This Weeks Seminar

Kevin Denny will give a seminar at 11am on July 4th in the seminar room in the Geary Institute.


The curious effect of education on political behaviour
Kevin Denny, Orla Doyle


Abstract
There is a large literature in economics on the private benefits to individuals of education. It is widely believed that there are additional, social, benefits for example that more educated people display greater levels of civic behaviour. Evidence on this is rather thin. However it has long been known that voting and political interest generally is more common amongst the more educated. This paper questions whether this is a causal relationship. Using data for Ireland we exploit a natural experiment that exogenously changed education levels. This allows us to go beyond the simple correlation of education and voter turnout. It is shown that this has a dramatic effect on the estimated relationship between education and the decision to vote.

Trust Me - Sure I Sprayed Myself So That You Would

The story below is fascinating - I can hardly believe that there is a spray that creates trust. There is potential for including this discovery as a feature in experimental economics work, and thats even more intriguing...

Trust me, I'm oxytocin

"Two years ago New Scientist reported Swiss research showing that a sniff of the hormone oxytocin caused people to be more trusting (4 June 2005, p 7). It made male Swiss students give money to strangers in the belief they would give it back, even though the strangers had every reason not to.

Unsurprisingly, this provoked shock-horror media speculation that politicians and others might spray people with oxytocin to engender trust for nefarious purposes. So what are we to make of the New York-based firm Vero Labs which is marketing oxytocin as a spray called Liquid Trust? "Just one or two sprays in the morning after showering, or in the evening before going out, is guaranteed to produce a more trusting atmosphere," the company claims".

Are Psychological and Ecological Well-being Compatible? The Role of Values, Mindfulness, and Lifestyle

Happiness and ecological well-being are often portrayed as conflictual pursuits, but they may actually be complementary. In samples of adolescents (Study 1) and adults (Study 2), we tested this proposition and examined the role of three factors in promoting both subjective well-being (SWB) and ecologically responsible behavior (ERB). In both studies, individuals higher in SWB reported more ERB. An intrinsic value orientation (Studies 1 and 2) and dispositional mindfulness (Study 2) related to higher SWB and ERB, while a lifestyle of voluntary simplicity (Study 2) related to higher ERB. Further analyses showed that the compatibility of SWB and ERB was explained by intrinsic values and mindfulness. These findings offer clues to a sustainable way of life that enhances both personal and collective well-being.

The Benefits of Being Present: Mindfulness and Its Role in Psychological Well-Being

Many philosophical, spiritual, and psychological traditions emphasize the importance of the quality of consciousness for the maintenance and enhancement of well-being. Despite this, it is easy to overlook the importance of consciousness in human well-being because almost everyone exercises its primary capacities, that is, attention and awareness. The relation between qualities of consciousness and well-being has received little empirical attention. One attribute of consciousness that has been much-discussed in relation to well-being is mindfulness which has roots in Buddhist and other contemplative traditions where conscious attention and awareness are actively cultivated. This research demonstrate the importance of constructs of mindfulness to a variety of forms of psychologicalwell-being(Brown and Ryan).

Neuro-trivia

Hollywood actress Natalie Portman is a cognitive neuroscientist.
http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2007/06/natalie_portman_cog.html

Does Obesity Hurt Your Wages More in Dublin than in Madrid? Evidence from ECHP

BEATRICE D'HOMBRES,,GIORGIO BRUNELLO

IZA Discussion Paper No. 1704

Abstract:
We use data from the European Community Household Panel to investigate the impact of obesity on wages in 9 European countries, ranging from Ireland to Spain. We find that the common impact of obesity on wages is negative and statistically significant, independently of gender. Given the nature of European labor markets, however, we believe that a common impact is overly restrictive. When we allow this impact to vary across countries, we find a negative relationship between the BMI and wages in the countries of the European "olive belt" and a positive relationship in the countries of the "beer belt". We speculate that such difference could be driven by the interaction between the weather, BMI and individual (unobserved) productivity.

€15bn push for our graduates

"An ambitious €15bn plan for transforming Ireland into a 'higher education nation' was outlined yesterday.

There are now 168,000 full-time college students in the system which represents 56pc of those who took their Leaving Certificate.

The latest target is to increase this to 72pc of Leaving Cert students by the end of the next decade, the chairman of the Higher Education Authority Michael Kelly confirmed".

Read the full story here.

One wonders what the saturation point for third-level take-up might be? Not everyone reaches the standard for third level and not everyone has the preference to attend third level.

We could assume that today's early childhood investment deals with the former caveat, indeed, the article linked above outlines a further vision for what will happen at the end of the next 20 years: "The plan will mean that most children starting infant classes in September will leave the education system in 17 or 18 years' time with a degree under their belts".

The Socio-Economic Gradient of Social Networking on the Web

"Over the last six months, I [Boyd] have noticed an increasing number of press articles about how high school teens are leaving MySpace for Facebook. That's only partially true. There is indeed a change taking place, but it's not a shift so much as a fragmentation. Until recently, American teenagers were flocking to MySpace. The picture is now being blurred. Some teens are flocking to MySpace. And some teens are flocking to Facebook. Who goes where gets kinda sticky... probably because it seems to primarily have to do with socio-economic class".

Here's the essay by Sarah Boyd:
http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html

The Motivation for Home Ownership

Thanks to Jim Smith for an excellent seminar today on house price volatility and downsizing. It got me thinking again about why there is such a culture of home-ownership in the States, but less so in some European countries.

There are some suggestions as to why home-ownership is popular in America in an interesting article today's Forbes: Don't Buy That House. The article also says there are claims that homeowners vote more, join more voluntary associations, take better care of their residences and have better-educated kids.

However, the buid-up of this kind of social capital is also evident in European countries where renting is the norm. The article says: "Certainly there are plenty of stable, wealthy, well-educated places in Europe, at least, where homeownership is far rarer than it is in the U.S. Nearly 70% of all Americans own their own homes; only 34% of the Swiss do. Thriving cities like Hamburg, Amsterdam and Berlin have rates of ownership of just 20%, 16% and 11% respectively, according to the United Nations".

And the article also suggests that it isn't ownership that is driving the build-up of social capital, but rather mobility, in the sense that less mobile households create more stable families:

"Some research has suggested that it isn't whether parents own or rent, but the mobility of the household," says Rachel Drew, a research analyst at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. In other words, it's likely that families who stay in one place for a long time (renting or buying) are doing better by their kids than families that move often.

National Centre for Public Policy and Higher Education

Worth a look:

http://www.highereducation.org/

It provides links to

(i) Berkeley's survey on students experiences in Californian research universities:

Student Experiences in Research Universities

(ii) The blog of Dr. Michael W. Kirst, Professor Emeritus of Education and Business Administration at Stanford University; his blog discusses college completion, college success, student risk factors (for failing), college readiness and academic preparation.

http://thecollegepuzzle.blogspot.com/

Males meddle with their twin sisters' love lives

A recent article in New Scientist describes how "FREEMARTINS are well known to cattle farmers - they are cows that grow up sterile, the result of sharing their mother's uterus with a male twin. Now a similar though less drastic effect has been found in humans. In what could be characterised as an example of women being suppressed by men before they are even born, girls with twin brothers have a lower chance of marrying and having children than do singletons".

