it to these games). And I mean...live games; watching them on TV does not count. After reading Hornby's "Fever Pitch", I understand Pissarides is definitely not alone in that passion :-).

Digital Darwin

Here.

And here's for instance the first edition of the Origin of Species (links to a PDF of about 90 MB; you can also listen to the audio version of the book in 21 .mp3 files ). If you want/need to start by reading more info on the Origin of Species, go here.

Econlinks for 28-02-'08

• A very nice article about GMU's Econ department. I love for instance the following bit, despite its capitalizing on stereotypes (but we love those sometimes :-)); so here's Arnold Kling: My simple way of describing it is that at Chicago they say, ‘Markets work; let’s use markets.’ At Harvard and MIT they say, ‘Markets fail; let’s use government.’ And at George Mason, we say, ‘Markets fail; let’s use markets.’”

• Barack Obama might be very good at writing books (see here my assessment of his most popular book); however, he fares pretty poorly so far, in his economics policies. Here's one of his worst ideas, for instance, rightly and well criticized on VoxEU. It is rather amazing that with some top economists as his advisors, Obama can actually support an economic proposal that is "reactionary, populist, xenophobic and just plain silly". One can only hope that Obama does all this nonsense economic campaigning for popular votes and he'd eventually get back to his senses if elected President... But could he deliver as President, as The Economist and probably most of us would like to know...?

• An excellent interview with Kip Viscusi, the specialist on individuals' assessment of risk, compensation policies for safety and health hazards, and so forth.

• Since I've been reading The Bottom Billion, by Paul Collier, here's Easterly's review of it, published October last year in the Lancet. Haven't yet finished the book, but so far I tend to agree with Bill Easterly (hmm, seems I often agree with Easterly, here's another recent instance). I saw of course Easterly, Collier, Acemoglu and Duflo (and George Soros, by videophone) debating in the panel discussion on development in Budapest, at the EEA 2007; also there Easterly's speech came forth as clearer (and better!) than Collier's (with Acemoglu and Duflo diplomatically not taking clear sides :-)). Soros was eventually better than I had expected, but promoting Collier's book somewhat too much :-).

Real stakes in the US election

Here's my favourite bit of the best essay I've read today:

The reality is that democracy is a very blunt instrument, and in today’s environment we are choosing between ways of muddling through. We may hear that the election is about different visions for America’s future, but the pitches may be more akin to selling different brands of soap.

We hear so many superficial messages precisely because most American voters have neither the knowledge nor the commitment to evaluate the pronouncements of politicians on economic issues. It is no accident that the most influential political science book of the last year has been “The Myth of the Rational Voter,” by Bryan Caplan. The book shows that many voters are ill-informed or even irrational; many economic issues are complex, and each voter knows that he or she will not determine the final outcome.

Rather than being cynics, we should be realists. Democracy is reasonably good at some things: pushing scoundrels out of office, checking their worst excesses by requiring openness, and simply giving large numbers of people the feeling of having a voice. Democracy is not nearly as good at others: holding politicians accountable for their economic promises or translating the preferences of intellectuals into public policy.

Read Tyler Cowen's entire article, from the NYTimes.


PS. I guess you've started reading Bryan Caplan's book by now ( I mentioned it before, e.g., here or here). If not, hurry up, what are you waiting for?! :-).

What I've been reading

Lately I've got about 5 books started at all times and I largely read them in parallel (unless I like one too much to let it out of my hands before I finish it). This seems to be an excellent strategy against getting "too much" of something in a short while and eventually deciding to drop it too soon (which, by the way, you should not shy away from doing anytime if you really--but really-- do not seem to find any merit in reading a particular book). Below some brief impressions on some of the books started by end '07-beginning '08 that I've finally finished:

• Stephen Greenblatt's "Will in the World. How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare". This is a book once suggested to me by my good old friend Daniel, probably the only person in the world who can read even two-three books a day :-). You'll learn more about Shakespeare (both life and creation -wise) than you've ever known before. Greenblatt, probably best known as father of the New Historicism, combines his comparative advantage as literary critic with a great biographer intuition and manages to almost deliver Will Shakespeare in person (I strongly doubt one can do better than this, based on the current, scant evidence on Shakespeare's life etc.). A book you should not miss.

