The Drogheda School Leavers Cohort

The Drogheda School Leavers Cohort is a longitudinal study of all 652 young people who completed their secondary education in the Drogheda-area schools in 1993. The Boyne Research Institute "constructed this unique-to-Ireland study of local youth as a way to track the changes in their lives during this time when Ireland social fabric is changing radically".

The first contact with the School Leavers was in 1995. Of the total number of 652, 328 completed a postal questionnaire. The second contact with the School Leavers Cohort took place from 2003-2004. In 2003, 413 of the original 652 Drogheda 1993 school leavers responded. There are results across a number of characteristics including height, weight and labour market earnings.

More details about results from the Drogheda cohort are available here. The mission of the Boyne Research Institute is to help understand the causes and consequences of diseases during childhood. Their current projects include studies into the causes of birth defects in families, and the long-term complications of cancer during childhood.

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index is a massive survey that attempts to measure the US nation's general welfare, much like the Dow Jones Industrial Average portrays the health of the stock market. The survey is based on interviews of more than 100,000 people so far, and interestingly, the findings can be broken down by occupation, commute time and exercise habits. Eventually, the data could even be used to compare health and happiness by ZIP code.

"There's never been anything quite like it," said Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner in economic sciences, brought in by Gallup to discuss the potential uses for the data. "What is the experience of the weekend? What is the experience of the weekday for someone who is sick and has to go to work in the morning? We are going to learn a great deal about what are the determinants of actual happiness."

Read more about the survey here in this article from Associated Press.

Joel Mokyr, Mercantilism, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution

How shifts in thought paradigms restructure institutional context and so impact upon systems of economic interactions. Very tasty.

"In this paper, I propose to explore a different and more elusive way in which the Enlightenment affected the Industrial Revolution, namely through its impact on institutions. The argument I will make is complementary to the one that focuses on useful knowledge alone. The logic is, essentially this: technological change was a necessary condition for long-term sustained economic growth. The Industrial Revolution provided a stream of innovations, improvements, and adaptations, which, in the longer term, generated growth beyond the wildest dreams of even the
most optimistic Enlightenment philosophe. Yet without changes in the institutional environment of Europe, such technological progress might have been slower in coming and more importantly, might have been arrested, as it had before, by what might best be called negative institutional feedback."

Full paper; http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jmokyr/stockholm.PDF

First International Summer School in Behavioral Economics and Retirement Savings

From July 7 to July 17, 2008, the DIA (German Institute for Retirement Savings) will sponsor the first International Summer School in Behavioral Economics and Retirement Savings at the University of Muenster, Germany.

Local organizers are Thomas Langer and Alexander Klos (both University of Muenster). Among the invited speakers will be David Laibson (Harvard University), Martin Weber (University of Mannheim), Cade Massey (Yale University), and others.

At most twenty participants, graduate students and beginning faculty, will be invited to join the summer school. The DIA Research Group will cover most participant costs during the event, including housing and most meals. A capped travel stipend (600 Euro, US-$ 950) will also be provided.

I am not aware of a web-link for this summer-school, so I will present the additional information, including submission details, in a comment on this post...

SLAN : Comprehensive Study on the Health and Lifestyle Behaviours of the Irish Population Published Today

The survey contains a wealth of data on lifestyle behaviours of the Irish adult population including smoking, alcohol consumption, mental health, diet and physical activity. Some of the key facts to emerge are:

• Half the population recorded self-rated health as ‘excellent’ or very ‘good’ and that this has increased since the last SLÁN survey in 2002. Similarly, there is a reported increase in the number of respondents who described their quality of life as good or very good.

• There was a decrease from 2002 to 2007 in the percentage of respondents who reported consuming 6 or more standard drinks (‘risky drinking’) at least once a week.

• Overall, 65% reported consuming the recommended five or more servings of fruits and vegetables daily. One third either always or usually added salt to food at the table. Half reported snacking between meals, most commonly on biscuits and cakes.

• 29% of the population smoked, with higher rates amongst young people. Almost half of both male and female smokers reported attempting to quit within the previous 12 months; younger smokers were more likely to report attempting to quit.

• Younger men reported higher levels of physical activity, reducing with increasing age. This contrasts with the relatively low level of physical activity in women across all age groups. Of concern was the fact that respondents who reported that they were physically inactive gave their main reason as 'no time'.

• Over half of respondents (55%) reported being involved in community activities, compared to 59% in 2002.

• The results that emerged from the physical examination of the population sample over 45 years of age point to the prevalence of raised cholesterol and high blood pressure in this population group. In relation to body weight, 39% of those examined (ages 18+) were medically over-weight with a further 25% classified as obese.

The lifestyle choices of individuals have a direct impact on their physical and mental well-being. These choices relate to what they eat, if they smoke, the amount of alcohol they consume and if they take regular exercise. While individuals can make their own lifestyle choices, policy makers need to develop and target effective health promotion policies and initiatives in order to inform and influence people to make healthier choices. It is crucial, therefore, that the information on which these policies are developed is accurate and up to date.


Full report: http://www.dohc.ie/publications/pdf/slan07_report.pdf?direct=1

IAREP/SABE 2008 at LUISS in Rome ---and--- Student Paper Competition

The International Association for Research in Economic Psychology and the Society for Advancement of Behavioral Economics are holding their World Meeting 2008 from the 3rd-6th September in Rome. More details here.