The Hard Science of Gender Sociology

Time Discounting for Primary Rewards

"There is a long history of research in psychology suggesting that decision making under many different circumstances reflects the interaction of qualitatively different systems. Some researchers have compared emotional (or affective) processes and deliberative (or analytic) processes, whereas others have contrasted automatic and controlled processes."

-The study below lends neuroscientific support to the use of such dual-process models in accounting for intertemporal choice.

"Consistent with previous findings, limbic activation was greater for choices between an immediate reward and a delayed reward than for choices between two delayed rewards, whereas the lateral prefrontal cortex and posterior parietal cortex responded similarly whether choices were between an immediate and a delayed reward or between two delayed rewards."

The Journal of Neuroscience, May 23, 2007, 27(21):5796-5804

Two Papers on Keynes and Econometrics

Keynes, statistics and econometrics

The Appropriate Style of Economic Discourse- Keynes on Economics and Econometrics

More on the "Non-Cog" Skills of PhD Attainment

Lovitts (2005) suggests "that students are typically admitted into doctoral programmes because they have been good coursetakers. Yet, the PhD is awarded for doing independent research and making an ‘original contribution’ to knowledge. Graduate faculty acknowledge that the transition to independent research is hard for many students, and that they cannot predict who will successfully make the transition and complete the doctorate based only on students’ undergraduate records or even their performance in their first year of graduate school...

Lu Gang, a graduate student from the People’s Republic of China, was one of the most brilliant graduate students ever in the University of Iowa’s Department of Physics, at least when it came to solving relatively well-defined problems, but not when it came to selecting significant problems and original thinking. Two years into his programme, his status was eclipsed by Shan Linhua, another brilliant graduate student from the People’s Republic of China. Thus ensued several years of vicious competition, at least in the mind of Lu, who was described by colleagues as a loner and who arguably had other personality problems (Chen, 1995). Not only did Shan complete his dissertation a semester before Lu, but, to add insult to injury, the Department of Physics subsequently nominated Shan’s dissertation for the D.C. Spriestersbach Dissertation Award, a prize that recognizes ‘excellence in doctoral research’, where excellence is defined as ‘highly original work that is an unusually significant contribution to [the field]’...

As soon as Lu learned that Shan was the department’s nominee, he began appealing the decision to various administrators. A month later, in May, he applied for and received a permit to own a gun, purchased three guns, and began shooting at target ranges around Iowa City. Lu continued his appeals even after it was announced in late August that Shan had won the prize. Finally, on 1 November 1991, Lu murdered Shan, his dissertation adviser, two professors who had been on his dissertation committee, one of whom was the department Chair, thus effectively wiping out the university’s Space Physics programme. He also fatally injured the Associate Vice-President for Academic Affairs and critically injured a student who was working in the Associate Vice-President’s office before committing suicide. Although this is an extreme case, many graduate students have difficulty making the transition from being good course-takers to being creative, independent researchers".

See here.

Male/female wage gap

The paper below made me think about the wage gap between males & females (sorry I hate the use of the word "gender" there) & to wonder does behavioural/neuro econ' have anything to say about it.In the asymmetric version of Nash co-operative bargaining, power can be thought of as coming from discount rates: higher discount rates means lower bargaining power.I wonder is this a plausible explanation of sex based differences in bargaining? I'm also curious to know what parts of the brain show activation during the bargaining process for example reward circuits.Maybe some people like the process and hence "hang tough".

Are Women Asking for Low Wages? Gender Differences in Wage Bargaining Strategies and Ensuing Bargaining Success.Säve-Söderbergh, Jenny (Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University). http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sofiwp:2007_007&r=cbe
Men and women’s labor market outcomes differ along pay, promotion and competitiveness. This paper contributes by uncovering results in a related unexplored field using unique data on individual wage bargaining. We find striking gender differences. Women, like men, also bargain, but they submit lower wage bids and are offered lower wages than men. The adjusted gender wage gap is lower with posted-wage jobs than with individual bargaining, although less is ascribable to the term associated with discrimination. Both women and men use self-promoting, or competitive bargaining strategies, but women self-promote at lower levels. Employers reward self-promotion but the larger the self-promotion, the larger is the gender gap in bargaining success. Women therefore lack the incentives to self-promote, which helps to explain the gender disparities.

Mixed methods

Mixed methods types might be interested in this paper from Political Analysis, 2006, 14(3) pp27-249
A Tale of Two Cultures: Contrasting Quantitative and Qualitative Research
James Mahoney, Gary Goertz
The quantitative and qualitative research traditions can be thought of as distinct cultures marked by different values, beliefs, and norms. In this essay, we adopt this metaphor toward the end of contrasting these research traditions across 10 areas: (1) approaches to explanation, (2) conceptions of causation, (3) multivariate explanations, (4) equifinality, (5) scope and causal generalization, (6) case selection, (7) weighting observations, (8) substantively important cases, (9) lack of fit, and (10) concepts and measurement. We suggest that an appreciation of the alternative assumptions and goals of the traditions can help scholars avoid misunderstandings and contribute to more productive "cross-cultural" communication in political science.

Emotion and Economics

The interplay between immediate and anticipated emotion and deliberate processes such as those involving self-control is an emerging topic in behavioural economics which may explain findings which contradict rational agent models emphasizing reflective weighting of positive and negative outcomes. Rick and Loewenstein discuss "how behavioral economic and neuroeconomic research may influence expected and immediate emotions on decision making under risk, intertemporal choice, and social preferences." Zeelenberg and Pieters delve deeper into contemporary theorizing on emotion in psychology which may relate to economic decision-making.

A Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) scale for adult populations
Ann-Renée Blais1Defence Research and Development Canada TorontoToronto, Ontario, Canada, Elke U. WeberCenter for the Decision SciencesColumbia University

Abstract

This paper proposes a revised version of the original Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) scale developed by Weber, Blais, and Betz (2002) that is shorter and applicable to a {broader range of ages, cultures, and educational levels}. It also provides a French translation of the revised scale. Using multilevel modeling, we investigated the risk-return relationship between apparent risk taking and risk perception in 5 risk domains. The results replicate previously noted differences in reported degree of risk taking and risk perception at the mean level of analysis. The multilevel modeling shows, more interestingly, that within-participants variation in risk taking across the 5 content domains of the scale was about 7 times as large as between-participants variation. We discuss the implications of our findings in terms of the person-situation debate related to risk attitude as a stable trait.
Keywords: risk attitude, risk perception, risk taking, personality, psychometric scale.


http://journal.sjdm.org/06005/jdm06005.htm

Excellent resource for personality and psychmetric tests

this is great - lots of instruments and links to other lists

http://www.hs.ttu.edu/research/reifman/qic.htm

Baumeister/Tice Lab

The publications page on the Baumeister/Tice lab is a treasure trove for people interested in self-regulation, behaviour decision making and related areas

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/pubs.html

The Non-Cognitive Skills of PhD Attainment

"For doctoral programs, class grades are a smaller part of the picture. Test data on what a college student remembers cannot predict how the student will use new information to think in creative and original patterns, manage complex research tasks, and explore the unknown. Completing a doctoral dissertation requires financial resources, social skills, aggressiveness, creativity, persistence, resilience, managerial skills, motivation, ability to work independently, family stability, health, and luck. There is a need for qualitative measures that predict student–graduate program compatibility".