• "Why beautiful people have more daughters [with too long of a subtitle...]" by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa. I once had a post related to research covered in this book, which was also when I decided that I had to read it. One good point is that you'll find out about a number of extremely interesting fertility or demographic empirical facts that you might have not known. For explaning most of these facts the authors try to fit an evolutionary psychology story. Unfortunately, there's also where you should be extra cautious: although they seem to be careful with presenting clearly the conclusions reached scientifically versus others that might be speculated upon, but cannot be given clear scientific backing, my opinion is that the book is still not satisfactory from that point of view. In fact I am very curious whether this is an opinion solely of people acquainted with scientific research/statistics/econometrics or it holds more generally. For those of you who'd like more details, some of the explanations in the book are simply taken over from several articles published in, e.g., the Journal of Theoretical Biology by one or the other of the two co-authors (Kanazawa most often), which have been already criticized on several grounds, see for instance the 'statistical' criticism by Andrew Gellman, published in the same journal. Somehow both the book and the previous articles on which the research therein is based, try to oversell, without always giving proper scientific foundations (though this does not mean the given explanations can be invalidated). This is not to say that you should ignore this book; once again, it can fill you up with facts you had no clue about (tip: facts that can be used in most colloquial discussions, since people seem to particularly like such topics: now you know which book to read if you want to get in the center of attention every time).
  

• Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope". Steven Levitt was the one who convinced me to read this book, as I've mentioned before (post in Romanian, with links to Kakutani's review of the book in NYTimes and to Levitt's admission that he "was blown away at how well written it is"). While I am far from being "blown away" after having read Obama's book, I agree that the book is well written, perhaps unexpectedly so for an active politician. One of its strong points is that pretty much all of the author's ideas are conveyed in parsimonious, common sense language; this is essential for a politician aiming to engage and completely clarify his position in front of a mass audience (with electoral power, where applicable). For those of you who want a shorter version, you can watch on YouTube the two parts (part 1, part 2) of Obama's 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech (the book extends and expands on the themes touched on in this address). This was the talk that essentially launched Obama as a key player in US politics. Whether you'd eventually like this fellow in the White House or not (hopefully that decision would not be solely based on the most appealing book written by the candidates), you will only gain from reading his book.

More to follow soon. Meanwhile, you can also check my "books" blog-category for other books I've read and/or talked about in previous posts.

Econlinks for 16-01-'08

• Alessina, Ichino and Karabarbounis arguing for gender based taxation, on VoxEU. This recent CEPR working paper has the details. Their modelling is very basic (one obvious extension to make this more realistic-- probably requiring a lot of effort-- should be to allow for frictions in the search & matching of agents on the marriage market), but still makes for super interesting research with (potential) serious policy implications. I guess female readers of this blog can only agree with their idea? :-).

• 5 myths about ballot-box behaviour (works very well also beyond the USA, if you're in any way worried about external validity :-)) from the author of the excellent "Myth of the Rational Voter...", see also a related, older entry of mine.

• voor degene die Nederlands begrijpen, een heel interessant video-interview met CPB directeur Coen Teulings (ja ja, hij is ook mijn promotor...) op de BNR: deel 1, deel 2 en deel 3. Inter alia, het interview gaat over de eventuele effecten van de kredietcrisis, handelen met China en India, de situatie in het zorg sector, de arbeidsongeschiktheidswet voor jongeren, het onderwijs en nood hebben aan toptalent daarin-- alle in de context van de Nederlandse economie.

• the exotic entrepreneurship edition today, again with a great example from one of my favourite reads last year (read here the previous entry on exotic business ideas): 'mud spray to cover license plates'. Somewhat illegal this time :-), but seems to work:

"Many markets are designed to help people avoid or circumvent lawful regulations. One British entrepreneur sells squirt bottles of spray-on mud for license plates. It is ostensibly so the buyer's vehicle can "look rugged", but more realistically it is used so police cameras cannot record the license plates of speeding vehicles. The mud is from Shropshire, and it contains secret ingredients so that it sticks to the license plate longer".

• an excellent article in the NYTimes on whether we ought to compensate the losers from free-trade (answer preview: NO), by Steven Landsburg (remember, he's the author of a book I've previously recommended for those who do not necessarily have a formal training in economics, but are, more seriously than the average person, interested in the topic; I am currently reading his latest book, will inform you of my final assessment once I am done with it:-)). You're my guests to offer counter-arguments; I couldn't.

Quote for the week 6th-12th of Jan '08

[...] children should be taught not so much what to think as how to think. If, having been fairly and properly exposed to all the scientific evidence, they grow up and decide that the Bible is literally true or that the movements of the planets rule their lives, that is their privilege. The important point is that it is their privilege to decide what they shall think, and not their parents' privilege to impose it by force majeure. And this, of course, is especially important when we reflect that children become the parents of the next generation, in a position to pass on whatever indoctrination may have moulded them."

Richard Dawkins, in "The God Delusion"

Read the quote of the previous week.

Unire intru fanatism...