The deadline for submissions is the end of May 2008, though the organisers say that they will leave the door ajar for "potentially Nobel Prize winning submissions". There is also a call for submissions for this year's student paper competition - the Elsevier/IAREP/SABE Best Student Paper Competition 2008. The winner of the
competition for 2008 will receive:

- A year's subscription to the Journal of Economic Psychology
- A year's subscription to the Journal of Socio-Economics
- 1000 Euro

The second and third place winners will receive a year's subscription to both journals.

Universities in NI to study rise in male suicide

Researchers from Queen’s and the University of Ulster have urged young men in the suicide hot-spot of north and west Belfast who have considered taking their lives to speak to them in a bid to help others in the same situation.

In the coming months the research will be extended to Craigavon, Co Armagh, and Banbridge, Co Down.

The team want to speak confidentially to men aged between 16 and 35 who have thought seriously about or acted with the intention of suicide, in order to develop care and support programmes for those at risk.

Any young men in the north and west of Belfast who wish to take part in the study can contact the team through Mr McGowan on 07894 646690 or by email to menssuicidestudyulster.ac.uk.

Read more about this study here on breakingnews.ie

Reconstructing Daily Financial Decision-Making

In a recent post on the 'Natural Rationality' blog, Benoit Hardy-Vallée mentions research which shows that a trader's morning testosterone level predicts his day's profitability.

The study that Benoit Hardy-Vallée mentions was published recently in PNAS:

J. M. Coates and J. Herbert

Endogenous steroids and financial risk taking on a London trading floor

These authors relate biological measures to risk preferences, which is an interesting development:


"...We found that a trader's morning testosterone level predicts his day's profitability. We also found that a trader's cortisol rises with both the variance of his trading results and the volatility of the market. Our results suggest that higher testosterone may contribute to economic return, whereas cortisol is increased by risk... acutely elevated steroids ... may shift risk preferences and even affect a trader's ability to engage in rational choice".


Benoit Hardy-Vallée also mentions that there is a good summary of the work in Science.

Gambling, Prediction Markets and Public Policy

Date: Monday 15 – Tuesday 16 September 2008

Event: Symposium of the Southern Economic Journal - Gambling, Prediction Markets and Public Policy

Location: Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University

Details: In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in expenditure on various forms of gambling and prediction markets, including casinos, sports betting, lotteries, wagering on financial instruments. The rapid growth in this activity has heightened interest in a variety of public policy issues related to this sector.

More details here.

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus

An interesting blog post by Clay Shirky, author of "Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organising Without Organisations" - essentially arguing that every dislocating social change causes, well , dislocating social change, that requires some kind of social narcotic for the first few decades. In the early years of the industrial revolution, it was gin - in the last years of the twentieth century, it was the sitcom. Only now are we using the cognitive and social surplus that we have accrued in recent decades for productive ends.

This hit me in a conversation I had about two months ago. As Jen said in the introduction, I've finished a book called Here Comes Everybody, which has recently come out, and this recognition came out of a conversation I had about the book. I was being interviewed by a TV producer to see whether I should be on their show, and she asked me, "What are you seeing out there that's interesting?"



I started telling her about the Wikipedia article on Pluto. You may remember that Pluto got kicked out of the planet club a couple of years ago, so all of a sudden there was all of this activity on Wikipedia. The talk pages light up, people are editing the article like mad, and the whole community is in an ruckus--"How should we characterize this change in Pluto's status?" And a little bit at a time they move the article--fighting offstage all the while--from, "Pluto is the ninth planet," to "Pluto is an odd-shaped rock with an odd-shaped orbit at the edge of the solar system."




So I tell her all this stuff, and I think, "Okay, we're going to have a conversation about authority or social construction or whatever." That wasn't her question. She heard this story and she shook her head and said, "Where do people find the time?" That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, "No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you've been masking for 50 years."


So how big is that surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project--every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in--that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it's a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it's the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.


And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus. People asking, "Where do they find the time?" when they're looking at things like Wikipedia don't understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of this asset that's finally being dragged into what Tim calls an architecture of participation.




Now, the interesting thing about a surplus like that is that society doesn't know what to do with it at first--hence the gin, hence the sitcoms. Because if people knew what to do with a surplus with reference to the existing social institutions, then it wouldn't be a surplus, would it? It's precisely when no one has any idea how to deploy something that people have to start experimenting with it, in order for the surplus to get integrated, and the course of that integration can transform society

Neurophilosophy

Here is a link to a review of a book on neurophilosophy (Review - Brain, Mind, and Human Behavior in Contemporary Cognitive Science, Coulter and Sharrock, 2007), that may be of interest to those reading up on neuroeconomics.

email about course in southampton

Dear Colleague The Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute (S3RI) is pleased to announce a repeat of the 3-day short-course on the demography of adult morbidity and mortality to be presented by Professor Richard Rogers, Director of the Population Program and Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA.Course title: Demography of Adult Morbidity and Mortality Dates: Wednesday 11 June - Friday 13 June 2008 Location: University of Southampton, UK Rogers is well-known for his work on social demography, ageing, and the sociology of health. Most of his research examines the effects of social, demographic, economic, health, and behavioural factors on individuals' health, disability, and mortality. The course will tackle such crucial questions as: Are health disparities widening over time and place? Are individuals really living longer and in better health? How does socioeconomic status operate to improve health and reduce mortality? Will life expectancies in more developed countries continue to increase over time and, if so, by how much?For detailed information about the course, please click on the link below: http://www.s3ri.soton.ac.uk/courses/mortality/index.php or email Christina Thompson at cct@soton.ac.uk. The number of places on this course is limited and hence early application is advised. Best wishes James Raymer S3RI University of Southampton

Some Tips for PhD Students in Economics

A couple of tips that someone pointed out to me for thinking about writing a PhD in Economics

http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/john.cochrane/research/Papers/phd_paper_writing.pdf

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Teaching_Folder/Romers_rules.html

Disparities in Life Expectancy Increasing in the United States

"Contrary to popular belief, life expectancies are not rising steadily and uniformly across the United States.