Read the debate in Science about whether test scores can predict good PhD performace

The Neuroscience of Counselling Therapy

Putting feelings into words makes sadness and anger less intense, U.S. brain researchers said on Wednesday, in a finding that explains why talking to a therapist -- or even a sympathetic bartender -- often makes people feel better.

"This region of the brain seems to be involved in putting on the brakes," said University of California, Los Angeles researcher Matthew Lieberman, whose study appears in the journal Psychological Science.

Hard-Wired Catharsis?

Family social rank not birth rank influences IQ

Firstborns frequently score higher on IQ and achievement tests than their younger siblings, but a new report suggests that how siblings are raised, not their birth order, is what matters when it comes to brain power.

"This study provides evidence that the relation between birth order and IQ score is dependent on the social rank in the family not birth order as such," write investigators in Friday's edition of Science magazine.

Dr. Petter Kristensen of the National Institute of Occupational Health in Oslo, Norway, and a colleague studied the birth order, IQ, and vital status of elder siblings of more than a quarter million 18- and 19-year-old male Norwegian military draftees.

Read about this study on Reuters Health


Its an interesting study because it lends support to the new economic theory of cultural capital and it also seems to use data that I think Paul Devereux has worked with before.

Debate about public funding of mental health services

A debate that is currently very active across several countries is the extent to which we should extend funding and increase the provision of mental health services. Many of our group want eventually to become mental health practitioners. i think it would be a good idea to blog some evidence related to whether spending more money on mental health services is a good idea. Below is the case being made by Richard Layard of the LSE.

http://cep.lse.ac.uk/layard/psych_treatment_centres.pdf

How fast should nano-technology advance?

The public's perception of technological risk is something that concerns several projects that we do here. One area of technology that is particularly interesting in this regard is nano-technology. Nature Nanotechnology has published some very interesting articles lately on public acceptance of nanotechnology. This is a debate that will become increasingly prominent. It is particularly interesting to reflect on risk perceptions with regard to emerging research such as stem-cell and nanotechnology and more established bio-tech areas such as GM.

here

here

Leaving Cert Subject Choice and Research Policy

I've been checking up on education statistics in the CSO's Statistical Year Books, and came across some information on Leaving Cert subject choice. I tried various ways to get the table up on this post but unfortunately you'll have to click on page 17 of this Pdf:

Statistical Year Book 2006

The table shows that there is a very clear pattern in subject choice for higher level Leaving Cert subjects between 1997 and 2005. Ignoring English, Gaelic and Maths (which are compulsory at either higher or lower), the following are the most popular subjects, in order:

1. Geography
2. Business Studies
3. French
4. Biology
5. Home Econ.
6. History
7. Art
8. Construction
9. Physics
10. Chemistry
11. German
12. Accounting

After Accounting the numbers taking any subject are quite low, though it should also be noted that there is a sizeable fall of about 50% in the numbers taking any subject after Home Econ. Also, this is stable (with minor exception) between 1997 and 2005.

All of this suggests that Ireland's brightest are choosing to study Geography, Business Studies, French, Biology and Home Econ right before they enter third-level. I suggest that these subjects are being chosen because they are easier exams to score highly in. I suspect that French is being chosen to get into NUI colleges, but that Home Econ would be a higher preference if the NUI language rule did not exist.

The implications for Ireland's innovation driven economy are quite stark. Granted, the statistics I am looking at do not necessarily predict subject choice at third level. However, without greater take-up in Physics, Chemistry, Phys-Chem and Applied Maths, students are less prepared for science courses at third and fourth level.

It is also fair to suggest that students are signalling preferences in their subject choice at Leaving Cert, regardless of the need to score highly in the points race. Perceptions of subject difficulty will not vanish after the Leaving Cert and are quite likely a causal factor in subject choice at third level. It is possible that the points race is accentuating the role palyed by perceptions of subject difficulty at third level.

Some solace can be taken from the buzz around geographic information systems and biotechnology in Ireland's research sector. With so many honours students taking Geography and Biology at Leaving Cert in Ireland, there is a flow of bodies into third level who are well prepared to do degrees in geography, biology and variations on these subjects.

Areas highlighted for research attention by expert groups include biotechnology, ICT and pharmaceuticals. Given the reality of how prepared students are for study in certain areas at third level, there is an argument to focus on how we can make the best of the supply-side factors in the labour market for fourth-level research. One possible recommendation is to target funding towards biotechnology and the geographic themes of ICT and to build up greater hubs around these streams, leaving pharmaceuticals as a smaller segment of Ireland's research sector.

Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation

IFAU studies and distributes information about the effects of labour market policy and investments in education, and the functioning of the labour market. Graduate students can apply for grants to visit the centre if the project leader is a researcher with a Ph.D.

IFAU has one permanent deadline for applications each year. Applications for research projects must have reached IFAU by October 1, at the latest.

IFAU

Children who 'talk posh' do better at school

The findings emerged across a wide range of language tasks for all age groups and both genders in urban and rural schools.

Those in the centre for Human Development and Public Policy might find this story interesting.

Its not what you say but the way that you say it???

Should We Subsidise Stocks of the National Identity?

The spiralling cost of raising a child means more couples are deciding to limit the size of their family, according to Eddie Hobbs. It will be interesting to test (for a spurious relationship on) this in a few years, perhaps with a metric for child costs (from where I don't know) running from 1990-2010. The QHNS is a possibility as that should indicate family size.

How Unfettered Markets Affect The Birth Rate

Mintzberg Criticises Irish Healthcare System

The Irish mixture of private and public healthcare has been described as "corrupt" by a leading international expert. Canadian management specialist Professor Henry Mintzberg was speaking after an address on managing healthcare systems at the UCD Smurfit Business School on Tuesday.

Corrupt Healthcare System

Many men taking risks over pregnancy and infections

A survey conducted by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency found that one in five men took no responsibility for contraception with their partners and that men had little awareness of sexually transmitted infections.

