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!

Sunday night econlinks

• Good, Gelman is even more pissed off with Greenspun's to-a-large-extent-nonsense than I was: 9th bullet point.

• The culture of Old Europe (aka, new European Union...), via Gabi Istrate; I've also promised him I would carefully look at/comment on this: the promise is still there, the time-- not yet... :-).

• I am very curious how big this can/will get. After all, a whole Nobel might be at stake (I confess: I never really liked Gore, on any dimension; I still think he is submediocre or worse; however, I thought/still think that some of the climate guys/gals who won within the IPCC were more than decent...). This is not so much about scepticism (of any kind/degree), but first and foremost about scientific honesty. Seemingly a very rare quality today.

• The current world chess champ was in Romania some days ago, but nobody within the national mass media seems to have noticed. Of course not, they are all busy with one of the most pathetic presidential elections ever; they always manage to keep themselves busy with the least important things.

• The battle of the IT giants takes every possible form. In case you're wondering whom I am putting my money on, here's something to help you; these guys seem to know what's important for tomorrow: a small step in that direction with a (preliminary version of) automatic captioning for YouTube .

• I guess I am not in such of an intimate relationship with Tokyo after all (despite this...), since I didn't manage to meet any of the city's "groundbreakers" (though ok, fine, between me and you only: the truth is that I've been playing hard to get with Tao Okamoto)

• Only reinforces one point Easterly (and a minority of others) has been stressing all the time; this is how development should be done: help them to help themselves.

• The underrated Economist: A.C. Pigou.

• The research agenda of some of my LMDG colleagues: enter Rasmus Lentz and co-authors.

• "[s]urely the biggest police action we have ever had in Danish history" or one of the rare occasions when I am glad that I am not closer to Copenhagen...

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.

(Many) Econlinks for the Weekend

• A nice, brief VoxEU note of Willem Buiter on negative nominal interest rates (and their potential desirability). Greg Mankiw also tackled the topic earlier.

• If you're at all into arithmetics (and not only) you might like this concise exposé on very big numbers (think Ackerman series, Busy Beavers and the like if you are dubious about what "very big" stands for in this context...). Inter alia, this reminds me that many many years ago :-), when I was starting highschool, one of my life goals was to prove the Goldbach conjecture. I guess meanwhile I started looking for easier life targets :-).

• We absolutely love Blonde Parades -- though I wouldn't necessarily ask a financial crisis as prerequisite :-).

• Harvard in BIG trouble?...

• Pacepa and the former Romanian car industry (that he does get at all WSJ editorial space I find rather amazing in the first place, that he uses it to give advice to the USA gov on the failed car companies is, well... just fantastic :-)...). Hmm, at least he's got an interesting "style", shifting the entire blame on his former superior(s)... There isn't much Economics in there of course, as he after all admits himself..., but I would have liked at least some more precision in the numbers (and no, "billions" in "The Oltcit project lost billions" is not what I would call a good approximation)

• This is the only bullet point connected to the "pathetic" label of this blogpost. Levitt oddly calls it "reasonably interesting" on Freakonomics (I also do not agree with all Levitt's further opinions on the apparent "macro problem", but well, I guess he is well versed in Macroeconomics to know it better :-)), but I find this Guardian editorial "interesting" only inasmuch it shows the difference in Economics education between the "Economics editor" (sic!) of The Guardian and other Economics editors at, say, WSJ, NYTimes, The Economist, or FT... Inter alia, I wouldn't pretend that everybody understands the work of Bonhomme and Robin forthcoming at the ReStud (or for that matter, any other work in a top 5 research journal within Economics, which perhaps is not aimed to really everybody?), but indeed from an "Economics editor" we would perhaps expect a little bit more that the appraisal "divorced from reality" (merely from reading the abstract and nothing further in the text, since else our author would have found plenty of "reality"...). But Economics à la The Guardian it is, now you know what to read :-).

• Who's a bigger villain for Development: Mugabe or Anopheles/ Sachs or Easterly...? I guess you ought to know by now what I think in this mater, but that should not stop you from making your own opinion :-).

• In a rather vague Reuters article Romania comes 3rd in a top of "new wine regions". A pity they do not mention any Romanian wine de facto in that top, since the variance in the quality of all wines produced in the above mentioned regions is... well, infinite.

• Interesting facts & thoughts by Dan Hamermesh on (incentive...) bonuses for papers with multiple co-authors. Should they be designed as function of 1/N or 1/SquareRoot(N), where N the number of co-authors etc.? Perhaps we should also know what other disciplines do, if anything, in this regard, in Economics indeed there seems to be a (very surprising) heterogeneity of such practices among various Departments/Institutes.

• It might be the first time ever..., but yes, the Historian won against the Economist (my good old friend Daniel, Harvard trained Historian of Science too, will surely be very pleased to hear this:-) ). I would never allow Paul Krugman in such competitions again, this is bad for the whole Econ field :-). The good thing though is that the Historian won with (the true) Economics arguments :-).