In fact, new research shows that between 1983 and 1999, death rates for women went up in many poor counties and, overall, geographical and racial disparities in life expectancy have worsened across the country".

Read about these and similar findings in a cuurent article from PLoS Medicine on USNews.com here.

A Critique of Harrison's Critical Reconsideration

Following on from Michael's post (re Harrison's critical reconsideration), and the related post by Liam on the Bernheim appraisal:

Neuroeconomics: A Critique of 'Neuroeconomics: A Critical Reconsideration'

Date: 2008-03-25
By: Stanton, Angela A.

(The paper is available here).

---Abridged Abstract----

The field of neuroeconomics is barely into its teenage years... Redesign the field of economics developed over a hundred years? ...That is not what neuroeconomics is trying to do, in spite of all the efforts of some economists trying to place it into that shoebox...

The two fields, neuroeconomics and SE (ed- standard economics), are evaluating two sides of the same coin; one with and the other without ceteris paribus; they are not necessarily in conflict with one another.

Neuroscientific evidence supporting the benefits of meditation

This recent TRENDS article summarises recent neuroscientific research demonstrating how meditation can enhance sustained attention and neural systems involved in monitoring, both functions which are essential for learning and the self-regulation of behaviour.

Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation- TRENDS in Cognitive Science 2008

Neuroeconomics: A Critical Reconsideration

Glenn Harrison points to the methodological flaws in neuroeconomics research, the dangerous "sprial" of a self-citing literature, the extent to which known confounds are glossed over and plausible stories are promoted without adequate control for numerous alternative explanations. He seems to suggest that neuroeconomics has fallen prey to the myopic side of it's own dual-self 'planner/doer' model of decision-making plucking the low-hanging fruit for publication and ending up exposed to a chilly and sobering breeze of critcism and methodological reconsideration!

A tad harsh perhaps, however, Harrison does insist on the value of the field, but less so in its current formulation..


Forthcoming, Economics and Philosophy, 24, 2008

neuroeconomics: a sober but hopeful appraisal

Use a mirror
(289 K)
B. Douglas Bernheim
NBER Working Paper No. 13954Issued in March 2008NBER Program(s): PE
---- Abstract -----
This paper evaluates the prospects for the emerging field of neuroeconomics to shed light on traditional positive and normative economic questions. It argues that the potential for meaningful contributions, though often misunderstood and frequently overstated, is nevertheless present.

This paper is available as PDF (289 K) or via email.

esri seminar

ESRI Research Seminar

“Are Good Industrial Relations Good for the Economy?”

Prof. John T. Addison
School of Management, Queen’s University Belfast

and

Paulino Teixeira
Faculdade de Economia, University of Coimbra


Venue: The ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2

Date and Time: Thursday 24th April 2008, at 4 p.m.

Using international data, we investigate whether the quality of industrial relations matters for the macro economy. We measure industrial relations inversely by strikes – which proxy we cross-check with an industrial relations reputation indicator – and our macro performance indicator is the unemployment rate. Independent of the role of other institutions, good industrial relations do seem to matter: greater strike volume is associated with higher unemployment. But these results apply in cross section. Holding country effects constant, the sign of the strikes coefficient is abruptly reversed. Although it does not seem to be the case that the line of causation runs from unemployment to strikes once we control for the endogeneity of strikes, it is also the case that support for the strikes proxy for industrial relations quality is much eroded.


Details of forthcoming ESRI Seminars can be found at WWW.ESRI.IE

Dataninja

I stumbled upon an excellent resource while reading up on missing values in survey data. DATANINJA is a "website dedicated to providing information on software and techniques for data analysis and research". And it has pointed me towards lots of wonderful stuff. Such as this article on missing values, and this one on making STATA do the work for you.

The website is set up as a blog, but essentially is meant to be navigated across directories dealing with topics such as 'Data', 'LaTeX', 'STATA', 'Programming' etc. There is also a nice philiosophy behind the enterprise:

"The internet has become a global information resource. As a researcher, I have benefited greatly from the many tutorials, data sources, lecture notes, software downloads and other tools available — at no cost — online. I maintain this website in order to give something back to the community that has helped me in so many ways".

New Website Aims to Highlight Gaps in the Labour Market

According to a news item from AIB Global Treasury Services (read here), John Carton and Eimear Sinnott of Durrow Communications have launched a new website, careersportal.ie, that allows students and members of the labour force to plan their career paths.

"The site continually monitors and collects up-to-date labour market information from the 29 most prominent industry sectors in the country... It highlights the current skills shortage in the various sectors, educating workers and students alike".

Alvin Roth

Alvin Roth will be one of the keynotes at the IAREP conference

a set of audio and video talks by him is available on his site below

http://kuznets.fas.harvard.edu/~aroth/alroth.html#AudioVideo

Why do some Irish drink so much?

a paper explaining variation in irish student drinking patterns

http://geary.ucd.ie/images/Publications/WorkingPapers/gearywp200810.pdf

irish universities study

We formally launched the universities study this week. it will run for three years and we have just begun analysing data from the first wave (which is still in the field).


http://www.ucd.ie/news/2008/04APR08/150408_university_study.html

Maynooth Psychology Society

Guest Address by

Professor Alan Baddeley
York University, UK

“Recent Developments in the Working Memory Model”

Location and Time:
Wednesday 23rd April JHL 7 @ 6pm

Contact richard.roche@nuim.ie if you want further details.

colm harmon on investing in education

from today's irish independent

http://www.independent.ie/education/latest-news/its-all-about-thirdlevel-investment-stupid-1349028.html

The Milgram Experiment

There is an interesting discussion about the Milgram experiment on the Nudge blog.