Here.

econometrics game

As someone who lectures econometrics, i would still feel the urge to mock Homer Simpson like anyone i saw at something like this. Worth bearing in mind for later years though. We could field a good team.

http://www.vsae.nl/activiteiten/econometricgame2007.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWou-EKERW4

This years case is below

http://www.econometricgame.com/previouscases/case2007.pdf

Anchoring Vignettes

Anchoring vignettes are an important part of modern survey work and people will probably have heard me going on about them a lot in here. The link below is to Gary King's website on anchoring vignettes. It includes an extremely informative video lecture on the subject that i would advise anyone who hasnt yet seen it to watch

http://gking.harvard.edu/vign/

Marriage and Graduate Student Outcomes

I was thinking of starting a new feature on the blog called "good economics names". Olivier Bargain is certainly up there as is Avner Offer. And a relative newcomer is keeping up the tradition - Joseph Price. Below is a recent paper of his that shows a clear effect of being married on graduate student success. One of our group just got married. However, the bad news for her is that it only works for men

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=933674

Call for Volunteers for Pretend Trip to Mars

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0620/space.html?rss

"The crew will experience extreme isolation and confinement... The project will kick off with one or two shorter 105-day studies in 2008, followed by the full 520-day study late next year or early in 2009".

The Ultimate Big Brother?

next weeks speaker

Just a bit of advance notice but Jim Smith of the RAND Corporation will talk next Wednesday at 2pm in the Seminar Room. The paper is linked below


http://www.econ.ucl.ac.uk/papers/working_paper_series/0409.pdf


Speaker Biography
1974-Present: Senior Economist, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA
Dr. Smith has served as principal investigator on a number of projects, including an analysis of the effects of economic development on labor markets; a study of black-white wages and employment; trends in women's wages and labor force growth; migration in developing countries; the economic impacts of marital dissolution; life-cycle decisionmaking regarding consumption and savings; racial income differences; the measurement and causes of income inequality of individuals and families; a survey of new immigrants; asset accumulation of mature adults; and the economic impact of immigration. In addition, Dr. Smith has participated in projects studying the evaluation of economic loss in wrongful death cases.
1977-1994: Director, Labor and Population Studies Program, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA
Dr. Smith was responsible for all research studies at RAND that dealt with domestic labor markets, demographic trends in the United States, and economic development in the third world. As program director, he managed a staff of more than 30 professionals in economics, sociology, demography and statistics, and oversaw the program's multifarious projects. He was responsible for selecting all project leaders, for assigning and recruiting staff, for maintaining client relations, and for monitoring research quality.
1971-1974: Assistant Professor, Graduate Center of the City University of New York

genetic evolution and economic outcomes

this paper has been out for a while but i just recently came across it. it demonstrates, at national level, a relationship between average co-operation rates in ultimatum and trust games and diversity of a feature in the blood that is related to immune outcomes. the earlier criticisms of naive Darwinism are interesting but this is a remarkable result.

http://ftp.iza.org/dp1838.pdf

Ode to Blaise

For the irredeemable nerds in the group, below is a video of a survey specialist singing a song about the benefits of moving from paper based to computer based surveys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I9xTTnSASg

Towards a Theoretical Foundation for a Multidisciplinary Economics

Some folks might like this new discussion paper from the Koopmans Research Institute.

Buying back happiness through compensation

Have you ever wondered how much money it would take to replace a family member whilst at the same time leaving you as happy as ever? Neither have I, but researchers at the University of London have and calculated that it would take $220,000 annually to raise someone's happiness to pre-death levels after a spouse dies, $118,000 for a child, $28,000 for a parent, $16,000 for a friend and only $2,000 for a sibling.

This finding is interesting in a number of ways. From an evolutionary perspective, as we are equally related to parents, children and siblings theories of kin selection would probably not expect such large differences in the impact of death. Though quantifying the impact in monetary terms probably misrepresents the actual differences in happiness considering the diminishing returns of, for instance, salary increases beyond a certain level. The "focusing illusion" or "affective forecasting" are also relevant here in that people may anticipate a different level of impact and/or less discrepancy.

putting a price on death

Perception

Someone posted earlier with a list of psychology blogs, and I found a couple of entries in Cognitive Daily about the lab I work at back in the states:

Physical exertion impacts our perception of distance

New article on perception of distance

Young people urged to speak out about suicidal friends

An intervention like this is really important.

Read more here.

That warm glow you get from paying taxes

It seems like Martin's RA taxes may actually be making us happier - as long as we accept that the purchase of fine tweed jackets is a worthwhile venture. The New York Times (free registration required) is reporting on research that people, or at lest 19 female students at the University of Oregon, experienced a "warm glow" when taxed - when some of their money was donated to a food bank without their consent.

The report in Science is here.

Gender Matching of Teacher and Pupil Not That Important

A recent NBER working paper finds relatively small effects of gender matching between teacher and pupil on grades and retention. This relates to a previous discussion. Although, it should be said that this relates to college and it seems more intutive to me that such effects would be more likely to operate when gender differences become most pronounced post-puberty. It would be fascinating to see the results of such an exercise at different phases of the student life-cycle.

The paper does reference quite a few papers that find that teacher gender does not have a big effect at secondary school level either. The paper by Dee forthcoming in the Journal of Human Resources shows some of the biggest effects with female teachers being associated with markedly lower maths grades for secondary school boys. On balance, the evidence is by no means siding markedly in either direction; some papers show an effect, some dont. More evidence needed on this.

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w13182

Literacy: why the writing is on the wall

By Sean Byrne, Lecturer in Economics, Dublin Institute of Technology
Irish Independent, Wednesday May 30 2007

"The recent report of the Chief Examiner in English for the Junior Certificate deplores the impact of texting on the spelling, syntax and vocabulary of second level students. The examiner, who seems to consider that 'impact' is a verb, must be aware that there are other factors leading to declining literacy among second level students..."

As many of you know may not have access to the web-link I was going to provide, you ran read the full text in the first comment on this post.

Patrick Wall

Our own Patrick Wall giving a talk on the role of EFSA and its relation to risk perception and risk communication

http://www.biolifetv.com/?page=video&video_id=76

This weeks Seminar - Richard Tol

Richard Tol of the ESRI will be giving a seminar here on Friday the 22nd at 11am "On International Equity Weights and National Decision Making on Climate Change".

Abstract
Estimates of the marginal damage costs of carbon dioxide emissions require the aggregation of monetised impacts of climate change over people with different incomes and in different jurisdictions. Implicitly or explicitly, such estimates assume a social welfare function and hence a particular attitude towards equity and justice. We show that previous approaches to equity weighing are inappropriate from a national decision maker's point of view, because domestic impacts are not valued at domestic values. We propose four alternatives (sovereignty, altruism, good neighbour, and compensation) with different views on concern for and liability towards foreigners. The four alternatives imply radically estimates of the social cost of carbon and hence the optimal intensity of climate policy.

Speaker Biography
Dr. Richard S.J. Tol joined the ESRI on August 1, 2006 as Senior Research Officer. He specialises in climate, energy and environmental economics. He holds a Doctorate in Economics and a Masters of Science in Econometrics from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Before joining ESRI, he was the Michael Otto Professor of Sustainability and Global Change in the Department of GeoSciences and the Department of Economic Sciences of Hamburg University, Germany; a Principal Researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies of the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. He has been a consultant to the Netherlands Ministry of the Environment, the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs, the German Parliament, the US Office of Technology Assessment, the US Department of Energy, the EC-DG Environment, and the UK House of Lords; and an author (from contributing to convening) for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Richard is the co-editor-in-chief of Energy Economics.

