Since I’ve lately (and anew…) got quite an unexpected lot of questions concerning the ‘optimal allocation of existing human resources in the Romanian Economics academe’ (never ad litteram formulated as such, but you get the point…), I’ve now decided to briefly depict publicly what I typically answer(ed). → Read more
Category: books
Funniest dating ad ever?
I hate you all. I hate London. I hate books. I hate critics. I hate this magazine, I hate this column and I hate all the goons who appear in it.
What I have been reading
A couple of books I have read within the past few weeks, most of them on my Kindle 3G device(*):
Scott Berkun’s “Confessions of a Public Speaker” (get the Kindle edition): the author is a professional speaker, in front of audiences large and small, hence he has got some very helpful tips for anyone who ever needs to engage in public speaking, mostly drawn from his own experiences.
→ Read more George Stigler could do anything–anything but be boring
[…] I must out of courtesy and caution reserve judgment on any laws that Professor Stigler may unveil. For, as I learned when our friendship began long ago, George Stigler can do anything– anything but be boring.
The Manski Critique
Chuck Manski’s recent NBER working paper, “Policy Analysis with Incredible Certitude” (non-gated version) ought to be a must-read for anyone doing or interested in policy analysis.
The study is written in an accessible way, such that it can be in principle followed without explicit academic training in Economics/Econometrics (there are plenty of further references for the technical details), and essentially sums up some of Manski’s conclusions from his well known research agenda on empirical methods in social sciences such as partial identification, and using decision theory with credible assumptions, for policy inference– see for instance his books on these topics (which any applied econometrician should have on his/her shelf; though I confess, my copies are currently still in Aarhus, awaiting my shipping/bringing them to Chicago), Identification Problems in the Social Sciences (1995), Partial Identification of Probability Distributions (2003), Social Choice with Partial Knowledge of Treatment Response (2005), and Identification for Prediction and Decision (2007).
→ Read more