"In the experiment, the subjects administered what they assumed was an electric shock to a person in an adjacent room after the person gave a wrong answer to a memory test... more than half administered the maximum 450-volt shock, which, in case they were not too familiar with the dangers of electricity, went beyond the “Danger: Very Severe Shock” label on the machine they used".

Interestingly, the Nudge blog links to YouTube footage of these experiments, which would be a useful teaching tool.

Interuniversity Decision Behavior Teaching Repository

The Interuniversity Decision Behavior Teaching Repository at Michigan houses a wealth of resources for teaching classes on decision behaviour.

Two PhD studentships in environmental economics and policy analysis at UCD

Link from the Endogenous Preferences blog.

How to Use Data

The US Integrated Public Use Microdata Series comes with a stark warning - "Use It For Good, Never for Evil"!

Emotional Mapping

In a recent post on Turbulence Ahead, Gerard O Neill from Amarach mentions the work of Christian Nold, who is "using technologies like GPS devices and lie detectors to 'emotionally map' villages, towns and cities". Some interesting map sites were also mentioned in O'Neill's post: Worldmapper and the Strange Maps blog.

ESRI Seminar

ESRI Research Seminar

“The Public Sector Pay Gap in France: New Evidence Using Panel Data”

Dr Olivier Bargain
Department of Economics, University College Dublin

Venue: The ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2
Date and Time: Thursday 17th April 2008, at 4 p.m.

This paper estimates the public wage gap in France for the period 1990-2002, both at the mean and at different quantiles of the wage distribution, for men and women separately. It accounts for unobserved heterogeneity by using fixed effects estimations on panel data and, departing from usual practice, allow the public wage markup to vary over time. It also provides one of the very first applications of fixed effects quantile regression.

Contrary to common belief, results convey that monetary returns are not fundamentally different in the public sector. Firstly, public wage premia (for women) or penalties (for men) are essentially the result of selection. After controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, only small pay differences between sectors remain over time, reflecting fluctuations due to specific public policies and to the pro-cyclicality of private sector wages. The long-term difference is essentially zero. Secondly, the relative compression of the wage distribution by the public sector is also partly due to unobserved characteristics. The most natural explanation for these results is that the civil sector manages to attract better workers in the lower part of the distribution, in part because of non-monetary gains (including job protection), but fails to retain the most productive ones at the top.

Details of forthcoming ESRI Seminars can be found at www.esri.ie

Kahneman on YouTube

Almost an hour here of Kahneman talking about intuition, at the UC Berkeley Graduate Council Lectures in 2007.

ronald ehrenberg

Professor Ronald Ehrenberg will be at the Centre next week including delivering a key note address at the launch of the Irish Universities Project.

His IDEAS page is below and gives an idea of his prolific output in labour economics and education economics.

http://ideas.repec.org/e/peh2.html

Some examples of his work include papers on the effects of internships on undergraduate performance.

Ronald G. Ehrenberg, 2005. "Involving Undergraduates in Research to Encourage Them to Undertake Ph.D. Study in Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 184-188, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)

His review of econometric studies in higher education is below

Ehrenberg, R.G.Ronald G., 2004. "Econometric studies of higher education," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1-2), pages 19-37. [Downloadable!] (restricted)

He has written a number of recent papers on the structuring of graduate programmes that are particularly relevant to current Irish initiatives


Jeffrey Groen & George Jakubson & Ronald G. Ehrenberg & Scott Condie & Albert Yung-Hsu Liu, 2006. "Program Design and Student Outcomes in Graduate Education," NBER Working Papers 12064, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)

Ronald G. Ehrenberg & George Jakubson & Jeffrey Groen & Eric So & Joseph Price, 2006. "Inside the Black Box of Doctoral Education: What Program Characteristics Influence Doctoral Students' Attrition and Graduation Probabilities?," NBER Working Papers 12065, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)

Individual’s Propensity to Engage with their Creditors

an interesting policy report on the mechanisms by which individuals take action when their credit problems are starting to get out of control and the relevance of the behavioural economics literature to this area


http://www.dca.gov.uk/review_debt_research.pdf


"Individuals who are being pursued for repayment of debts often fail to engage with their creditors, or delay engagement until a late stage in the process; Lea et al. (1993), for instance, reported that as few as one third of debtors contact their creditor. Avoiding this contact can, however, lead to higher costs for the individual, such as those arising from court action, and can cause stress to the debtor. In response to this situation, Her Majesty’s Court Service (HMCS) is managing the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) Debt Programme, a key element of which is Proportionate Dispute Resolution. One aim of this element is to develop procedures that will encourage debtors to engage with their creditors and develop alternative solutions to debt problems that might otherwise lead to court proceedings. This report considers the lessons that can be taken from behavioural economics and psychology to help achieve this aim."

talks at the centre next week

Tuesday 15th April 2008 1pm: Alois Stutzer (University of Basel). "Blood Donations and Incentives: Evidence from a Field Experiment"

http://geary.ucd.ie/behaviour/index.php/Home/Geary-Institute-Behavioural-Seminar-2007-2008.html

