Assorted Links: 7th September 2010

1. The Hewlett Packard Social Computing Lab focuses on 'methods for harvesting the collective intelligence of groups of people in order to realise greater value from the interaction between users and information'.

2. "The agony and the ecstasy: the history and meaning of the Journal Impact Factor" (Garfield and Sher, 2005).

3. Measurement of administrative burden imposed on Irish business by Central Statistics Office inquiries

4. http://www.bundle.com: Track your spending

5. DIT School of Computing launches a new master's programme in data analytics

6. A story on the OECD's Education at a Glance 2010, in today's Irish Independent: "For every €7 spent on a primary pupil, nine is spent on second level and 12 is spent on third level".

7. Another Irish Independent story: the mechanics of random selection in the CAO application process

8. Bloomberg Businessweek: The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies

9. Below is a video from the OECD showing the importance of tax credits for understanding government funding of research and development (R&D). When tax credits are taken into account, Korea spends the most (as a percentage of GDP) on R&D. Canada spends ten times more on R&D tax credits than it does on direct funding for R&D.

Measuring Expenditure and Consumption

On February 22nd, we will have an afternoon session in the Geary Institute on the measurement of consumption and expenditure. Participants include Colm Harmon, Joachim Winter and Thomas Crossley. The aims of the afternoon include (i) focused discussion of current work on measuring consumption and expenditure in surveys (ii) introduction to the Irish internet panel being conducted in Geary and its potential use a tool for innovating in measurement in economics (iii) discussion of development of research (iv) discussion of development of ongoing seminar and workshops in this area (v) Short presentations from Dublin-based PhD students on their work on measurement.

Again, this is more focused than regular seminars. Please email if you are working on these areas and would like to attend this session. Also, would appreciate ideas for developing this from internal folks.

Geary Working Paper - Experimental Tests of Expenditure Response

New Geary Working Paper reporting results on experiments on survey effects on expenditure estimates

link here