Econlinks for 23-11-'07

• Remember my post about names in Denmark? At that time I could not find which were really the most frequently used first names. But Denmark Statistics even has those available. So "Jens" (male) and "Anne" (female) are the most common first names in Denmark, to date. In terms of recents trends, the most popular names given to newborn children in 2006 were "Lucas" and "Sofie", respectively. PS: read also some relevant comments to an older post of Dan, with several interesting links concerning (though some of that is about futuristic trends:-)) names elsewhere in the world.

• Here's a short video about one of the most famous labor economists of the moment, Richard Freeman. (wmv file, about 55 MB). The clip is with relationship to his winning this year's IZA Prize (after he won a bunch of other relevant prizes during the years). IZA award statement, Freeman's website at Harvard (or the one at NBER). And yes, the hat is part of Richard Freeman's personality (by the way, did you know that before JFK all US Presidents had hats? I didn't. Freeman makes that clear in the video linked above:-)).

• WineSpectator's top 100 wines for 2007 is now also available (PDF). See also my previous post about the winner and top 10 of this year. I am happy to say that, at a first glance (did not go thoroughly through the list yet) I have tried at least 7 wines in top 50 (but none in top 10). Among those, number 26, "Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi, Brunello di Montalcino Castelgiocondo, Ripe al Convento Riserva 2001" is the one I prefer (2001 is by far the best year for that wine). Try it out. And if you really want the sublime experience, do this while indulging in an Italian classic dish: "lepre in salmì".

• Yes, Bloomberg goes ahead with the "cheap talk for better grades" plan (see my previous post on this) in New York, which is partly due to the initiative of Harvard's Roland Fryer. Excellent, let's see if incentives of this kind elicit better students' outcomes. Ex ante it is not clear how this will work, hence the more interest around these types of studies ( for instance, in a different but related context, recent research by Edwin Leuven, Hessel Oosterbeek and Bas van der Klaauw at SCHOLAR, University of Amsterdam & Tinbergen Institute, suggests that financial incentives do not work as intended (at least not for everybody), ie. extrinsic rewards might be detrimental for intrinsic motivation).

Replication in Economics

Here's my most interesting read in the last weekend, a recent article by Dan Hamermesh, published in the Canadian Journal of Economics, on "replication in economics". It is also downloadable as PDF from Hamermesh's site (Dan Hamermesh's website contains much more information, potentially useful for any economist, albeit junior or senior-- that as a remark for those of you who did not know about this excellent online resource...). But going back to Hamermesh's viewpoint in this context: the short article linked above is extremely interesting and informative. And it contains also a proposal ("modest proposal" in the text), which I also support as very welcome: the only way to see more replication studies done is to have them commissioned (to senior researchers, with tenure...) by journal editors.

While I'd advise any empirical economist (or better: any economist that is currently/ plans in the future to also do some empirical work) to read the paper, I'll put forward below some possible omissions in Prof. Hamermesh's article, which would have been particularly interesting for me:

a. What to do about registered (say, matched employer-employee) datasets that cannot be made publicly available due to confidentiality agreements (though clear steps for accessing them can be always provided as information; in practice, some of these might take too long etc. for the replication to be worth undertaking); the use of such datasets is increasing day by day, particularly within applied microeconometrics, hence I'd say they would merit some separate discussion. Caveat lector: although their case is somehow similar to that of any proprietary database, these administrative datasets do have one common characteristic, namely that usually they are provided by the official statistics bureaus of individual countries. This might suggest possible (ad-hoc) agreements between journals and such bureaus to allow replication of studies under the same very strict confidentiality rules as those the initial author had been subjected to.

b. There is no discussion in Hamermesh's paper about structural approaches: in those cases replication, as commonly understood (particularly "scientific replication" in Hamermesh's terminology), is typically not an issue (subject to correct coding and analysis, to start with). In fact, one way to avoid frequent requests for replication using other datasets and other time periods etc, would be to have a structural framework to start with...

Quote for week 11th-17th of Nov '07

How can my muse want subject to invent,
While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent
For every vulgar paper to rehearse?
O! give thy self the thanks, if aught in me
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight;
For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee,
When thou thy self dost give invention light?
Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth
Than those old nine which rhymers invocate;
And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth
Eternal numbers to outlive long date.
If my slight muse do please these curious days,
The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet XXXVIII

See quote for the previous week.

