My whereabouts

I'll be less active with blogging these days since I am attending the Society of Labor Economists annual meeting (at Columbia University this year). I'll present this (preliminary and incomplete; comments very welcome; check my website periodically for updated future versions). For the rest, the Big Apple still impresses me, though I've paid a lot on taxis already :-).

Long PS. Yesterday, completely not linked to the conference above (actually he did not know about it), I met, was introduced to, and exchanged a few impressions with Bob Solow and his wife, at a welcome party organized by Niels, who also happens to be one of my co-authors for the paper linked above. And a brief, fast opinion: Solow is a super nice guy, far more humble when compared to all the Nobel prizers I previously met and always eager to open new subjects of conversation --and no, it wasn't so much about economics, if that is what you think :-). So my NY experience didn't start too bad. BTW, if you didn't read Solow's work (which also, obviously, means that you are not an economist...), retain at least that I've been using his quote related to Milton Friedman quite a lot, most recently in an "economics-popularization" presentation I gave last year in Copenhagen (read about that event here, check out the presentation here, both in Romanian however) :-).

Econlinks today

• Problems of Interplanetary and Interstellar Trade. Indeed, somebody had to start researching on this topic, at some point :-). Here's the part I like best in the concluding remarks: "Perhaps, the establishment of a solar system monetary union would permit the free flow of capital [...]"

• Giuseppe Bertola on why offshoring and immigrant employment are good, using the Italian context. Link to the VoxEU article, link to the background research paper.

• Our Moldavian neighbours are not too happy (if you are searching for the happiest Europeans instead, see here):

It was in Moldova that Weiner began to see, or, rather, failed to see, the building blocks that make a culture happy. "While I did meet some people I liked, Moldova is the least happy country on the planet," Weiner says. "People go to great lengths to see their neighbors fail. Completely seriously, it is a very morose place. I've never been so glad to leave a country."

• Pythagoras follow-up (well, almost...): Geometrical Music Theory (the shorter perspective, the longer report, both in a recent number of Science).

A well deserved Pulitzer and pearls before lunch...

I must be the most ignorant person ever: I've only found out today (via Terry Tao) that this superb article by Gene Weingarten, "Pearls before breakfast", likely the best I've ever read in the Washington Post, won a well deserved Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing about a month ago.

And since the credit should definitely be shared with this phenomenon called Joshua Bell, here's the (short, but intense) musical piece I propose to you before lunch today: Josh playing an excerpt from "The Red Violin", composition by John Corigliano, who won with it an Oscar for Best Music, Original Score, in the movie "The Red Violin" (IMDb, RottenTomatoes). Here's one of the best scenes of this movie (with Josh Bell playing again in the background).

Carlsen consistence

He's just tied for first (well, he's been de jure third, if you take the tie-breaks into consideration, but that does not matter much) in the powerful Baku 2008 Grand Prix. This after he did also very well in the Amber '08 Blindfold and Rapid Chess Tournament, where in the Combined final hierarchy he tied for second. As I said before, the chess wunderkid is in the very top already (probably 4th world-wide in terms of ELO-ranking by now) and he's there to stay. Let's try a forecast: Carlsen Chess World Champion before 2012?

(New) Danish cuisine

Yes, yes, I confirm: top Danish cuisine is resurrected and its outputs are nothing but extremely yummy... The NY Times has also got only praise for it (with assorted photos here). I've also mentioned recently that Noma, the current very best among the Danish restaurants, went up on the world rankings, being now number 10 (2nd bullet point).

Now, while the article above focuses on the Copenhagen dining scene, I've already experienced some of the best places in Aarhus (still waiting for such an article reviewing in detail the best of the best restaurants in Aarhus). For instance, I've had all the liquid nitrogen sensation at Malling & Schmidt (where I also paid more than I had ever paid before in a restaurant, but those are details...) and the smoking of the salmon in front of you at Nordisk Spisehus (the cheaper version of Malling & Schmidt, though nothing short of spectacular in terms of quality of the meals).

All in all, it should be clear that the restaurants' quality became a chief reason to visit Denmark. And perhaps the Danes could aggresively market this dimension also in order to attract highly skilled migrants for longer periods? Maybe there is a chance that such great food would make some people forget about the ridiculous level of the taxes (1st bullet point) :-).

Econlinks for the weekend

• Dan Hamermesh, on Freakonomics, tackles a very interesting issue: competition between kids, grandkids and so on, for parental bequests. I don't have such a parental dilemma as yet, but my parents do, I guess :-).

• Relative social status seems to dominate relative material status: the neuroscience evidence. Of course I knew that all the time :-).

• How Economics can turn bleeding hearts into capitalists (and mutatis mutandis, for most of the other social sciences :-)). Here's the perspective on the study, by Ray Fisman, in Forbes and here's a first draft of Fisman, Kariv and Markovits (2008).

• Serious carbon tax homework for Greg Mankiw.

