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.

The quest for good old kiełbasa in the Big Apple

We ventured out to the Polish neighborhood yesterday. Nothing as compared to Chicago, but nonetheless good sausages. But after five minutes we went to the wrong direction, and ended up in a derelict, post-industrial nightmare instead of lively Polish ladies selling imported toilet paper. 

-Daniel, venturesome lover of all things Polish-

Beyond Pico della Mirandola

How do you get talented, self-absorbed, often arrogant, incredibly bright people to work together?

Warren Bennis, "The Secrets of Great Groups", Leader to Leader, 1997

Labour markets, between heaven and hell

[...]heaven is where women and older people work like Swedes, the young work like the Dutch and the unemployed find jobs like the Danes. Hell is where workers get into unemployment like the Americans and out of it like the Italians.

"A special report on the world economy", The Economist

Hup Holland Hup!

With a very pertinent quote from my good old friend Robert, which best summarizes what needs to happen tomorrow (today, if you are on European soil):

Indeed, the defence is crucial, as is violence on the midfield. For the first time in years Holland has a pair of complete bastards in the midfield (De Jong and Van Bommel). They will have to break down the Brazilian attack while Sneijder finds space behind the Brazilian wing backs to launch Robben and Van Persie. Doesn't sound very traditional Dutch, right? But it will be the game plan tomorrow. Believe it or not, some people here are actually calling for an old fashion German style approach, which is causing some distress among the total football purists. Lets hope for the best.

Oh yeah, and the reason I have not posted for so long is that (as you obviously imagined...) I am very busy-- inter alia, have very impatient co-authors (they do have a point, though, and I have always liked challenges, hence all for the best this far)--, and have recently returned to Chicago from very interesting conferences in London (EALE-SOLE 2010; great organization by the UCL team of Richard, Steve & co) and in Skagen (Danish Microeconometric Network; admirably organized by Lars and Marianne). Following soon is SED at Montreal, with the greatest expectations. If I find the time, you'll read detailed criticisms and praises at some point.

High expectations

[...] We’ve been busy traveling around in the Nordic regions and we have been finding a number of simply phenomenal ingredients that we have flown into town for our use: Horse mussels, deep-sea crabs and langoustines from the Faeroe Islands, which are living right up until the moment they are served to our visitors. Halibut, wild salmon, cod and seaweed and curds from Iceland. Lamb, musk ox, berries and the purest drinking water from Greenland. In much the same fashion, we are constantly scanning for new sources of inspiration in Denmark, especially, as well as the other Nordic regions, for purposes of securing reliable sources of top-quality raw produce. This pertains both to very costly ingredients and also to ingredients of a more everyday character that we feel have come to be overlooked in the formulation of a salient Nordic approach to cooking: cereals, hulled grains and legumes, which you will come to experience here in the context of surprising preparations. [...]

The verdict on the top exponent of new Nordic culinary craft after the weekend.

Theory and practice, in theory and in practice

[...]

The playful mantras of our adolescence have become a way of life for later generations. At least in the ’60s we knew, whatever we said, that sex was about…sex. All the same, what followed is our fault. We—the left, academics, teachers—have abandoned politics to those for whom actual power is far more interesting than its metaphorical implications. Political correctness, gender politics, and above all hypersensitivity to wounded sentiments (as though there were a right not to be offended): this will be our legacy.

Why should I not close my office door or take a student to a play? If I hesitate, have I not internalized the worst sort of communitarian self-censorship—anticipating my own guilt long before I am accused and setting a pusillanimous example for others? Yes: and if only for these reasons I see nothing wrong in my behavior. But were it not for the mandarin self-assurance of my Oxbridge years, I too might lack the courage of my convictions—though I readily concede that the volatile mix of intellectual arrogance and generational exceptionalism can ignite delusions of invulnerability.

[...]

Superb historical/biographical account by Tony Judt, in "Girls! Girls! Girls!". A must read for all us elitists without scruples (some things will always be the same)... and anybody else who dares.

In Memoriam L.H. Chen

For those of us who met him, Long Hwa came across as the soft-spoken, thoughtful Taiwanese; curious, but skeptical, about all-things Western. He brought with him his Asian wisdom, and enriched everybody's horizon in a world where we care too much about details, and often ignore the essence. That doesn't mean he did not care about those details that, at times, sweeten our lives. Among other things, he taught some of us how to do proper dumplings-- operation where his two lovely teenage daughters showed us what comparative advantange in the dumpling-making art really means. (He also 'smuggled' a bottle of Taiwanese hard liquor in a top lounge/bar in Aarhus, just to prove to me, live, that their liquor is better than any European hard liquors; I still have the bottle, full-- I like that drink as much as I like palinka: it burns! :-) ). Next to being a perfect host in Aarhus several times, he was a great companion in several conferences and workshops attended together, among which memorable ones in Budapest, Oslo, Tallinn, Tokyo, and several places in Denmark.