Conference on Higher Education Research (15th April 2008) - Keynote Speaker: Professor Ronald Ehrenberg

biological measures of the standard of living

Biological Measures of the Standard of Living Richard H. Steckel
Steckel, Richard,H.. "Biological Measures of the Standard of Living", Journal of Economic Perspectives 22(1), pp. 129-152.

http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.22.1.129

DOI:10.1257/jep.22.1.129

Abstract
When economists investigate long-term trends and socioeconomic differences in the standard of living or quality of life, they have traditionally focused on monetary measures such as gross domestic product—which has occupied center stage for over 50 years. In recent decades, however, scholars have increasingly recognized the limitations of monetary measures while seeking useful alternatives. This essay examines the unique and valuable contributions of four biological measures—life expectancy, morbidity, stature, and certain features of skeletal remains—to understand levels and changes in human well-being. People desire far more than material goods and in fact they are quite willing to trade or give up material things in return for better physical or psychological health. For most people, health is so important to their quality of life that it is useful to refer to the "biological standard of living." Biological measures may be especially valuable for historical studies and for other research circumstances where monetary measures are thin or lacking. A concluding section ruminates on the future evolution of biological approaches in measuring happiness.

The Monty Hall Problem

"I thought this was really interesting. Experimental results, that for years have been attributed by psychologists to cognitive dissonance, can be explained by a failure to recognize a statistical explanation analogous to the Monty Hall problem".

Courtesy of Alan J Brothers:

Link to article in the New York Times

effects of erasmus programmes from iza discussion papers

Matthias Parey, Fabian Waldinger
Studying Abroad and the Effect on International Labor Market Mobility: Evidence from the Introduction of ERASMUS
April 2008

Abstract

memory technology

another recent paper from the EJ examines how we should release information to someone with particular forms of limited memory. This draws heavily on a well-known paper on memory in the QJE. Interesting how both papers combine well-known experimental results in psychology with mathematical techniques most used in economic theory.

Mullainathan, S. (2002). ‘A memory based model of bounded rationality’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 17 (3), pp. 735–74.
CrossRef


What Have you Done for me Lately? Release of Information and Strategic Manipulation of Memories Yianis Sarafidis

Abstract
How should a rational agent (politician/employee/advertiser) release information in order to manipulate the memory imperfections of his forgetful assessor (electorate/supervisor/consumer)? This article attempts to answer this question using a memory model based on the principles of recency, similarity and repetition. I show that the problem of a rational agent who releases information to a forgetful assessor can be modelled as a standard dynamic optimisation problem and we describe the properties of the optimal profile for releasing information. The theoretical results are applicable in a wide range of social and economic contexts, such as political campaigns, employee performance evaluations and advertising strategies.

identification of peer effects

identiyfing peer effects on behaviour is tricky for lots of reasons particularly as people will sort together on many observable and unobservable characteristics. the literature has tried various ways to examine exogenous sources of peer variation such as examining the effect of background factors of randomly assigned flatmates in college (e.g. Sacerdote, Bruce (2001). ‘Peer effect with random assignment: results for Dartmouth roomates’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 116(2), pp. 681–704.
CrossRef, ISI, JSTOR.)

a recent paper in the EJ tries the following identifcation strategy (quoted below from the article)


“Our first identification strategy relies on variation across neighbourhoods in the proportion of adolescents born at the beginning (or at the end) of the year. As discussed below, the date of birth within the year is an important determinant of French children's early performance at school and is plausibly exogenous to the quality of the neighbourhood in which they live. In such a context, one simple way to identify the influence of neighbours is to test whether children's performance at school is affected by the distribution of dates of birth within the year of the other children living in the same neighbourhood. As shown below, the answer is positive. Regardless of their own date of birth, children living in a neighbourhood with a relatively high proportion of children born at the beginning of the year perform significantly better than children living in a neighbourhood with a relatively high proportion of children born at the end of the year.”


http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0297.2007.02079.x

OECD Paper on Behavioural Economics

Tapia, W. and J. Yermo (2007), "Implications of
Behavioural Economics for Mandatory Individual Account
Pension Systems", OECD Working Papers on Insurance
and Private Pensions, No. 11, OECD Publishing.
doi:10.1787/103002825851


http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/5/22/39368306.pdf

ABSTRACT/RÉSUMÉ
Implications of behavioural economics for mandatory individual account pension systems
In individual account pension systems, members bear the risks and consequences of their investment decisions. If participants behave as predicted by economic theory, such responsibility would be welfareenhancing as members would invest and hold a portfolio of financial assets with a risk-return combination consistent with their investment horizon, degree of risk aversion and the portfolio of other assets they hold, including their human capital and, where relevant, their home. Behavioural economists and empirical researches have shown that in reality members are not particularly good at handling their retirement savings, either because they lack the necessary cognitive ability to solve the optimization problem, because they have insufficient will power to execute it, or even sometimes because they are overconfident. This paper describes the extent to which plan members make active investment decisions in these systems and assesses the policy solutions that have been put forward to facilitate choice. The paper offers a comparative analysis of ten countries that have implemented investment choice in the accumulation stage of their individual account pension system.

JEL codes: J31 G11 G23 G18
Keywords: Pension funds; portfolio preferences; individual choice; individual accounts; investmentalternatives; pension plans; investment return; investment limits.

Criticisms of the Signalling Model

"Gary Becker, Tyler Cowen, and Arnold Kling have all recently criticized the signaling theory of education". This topic is discussed on Econlog by Bryan Caplan. The quotes he uses are shown below.

