The real tenure clock

At least in econ, this joke couldn’t strike closer to the truth.  How long is the 6-year tenure clock?

28 days.

Enjoy  this great, short commentary by the ever-insightful and funny Peter Thompson.

 

Some great advice

Thanks to John Whitehead for organizing this great AERE-sponsored session at the SEA meetings on tips for young economists.  The speakers were superb and — despite being environmental economists — I think had great advice for any economist and for othe social scientists.

See the lineup and download the PowerPoints here.

Perhaps my favorite was Laura Taylor’s talk on balancing family and work.  I’m not sure that it had much great advice in it, really, on the balancing question.  But, it had a few gems (‘outsource everything’) and a lot of very useful information.  How one uses that information, of course, is where the real advice might be crucial.  Still, it’s great info and great reminders of the powers of the clock.

 

Seven (deadly sins) scientific biases

Here is a great post from Mentaculus blog on The Seven Most Discussed Scientific Biases.  Click the link.  Keep these on the top of your mind when researching, authoring, and refereeing.  The shortlist:

1. confounding
2. selection
3. publication
4. response
5. attention
6. recall
7. sampling

 

So, you want to get a PhD in economics?

 

This sounds good: a video

This video was recommended to me.  I haven’t seen it yet, but I imagine that it’s fantastic, judging by the recommender.  The blurb that goes with it:

Mixing humor and heartbreak, Naturally Obsessed: The Making of a Scientist delves into the lab of charismatic professor Dr. Lawrence Shapiro, and follows three irrepressible graduate students on their determined pursuit of a PhD and scientific success. As if the pressure of scientific discovery isn’t enough, the students are also competing in a worldwide race to be the first to publish their findings. Their challenge: to decipher the structure and mechanism of AMPK, a tiny protein that controls the burning and storage of fat. Their road to success: years of trial and error, unflinching dedication, rock-climbing, rumors of pickle juice, and the music of The Flaming Lips.

So, check it out.

http://www.thirteen.org/embed-player?pid=0IbDG4CTzUuikqXGA0atytdwiHDU_Adg

 

GIS in Stata

First, I heard about this new bit of code for Stata that lets you interface with GoogleMaps to geocode and even compute travel times.  Just type: ‘findit geocode’ in Stata, or look here.

And, while we’re on the topic, this posting look great even at first glance!  Maffia names cause violent crimes.  Imagine if they had video games, too.

 

Pigou, Coase, and the Grinch

From a Forbes.com blog:

Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot.

But the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, DID NOT.

He stood and he hated the Whos and their noise

He hated the shrieks of the Who girls and boys

For fifty-three years he’d put up with it now—

He had to stop Christmas from coming, somehow.

He asked and he questioned the whole thing’s legality

Then his eyes brightened: he screamed “externality!”

He reached for his textbooks; he knew what to do

He’d fight them with ideas from A.C. Pigou

This idea has merit, he thought in the frost

A tax that was equal to external cost

At the margin, would give all the Who girls and boys

An incentive to stop all their screaming and noise

Failing that, an injunction to make them all cease

And they’d have to pay him to have their Roast Beast.

Low costs of transacting meant that if the Whos

Were the high-value users and wanted to use

All the rights to have feasts and the rights to sing songs

Then they’d have to buy them, to right their Who wrongs

They’d buy a noise easement, if they wished to sing

Until then, the Grinch could stop the whole thing.

On Christmas Eve Night, the Grinch went to town

He stole all the presents, he took their wreaths down

He stole their Who Hash, everything for their feast!

He swiped their Who Pudding!  He swiped their Roast Beast!

He looked at his sled loaded up with Who snacks

‘Twas quite an efficient Pigovian tax!

Then late in the night, when he got to Mount Crumpit

For he’d taken the load, and he threatened to dump it

The Whos, with one voice crying out in the night

Screamed “bring back our stuff!  You haven’t the right!

“We know that we’re noisy all through Christmas Day,

But if you don’t like it, it’s you who should pay!

“For we were here first, and homesteaded the rights

To sing, to make noise, and to hang Christmas lights

“The costs of our Christmas joy helped you to save!

They were fully reflected in the price of your cave!”

“We’ll all be good neighbors, and we’ll be polite

“But you’ve done us wrong on this Christmas Eve Night!”

The Grinch was crestfallen, he knew he had lost

For he was the source of the “external” cost

He’d come to the nuisance, and yes, he was wrong

He’d now have to live with their noise and their songs

He realized that day, though, that they could be friends

His heart grew three sizes (you know how this ends)

The Whos asked the Grinch to join them in their feast

And he—he, the Grinch—carved the Roast Beast.

The holiday season brings specials galore

They teach us that Christmas can’t come from a store

Reflect, as you watch them, as day turns to night

On good economics, and property rights.

via blogs.forbes.com

 

Using CVM in policy

Policy is full of CBA (or BCA, depending on tastes) … yet cost-benefit analysis takes many forms and degrees of formality.  When I teach about contingent valuation method (CVM), students often wonder about whether this academic stuff actually ever makes it into policy or into a real-world policy CBA.

Prof. John Whitehead recently asked the RESECON listserv for examples of this.  He compiled the many responses, and here’s what he found (below the jump):

 

Econ journal rankings

Here’s a little update, courtesy of the env-econ.net blog:

• Thomson Reuters JCR
• RePEc
• SCImago (based on Scopus data)

 

Feeling poor (or feeling poorly)

Just because something is written by someone at the Heritage Foundation, does that make it factually suspect, analytically suspect, both, or neither?  I do wonder what folks think on this one.  On the other hand, broad generalizations here might not be so useful.

A copy of a surprising (in a good way) policy analysis textbook landed on my desk a few months ago, and I was struck by the inclusion of a table/textbox that gave some summary statistics on what it’s like to be poor in the United States.  A little googling, and I think that I found the source material.  An updated version of the report (“How Poor Are America’s Poor?“) can be found here.  A few highlights about the 37 million Americans (circa 2005) below the poverty line:

• 43% own their own home.  (Thank goodness!)  3 BR, 1.5 BA, & garage.  Median home value of $100K puts it at 70% of the US median home value.
• 80% have A/C.
• 6% are “overcrowded;” most have 2+ rooms each.  Our typical poor person enjoys more square footage than the average Parisian, Londoner, etc.
• Almost 75% own a car; 31% own 2+ cars.
• 97% own a color TV; 50%+ own 2+ color TVs.
• 78% have a VCR/DVD; 62% get cable or satellite.
• A third had a landline and a cell phone, even back in 2005.
• 89% have microwaves; over a third have a dishwasher.

The ‘analysis’ involving marriage and immigration may not be so justified, but the snapshot present is otherwise intriguing.

• 98% of Americans report that they always have enough food to eat.  Among the poor, that figure is 92.5%.
• Nutrient density, percent with high-fat diets, and overconsumption of calories is basically same for the poor and for middle-class.
• Poor women (47%) are substantially more likely to be obese than non-poor women (32%).
• 30% of poor report being unable to meet essential expenses (rent, utilities, etc.) in the past year.
• 13% of poor cite an inability to go to the doctor when they needed to in the past year.  (The national average is 6.3%.)
• Adding in lots of sorts of hardship (not paying bills, being hungry, overcrowding, etc.), 18% of Americans had at least one of these sorts of hardships in the previous 12 months (circa 2003).  38.5% of the poor had at least one.

So, lots more hardship for the poor; the rate of hardship among the poor is about double average rate.  (Interestingly, it is still the minority of the poor who experience any of these hardships in the past year.)