Long Hwa wrote to me the following, after joining me and several colleagues to a dinner in a, as he called it, "burning-money restaurant", in Tallinn, Estonia, September last year:

Thank you for the burning-money restaurant. That is not a bad idea, to burn some money when we are alive. I mean that it is better than getting money in the underworld, when we pass away.

He always knew better.

I will greatly miss Long Hwa: the student, the teacher, the colleague, the Friend.

Bar Rouge and the evils of drinking

Yeah, yeah, yeah... I am extremely busy and promised several VIPs who read my blog (I am flattered!) that I would focus fully on research, so the posting frequence has (to) decrease(d) somewhat. But still, I just cannot abstain: here's the quote for the week. Or maybe it should be the quote for the whole year. We'll see; I might need/prefer some Champagne eventually...

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.

Henny Youngman

This is the best motto from the cocktails list at Bar Rouge, of Skt. Petri Hotel fame (see also here, if you have the legal drinking age), a most interesting place in Copenhagen that I've recently explored (credits to Frederic, the Belgian who knows Copenhagen by heart). If you pass by, try "East & Hold Up" (votka, Aperol, pineaple, lime, and passion fruit); or, if the other bartender is there, maybe you will get "Captain Nemo" (Hendrick's gin, Noilly Prat, orange bitters, & a baby squid)-- in that case, let me know how it tastes.

PS. Overall verdict: almost as interesting as Michael Mina's Clock Bar, last year in San Francisco (more on which here--last paragraph-- where it is revealed that "Boulevardier" did not have the "Last Word").

Easterly on Randomized Evaluation

By far the best read of the current week (as yet, but looks incredibly difficult to surpass this):

Here’s an imagined dialogue between the two sides on Randomized Evaluation (RE) based on this book:

FOR: Amazing RE power lets us identify causal effect of project treatment on the treated.
AGAINST: Congrats on finding the effect on a few hundred people under particular circumstances, too bad it doesn’t apply anywhere else.
FOR: No problem, we can replicate RE to make sure effect applies elsewhere.
AGAINST: Like that’s going to happen. Since when is there any academic incentive to replicate already published results? And how do you ever know when you have enough replications of the right kind? You can’t EVER make a generic “X works” statement for any development intervention X. Why don’t you try some theory about why things work?
FOR: We are now moving in the direction of using RE to test theory about why people behave the way they do.
AGAINST: I think we might be converging on that one. But your advertising has not yet got the message, like the JPAL ad on “best buys on the Millennium Development Goals.”
FOR: Well, at least it’s better than your crappy macro regressions that never resolve what causes what, and where even the correlations are suspect because of data mining.
AGAINST: OK, you drew some blood with that one. But you are not so holy on data mining either, because you can pick and choose after the research is finished whatever sub-samples give you results, and there is also publication bias that shows positive results but not zero results.
FOR: OK we admit we shouldn’t do that, and we should enter all REs into a registry including those with no results.
AGAINST: Good luck with that. By the way, even if do you show something “works,” is that enough to get it adopted by politicians and implemented by bureaucrats?
FOR: But voters will want to support politicians who do things that work based on rigorous evidence.
AGAINST: Now you seem naïve about voters as well as politicians. Please be clear: do RE-guided economists know something the local people do not know, or do they have different values on what is good for them? What about tacit knowledge that cannot be tested by RE? Why has RE hardly ever been used for policymaking in developed countries?
FOR: You can take as many potshots as you want, at the end we are producing solid evidence that convinces many people involved in aid.
AGAINST: Well, at least we agree on the on the much larger question of what is not respectable evidence, namely, most of what is currently relied on in development policy discussions. Compared to the evidence-free majority, what unites us is larger than what divides us.

Looks like Easterly's has very high chances to become the top blog among my econblogs (at least according to how often I dedicate entire blogposts just to cite his posts, e.g. here or here, or a WSJ article here). Not bad, not bad at all: I do have pretty high standards, as all of you should have noticed! :-).

PS. See also an earlier entry on the topic (featuring again some of the heavyweights in this realm): 4th bullet point.

On U2's poverty of music trap

“We will be lending African musicians to U2 to try to refurbish their sound to satisfy the urgent and growing needs for diversionary entertainment at a time of crisis in the global music and financial sectors.”

