Specialization is for insects

von Ahn at the Library of Congress

Luis von Ahn talks about CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA.  Amazing stuff.  This talk makes me miss my days as an engineer; his research so clearly raises social welfare.

More golfonomics

Wonderful write-up in the NY Times of a new golfonomics paper by Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitzer (both at Wharton), who find that PGA Tour golfers are "loss averse."  I haven't read the paper carefully yet, but at first glance it looked well done and had great data.  This is yet more evidence of how much more fun you can have at a business school.

Excerpts:

“Par putts just seem to be more critical because if you miss you drop a shot — if you miss a birdie putt, it doesn’t seem to have the same effect,” said Jim Furyk, one of the tour’s best putters.

Added Justin Leonard: “When putting for birdie, you realize that, most of the time, it’s acceptable to make par. When you’re putting for par, there’s probably a greater sense of urgency, so therefore you’re willing to be more aggressive in order not to drop a shot. It makes sense.”

Of course, it makes no sense at all: each stroke counts as one on a scorecard, whether for eagle or triple-bogey on any particular hole. The goal is to finish with the fewest strokes, regardless of what each might be artificially termed. All else being equal — distance from the cup, one’s proximity to the lead or cut, the course difficulty and so on — putts should be handled the same way.

...

“A 10-footer for par feels more important than one for birdie,” said Goydos, a two-time winner on the tour. “The reality is, that’s ridiculous. I can’t explain it in any way other than that it’s subconscious. And pars are O.K. — bogeys aren’t.”

Today's playlist

The Loneley Island, "We Like Sportz."  I am pretty sure this music video represents how Jenny views me sometimes.  Hilarious stuff from the same people who brought us "I'm on a Boat (ft. T-Pain)"

I'm team captain, and I choose you
I'm the other team captain, and I choose you, too

Today's playlist

Stereolab is one of my favorite bands.  Lyrics are borderline Marxist, but I'm willing to listen to claims of "capitalism's cruel cycles of slump and recovery."  Maybe in their next CD they will cite the recent work of Daniel Sullivan and Till von Wachter, who provide fairly compelling evidence on the health costs of job displacement.

Stereolab, "French Disko"

Stereolab, "The Incredible He Woman"

Theo and Pearl Jam

A few years ago, Levitt wrote the following on his blog:

My friend Laura Beth Nielsen at the American Bar Foundation has a theory that people who are good at one thing are good at everything. Since she shared it with me, I have thought often about whether it is true. I tend to believe it, with the important qualification that the right kind of practice is critical to being good at anything. It may well be that people who are good at one thing have learned how to do the right kind of practice, not just for that task, but more generally.

Today's evidence in favor of the theory is Theo Epstein, who I have decided is one of the few men in the world who commands respect from a large number of both jocks and nerds.  Apparently, he can also play guitar:

On May 25, 2006, Epstein made an appearance on stage with Pearl Jam at TD Banknorth Garden playing rhythm guitar on the concert's penultimate song, Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World."

Today's playlist

The Cure, "Killing An Arab" (In today's climate of political correctness and hyper-sensitivity, the record label would probably strongly urge them to rename the song to The Stranger)

Razorlight, "In the morning" (I should probably be a little embarrassed that I like this song; it's pretty unimaginative.  I think I just find the intro very catchy -- reminds me a little bit of The Cure)

Today's playlist (White Male Privilege Edition)

I have been listening to the Dresden Dolls recently (as well as band member Amanda Palmer's own solo work).  Dresden Dolls, "The Kill."  Amanda Palmer, "Leeds United."

Sad/Funny story on the Leeds United video from Amanda Palmer's blog (emphasis mine):

right before the european tour i went to the new york offices of roadrunner to say hi and check in.
my a&r guy (my main contact at the label) sat me down in his office and said he wanted to discuss the “leeds united” video.  he told me that there were certain shots that they wanted to either cut completely or digitally alter to “be more flattering”.

my favorite quote from that meeting:
“i’m a guy, amanda. i understand what people like.”

Sounds like a relative of Byron York to me:

Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.

Google Chrome Experiments

Thanks to Tal, I have discovered some fun JavaScript toys (Google Chrome strongly recommended):

 - Ball Pool
 - InterNetris
 - Apophis 2029

Today's playlist

Teddybears Stockholm, "Cobra Style" (this song was re-done by Robyn recently; I like both versions)

Teddybears Stockholm, "rock and roll high school" (cool video-game-inspired music video)

Back to blogging!

I think it's a sunk cost fallacy, but since I'm paying money to TypePad to host this blog, I might as well make use of it.  Recently, I starting putting songs I was listening to on my Google Chat away message and people seemed to like it.  I'm going to move those mini-playlists back onto this blog so that they are preserved for posterity.