Suggested reading

I just acquired a very interesting book "Happiness: the science behind your smile" by Daniel Nettle (Oxford U.P.).Its mainly psychology with a biological flavour. Curiously, none of the recent economics work (Clark & Oswald, Layard etc) gets a mention though Kahneman does. Nettle has done lots of interesting stuff including work on laterality & on height and, unusually for a psychologist, does secondary data analysis e.g. the NCDS.

Washington Math Camp

The Centre for Statistics and the Social Sciences in Washington is well worth looking at. Below is a link to their math camp

http://www.csss.washington.edu/MathCamp/Review/

Psychology blogs

Some good blogs discussing emerging research:

World of Psychology blog- good for keeping up to date on research relating to mental health and specific clinical conditions.

CogNews a mixed bag of links to new blog posts and books relating to psychology, philosophy and neuroscience.

Cognitive Daily- for peer-reviewed developments in cognition research.

Encephalon- a neuroscience blog carnival with links to the best cognitive neuroscience blogs.

British Psychological Society blog

Neuroeconomics blog- these guys haven't been posting much

Amartya Sen talk

Amartya Sen gave a talk in UCD last night followed by a Q+A this morning here in Geary. A podcast of his lecture is below

http://www.ucd.ie/news/june07/051507_sen_lecture.html

Recipe for happiness

Researchers have analysed the content of 10,000 mood-annotated blogposts in order to establish what times people are most likely to indicate a happy or sad mood and what words within posts are most likely to be associated with these moods. Unsurprisingly happiness peaks on Saturday night and Wednesday is shown to definitely be "hump day". The best ingredients for maximum happiness are: something new, lots of food you enjoy, your favorite drink, preferably in an interesting social place. The happiest word is "yay" followed closely by "shopping"!

A corpus-based approach to finding happiness

Implicit Attitudes

This site has very interesting tests that measure your implicit attitudes on a range of issues: discover your prejudices in privacy!
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Worldwide Science and Engineering Doctoral Degree Data...

...confirms that Europe produces the majority of S&E PhD's in the world.

S&E Doctoral Degrees

Google's Web Directory for Economics

http://directory.google.com/Top/Science/Social_Sciences/Economics/

A good resource.

Health Research at Cornell

Cornell Medical School has received a $400 million gift for research into obesity, infectious diseases and diseases of aging, amongst other topics.

HERE

A challenge to rational choice - part 4

An American judge has run out of court in tears during a £27m lawsuit against a dry cleaner who allegedly lost his trousers.

}}}}} Here

Repenting hyperopia: Drink now or forever hold your peace!

Some people drink because they are impulsive, make myopic choices and are time inconsistent. They can't resist indulgence and are largely affected by the proximity of the stimulus and how attractive and tempting it is. Other factors like sleep deprivation, negative mood and as has recently been found self-control depletion affect impulsivity (Vohrs & Faber, 2007). On the other side people forsee to an extent that their behaviour may have negative consequences in terms of guilt and anticipated regret. However, it has recently been shown that curiosity is a good cure for anticipated regret (Dijk & Zeelenberg, 2007). I've often heard hardened drinkers refer to the prospect of a nights heavy drinking as "a throw of the dice, not knowing what's going to happen". People are more likely to bet large sums on the throw of a dice before it happens than after a concealed roll has happened. Curiosity and anticipation may be the best tools to use to lure the drinker with a degree of self-control into a binge. As Budweiser have recently emphasised when it comes to drinking many of us feel the urge to "answer the call" which may be influenced by the lure of largely unknown possibilities.

However, what about the prudent drinker, the one who almost always chooses the book over the bottle? Well it appears there is a cost in that the regret the hyperopic consumer feels at missing out on the good times increases over time whilst the guilt associated with hitting the bottle rather than the books diminishes over time (Kivetz & Keinan, 2006). The self-controlled suffer their virtue in this way. The question is can these wistful feeling of regret at passing up the pleasures in life actually promote drinking in those for which this may not be their natural bent. Do some prudent people occasionally answer the call because they anticipate not doing so will generate future regret? Similarly do indulgent people occassionally refrain because of anticipated future regrets such as those relating to health? Doubtless, both processes of ambivalence occur to an extent and this may happen even outside awareness due the effect of anticipated conflict reactions which may promote ambivalence now even if ones reaction to in this case drinking is immediately positive or negative (Priester et al., 2007). In a culture where heavy drinking is inherent to socialising holding ones peace may be more difficult than it seems!

Systematic review of dynamic methods in poverty research

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a lot on poverty and its antecedents & consequences; I thought this was interesting as they go for a systematic review method

"See Ya Later Innovator"

Irish companies spend billions of euro every year on research and development - but are they actually discovering anything new?, asks Carissa Casey

The Irish Times has a new Innovation Section on Mondays, and a resource is being built up here on their website. There's a few interesting articles.

Pentagon confirms 'gay' bomb plan

The proposal by an Ohio Air Force lab was to develop a chemical that, when dropped onto troops, made then irresistible to each other and unable to fight.

Here.

Dependent Interviewing

This ISER paper documents the introduction of dependent interviewing in wave 16 of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). Dependent interviewing is a method of designing questions on longitudinal surveys where substantive information, available to the survey organisation prior to the interview, is used to tailor the wording and routing of questions to the respondent's situation or to enable in-interview edit checks.

Could be worth bearing in mind for MESS.

attack on economics - taking absurd theories seriously

the following paper makes quite a vociferous attack against economic theory using rational addiction as an example. it argues that economic theorists are liable to the same charges of obscurantism etc., discussed by Kevin below with relation to some of the continental philosophers. i doubt many economists would agree with their main thrust but interesting to hear counter-arguments all the same.


here

Seminar this Week - Rowena Pecchenino

Prof. Rowena Pecchenino is giving a seminar this Thursday June 14th at 10 am in the Geary Institute. She will present on ''Identity, Collective Beliefs, and the Allocation of Resources''.



Speaker Biography: Rowena Pecchenino is Professor of Economics at Michigan State University. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1985. She is an eclectic researcher having published in a number of distinct fields in economics including theoretical and empirical macroeconomics, in the microeconomics and macroeconomics of banking, in growth theory, in defense economics, in environmental economics, in health economics, and in the economics of aging. Using behavioral economics methodology, her research now examines the conjunction of economics and theology. She has published widely in journals such as the American Economic Review, The Economic Journal, The Journal of Public Economics, The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, among others.

The Joy of Philosophy

I realized last night (about 8.30pm) just how impoverished my work was - just a superficial apologia for the Washington consensus manifesting itself as microeconometrics- following a brief but intense study of leading French philosophers. Some quotes below will help you understand my conversion to a more humanistic philosophy.