Quote of the week

Prima impresie spune o poveste spontana, in care de fapt se intretes propriile noastre viziuni cu ceea ce dorim sa vedem. A doua privire este mai atenta, ordonand detaliile dupa logica mediului in care ne-am format ochiul. A treia privire spune o cu totul alta poveste, eliberata de constrangerile prejudecatilor. Povestea mea este galbena si verde, abstracta si concreta, statica si dinamica, reala si virtuala. Ea danseaza la marginea celor ce exista pentru ca exista, a celor ce nu exista pentru ca nu exista. O tentativa de a desena parmenidian.

Ana Pauper, "Compunere-fluviu" (8)

Read the previous quote of the week (many weeks ago...).

The prophet Jeremiah is alive and well and teaching economics at Harvard

This is the best article related in a way or another to Economics that I've read so far this week: Roy Weintraub reviewing Stephen Marglin's new book "The Dismal Science. How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community", for Science.

I have to say that on a scale from 1 to 10, I'd give 11 to Weintraub's review (here's Roy Weintraub's site, by the way): a state-of-the-art example of how sarcasm and irony can be used to fight against nonsense. We love it! Next to the opening sentence of Weintraub's review, which is also the title of my post, I'd single out its superb ending:

"I note in closing that the lead dust-jacket blurb for this volume was provided by the noted economist and social theorist Bianca Jagger (sic). Whatever was Harvard University Press thinking?"

Indeed, a darkest black point for Harvard University Press and a brightest red point for Science.

PS1. I've also learnt, for the first time, that even in such places like Harvard, some dinosaurs still roam around...

PS2. Note that this was the second attempted murder of Economics and economists I've talked about today. Dangerous times ahead...

Killing Adam Smith... in Dilema Veche

Surely Adam Smith couldn't care less by now if anybody threatened to kill him, but here's a serious attempt to even burry his memory. Unfortunately (or fortunately, for the author), this short article, recently published in "Dilema Veche", is in Romanian. Its author is somebody whom some of my Romanian fellows call the greatest Romanian economist alive (though don't bother to search for his top journal articles, cited by all the economics academe; in Romania that was/still is hardly a prerequisite to such honours: we do not like to complicate things). Next to his extensive academic experience, he is also ex-Minister of Finance, ex-Chief Economist of the Romanian National Bank, ex-that and ex-this, ex-everything... the man has clearly got a lot of policy experience and, truth be told, he also did some good things. Even though that might be in the end for the worse: overall, Daianu comes forth as much more of a politician (read: Romanian politician) than an economist (in fact, he's an MEP currently, probably not very busy with serious economics research), as I see him. Though that is hardly an excuse for his confusion in this article, even with respect to assessing others' viewpoints (Greenspan, Krugman etc.), and for his conclusions that are almost foreign to economic reasoning (a simple libertarian-nonlibertarian economic split would have little explanatory power in accounting for that), and bordering dangerously on populistic arguments with null academic basis, e.g. the "moral compass" etc. While I'll let you enjoy dissecting this further on your own, I'll just wrap it up here: forgive him, Adam Smith, he does not know what he is talking about...

PS. If you really want to read a mature opinion about (re)regulating financial markets and what is needed (even that, only in light of what went wrong because of interfering with the free market, to start with...) and what is simply a lot of noise and naivité, try Becker's here (4th bullet point), for instance. You could also check out recent articles by Feldstein, Mankiw, Summers and a few selected others that know what they talk about, though I am too lazy to find the exact links for you now (check my previous posts in the economics category though, they link often to such viewpoints).

Econlinks today

• Esther Duflo on a topic that deserves much more attention among policy makers: the need to insure the very poor against food price variability

• Here's the most ridiculous thing I've heard so far, within the academic publishing business: deliberately slowing things down by sitting a whole month on each submission before doing anything with it. Via Andrew Gelman. Something like this might well be practiced by more journals and in many fields ( and surely I am thinking mostly about my own field here...) than currently known: could explain a substantial part of (complementing the fact that referees are not easy to find and they might be slow themselves, see also here) the often exaggerated times before one gets back referee reports etc. I think it just shows the incapacity of those editors to function as editors, if that is the case. And obviously excessive crowding/queueing can be solved in this context, similar to many other contexts involving congestion, by raising submission fees (despite the apparent objection of some people, which Gelman also mentions, that people don't have the money for it-- give me a break, I'd say: if you are indeed such an underpaid academic, probably you can't produce the quality required for that top journal anyway; and for universities in places that really run low on budgets and remuneration in general, like Africa, Eastern Europe etc., some reduction or waiver could be in place).

• "Econometrics: qu'est-ce que c'est?" or econometrics as taught at University of Michigan (where also other Econ professors seem to be very talented inasmuch as music is concerned) :-). I think many economics/ econometrics professors elsewhere could learn something from this-- it isn't for nothing that most students consider econometrics courses the most boring courses they (have to) take... Here's the academic website of the excellent performer above, in case anyone wants to contact him for advice in teaching.

• Discussion on the merits of (further/ re-) regulating financial markets: Becker and respectively, Posner. I believe Posner is for some reason becoming too skeptical of the powers of the free market, so I'll strongly recommend only Becker's analysis this time :-).

• Collected advice for young economists (via Tyler Cowen on MR), from senior economists. I have read all of these pieces before (though, unfortunately, haven't always followed the advice in there...), but it is excellent to have them in one place.