The Plural Pubmates of Decision Making

This paper (Pirouz, 2007) looks at some seminal studies in neuroeconomics, broaching game-playing, decision-making, and behaviour, but ends up outlining possible applications for consumer theory and marketing strategy.

graduate economics page - aea

the graduate economics page on the AEA webpage is a fairly recent and very welcome development. Some of the stuff here is really great and i would recommend this to all of you who are looking out for post-grad opps. On the academic side, the following literature listing is really good
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AEA/gradstudents/Education_Issues.htm

Need for Cooperation Between EU's Business, Academic and Govt. Sectors

Issue 4 (March 2007) of the Europe4Researchers Newsletter describes how the EU has five full-time researchers for every nine in the United States and ten in Japan. And that the comparative lack of researchers is particularly visible in business, with almost a third fewer researchers employed in this sector compared to the US!

The irony is that EU countries still produce more science and engineering graduates - including those with PhDs - than the US and Japan. However, unemployment among doctoral researchers in the EU is relatively high, while their salary remains low in comparison to other professionals with a similar education. Why? Europe4Researchers suggests that there is insufficient demand for researchers by the business sector in Europe.

What's clear is that co-operation would be very helpful, across government, academia and the business sector. The business sector may not be hiring PhD's if they are not trained in the right sub-fields of science, engineering and technology or if these PhD's do not have adequate administrative skills, soft skills etc.

If this is the case, then the business sector should send a clear message to academia that the quality of labour supply needs to be improved. If this is not the case, then govt. should impress upon the business sector the importance of hiring PhD's in science, engineering and technology to enable commercialised innovation, patenting and technical progress.

Another question is what is happening to all the EU-produced researchers that can't get a job? A very tentative suggestion is that they are finding employment in the US. This is based on the fact that the US produces less PhD's in these areas than the EU, but somehow has more PhD's working in these areas than the EU.

I came across this article from Wired http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,70487-0.html discusses Steven Johnson's Everything Bad Is Good For You - which I reviewed here back in the day: http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000687.php Essentially it discusses how computer games designers, no doubt eager to broaden their consumer base, are producing games promoted as cognitive workouts.

I wonder are there products available which aim to modify behaviour in this way. I do know from the cognitive-behavioural therapy point of view, the Fearfighter http://www.fearfighter.com/index.htm program has been introduced to deliver CBT for anxiety disorders and phobia. Has a computer games based approach been tried to modify other behaviours?

Does qualitative research belong in economics?

http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/download_pdf.php?id=1043

ROSLA in the UK?

I don't know the extent to which this announcement ties in with the stated objective of Gordon Brown to target scarce resources at education (this is in light of the proposed rise in UK govt spending by 2% per year from 2008, which is half the rate of growth of the current round). If the rationale is to yield maximum benefit, I presume there's been rigorous costing and forecasting before they announce this emphasis on skills. I don't know if it serves a counterpoint to Ireland's fourth-level investment, but interestingly, skilled workers in manual trades of the former COMECON states are able to enter the UK in large numbers and have indeed done so - is this a new type of technology worker that DfES and the CBI want to produce?