Econlinks: The Freudian interlude

• Seinfeld's spongeworthy Elaine, an unusual, limited-purpose --but very thorough-- option theory application, by the one and only Avinash Dixit.
•  All passé now, but hopefully you did pick your favorite Cupid. 
• New academic econ world order... but only if you fail to control for the quality of the journals  those papers are published in (my conjecture is that if you take only the top 5-10 journals, the US-EU average gap actually widened). Unfortunately, most European academic economists still believe that publishing  frequently into journals (almost) nobody can remember the names of, or reads, actually makes any difference (other than locally). Pretty Freudian, if you ask me.
•  Compensating wage differentials for sexual harassment? Via: Tabarrok's politically incorrect MR example. 
•  Ely has a good analysis of an (the?) ubiquitous situation arising in the econ (not necessarily  junior) job market. Hamermesh's post on Freakonomics is more related to that than you'd first think. 
• Finding the G-spot; next will be tasting it. 
• Massive reorganization of science funding in Europe... Something promised every four years or so; at least in that practice they are consistent. I don't really know why they aim to change these things ever so often, seemingly just to leave their mark, instead of making sure something actually works well, for once . Very European, and very Freudian...
•  Looks a bit shaky research-wise, but let's take it at face value for now: heterogenous effects of the scent of a woman (I guess Colonel Frank Slade had a simpler, yet practical, view of life). In all cases, a related (albeit equally shaky...) study reaches what looks to me like the right conclusions, which even Slade aka Pacino could adhere to: "Our investigation, however, demonstrates that implicitly preventing people from attending to desirable relationship alternatives may undermine, rather than bolster, the strength of that person’s romantic relationship" HT: Freakonomics.
  
  
  

Ah não ser eu toda a gente e toda a parte!

I've watched it most recently via this smart* video rental & online streaming service called Netflix : a true gem of a movie, albeit one of the most underrated cinematographic creations of the past decades (does not have a RottenTomatoes critics' rating!). This is a Wim Wenders meisterwerk, most of the time my favorite (nontrivial; I hold most of Wenders's movies in high esteem). As a by-product, the film is also an effective branding/ marketing tool for Lisboa, and, by extension, Portugal** --in fact, Wenders's original intention had been to make a documentary about the city; suffice to say that Lisbon Story alone would convince me to place Lisboa among my in-no-way-can-miss destinations.  Some highlights: Rüdiger Vogler plays superbly the confused German sound engineer; even though his effective role here is minimal, Patrick Bauchau is perfect as the elusive film director (alter ego of Wenders himself); while Madredeus's Teresa Salgueiro... well, she is just so unique; around them fascinating Lisboa snapshots-- images, sounds, poetry, music, life: what's a key without a kiss?

Earlier on my live discovery of Portugal. Earlier on Madredeus. Earlier on Pessoa.

* not ideal: so far I could find only about 60% of the movies I was interested in watching, with the post-mailed DVD option included. Given my typically unusual choices though, 60% is not that bad. Something like this is badly needed on European soil, too.

** I am going to claim more: this is eventually a great cinematographic statement for and about Europe itself.

One hundred years of AER

 "This paper presents a list of the top 20 articles published in the American Economic Review during its first 100 years. This list was assembled in honor of the AER's one-hundredth anniversary by a group of distinguished economists at the request of AER's editor. A brief description accompanies the citations of each article."

 ***

"Written in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the American Economic Review, this paper recounts the history of the journal. The recounting has an analytic core that sees the American Economic Association as an organization supplying goods and services to its members, one of which is the Review. Early in its history the Review was a multipurpose publication with highly disparate content. Over time the economics profession expanded and more economics research was produced, primarily in the form of journal articles. Editors accommodated this shift by allocating more resources to the refereeing and editing process and more space to research papers."

Econlinks: Of (visual) art, old and new

• The third and the seventh: imagination materialized or Alex Roman's computer generated art. Via Michael Nielsen. 
• Staying in CG: meet Julia Map, of Google ancestry. And since we're here, read how the fractals changed the world --which was in a way also part of the obituary to Father Fractal, Benoit Mandelbrot, who passed away a couple of months ago; see a better one from the Economist. My own brief memories of him: I met Mandelbrot at a workshop on economics with heterogenous agents (WEHIA) at Essex University, back in 2005. Before his keynote speech, he introduced himself in the following very humorous way (paraphrasing): "Hi, I am Benoit Mandelbrot. And I am not dead yet. [pause] I tell you that because I have just met somebody in the corridor who told me: 'OMG, you are Benoit Mandelbrot. I thought you were dead for a long time now' ". 
• Meet Jeremy Mayer, tamer of the typewriter. "I disassemble typewriters and then reassemble them into full-scale, anatomically correct human figures. I do not solder, weld, or glue these assemblages together- the process is entirely cold assembly. I do not introduce any part to the assemblage that did not come from a typewriter". 
• Back to the traditional, but impressively executed: meet Camille Seaman. From the "Last Iceberg series" statement: "Nick Cave once sang, 'All things move toward their end.' Icebergs give the impression of doing just that, in their individual way much as humans do; they have been created of unique conditions and shaped by their environments to live a brief life in a manner solely their own. Some go the distance traveling for many years slowly being eroded by time and the elements; others get snagged on the rocks and are whittled away by persistent currents. Still others dramatically collapse in fits of passion and fury."
• On the art of fiction: interview with Michel Houllebecq, born provocateur. Hat tip MR.
• And yes, she is back online (hopefully she is now here to stay)! Meet my friend Anna, talented photographer and undercover economist. 

