Word goes that Portugal is likely to soon join the category of developing countries (as you might have heard). However, before you start sobbing, consider this: not all is doom.
→ Read more Category: econometrics
On multicore Stata MP performance
Since I am in the middle of some very interesting discussions and experiments concerning this topic: it really does look like the difference in speed between the different multi-core/multi-processor Stata/MP versions is considerable.
→ Read more Econlinks: Of Maths, Efficiency, and Language
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Terry Tao brief and informative on the 2010 Fields medalists (Le Monde est aussi très heureux et honoré pour Ngo et Villani, “deux facettes de l’école mathématique française“). Read also Tao’s intro to the winners of the Nevanlinna, Gauss and Chern prizes.
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 Weekend econlinks: The quest for perfection
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Gelman writes a useful overview on causality and statistical learning (caveat lector: I have only read through Angrist and Pischke’s book, among the three Gelman mentiones; that one is very well written, but aimed at junior graduate students at best: hence, the book’s tag “an empiricist’s companion” is overselling it; and that has nothing to do with Josh Angrist kindly “advising” me to change my PhD topic/focus, sometime in my beginning graduate years, because ‘nobody serious would be interested in structural modelling’ :-)).