According to Thomson Reuters Prediction:
Alberto Alesina for theoretical and empirical studies on the relationship between politics and macroeconomics, and specifically for research on politico-economic cycle
Nobuhiro Kiyotaki & John H. Moore for formulation of the Kiyotaki-Moore model, which describes how small shocks to an economy may lead to a cycle of lower output resulting from a decline in collateral values that creates a restrictive credit environment
Kevin M. Murphy for pioneering empirical research in social economics, including wage inequality and labor demand, unemployment, addiction, and the economic return of investment in medical research, among other topics
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Infectious Talk
For those of you who enjoy listening to new ideas rather than reading (particularly true when you are cooking or driving), you may definitely try a couple of these interviews (including Paul Romer, Arnold Kling, and Josh Lerner).
Monday, September 6, 2010
Manage your bibliography is just one-click away
I started to use Zotero - a Firefox plugin - to manage numerous categories of academic papers, books and their bibliographic information, and it was soooo amazing! By just clicking a small button at the end of the address bar, you can easily import the link of an article from various online sources and databases, like JSTOR, ScienceDirect, Google Books, Amazon and so on, and its citation information is also automatically loaded.
When you are writing an article, it is also very easy to create a list of references using Zotero. For instance, if you are using the Word processor, all you need to do is to highlight the list of papers you want to cite in your Zotero window and drag them onto the Word file you are using. Different citation styles are also available to be chosen.
You can also easily creat groups, share your libraries with friends and colleagues, and synchronize all your library information if you are invited to some other groups.
Hat tip to Todd.
When you are writing an article, it is also very easy to create a list of references using Zotero. For instance, if you are using the Word processor, all you need to do is to highlight the list of papers you want to cite in your Zotero window and drag them onto the Word file you are using. Different citation styles are also available to be chosen.
You can also easily creat groups, share your libraries with friends and colleagues, and synchronize all your library information if you are invited to some other groups.
Hat tip to Todd.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Recommended Posts
From Organizations and Markets:
The release of the Handbook of the Economics of Innovation (Intro, Vol I, II)
Nicolai Foss on the Assumptions in the Management Research (also some comments there)
A Recent Workshop on Organizational Economics and Organizational Capabilities
From the Project Syndicate:
Identity Economics (also a talk here by Akerlof, and Q&A)
The release of the Handbook of the Economics of Innovation (Intro, Vol I, II)
Nicolai Foss on the Assumptions in the Management Research (also some comments there)
A Recent Workshop on Organizational Economics and Organizational Capabilities
From the Project Syndicate:
Identity Economics (also a talk here by Akerlof, and Q&A)
Aside: why acupuncture could reduce pain?
From Scientific American.
"Scientists tried the technique on mice that had a pain in the paw, inserting and rotating the needles in the mouse version of one of the most effective acupoints in Chinese medicine. And they found that the tissues around the treated acupoint get flooded with adenosine, a chemical that provides relief by preventing pain signals from reaching the brain.
This biochemical blockade reduced the animals’ discomfort, as did treating them with drugs that boost the amount of adenosine in the tissue. The scientists say the pain relief stems from the body’s natural response to minor tissue injury. So acupuncture’s analgesic effect may have finally been pinned down."
"Scientists tried the technique on mice that had a pain in the paw, inserting and rotating the needles in the mouse version of one of the most effective acupoints in Chinese medicine. And they found that the tissues around the treated acupoint get flooded with adenosine, a chemical that provides relief by preventing pain signals from reaching the brain.
This biochemical blockade reduced the animals’ discomfort, as did treating them with drugs that boost the amount of adenosine in the tissue. The scientists say the pain relief stems from the body’s natural response to minor tissue injury. So acupuncture’s analgesic effect may have finally been pinned down."
Monday, May 17, 2010
Randomized Control Trials...or not?
Do we need more field experiements and RCTs in doing empirical economics or do we need to rely on alternative methods and develop new econometric techniques? Duflo's Clark Medal has triggered some methodological debates among the development economists recently (see here and here). One possible alternative (as they cite Acemoglu's piece) is to rely more on structural models in which data for counterfactuals could easily be simulated rather than collected via field trials.
To me, this is just another around of methodology debate between the reduced form school and the structural school. Any deep issues aside, for graduate students, it might be a safer strategy if we can do both.
To me, this is just another around of methodology debate between the reduced form school and the structural school. Any deep issues aside, for graduate students, it might be a safer strategy if we can do both.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Curbing Risk on Wall Street
Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales promote again (here for the previous piece) their ideas for a market-based trigger (rise in CDS price) to induce regulators' actions in regulating financial institutions and restraining risks on Wall Street.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Who is OB Drive?
The other day, I looked up a published paper in Industrial and Corporate Change, which cited a recent publication by one professor in our strategy group, prof. Anne Marie Knott. The citation goes like this, "...Knott and Drive (2008)...", my immediate response is that who the heck is Drive? I am familiar with this paper and I am pretty sure that this is a single-author publication!!