Back to the blog! ... for a day

I am leaving on Thursday to visit Jakarta, Indonesia for 17 days.  My brother and his girlfriend Nicole will be joining me and Jenny on the trip.  Before leaving, I thought I'd give a quick update on what has happened during my very long, extended absence from blogging:

• My golf paper was given a very positive Revise & Resubmit at the AEJ: Applied journal. 
• I visited Lindau, Germany to attend a conference featuring many former winners of the Nobel prize.  I thought Yunus was the most inspiring speaker and Solow was the most helpful in stimulating my own research ideas.
• I taught a two-day course at the University of Maryland on Stata programming.
• Jenny and I got engaged on September 18th!  Since I don't have a Facebook profile, I will put the announcement here and hope that the news travels far and wide.  We will be celebrating at the People's Republik tomorrow (Wed 9/24) starting at 8:30pm.

NBER summer institute, 2008

No blog posts for past few days because I spent all week at the NBER summer institute.  There were a few good papers, but overall I thought the quality was a little lower than in past years.  Perhaps this is because Erzo presented a paper we had written with Amy, and like Groucho Marx, "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member."

I spent most of my time at the "Labor Studies" session.  Most of the papers are posted here.

My favorite paper was by Alex Mas and David Lee, who were studying the effects of unions on firms.  Michael Greenstone always tells us that we should try to create a "killer graph" to make our papers memorable.  Lee-Mas definitely have such a graph (page 43):

Not with a bang but a (girl-on-girl) whimper

To quote T.S. Eliot, this is the way the world ends:

• Number of views for youtube.com video of Jeff Sachs discussing global environmental challenges and the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals: 1,849.
• Number of views for youtube.com music video of Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl": 3,302,857.

Let's hear what they have to say:

"It is our technology that gives us both the capacity to save the world and to destroy the world.  What do we need to do?  We need to understand what we're doing.  We need a new science.  Sustainable development doesn't exist as a department.  One needs to integrate across ecology, earth systems, environmental engineering, economics, public policy, and public health.  We need to create this new discipline.  At Columbia, we believe we have created the first Ph.D. program focusing on sustainable development."

"I kissed a girl and I liked it \ The taste of her cherry chapstick \ I kissed a girl just to try it \ I hope my boyfriend don't mind it"

Surplus demand for the Batman

I was curious whether there were any tickets for the new Batman movie available at our local movie theater.  I am assuming this error message at the website of the outsourced ticketing company means that the show is probably sold out:

I could walk around the block and find out for sure, but I'll probably just wait a few days and then go see the movie, which is supposed to be pretty good.  I definitely wouldn't pay a movie ticket scalper $150 to see it tonight.  That's just silly.

Cool music video post-of-the-day

"Goodbye", by Ulrich Schnauss.  It's a "fan video"; I don't think there is an official music video.  Very relaxing song.

Mathematical economics

Every so often I feel that economics has started to get a little too math-heavy.  Today's evidence of this trend: I was sitting at a classmate's desk and I noticed he was reading "Mathematics for Physicists."  I took "Mathematics for Economists" (14.102) during my first semester as an economics graduate student, and I thought that was plenty of mathematics. 

One of my favorite economic theories actually comes from chemistry, so perhaps I should be more open-minded to borrowing rigorous methods from the hard(er) sciences.  Lately, though, I've been thinking hard about urban decline and unemployment, and many days I feel like more math is the last thing I need to shed new light on these old problems.

One of my least favorite words: portlet

It's not a servlet; it's not a portal -- it's a "portlet".

I think part of the reason I hate this word is that portlets never seem to work.  Example: Chicago GSB faculty webpage, 15 minutes ago:

Cool music video post-of-the-day

My classmate Chris Smith sends me this very fun video of Feist on Sesame Street.  Does this mean my generation is having kids?  (I am assuming that I am squarely within the Feist demographic, though maybe that's not true)  One thing is for sure: once I start seeing Radiohead on children's programming, then I think I'll know it's time to settle down.

Fun with Photoshop

Looks like one of the four missiles during Iran's latest test didn't launch, so instead of admitting that they had a dud, instead they just (badly) doctored the image.  I'm not sure why they would do that; three working missiles is still pretty intimidating.

Back from Summer Camp

No posts recently because I was spending one week at the Univ. of Chicago attending the "2008 Price Theory Summer Camp."  Information on last year's camp is here.  I suppose a better blogger would have warned her readers ahead of time.  Sorry about that.