Econlinks for 18-10-'07

• On (speed) dating preferences (in USA): some old stereotypes reconfirmed but also some news. Here's the full paper (Fisman et al, QJE 2006) on which the Slate article linked above is based. What's intriguing is that another (very interesting) research based on speed dating (not published yet) done in UK finds some opposite results, though it also agrees in others. See here that paper (Belot and Francesconi, mimeo Univ of Essex) and/or a summary of their findings.

• Car preferences of faculty at Harvard. They could not detect the owners of the Porsches, but the BMWs belonged mostly to the Econ faculty (also: "Of 18 respondents in the economics department, eight said they owned luxury cars—one of the highest percentages")... Now compare that with the Subarus owned by most faculty at other departments and tell me which Dep there has taste:-). Via Greg Mankiw.

• Some (Japanese) econometricians have time to combine their haiku and econometrics knowledge :-). Here's one superlative result of that endeavour: "Econometrics Haiku" by Keisuke Hirano.

• A rather oldish article from The Economist; the best I've seen so far in describing what the recent hysteria over Romanian immigrants in Italy amounts to.

• And here's one of the very few who didn't lose their sense in the debate over health policy in the USA...

The Wine of the Year: Clos des Papes, Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2005

Wine Spectator's best wine of 2007: Clos des Papes, Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2005. Apparently an easy choice, almost unanimous decision among the senior editors of Wine Spectator for the best wine of Vincent Avril's domain. One should also say that number 3 is from another Châteauneuf-du-Pape domain and also from 2005. Hence, Vive la France! And: Dan knows now what he should bring from France when he comes back to Romania this winter :-).

You can also see the videos for all top 10 here. Unfortunately I have to confess that I have not tried any of this year's top 10...yet! For the full top 100 for 2007 you have to wait until Monday next week :-).

See my post about the wine winner from 2006.

Song of the day: "Call me" (in Eliane Elias's version)

Nicole, your turn :-). The song of the day (tonight dedicated to Nicole, if she can handle it...) is "Call me"... and not just any version of this superlative piece, but indeed my very favourite one: Eliane Elias's "Call me" (I'd almost consider the artist's intro here as part of the piece). Enjoy!

Assuming you all know (alternatively, you will immediately inform yourselves...) who Eliane Elias is, I'll just say that some months ago, with the occasion of the yearly International Jazz Festival from Aarhus, Elias and her band (in my opinion the very highlight of 2007's edition) softened the Vikings' (and not only) hearts; for an evening the entire city was under her spell... But more about other Eliane Elias's top musical pieces with another occasion.

Here's more info on Tony Hatch's masterpiece. And here's the song in other, equally famous, renditions (unfortunately Petula Clark's was removed from YouTube shortly after I had found it and I was not able to trace Shirley Bassey's at all) : Astrud Gilberto's (be patient and wait a bit until it starts, in the clip...), Sinatra's, Blue Velvet's, even a version in Polish... Pick your favourite.

Most promising photoblog in the ROblosphere

True talent is true talent and you can't pass by without noticing it. So I decided not to. In my (always subjective, of course) opinion Cristina Grosan's photoblog is the very best (young) photoblog I had the chance to fall upon, within the Romanian blogosphere. Who is Cristina Grosan? I do not have more direct information about her than the bits from this short (and very smart) interview with her (in Romanian). However, neither is more background necessary; from the photos and accompanying texts (all superlative) on her blog, I already know her enough: I am honoured to add her blog among my bloglinks. And I think I am right to keep my expectations very high inasmuch as she is concerned. Ad majora, Cristina!

Quote for week 4th- 10th of October '07

And who are the peple who like just about everything, from Chinese pipa music to Bach to Algerian Rai to Stockhausen to bebop to 1920s blues? They are either musical professionals or nerdy upper-middle-class professionals, usually with some experience living abroad. That's me. Sadly I am no less predictable than the Grand Rapids stoner.

Tyler Cowen, "Discover Your Inner Economist"

Read previous quote of the week.

Econlinks for 07-11-'07

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

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

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

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

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

Econlinks for 01-11-'07

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

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

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

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

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