• Average citation rates by field (through Ad Astra). One trend not emphasized in the article's discussion following the table is that in some fields the citation impact is very low on the short run (1-3 years), but increases much faster over the the longer run (8-10 years). This is why for instance Economics gets a higher average citation impact than Mathematics or Computer Science overall, though in the short run (eg, the two years span that the Thomson ISI citation ranks are typically constructed on) is equally "de-cited". Consider switching to Molecular Biology if you're after citations :-).

Read of the week / Quote of the week

My read of the week is John Cochrane superbly answering to this... well, "protest letter" (the latter being the reason why one of the labels for this post is "pathetic"). Probably only Milton Friedman himself could have done a better job than Cochrane here... I actually choose the following paragraphy as quote of the week:

Milton Friedman stood for freedom, social, political, and economic. He realized that they are inextricably linked. If the government controls your job or your business, dissent is impossible. He favored, among other things, legalizing drugs, school choice, and volunteer army. To call him or his political legacy “right wing” is simply ignorant, and I mean that also as a technically accurate description rather than an insult.

Via Tyler Cowen, on MR.

And here's the website of the new Milton Friedman Institute (MFI), the object of controversy in the exchange above (you can also read the proposal to establish the MFI, signed by some of my idols within Economics)

Culmea pateticului pe saptamana curenta

Domnul Daianu, fost economist..., "ataca" din nou (vezi si isprava precedenta, comentata)... Introducerea textului din Dilema Veche uita sa precizeze ca nici un economist serios nu se afla intre semnatarii 'scrisorii', cu toate ca politicienii respectivi (unii dintre ei economisti ratati sau/si politicieni frustrati, altii simpli naivi) "aparţin unor grupări politice diferite [...] depăşirea barierelor ideologice adăugînd un plus de importanţă documentului." (sic!). Revin cu comentarii detaliate pe text cand voi avea mai mult timp. Pana una alta, mirati-va si singuri :-).

Catalin, merci pentru link!

Academia patetica... ad infinitum

Din pacate, din ceea ce a reprezentat odata Academia Romana, eticheta academica a ramas doar in nume; daca institutia s-a remarcat prin ceva in ultimii ani, e vorba de a). cvasi-invizibilitate pe scena academica/educationala/sociala etc. (speram ca lucrurile sa se schimbe o data cu Ionel Haiduc, un om de stiinta in adevaratul sens al cuvantului, ajuns presedinte; asteptarile nu s-au materializat...) si b). perpetuare, sub diferite forme, a status quo-ului din perioada comunista si cea, din multe puncte de vedere similara, care i-a urmat ('perioada de confuzie' ar zice unii, eufemistic; confuzie doar pentru analisti, nu si pentru actorii din context, le-as raspunde...). Limitat de spatiu si timp, voi aminti aici doar doua din cele mai recente dovezi ale 'verticalitatii' acestei institutii: 'replica' lipsita de orice urma de decenta a unui (fost... at last!) reprezentant din setul "membrilor de onoare" ai Academiei sau neinspirata 'onorare' a altora cu activitati paralele academe-ului. Epsilon intre exemplele care pot fi discutate.

Probabil doar timpul va schimba ceea ce trebuie schimbat-- si e nevoie de cateva generatii bune pentru aceasta. E trist mai ales pentru cei care intr-adevar isi merita locul si care cred intr-o Academie (pentru un proxy al proportiei acestor adevarati academicieni, intre membrii institutiei, comparati voturile pro si cons date fostului rege si respectiv actualului patriarh, de mai sus). Daca acestia vor totusi sa faca o diferenta (sa contribuie la ceea ce va constitui "diferenta"), ar fi nevoie sa-si dea demisia acum si sa (re)infiinteze Academia Romana, cea pe care ne-o dorim-- si cea pe care in cele din urma o vom avea. Pentru ei insa, din nefericire, timp prea mult nu mai este...

Patetic^2

Cat despre

a. decorarea post-mortem a Patriarhului de catre Presedintele Basescu (pur si simplu in calitatea defunctului de Patriarh al BOR si ignorand complet trecutul 'problematic'--caveat lector: dovedit-- al acestuia; Dan Tapalaga e singurul jurnalist-analist-etc. care in zilele acestea nu sufera de lapsus memoriae..., iar despre poftele recente, mai putin divine, ale Patriarhului nimanui pare sa nu-i mai pese de la Dinescu-Bulgakov incoace...)

si despre

b. declarea zilei decesului Patriarhului=zi de doliu national (am mai scris despre inconsistentele din jurul declaratiei "In Romania nu exista religie de stat; statul este neutru fata de orice credinta religioasa sau ideologie atee" din legea cultelor),

acestea sunt materializarea pateticului sub cea mai pura forma.

Departe insa de a fi neasteptate, evenimentele acestea ne apropie mai mult de q.e.d.