First, Becker:

"I believe it [the signaling model] declined because economists began to realize that companies rather quickly discover the productivity of employees who went to college, whether a Harvard or a University of Phoenix. Before long, their pay adjusts to their productivity rather than to their education credentials".

Second, Cowen:

"If education is pure signaling, just give everyone a standardized test in seventh grade and then close up the schools".


Tyler:

"Men are born beasts. But education gives you a peer group, a self-image, and some skills as well. Getting an education is like becoming a Marine. Men need to be made into Marines. By choosing many years of education, you are telling yourself that you stand on one side of the social divide".

Short-Term Credit Constraints?

A new NBER paper suggests that we shouldn't dismiss the role of short-term credit constraints in higher education participation.

The Nature of Credit Constraints and Human Capital
by Lance J. Lochner, Alexander Monge-Naranjo - NBER WP #13912

Abridged Abstract:

"We show that the rising empirical importance of familial wealth and income in determining college attendance (Belley and Lochner 2007) is consistent with increasingly binding credit constraints in the face of rising tuition costs and returns to schooling. Our framework also explains the recent increase in private credit for college as a market response to the rising returns to school".

http://papers.nber.org/papers/W13912

Stop-Gap Jobs 'Rob Graduates of Ambition'

According to a recent article in The Times, "graduates who take stop-gap jobs after leaving university can get so depressed by the boredom of their work that they... would be better off staying on the dole. After nine months of low-grade work, graduates were more distressed, less motivated and more likely to fall into depression than those who were unemployed".

The research was conducted by Tony Cassidy, of the University of Ulster, and Liz Wright, of De Montfort University, and was presented at the British Psychological Society conference in Dublin on the 4th April.

Spin Cycle: How Research Is Used in Policy Debates

From the Russell Sage Foundation Website

http://www.russellsage.org/publications/books/080116.032006


Spin Cycle: How Research Is Used in Policy Debates: The Case of Charter Schools
Jeffrey R. Henig Publication Date: February 2008

One important aim of social science research is to provide unbiased information that can help guide public policies. However, social science is often construed as politics by other means. Nowhere is the polarized nature of social science research more visible than in the heated debate over charter schools. In Spin Cycle, noted political scientist and education expert Jeffrey Henig explores how controversies over the charter school movement illustrate the use and misuse of research in policy debates. Henig’s compelling narrative reveals that, despite all of the political maneuvering on the public stage, research on school choice has gradually converged on a number of widely accepted findings. This quiet consensus shows how solid research can supersede partisan cleavages and sensationalized media headlines.

some recent books in economics

the guardian provides a review below of some recent books in economics

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2268952,00.html

A book that some of our colleagues will appreciate is below. Looking forward to taking it and a copy of Nudge away for a read.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/MARDIS.html

(description below from the website)

The Dismal Science

How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community

Stephen A. Marglin

Economists celebrate the market as a device for regulating human interaction without acknowledging that their enthusiasm depends on a set of half-truths: that individuals are autonomous, self-interested, and rational calculators with unlimited wants and that the only community that matters is the nation-state. However, as Stephen Marglin argues, market relationships erode community. In the past, for example, when a farm family experienced a setback--say the barn burned down--neighbors pitched in. Now a farmer whose barn burns down turns, not to his neighbors, but to his insurance company. Insurance may be a more efficient way to organize resources than a community barn raising, but the deep social and human ties that are constitutive of community are weakened by the shift from reciprocity to market relations.

Marglin dissects the ways in which the foundational assumptions of economics justify a world in which individuals are isolated from one another and social connections are impoverished as people define themselves in terms of how much they can afford to consume. Over the last four centuries, this economic ideology has become the dominant ideology in much of the world. Marglin presents an account of how this happened and an argument for righting the imbalance in our lives that this ideology has fostered.

Ireland and the housing market cycle

The IMF released a report recently on housing cycles and the wider economy. it points to one positive feature in the irish case, namely the relatively smaller inclination of Irish homeowners to borrow on the strength of their home values


http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2008/RES040308A.htm

Counterfactual Thinking and Job Satisfaction

Medvec, V. H., Madey, S., & Gilovich, T. (1995). "When less is more: Counterfactual thinking and satisfaction among Olympic medal winners". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 603-610.

The authors discuss why bronze medalists tend to be happier than silver medalists. They attribute these results to the fact that "the most compelling counterfactual alternative for the silver medalist is winning the gold, whereas for the bronze medalist it is finishing without a medal. Support for this interpretation was obtained
from the 1992 Olympics and the 1994 Empire State Games".

It would be interesting to consider where the thresholds lie for compelling counterfactual alternatives, in relation to individuals pursuing labour market outcomes. We can even think of this in the context of a linear OLS model where job satisfaction is rated on a scale fom 0-100. The higher up the scale one rates onself, the closer one gets to reaching the limit in possibilities for a counterfactual alternative.

This relates somewhat to research being conducted in the Centre on the use of anchoring vignettes to enhance inter-personal comparability in self-evaluation. But the issue of reference-dependency also seems to be inevitable for many instances of counterfactual thinking - certainly in the contexts of Olympic contests and labour market outcomes.

Here's a video clip of Jerry Seinfeld outlining the example related to Olympic medal winners:

http://info.ruppin.ac.il/yassour/misc/silver.wmv

Keep your future self on the straight and narrow...