Jacques Lacan,
…human life could be defined as a calculus in which zero was irrational.. When I say “irrational”, I’m referring not to some unfathomable emotional state but precisely to what is called an imaginary number . The square root of minus one doesn’t correspond to anything real - in the mathematical sense of term- and yet, it must be conserved, along with its full function. (1959)

Thus the erectile organ comes to symbolize the place of jouissance [i.e. pleasure,joy], not in itself, or even the form of an image, but as a part lacking in the desired image: that is why it is equivalent to √-1 of the signification produced above, of the jouissance that it restored by the coefficient of its statement to the function of lack of signifier (-1). (1977)

Julia Kristeva
It is therefore impossible to formalize poetic language using the existing logical (scientific) procedures without denaturing it. A literary semiotics has to be made starting from a poetic logic in which the concept of the power of the continuum, would encompass the interval from 0 to 2 , a continuum where 0 denoted and 1 is implicitly transgressed (1969)

Luce Irigaray
What is left uninterpreted in the economy of fluids – the resistances brought to bear upon solids, for example – is in the end given over to God. Overlooking the properties of real fluids – internal frictions, pressures, movements and so on, that is, their specific dynamics, leads to giving the real back to God, as only the idealizable characteristics of fluids are included in their mathematization. (1985)

Jacques Derrida
There’s so much I don’t know about astrophysics, I wish I’d read that book by that wheelchair guy. (2000)

Deleuze
In the first place, singularities-events correspond to heterogenous series which are organized into a system which is neither stable nor unstable but rather metastable , endowed with a potential energy wherein the differences between series are distributed…In the second place, singularities possess a process of auto-unification, always mobile and displaced to an extent that a paradoxical element traverses the series and makes them resonate …(1990)

Régis Debray
Ever since Gödel showed that there does not exist a proof of the consistency of Peano’s arithmetic that is formalizable within this theory, political scientists have had the means for understanding why it is necessary to mummify Lenin and display him to the “accidental” comrades in a mausoleum, at the Center of the National Community. (1980)

Jean Baudrillard
There is no better model of the way in which the computer screen and the mental screen of our brain are interwoven than Moebius’s topology with its peculiar contiguity of near and far, inside and outside, object and subject within the same spiral .(1993).

Tobacco taxation on seminar agenda

The first national seminar on taxation, health and tobacco will be staged in Dublin later today.

A range of national and international speakers will address the issue of removing tobacco from the basket of products, which constitute consumer price index.

Economists, health professionals and Government ministers will discuss the issue in the city's Conrad Hotel.

Here.

Study highlights Ireland's road safety failure

An EU report has ranked Ireland as one of the worst countries for reducing road deaths.

The data does not take mandatory breath testing into account, but the European Transport Safety Council said the incoming Government will still need to put the issue at the top of its agenda.

The report's author, Francisca Achterberg, says Ireland can learn from the French example where road deaths have dropped by 35%.

here.

Irish travellers ‘gambling with their healthcare’

Only 57% of Irish people travelling abroad for leisure purposes in the past 12 months took out travel insurance, according to research findings issued.

here.

TIBER

Tiber is not only the name of a meandering river in Italy, it is also the relatively new (as far as I gather) Tilburg Institute for Behavioral Economics Research.

OECD: Irish near bottom of pension table

A report from the OECD has put Ireland close to the bottom of the league of developed nations when it comes to pension coverage.

Ireland and New Zealand remain the only OECD countries without some form of mandatory occupational pension provision.

Here.

overheard in dublin - dublin econometrics

http://www.overheardindublin.com/story.php?id=3790

Just Jack...sittin in an econometrics lecture- the lecturer is a bit of a nerd (but a nice guy!).not the most exciting of subjects so its usually fairly quiet/sleepy.We're lookin at an equation up on the screen that has a Y* in it when out of nowhere he starts singin:"now why d'you wanna go and put stars on their y's" do do do do do doooo!we all broke our shites laughin! Overheard on Monday, 07th May 2007 - UCD Theatre N by Anonymous

A challenge to rational choice - part 3

Real estate investor Zell Kravinsky gave more than $40 million to charity—and then donated one of his kidneys to a stranger. He would have given away more organs and the rest of his fortune, had his family not stopped him.

The Compulsive Philanthropist.

immigrant mismatch

we have written a lot about mismatch in terms of qualifications. While there are many reasons why people study (e.g. intrinsic reasons, love of subject, better fun than working) it is surely favourable if one's qualifications are useful when you are out in the working world. A further aspect of this is whether your qualifications are useful abroad.

Alan Barrett and colleagues at the ESRI have done some good work over the years looking at the integration of immigrants in to the Irish economy. The bulk of their work has shown that immigrants dont tend to achieve occupational levels consistent with their qualifications. This is potentially a market failure. The latest paper on this is below.

here

Behavioural Economics and Institutional Innovation

One of the great things about linking economics and psychology in real-world contexts is the potential it opens up for thinking about the role that different institutions play in choice and welfare, and ways in which institutions can be improved. Shiller, in a working paper from a couple of years back, makes the argument that behavioural economics will have a big part to play in institution design

http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/P/cd/d14b/d1499.pdf

Docs Ten Years On -

These references are a little out-of-date now but given that the US higher education system is a little farther down the road at fourth level in many fields, perhaps they could still considered timely here. The first (especially for Ken) looks at the career trajectories of pol sci PhD's ten years on. The second looks more generally at the idea of post-docery.


here

here

financial aid to students

Susan Dynarksi summarises work on financial aid to students in the US in a recent NBER commentary.

http://www.nber.org/reporter/spring07/dynarski.html


Financial support for Irish students (including the free fees initiative) is summarised below.

http://www.usi.ie/pages/usi-home/student-resources/student-finance-links.php

Behavioural Economics and Higher Education Participation

Liam posted recently about a recent Kennedy School Working paper (Dynarski and Clayton, 2007: College Grants on a Postcard) which proposes a simplification of the student financial aid system. Liam suggested that this is something we should look at in Ireland, and to examine whether students are being dettered by not getting clear signals as to whether they are eligible or not.

So it seems timely that I just discovered the website of the US Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Dynarski and Clayton have their paper on simplification of student financial aid up here - its an earlier version and is called "The Cost of Complexity in Federal Student Aid: Lessons from Optimal Tax Theory and Behavioral Economics" (Dynarski and Clayton, 2006). This is a real inspiration for thinking about how behavioural economics applies to higher education participation, which is something that I have been doing for some time and which I will discuss further below.

Other interesting papers from the Commission's website are Burgdorf & Kostka (Eliminating Complexity and Inconsistency in Federal Financial Aid Programs For Higher Education Students), Kirst and Venezia (Improving College Readiness and Success for All Students) and Daniel Hammermesh (FOUR QUESTIONS ON THE LABOR ECONOMICS OF HIGHER EDUCATION).

The conclusions in my MPhil thesis have been informed by the recent infusion of behavioural economic theory to higher education economics. One of my recommendations is to unify, simplify and create awareness about the higher education grants system. This is based on findings from the NOEAHE (2005), that both students and parents emphasise the difficulties of navigating through the range of available funding and the impression that some people have an ‘inside track’ when it comes to information on the various programmes. Students believe that this creates inequalities, and this view is shared by several administrators.