Update: se pare ca si Rodica Culcer are un articol rational pe marginea evenimentelor descrise mai sus, in EvZ.

Doi patetici pe Hotnews. Aceiasi doi.

Cei doi de pe blogurile Hotnews (doar doi...) pe care ii laudasem cu alte ocazii (a., respectiv b)... Se pare intr-adevar ca au fost doar straluciri de moment... ceea ce nu e- stati linistiti- nimic neobisnuit pe la miorite, gregare ad infinitum, in orice, oriunde, oricum. In ultimele interventii personajele respective apar, ipso facto, in intreaga lor splendoare (naturala, presupun): semidocti, populisti, lozincarzi, patetici (au fost 'mnealor in degringolada de ceva vreme, deci incep sa ma indoiesc profund ca e vorba doar de labilitate- caveat lector, asta nu ar fi oricum o scuza; dar am crezut ca totusi nu se vor arunca chiar asa...in gol): vezi Doc, vezi Mihai Morar. Ma rog, circumstante atenuante pentru ca nu sunt si bugetivori, deci, material, peu importe. Inofensivitatea directa e suplinita insa de prostia agasanta (la urma urmei), care se propaga in ritm delirant in roblosfera. Mai ilar e sa realizezi cat de multi sunt cei care se raliaza paroxistic ineptiilor, prin comentariile la posturile cu pricina... Niste epave. LOL. Nu stiu de cate asemenea exemple de obscurantism e nevoie pentru a-i trezi si pe practicantii oblomovismului. Pateticii misuna doar pentru ca majoritatea celorlalti sufera de pasivitate cronica.

Pseudo-science at its best: "International Journal for Creation Research"

Check it up for yourselves. One of the most entertaining parts is the remark from their "Technical Review Process, Overview and Procedures".

"Remark:
The Editor-in-Chief should not be afraid to reject a Paper if it does not properly satisfy the above criteria nor is in the best interests of ICR as judged by its Biblical stand and goals as outlined in its Tenets. The Editors play a very important initial role in preserving a high level of quality in the IJCR, as well as protecting ICR from unnecessary controversy and review of clearly inappropriate papers." [my emphasis in bold]

LOL!

PS. This determined me to start a new blog category: "pathetic".

Thriller: "Apostoli si guzgani" by Victor Roncea

For the English version, scroll down...

Spre deosebire de Dan, care are o solutie, dar nu cea mai eficienta solutie, de fiecare data cand il citesc pe Victor Roncea (pe care RGN-ul il tine in brate si il vara pe gat diasporei chit ca vor sa se amuze nonstop, chit ca nu mai vor: fara Roncea si alti acoliti RGN-ul ar putea fi chiar un serviciu de informatii serios si decent), ma distrez de minune. Omul are un talent de comic fantastic. Pe cuvant! In plus diferenta fata de alti comici celebri - si probabil secretul succesului lui Roncea- este ca 'mnealui nu joaca un alt personaj: isi joaca propriul rol. Nu are deci nevoie de pregatiri suplimentare, ore si ore de practicat grimase sau ranjete fortate s.a.m.d. Intre altele dumnealui i s-a nazarit ca are o misiune nobila si sfanta, materializata pana in prezent in plantare de cruci (mai au putin si formeaza o echipa de fotbal veritabila- avem 4 piese de baza deja: Funar, Becali, Vadim, Roncea) si deratizat (sintagma asta cu "apostolii unirii si guzganii dezunirii" trebuie sa intre in istorie, eu il invidiez sincer pe Roncea pentru creativitate!) si de ceva vreme buna a trecut, la modul foarte serios, la treaba. Asta pe langa specializarea in epitete multicolore (marcarea teritoriului à la Roncea) prezente in toate creatiile sale. Intrebarea mea este de ce i se pune omului in mana pana de jurnalist, de ce nu e lasat omul sa profeseze ceea ce stie si poate cel mai bine: avantajul sau comparativ se afla categoric in comedie. Si noi si dumnealui am castiga din asta. Un (alt) sfat gratuit. De obicei nu sunt atat de generos.

For all foreigners. In case you ask yourselves who the f... is Victor Roncea: shame on you for not knowing this great fellow, you poor ignorants! He is the best comedian Romania ever had, currently struggling to remain the best Romanian clown for eternity. However, so far he's got a few drawbacks that heavily work against his goal: a. he has a fatal attraction towards the Hungarian ethnic minority, to the expense of the Romanian majority in his own country and he is said to secretly plan, any moment now, deserting to Hungary altogether; b. he is known to often play cards with his alltime best friend, our foreign affairs minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, being suspected of some special favours he might have gotten via that route; c. and more than anything else, he is a convinced atheist who goes far beyond his personal convictions and principles and tries to rally everybody in burning down every Orthodox church in our country! Now, that is unforgivable even from our Romanian comedy star...