For me, the best part of the camp was Gary's and Kevin's lectures.  They have incredible economics intuition, and they are great instructors.  At MIT, we take a half-semester course in price theory from Glenn Ellison, who is also an exceptional teacher.  What I liked better about the way Gary and Kevin taught the (same) material was that they would mention examples (whenever they could) of where the economic theory they were teaching had been used successfully in an empirical paper (e.g. Katz-Murphy, QJE, 1992).

Cool music video post-of-the-day

If I was going to start a cover band, it would probably be for the Dandy Warhols.  They crack me up.  Here is the song "Bohemian Like You."  After watching the video you can watch the full "uncensored" version, but that version has some nudity, so it's probably not safe for work, and I won't link to it so you don't "accidentally" click on it.  Anyway, here are some of the lyrics:

So what do you do?
Oh yeah I wait tables too.
No I haven't heard your band,
Cause you guys are pretty new.
But if you dig on Vegan food,
Well come over to my work,
I'll have them cook you something that you'll really love,

Cause I like you,
Yeah I like you,
And I'm feeling so Bohemian like you.

Good sentence

"Intractable problems often have many contributing causes."

from a recent working paper by Abigail Wozniak on the causes of low employment among less skilled black men.

Cool music video post-of-the-day

"Robot Man", by The Aliens.  Do the robot.

Feminist Geometry

I really like the feministing.com blog.  I always learn a lot there, and I think it has made me a little more sensitive than the average hyper-rational social scientist to "women's issues."

Today I'm disappointed by what I am calling "feminist geometry" -- a pyramid that is wider at the middle than at the base.  The accompanying article is pretty good, though.

Economics Trivia

The "Pentagon Papers" (the top-secret reports about the Vietnam War) were given to the New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg, who received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard and discovered the Ellsberg paradox, which is generally interpreted as evidence of ambiguity aversion and as a violation of standard expected utility theory.

I learned this bit of trivia while reading Gentzkow-Shapiro's Journal of Economic Perspectives (JEP) paper titled "Competition and Truth in the Market for News." 

The JEP continues to be my favorite economics journal.

Supply and Demand or Spatial Mismatch?

This question continues to stump me.  Why did this happen?  From The Economist:

The conventional wisdom about ghettos—best expressed in William Julius Wilson's book “When Work Disappears”—is that inner cities decayed because factories moved away. But the jobs often moved only a couple of bus rides away. Noting that millions of blacks moved halfway across the country to find work during the “great migration” in the early 20th century, Mr McWhorter wonders why so many of their descendants failed to follow suit.

He offers two explanations. First, a huge expansion of open-ended welfare in the 1960s enabled mothers to subsist without work. Until the mid-1990s, welfare often paid better than an entry-level job. Second, the counter-culture taught young blacks that working for “chump change” was beneath their dignity.

I find these two explanations highly unsatisfactory, but I don't have any better explanations at the moment.

Blobbles

This cartoon (from The Tech, MIT's campus newspaper) cracks me up.  For the second day in a row I can't stop laughing at it.  Maybe it's because it's a metaphor for my thesis progress. 

Phenix City

One of the fun things about being a wannabe urban economist at the moment is all the new cities I discover.  For example, did any of you know there is a Phenix City in Alabama?  According to Wikipedia,

Phenix City was notorious during the 1940s and 1950s as being a haven for organized crime, prostitution, and gambling. As a result, the city had a negative reputation, and many people still associate this legacy with Phenix City. The Tragedy and the Triumph of Phenix City, Alabama by Margaret Ann Barnes chronicles these events.

In 1955, it won the All-America City Award from the National Municipal League.

How can a city that was "notorious for ... organized crime, prostitution, and gambling" during the 1950's win the "All-American City Award" in 1955?  I would hope it won the award in spite of those problems, not because of them.

Cool music video post-of-the-day

"2080", by Yeasayer.  The video is not by the band; it's a "fan video."  The band's name is growing on me.

Yeah, yeah, we can all grab at the chance and be handsome farmers,
Yeah, you can have twenty-one sons and be blood when they marry my daughters,
And the pain that we left at the station will stay in a jar behind us.
We can pickle the pain into blue ribbon winners at county contests.

Soft paternalism

The title is taken from a very interesting law review article by Colin Camerer, Matthew Rabin, and others.  I think that's the new philosophy of the Cambridge municipal government, as the Red Line of the "T" was down this morning, sending a hoard of people down Massachusetts Avenue in the early morning to wait for buses or to try (in vain) to hail taxicabs.  In the end, there was a "Walk-for-Hunger"-like scene as people decided to just walk to their Cambridge destination.  It was probably healthier for all of us in the end; from casual observation, it looked like almost all of us on the street could have used the exercise.