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) (2007) recommends a single, unified grants system, which would feature a single application form, single assessment criteria and single payment date. They also recommend that grant application documents should be simplified and the instructions improved. A single and unified system would allow for economies of scale and enhance efficiency. It would also reduce confusion for students by giving them a sole institution to deal with in relation to higher education grants.

Awareness about the higher education grants system (and what entitlements are available) is another key issue. According to the NOEAHE (2005), “a number of students reported that they only became aware of the Student Assistance Fund when they were on the verge of dropping out due to financial hardship. It is possible that others who did drop out had not heard of the fund at all”. Since 2000, the Department of Education and Science has produced information in leaflet and booklet form on the range of funding available to students in further and higher education. However, according to the Department (2005) ensuring that this information reaches a wide body of people is a challenge.

The Department issues an information leaflet to each student applying to the Central Applications Office (CAO) for a higher education course and sends copies of the booklet to schools. However, according to NOEAHE (2005) students were unaware of the information, and access personnel had doubts as to whether students in general are aware of its existence. It was also reported that the booklet is difficult to follow, in part due to the range of funding programmes on offer and their associated criteria. Second-level representatives report that certain school-leaver groups are particularly at risk of being under-informed, in particular students on Leaving Certificate Applied programmes who do not normally use the CAO but are interested in accessing a further education course. The NOEAHE (2005) has stated that departmental information sources are in urgent need of development into a range of formats to reach the widest possible number of students.

A new information service (a website called www.mygrant.ie) has been set up with “the purpose to inform students and prospective students about the Maintenance Grant Scheme for 2006/7, and to ensure that students will find it easier to obtain grants”. This website is quite comprehensive; it includes a message board for discussion about the maintenance grant scheme as well as links to the other grant schemes that students can apply to. A user-friendly website with interactive features would be a useful step for creating awareness about the higher education grants system. A unified body in charge of the grants system should also advertise the website and the upper income limit for grant eligibility in multi-media advertising campaigns. Sensible places for placing these advertisements would be on the website of the Central Applications Office, and the websites of social networking sites which are popular the age-cohort of school-leavers. The financial resources for these advertising campaigns should be benchmarked at a similar level to those used in campaigns for consumer products aimed at the same age-group.

Other thoughts that I have about behavioural economics and higher education arise from the possibility that some school-leavers in the Republic of Ireland may:

(i) finish their secondary schooling with relatively less investment in the cultural and/or human capital of their household

(ii) and/or finish their secondary schooling with relatively less confidence in their academic ability

(iii) and/or finish their secondary schooling without a familiar reference point for academic achievement[1]

It should be considered that the first situation mentioned above may lead to the subsequent development of the second and/or third situations. Furthermore, increased investment in early childhood development could prevent any of the above situations from developing.[2] However, given that we know some households have less investment in their cultural and/or human capital, some consideration needs to be given to what can be done to help school-leavers who end up in the three situations outlined above.

Research that I am working on suggests that there should be an emphasis on Access programmes explicitly targeting students before they decide to enter higher education, and targeting students as early as possible in this period when there is lesser (or no) exposure to non-monetary household capital. Furthermore, Access programmes should compensate for deficits in non-monetary household capital by ensuring that students have confidence in their academic ability and high expectations for attaining a higher education qualification, including high expectations for the level of support they will receive from an Access programme at a higher education institution. With these behavioural interventions in place, non-financial barriers to participation are much more likely to be successfully tackled.

I have discussed with Liam to a great extent on the relevance of behavioural finance interventions to behavioural social interventions, and one of the relevant applications is illustrated by the idea that potential higher education (HE) participants may need to increase the length of their planning horizon. Higher levels of confidence and higher expectations will be less effective if potential HE participants do not appreciate the benefits of studying hard in secondary school (and subsequently investing in a higher education). With this is mind, the Access programmes in second-level schools should try to help students increase the length of their planning horizon.

There is a parallel to this issue in the behavioural finance literature, where a paper on retirement savings by Munnell et al (2000) shows that those with planning periods of less than two years are much less likely to provide for retirement. Munnell et al show that employee education can create a more long-term perspective and can have a major impact on retirement saving.

Another behavioural issue is the complexity of the unfamiliar choices that potential HE participants face when they come from households with lower levels of non-monetary capital. Iyengar et al (2003) and Iyengar and Lepper (2000) show that although extensive choice seems appealing, it may actually hinder the motivation to purchase, and that a more limited array of choices increases the likelihood to purchase (or make an economic decision). The 2003 paper by Iyengar et al discusses the complexity in the options available to individuals when they are deciding whether or not to begin a retirement plan.

Again, the field of behavioural finance provides inspiration and indeed some of this literature is producing much of the insights on how to apply behavioural interventions. Experiments with 401(k) retirement packages in the US suggest that changes in the manner in which financial instruments are delivered and framed can change behaviour toward saving for an equivalent discounted value. For example, a recent Pension Research Council working paper (Choi et al, 2006) reported on a "Quick Enrolment" programme which is designed to reduce the complexity of retirement savings decision-making. Despite essentially being a simplification of the 401(k) scheme rather than a major change in its monetary value, participation in the "QuickEnrolment" programme tripled 401(k) participation rates among new employees at one company (Choi et al, 2006).

The work by Choi et al is relevant to the decisions that potential HE participants make when they are choosing between higher education options and deciding whether to stay in education or enter the labour market. The array of subjects and courses is wider than ever at third level in Ireland and the risk is that too much choice can sometimes be a bad thing, especially when potential HE participants are concerned about making what they perceive to be the right choice. A lot of their concern could stem from the fear of choosing a third level course that will not provide high returns in the labour market once they are finished studying. One solution may be to reduce the number of higher education choices that potential HE participants face by devising some kind of "Quick Choice" initiative.

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[1] Oxoby (2007), in “Skill Uncertainty and Social Inference” (IZA WP-2567), suggests that individuals without familiar reference points for academic achievement may under-invest in their human capital due to uncertain expectations about their academic ability. The importance of “reference-dependency” in the formation of expectations about human capital investment is an interesting area for future research.

[2] According to Currie (2001), the benefits of early childhood education programs are often greater for more disadvantaged children, with notable results in terms of improved educational attainment.

the child-cycle of alumni giving

a new NBER working paper argues that the empirics of alumni donations are consistent with a model whereby people give money to universities to attain benefits in terms of their children's admission prospects

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w13152

racial differences in early ability

A recent paper by Levitt and colleagues that generated some discussion is linked below. it shows that there is very little difference in measured abilities by race at 8-12 months but that differences begin to appear at age 2. They do make all the caveats, but in my view come down on the side of the argument that suggests that their results are a blow to genetric causation and are more suggestive of environmental causation. worth a read but i think it is very much an opening move in this debate rather than anything conclusive.

here

crack

A paper below argues that the evidence points to the deleterious effects of crack being generated by prohibition related violence rather than drug-use per se. This is something we are eventually going to have debate sensibly in Ireland at some stage. Almost all of our murders, it seems to me, are related to turf-wars around drugs and we have sent billions of euro in to the black market. It is almost impossible though to know what the counter-factual would be if "hard drugs" were made legal in some form. the present situation is frustrating though.