... sau intru prostie, as completa eu. Costi Rogozanu scrie foarte bine pe blogul sau despre recentul protest al Patriarhiei Romane vizand traducerea in romana a "Versetelor Satanice" scrise de Salman Rushdie. Am zis 'foarte bine' mai sus; asta nu acopera insa si remarca lui Rogozanu referitoare la "stilul greoi emfatic al lui Rushdie", dar ma rog, sa o lasam la de gustibus (desi m-as fi asteptat la mai mult de la Rogozanu si ajung sa ma intreb cat a citit din Rushdie...).

Recenta incercare a Patriarhiei de a se opune libertatii expresiei in baza legii cultelor era desigur previzibila de multa vreme, vezi si o analiza rapida, pe text, a acestei fantastice probe de eruditie mioritica, numita 'lege a cultelor' la noi.

Intr-un fel sunt mirat ca nu am auzit (inca?) nimic vis-à-vis de eventuale proteste ale Patriarhiei (si ale Ambasadei Iraniene, partenerul ideal intru fanatism & co, evidemment) la recenta traducere a cartii lui Richard Dawkins, 'The God Delusion' , in limba romana. Sau dumnealor chiar nu mai citesc decat fictiune?

Econlinks for 27-12-'07

• How to avoid recession in USA: Greg Mankiw's answer. Gary Becker and Richard Posner advocate a similar perspective (the argument is centered, of course, on the subprime housing mess). Former Fed boss Greenspan already said that one should do absolutely nothing and wait for the bubble to break on its own, just as the people above (e.g. in Mankiw's words: "Sometimes, bed rest and wait-and-see are the best we can do"), see my previous post on that. This also takes me to a link by Mankiw on 'bad press for Ben Bernanke ", the new Fed chair; while I think some of that criticism is valid, I'd say there is really no reason to panic and that one should trust the Fed and its chief governor, with handling this. After all, the great Milton Friedman already said Ben Bernanke is a great choice and is expected to do a good job (& remark here: this youtube clip linked above is almost one hour long wisdom from Friedman; no second of that is expendable).

• "Morality matters for economic performance": A very interesting summary of recent research plus the agenda for further research in the context, by Guido Tabellini, on voxeu.org. Tabellini already presented (part of) this in the 2007 EEA-ESEM conference from Budapest (more precisely, as the EEA Presidential Address, from the 30th of August), for those of you who have also been attending.

• "Lawsuit investment" as the new hype: "Juridica will make investments in ongoing legal claims, mostly in the US, and loans to law firms to finance their costs in pursuing claims."

• Markets in everything, one more exotic episode from Tyler Cowen's book, "Discover your inner economist" (read here the previous one). Today about the 'business of renting wedding guests':

A report from India tells of a firm that rents out wedding guests, so that the wedding and the party do not look empty. The "guests" will wear either traditional Indian dress or Western clothes, depending on what the customer dictates. They are told to dance and make small talk, and show a knowledge of the marrying couple,without letting on that they are hired. The firm's owner, a Mr. Syed, told one newspaper: "The breaking up of joint families and lack of affection among relatives also creates a demand for paid guests". The Best Guests Centre, at Jodhpur in Rajasthan, is looking to expand. To each his own: I would pay some people to stay away from my wedding.

Econlinks for 21-12-'07

• Larry Summers on the state of the US economy, a 19th of Dec speech (PDF, 8 pages). The gist is that he recommends fast and aggresive monetary and fiscal stimulus (the latter, mainly through tax cuts), just like (but more detailed than) Martin Feldstein, see my previous post on that. There are some very good ideas in Summers's proposal, though a few of his recommendations are falling too far on the 'leftist' side, to try a catch-all term (and I bet that many US economists would also agree). An example of the latter is for instance a proposal to increase the portfolio limit of the government sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
  



• L'embarras du choix: Romanian 'manelists' might have to choose between hot women and hot cars :-)
  


• Since tomorrow is the Global Orgasm Day (see also my last year's posts about that, here and here), I'll pick an assorted topic among the more exotic entrepreneurship cases discussed in Tyler Cowen's book, 'Discover your inner economist" (last one was in this post). Today about the hymen re-attachment hype:
  
  

  For her 17th wedding anniversary Jeanette Yarborough wanted to do something special for her husband. In addition to planning a hotel getaway for the weekend, Ms. Yarborough paid a surgeon $5000 to reattach her hymen, making her appear to be a virgin again. "It's the ultimate gift for a man who has everything" says Ms. Yarborough.
  
  This is reported to be one of the plastic-surgery industry's fastest growing segments, and yes, that is in the United States.

  
  
• An excellent article by Aaron Edlin on Microsoft's latest OS.
  


• I think Szekelys should indeed follow Andy's free advice on marketing Dracula. Somehow connected, see also an older post of mine touching on Stoker's book (including a link to the whole book online).