Email yourself in the future!

http://www.timemachiner.com/

Nudge - Improving Decisions

I havent read this yet but its high on the reading list:

"Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness" by Thaler and Sunstein

http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/product-description/0300122233

Their paper on Libertarian Paternalism has been extremely influential and, in particular, recent literature on pension policies all over the globe have incorporated many ideas about designing institutions that take in to account decision making biases.

http://aei-brookings.org/admin/authorpdfs/redirect-safely.php?fname=../pdffiles/phptj.pdf

Becker and Posner offer a critique below, with one of the more compelling arguments being that central decision makers themselves suffer from many biases which may transmit if they try to steer the populace down the right road.

http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2007/01/libertarian_pat_1.html

Economics and Development

A biology postgraduate student was asking for some ideas on how academic economics is contributing to the study of development. Not my area but some interesting recent contributions include (others can add stuff also):

Esther Duflo's work is clearly one place to start

http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/eduflo/papers

The lab at MIT is linked below

http://www.povertyactionlab.org/

Emily Oster has written on HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her papers are available below,.

http://home.uchicago.edu/~eoster/

A recent paper by Cormac O'Grada in the Journal of Economic Perspectives is well worth reading

http://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jeclit/v45y2007i1p5-38.html

The Journal of Development Economics is linked below

http://ideas.repec.org/s/eee/deveco.html

Douglas Almond has written several recent papers on the effect of poor early conditions on later outcomes. They are relevant to the domain but also illustrate very well the methodology that economics researchers use to establish causal relationships

http://www.nber.org/~almond/

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation recently established in Washington is also doing a lot of work relevant to development economics

http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/

ok, if you get through all that it will be a good start

Call for Submissions for Irish Universities Quality Board Review

Well, this is just what it says in the subject line. "Interested stakeholders" who'd like to hold forth about Quality Assurance in Universities can vent their spleen or express their joy at http://www.hea.ie/index.cfm/page/sub/id/1187

Reading the OED, or How technical should dictionaries get in their defintions.

A chap called Ammon Shea has written a a very funny sounding book about reading all of the OED in a year. I particularly like this part of the excerpt posted online at the link above:

Absurd Entries is the name that I gave to a certain class of definition that I would come across every so often when reading the OED. They are rarer than the mistakes, and considerably more fun to read. These are the extremely rare moments when the OED does something that is so inexplicable that you have to close the book and check the cover to make sure that it is indeed the same book that you thought. I have decided, without giving too much thought to the matter, to divide them into two separate categories: ‘Blatant Disregard for the Reader’s Level of Education’ and ‘What Were They Thinking?’

In the category of Blatant Disregard, the past editors of the OED had seemingly come to the conclusion that since they sat around all day reading about words, accruing a monstrous knowledge of vocabulary, their readers must have done the same, and therefore it was not necessary to talk down to anyone with the definition. For instance trondhjemite is defined as ‘Any leucocratic tonalite, esp. one in which the plagioclase is oligoclase’. I have my doubts as to whether anyone has ever thought to themselves ‘I wonder what trondhjemite means?’ But if someone did, and went to look it up in the OED, it seems unlikely that this definition would clear things up much.

In a similar vein, self-feeling is defined as ‘used to render coenaethesis’, and occupatio is simply ‘preterition’. (I should add that in the online version both coenaethesis and preterition are linked to definitions, which feels a bit like cheating) The word syllogism has a fairly simple and informative definition, and the OED even thoughtfully provides an example of a syllogism at the end of it. Which is written entirely in Latin. Although for sheer incomprehensibility, I do not think that I have seen many entries that can beat the masterful one that was created for the curious word disghibelline – ‘To distinguish, as a Guelph from a Ghibelline.’

I posted about this on a trivia-focused internet forum here. A poster responded

In the second paragraph, Shea appears to be calling for the entry of every technical word in the dictionary to define the word down to the level of everyday English. This is, of course, ridiculous-- the dictionary would have to contain a biology textbook, not once but many times over, and likewise for every other discipline. This is all the more impossible since Shea regards hyperlinks as "a little bit like cheating."

Maybe so, but as I respond to that poster, the Wikipedia definition of trondjhemite is much more useful for the non-specialist. One can discern from it that we are talking about rocks, for one thing. It also turns out Ammon Shea's joke has prompted some self-scrutiny in the world of geology.

This is an issue for medics and economists and all academics who try and communicate with the general public and engage with the general culture alike - how do you explain the terminology of the discipline to the public? How do you bridge the tension between being as accurate as possible and as clear as possible?

Forget blogs - lifestreaming is the new, um, rock'n'roll

Or so some think.

But not everyone. And neither do I.

Driving in my car

Clive Thompson's always-interesting blog links to a great video illustrating how traffic jams form.

Thompson writes

This also puts me in mind of William Beatty, the electrical engineer who -- while stuck in traffic in 1998 -- figured out a way to hack traffic jams and erase them. Basically, when he was stuck in a jam, he'd slow down until he had a really large amount of space between him and the car in front of him. Then he moved forward in at very slow, uniform speed, so that he no longer stopped and started. Sure enough, the wave stopped at him: Everyone behind him began driving at a uniform 35 mph. "By driving at the average speed of the traffic around me, my car had been 'eating' the traffic waves," he wrote. The only problem, of course, is that he himself was stuck traveling at the average speed of the wave in front of him, which -- at 35 mph -- is pretty pokey.

I can recommend from recent experience not to try this in Dublin. At least not in the city. There are two many traffic lights which totally ruin the exercise (and attract much ire from one's fellow drivers) But the concept Thompson describes - that driving in a kind, respectful, letting-the-other-guy-in way reduces traffic and thereby is in all our interests - is an interesting one from the behavioural point of view?