Guess what? It turns out that this confusion is simply caused by the omnipotent search engine - Google Scholar! As you can see from here, the search result does look like that the paper is written by Knott and Drive. However, as I dig this a bit further (I simply typed in the keyword "OB Drive") , and from the search result, I could almost immediately explain what went wrong. Many academic papers whose authors are affiliated with Washington University suffer the same problem, because they all share the same critical attribute - their correspondence addresses are all listed as "One Brookings Drive"!!
If we could simply change this to "1 Brookings Drive", this problem might be resolved under the current algorithm of Google Scholar! See, here is at least "1" benefit of using numbers rather than words!!
Guess what? It turns out that this confusion is simply caused by the omnipotent search engine - Google Scholar! As you can see from here, the search result does look like that the paper is written by Knott and Drive. However, as I dig this a bit further (I simply typed in the keyword "OB Drive") , and from the search result, I could almost immediately explain what went wrong. Many academic papers whose authors are affiliated with Washington University suffer the same problem, because they all share the same critical attribute - their correspondence addresses are all listed as "One Brookings Drive"!!
If we could simply change this to "1 Brookings Drive", this problem might be resolved under the current algorithm of Google Scholar! See, here is at least "1" benefit of using numbers rather than words!!
Saturday, April 24, 2010
A Lecture from the New Clark Medalist
John Bates Clark Medal will be awarded annually from this year on, and this year's winner was announced by the American Economic Association yesterday -- the title goes to MIT development economist, Esther Duflo (also see here).
She will visit Wash U next week and give a lecture here.
Update: Here is a talk given by Esther Duflo on social experiements earlier this year.
She will visit Wash U next week and give a lecture here.
Update: Here is a talk given by Esther Duflo on social experiements earlier this year.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Insider Econometrics
Ichniowski and Shaw have a great review paper recently on how organizational economists address the question of the adoption of management practice and its potential effects on the productivity of workers, worker groups and firms. With the attractive title of "Insider Econometrics: Empirical Studies of How Management Matters", I am sure if you are interested in recent development in empirical personnel economics, this is a must read.
Insider Econometrics is termed to suggest "the use of rich mirco-level data on workers or work groups inside firms that share a common production function, and at the same time, also refers to the use of insights from insiders - from managers or employees - that inform almost every facet of the research." The latter point, according to the authors, is the defining characteristics of this empirical strategy.
Insider Econometrics is termed to suggest "the use of rich mirco-level data on workers or work groups inside firms that share a common production function, and at the same time, also refers to the use of insights from insiders - from managers or employees - that inform almost every facet of the research." The latter point, according to the authors, is the defining characteristics of this empirical strategy.
Extrinsic versus Intrinsic Motivation
Can we use rational economic theory to explain voting, volunteering, giving to charity, helping strangers or even risking life? Behavioral economics often attribute these to altruistic preferences. However, some phenomena cannot be explained by sole presence of individuals with other-regarding preferences, such as the well-documented "crowding-out" effect. For example, when people start to get monetary benefits from donating blood, their actual donation will go down.
In a series of papers (see here and here), Roland Benabou and Jean Tirole attempt to explain this crowding out effect using rational economic models. Put it simply, they have built two different models to capture two such possible mechanisms that would eventually lead to crowd-out. One is the so-called informed principal problem. In this model, the principal wants to motivate the agent to make efforts. However, although the principal knows the critical factors of the task the agent is going to take (e.g., its chance of success, or the ability of the agent in doing the task), the agent doesn't know about it. It turns out that the principal would have more incentive to motivate the agent only if the agent is not that good. This would eventually become a bad signal for the agent to make such efforts.
The other mechanism, often documented in the psychology literature as the "overjustification effect", is called "multi-dimensional signaling" by Benabou and Tirole. They argue, that people don't care only about monetary payoffs, they also care about their self-fulfillment (e.g., intrinsic warm glow when helping others) and their reputation (e.g., what others would say about them when they do good deeds). If all people in the society could be characterized by parameters of intrinsic, extrinsic and reputational motives, and these parameters also follow some kind of distribution, then, as they have shown in their model, when we increase the monetary incentives, part of the population who are initial contributors would be crowded out by new contributors who are more greedy but less altruistic.
In a series of papers (see here and here), Roland Benabou and Jean Tirole attempt to explain this crowding out effect using rational economic models. Put it simply, they have built two different models to capture two such possible mechanisms that would eventually lead to crowd-out. One is the so-called informed principal problem. In this model, the principal wants to motivate the agent to make efforts. However, although the principal knows the critical factors of the task the agent is going to take (e.g., its chance of success, or the ability of the agent in doing the task), the agent doesn't know about it. It turns out that the principal would have more incentive to motivate the agent only if the agent is not that good. This would eventually become a bad signal for the agent to make such efforts.
The other mechanism, often documented in the psychology literature as the "overjustification effect", is called "multi-dimensional signaling" by Benabou and Tirole. They argue, that people don't care only about monetary payoffs, they also care about their self-fulfillment (e.g., intrinsic warm glow when helping others) and their reputation (e.g., what others would say about them when they do good deeds). If all people in the society could be characterized by parameters of intrinsic, extrinsic and reputational motives, and these parameters also follow some kind of distribution, then, as they have shown in their model, when we increase the monetary incentives, part of the population who are initial contributors would be crowded out by new contributors who are more greedy but less altruistic.
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