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-

A little blizzard. Treated with Tanya.

Will it beat the legendary 1967 one? My Lakeview Lake Shore apartment windows are shaking,  but so far holding up (they'd  better: in Chicago terms, I am paying a fortune for this place). Yes, somehow  I made it home; Evanston likely cut off from Chicago for the next couple of days, Northwestern closed for the time being. No better time than now for listening loudly to Gordon and Byrd's Tanya: Part 1 + Part 2 in the original 1964 recording; later Tanya sample with Dexter Gordon proving his worth. A tune indeed* one flight above pretty much anything else. Blizzard-proof, too.

* some credits due to my jazz-expert friend Dean

Grand challenges for social, behavioural and economic sciences

What this is about: SBE 2020.

244 white papers in SBE available on the NSF site.

The white papers in Economics. Note that some of these papers are not available on the NSF site as they were submitted after their deadline, hence this is not really a subset of the earlier 244; moreover, more might be added at this link (I would not be surprised to count ultimately more here than the total number of papers on the NSF site, after all Econ work is never over-- last bullet point).

(hat tip to Al Roth)

Econlinks: In degrees of awesomeness

• Greg Mankiw seems to be arguing for a European-type separate master + PhD graduate Econ program-- such as those at LSE, Oxford, Pompeu Fabra, Tinbergen Institute, and (I guess) the newish Paris School of Economics entity-- rather than the US-type graduate PhD package, which comes with a (usually elective) master on the way (that is somewhat ironic, given the desire of the typical high-aspiring European place to ultimately emulate the US top places). In any case, assessing the total costs and benefits of these two alternatives remains a difficult empirical quest.
• Awesome grants, via Michael Nielsen.
• MR has linked to direct evidence that the History academic job market was hit way harder (e.g., this year lowest number of positions in a quarter century) than the Economics academic job market (and most likely than any other discipline's job market), which is almost back to the pre-recession level. (My wise friend Daniel, the historian of science with whom I talked several times about this, was absolutely right in his intuitive assessment) 
• Awesome (albeit late) discovery. After reading Gelman's WSJ story, I am decided to request a priori a "kill fee provision", whenever I am asked again to write stuff for various non-scientific outlets; I had similar experiences with a couple of Romanian (some, not surprisingly, now defunct...) newspapers, and, in particular, with the (very surprisingly, still surviving...) Aarhus School of Business internal press. Except that I ended up wasting time and not getting any 'kill fee' for it. Sometimes you have to learn from your own mistakes.
• Creative love song for Friedrich Hayek. Great, as so far Keynes seemed to get all the love (plus the hangovers, true): last bullet point. 
• Very well presented classic economic arguments for raising public college tuition fees by Gary Becker and Richard Posner. Digest them carefully, as they might appear counter-intuitive (witness the frequent nonsensical arguments against such tuition raises) even to intellectuals -- those without training in and/or understanding of Economics. 
• Awesome reply to comment in the scientific journal world. 
• As controversial as outputs of such activity might currently be, concretely gathering brains in such 'intellectual ventures'--in fact: literally leading to brainstorming-- is just awesome. The idea in itself is of course not new, Myhrvold just had the will-- and financial means!-- to implement it on such a scale

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"

Des petits trous, des petits trous, toujours des petits trous...

I attended two excellent jazz events last week, jazz being one thing the Chicago music scene excels at (*).

The first was "Brazilian Nights" with Paulinho Garcia and some very talented NU jazz students, at the Regenstein Hall in the NU campus. Best live bossa nova since Eliane Elias's concert in Denmark a couple of years ago. Could not find any of the pieces from the concert I mention above (let me know if you trace Chega de Saudade in Paulinho Garcia's rendition anywhere) but check out Garcia in an amazing duet on Batida Diferente, one piece that well emphasizes both his guitar and vocal abilities.

The second was a super interesting fusion of gypsy jazz, chansons, latin & more-- indeed a "fantastic French-y performance" as they themselves call it-- by Paris La Nuit, at Katerina's. On their site you can directly listen to several nice pieces (try for instance J'ai Un Revolver, that rendition is superb). All the members of the quintet, format in which they played at Katerina's, are superlative on their own  (though only the bassist markets herself properly), while they also almost perfectly synchronize within the team. A plus for Marielle, the talented lead singer and violinist: she's got the style and theatrical presence, something one might think a sine qua non in this business, but nonetheless pretty hard to come by... Way above my uninformed priors; I am sure I'll hear many good things about them in the near future. Check them out also in quartet format, interpreting Serge Gainsbourg's Le Poinçonneur des Lilas (with the risk of committing the sacrilège: despite that song launching Gainsbourg, I prefer Paris La Nuit's jazzy version)

(*) although, talking about Chicago jazz in general, not all is rosy: local organizers & hosts tend to overstate the public's demand for "large band jazz", think long Green Mill Thursdays, for instance...; in other words, I'd vote anytime for New York- vs. New Orleans- type of jazz.