Weekend Links

1. A utilitarian formula for world cup success (from Marginal Revolution)

2. Psychic Octopus on the March. 4 right gives odds of one in sixteen if he is really not being helped. The fact that he has chosen Germany in three of the games might make one suspicious that the German tank is laced with something that he likes. However, the fact that he went for Serbia in the sole German defeat looks odd from the perspective of human interference given that this defeat was a bit of a shock. He has predicted Germany again for the game against Argentina.

3. Economic Logic blog links to a debate between Acemoglou and Johnson on the one hand and David Canning, David Bloom and Gunter Fink on the other, about the causal relationship between life expectancy and economic growth

4. Nicole Fortin & Thomas Lemieux & Sergio Firpo, 2010. "Decomposition Methods in Economics," NBER Working Papers 16045, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

5. What makes a university great? (via Ferdinand's blog)

6. Gallup page on behavioural economics

7. Citation Classic: Jolls, Sunnstein and Thaler (1998) "A Behavioural approach to Law and Economics" - Stanford Law Review - Cited by 1383 on Google Scholar.