Behavioural Economics is the New Rock'n'Roll

Or the New Black? Or the New Gardening? Or the New Behavioural Economics?

Don't you love snowclones? They are the little journalistic formulations that are beloved of subeditors stuck for a headline and lazy writers padding out their prose. There's a whole rake of them here (as you can see, I've become somewhat addicted to trying to find other ones. There's an entertaining article about the phenomenon here

The Advantages of Closing A Few Doors

We've all been paralysed by choice. And its happening to more and more of us, more and more of the time. We live in a culture that celebrates choice in everything from leisure pursuits to where to go for an operation.

There's an upside to

reducing choice, though

heckman on causality

Econometric Causalityby James J. Heckman(March 2008) forthcoming in: International Statistical ReviewAbstract:This paper presents the econometric approach to causal modeling. It is motivated by policy problems. New causal parameters are defined and identified to address specific policy problems. Economists embrace a scientific approach to causality and model the preferences and choices of agents to infer subjective (agent) evaluations as well as objective outcomes. Anticipated and realized subjective and objective outcomes are distinguished. Models for simultaneous causality are developed. The paper contrasts the Neyman-Rubin model of causality with the econometric approach.


http://ftp.iza.org/dp3425.pdf

talks with kahneman

a very nice set of audio and visual links to Kahneman's work available below

http://www.princeton.edu/~kahneman/multimedia.htm

esri seminar

Event Details

ESRI Research Seminar: "Healthy Retirement or Unhealthy Inactivity: How Important are Financial Incentives in Explaining Retirement?"
Venue: ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2
Date: 10/04/2008 Time: 4 p.m.
Speaker: Carl Emmerson, Deputy Director, Institute for Fiscal Studies, London.
No booking required. All welcome.

Google Charts

The Google Chart API lets you dynamically generate charts. To see the Chart API in action, open up a browser window and copy the following URL into it:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=t:60,40&chs=250x100&chl=Hello|World

Press the Enter or Return key and - presto! - you should see the following image:



For more info on the wide range of chart options available, see here.

success in economics phd programmes

http://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecinqu/v45y2007i4p864-871.html


"This study investigates the completion of the Ph.D. in economics. We use ex ante information, based upon reviewing individual applications from former doctoral students. Students need different skills to succeed at each distinct stage of the doctoral program. Significant determinants for passing the comprehensive exams include Graduate Record Exam (GRE) verbal and quantitative scores, a Masters degree, and prior focus on economics. By contrast, research motivation and math preparation play significant roles in completing the dissertation. GRE scores become insignificant for completion in the generalized ordered logit estimates, which emphasize the sequential nature of the Economics Ph.D. program". ("JEL "I210) Copyright 2007 Western Economic Association International.

The Netflix Competition

Netflix has provided a large data set that tells you how nearly half a million people have rated about 18,000 movies. Based on these ratings, you are asked to predict the ratings of these users for movies in the set that they have not rated. The first team to beat the accuracy of Netflix's proprietary algorithm by a certain margin wins a prize of $1 million!

See details here.

Advice from Bertie Ahern on completing PhD's

For the best advice you can get on how to finish your PhD on time listen to the audio clip below of an Taoiseach offering the same advice to Gay Mitchell (second clip from the bottom)

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0402/bertiearchive.html

Last Week's Reading Group

We discussed Dan Ariely’s new book.

http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/papers.shtml

We talked a lot about the economic activity of children. Development of preferences in particular how children develop ideas of exchange, form risk and time preferences and rates of social altruism. Talked about transmission from parents and society through language. Talked also about link to traditional theories in child psychology.

Mischel had conducted a number of early studies of delay of gratification in children. His url is below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Mischel

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/indiv_pages/mischel.html

Also, we went over a number of experiments in economics that can be used as evidence that the simple model of upward sloping labour supply hides a lot of motivational factors underlying effort.

In particular we examined:

Ariely’s papers on meaning:

http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/papers.shtml

Fehr’s papers on cost of control and "hidden" aspects of incentives

http://ftp.iza.org/dp1203.pdf

The Hidden Costs and Rewards of Incentives (623.7KB, ) Journal of the European Economic Association.

Push To Raise Irish Drinking Age To 21

"The legal drinking age in Ireland could be raised from 18 to 21, in a bid to curb the country's growing under-age alcohol problem. Under new proposals being considered by the Irish government, parents who allow their children to get drunk or have wild parties could also be made 'criminally liable'".

Read the full story from Sky News here.

Ronald Ehrenberg Lecture

Date: Tuesday, April 15th 2008, 11am-1pm
Venue: Royal College of Physicians, No 6 Kildare St, Dublin 2

RONALD EHRENBERG LECTURE /
LAUNCH OF THE IRISH UNIVERSITIES STUDY


This joint Geary Institute/Irish Universities Association (IUA) event will mark the launch of the Irish Universities Study (IUS). This is a 3 year longitudinal study of the 3rd and 4th level populations of the 7 universities. The sector-wide survey is a major innovation providing the universities with the ability to formulate policy for students and researchers based on sound evidence. The IUS is being carried out on behalf of the IUA by the UCD Geary Institute sponsored by the Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF).

The keynote speaker will be Professor Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. From 1995 to 1998 he served as Cornell's Vice President for Academic Programs, Planning and Budgeting. He has authored or co-authored over 120 papers and 20 books and is a leading figure in the fields of labour economics and education policy. Prof Ehrenberg will discuss international best practice in the evaluation of higher education policy and will outline future directions in this area.

For event info and registration click here.