Easterly rocks (given Bono is too busy fighting poverty)

John Adams on concert coughing

So the loud cough, most likely completely unconscious, is a way of saying “I can’t handle this, folks. You all may be crowding round Mahler’s deathbed for one final intimate confession. You may be letting Debussy whisper opium secrets into your ear. Perhaps you like being ravished by Takemitsu’s lush penumbras. BUT I AM OUTTA HERE!"

Excellent!-- I don't think anyone could have written this better than Adams.

PS. Unfortunately, I think there are even more types of concerto coughers. For instance the person who just cannot stop coughing-- desperately wants to, but simply cannot-- somebody who should have stayed at home, or even better, in a hospital. Provided s/he does not die before, s/he is usually gone after the break...

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 :-).

My first (and last) public karaoke performance

...represents the validation of my long held opinion that I have no comparative advantage whatsoever in this area. My team partner for this impromptu exercise, Ian Walker, among other things the current editor-in-chief of Labour Economics, performed rather reasonably, but there was no chance to ultimately rank decently among the brave competitors-- my colleague economists from the Aarhus School of Business, some of them natural born karaoke stars-- precisely because of teaming up with yours truly. As a consequence (and I credit Ian Walker with the quote of the week), "[I] shall remain a referee for Labour Economics forever". Still, there could/would/should be some attenuating circumstances to consider: the event took place in an unlikely hotel restaurant room in Viborg with what looked like improvised (initially malfunctioning) equipment, the choices were from a limited set of (only) Abba songs and, crucially, I was forced in the show without being provided with sufficient wine beforehand... :-)

Anyway: though we butchered the song, we still ought to thank the true masters for the music!

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"

On cats

while talking about animals seems easy, a thorough analysis on cats is a nightmare. let us see the dogs. stereotypes about dogs are more clear-cut: common sense conceptualize them as long standing markers of faithfullness, accuracy, and addiction to well known spaces. dogs bark when they have too, cats miaou when they want to. we could hardly conceptualize a cat, because all cats are linked to contexts, and yet so dreadfully out of them. it is difficult to categorize them either. we think about cats as agile creatures and lazy things at the same time. we find them attached (.pdf, .jpg, never .doc), yet mostly disconnected and independent. it is impossible to write about cats. apologies for this failure.

Ana Pauper, "Compunere despre pisica, in limba engleza"

Sinatra and Sodini's

A quote for any week (click on the picture to enlarge).

A great dinner we had at Sodini's Green Valley Sicilian restaurant in North Beach and the ever present, ever wise Frank Sinatra himself was at (or should I say: above) our table... If you ever pass by-- you should: this is probably the best Italian restaurant in San Francisco, atmosphere- & quality-wise --, I warmly recommend the "Chicken Alla Sodini" (grilled chicken topped with ham, mozzarella and cream sauce served with linguine alla casa; add a small Caesar salad and you'll surely satisfy any appetite, no matter how hungry you start...). Pair that with a glass of the house's Merlot for the complete sensation.

Alcatraz online

You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention. Anything else you get is a privilege.

Number 5, Alcatraz Prison Rules and Regulations, 1934

PS. I have the great privilege of free wireless internet. I guess Al Capone didn't get that :-).

Best paragraph I've read this past weekend

...is the following part from Rob Shimer's letter to Greg Mankiw (posted on Mankiw's blog):

In closing, let me mention one other issue that I take very seriously. I recognize that this might not matter much to my Congressman, but in my view it may be the most important issue for global welfare. The U.S. has long been a beacon of free markets. When economic conditions turn sour in Argentina or Indonesia, we give very clear instructions on what to do: balance the budget, cut government employment, maintain free trade and the rule of law, and do not prop up failing enterprises. Opponents of free markets argue that this advice benefits international financiers, not the domestic market. I have always believed (at least since I began to understand economics) that the U.S. approach was correct. But when the U.S. ignores its own advice in this situation, it reduces the credibility of this stance. Rewriting the rules of the game at this stage will therefore have serious ramifications not only for people in this country but for the future of global capitalism. The social cost of that is far, far greater than $700 billion.

Indeed (paraphrasing Orwell...), time is high that smart people restated all these otherwise obvious things (at least within the Econworld...). I've already linked, in a previous post (last bullet point), to the letter where most serious US economists, including Shimer, are openly worried about the massive bailout plan.

PS. Rob Shimer will be the discussant of one of my co-authored papers in beginning November, within the conference on Structural Models of the Labour Market and Policy Analysis from IFS, in London. Already looking forward to the best possible comments (including toughest criticism...): given the letter mentioned above, Shimer looks clearly in top shape :-).