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/papers/fhlm_crack_cocaine.pdf

clean air laws

One of the achievments that is listed most prominently on Mary Harney's website was a ban on the sale of bitumonous coal in Dublin (and eventually other cities) that is credited with the ending of Winter Smog. The first link below cites work that suggested that this had a big effect on mortality. The second link is a very interesting paper by Greenstone showing the effect of clean air laws in the US on infant mortality. It would certainly be worth revisiting the smog question in Ireland to examine further the effect it had on mortality; the differential effect at different stages of the life-cycle; the socio-economic distribution of the effect; whether the effect is still continuing in terms of whether children in the womb post-ban had a better ante-natal environment etc.,


http://www.euro.who.int/eehc/implementation/20060322_1

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=509182

online academic advisor

i dont know how useful this is - might be worth checking out particularly for the PhD students

http://www.onlineacademicadvisor.com/

New Geary Papers

We have been getting to grips in here for the last two years with integrating different methods to understand research questions. Below are two recent working papers co-authored by me and others in the group that examine the concept of excessive alcohol consumption from quantitative and qualitative perspectives. The first paper shows that anchoring vignettes "work" in terms of adjusting for the fact that individuals hold very different subjective beliefs about the concept of excessive that they use when answering whether they themselves drink excessively. The second paper digs deeply in to the concepts underlying these response utilising extended quants questions and qualitative methods. My own experience of this merging of methods has been very positive. At some stage, we should write down what we have learned from working together with all these different perspectives.

anchoring vignettes paper

mixed methods paper

Life Reconstruction Research at Maynooth

Well they don't call it life reconstruction, but its very similar. Its the Life Histories and Social Change (LHSC) project at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

They have a conference on June 18th but unfortunately I have my final review in DIT that morning. One of the sessions is on “Life History and Occupations and Careers in a Changing Society”.

This catches my interest as I want to get a better grasp on how the degree of match, the importance placed on financial return and the level of job satisfaction for PhD graduates evolves over time, particularly the life-course. What happens when we move from 10 to 20 to 30 years after graduation? This is something I might talk to Hannah about.

The role of universities in California

University Roles in Technological Innovation in California. C. Judson King. CSHE.6.07. (May 2007)

PDF document (426 kB)
Abstract: California has achieved considerable economic success through technological innovation and the formation of businesses based upon those technologies. This paper addresses some of the roles of universities in that success story. It starts with some measures of the contributions of innovation and a robust university structure to the California economy, drawn from the biotechnology and wine industries. This is followed by an exploration of some recent partnership structures involving universities with industry and/or the state government. Emphasis is on the University of California, since that is where the experience of the author lies. This is followed by considerations of how such partnerships can be most successful and at the same time meet concerns about potential undesirable consequences stemming from them.

Hedda Blog

Exploring current issues in International Higher Education through the eyes of students, faculty, and alumni from the Higher Education Development Association (Hedda) at the Univesity of Oslo.

This is a great resource to get an international perspective on higher education issues:
http://stan.uio.no/blog/flexlearn/

Flash Eurobarometer on Higher Education Reform

A recent Flash Eurobarometer (March 2007) was carried out between the 23rd of January and 23rd of February 2007, with respones from almost 5,800 randomly-selected teaching professionals of higher education institutions in the 27 Member States of the EU, Croatia, Iceland, Norway and Turkey.

This is a useful background perspective to the post-doc panel in the Geary Universities Study. The full Eurobarometer report is available here, and a summary here. Some of the key points are:

• Irish teaching professionals are the most likely (82%) to believe that first cycle graduates will find a suitable job; whereas only 34% of respondents in Italy believe this to be the case.
• Respondents in the fields of engineering and economic studies are the most likely to say that first cycle graduates will find a suitable job (61% and 64%, respectively), while respondents in the fields of social sciences and other hard sciences are more inclined to say that first cycle graduates should follow a Master programme before entering the labour market.
• Almost three out of four teaching professionals agree that study and training programmes should encompass more generic competences, such as communication, teamwork and entrepreneurship, and be adapted to meet labour market needs in a better way.
• Respondents agree that student mobility should be an obligatory part in the curriculum for doctoral candidates (65%) and for students in general (58%).
• Three out of four respondents agree that partnerships with businesses will reinforce universities, and 68% think that competition between universities will lead to better quality.
• Slightly less than three out of four respondents agree that private funding would help universities to gain extra income and to perform better and 68% also agree that student fees are an acceptable source of extra income for universities.
• Teaching professionals in engineering and economic studies are the most likely to agree that partnerships with businesses will reinforce universities.

US Immigration Laws may be causing "post-doctoral mismatch"

There is a piece on this in a recent Science article: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/316/5829/1268.pdf

We should take note of this issue here in Ireland.

Behavioural Science Comes of Age

A recent edition of Science (May 18th) has declared that behavioural science has come of age.

Three reviews in that edition of Science illustrate how behavioral science is making progress in explaining such complex concepts as how people process emotionally significant information (Niedenthal, p. 1002), how morality can be both universal and culturally variable (Haidt, p. 998), and how children develop resistance to scientific explanations if those explanations contradict their common-sense views of the world (Bloom and Weisberg, p. 996).

Also in the same edition, Eric Gold, a behavioral economist at Fidelity Investments’ Center for Applied Behavioral Economics in Boston talks about career tracks for behavioural scientists.

Eric Gold on Behavioural Science Career Tracks

And here in the same edition, there is a discussion about careers in public opinion reseach and "neuromarketing".

Impartial Spectator Models and Hypothetical Vignettes

"The chief impartial observer models known to economists are two that Harsanyi
proposed .... In the one model (1978), Harsanyi proposes that individuals have internalized moral preferences, which they might express as third parties (indeed, he suggests they might
even express these as stakeholders trying to remain impartial). Nevertheless, Harsanyi
allows that these moral preferences could differ across individuals. In the other model
(1953, 1955), he proposes that the impartial observer engages in a thought experiment.
The observer considers the objective and subjective circumstances of every person and
imagines himself having an equal probability of being each of those persons, ignoring his
own actual station....

This study employs a simple method with the aim of expanding our understanding
of two fundamental topics: unbiased justice preferences in real world contexts and the
nature of impartiality itself. The method of investigation is the one used in most studies
of empirical social choice, viz., attitude surveys consisting of vignettes (i.e., hypothetical
scenarios) that elicit preferences over the distribution of benefits or burdens....

The current study is in this vein, and the eight distinct vignettes in the survey prompt more complex distributive preferences that correspond to unequal allocations. They describe a wide
variety of real world ethical concerns, including environmental protection, fair wages,
welfare, job security, tort law, bioethics, globalization and media ethics".

Is Fairness In The Eye of the Beholder?

Ireland on the Freakonomics Blog

Ireland has finally made it in to Freakonomics! - It will no doubt come as a source of national pride that the reason lies in the increasing number of burn-cases being reported due to burning rubbish that emerged after the introduction of the "pay-by-weight" rubbish laws! "Ole Ole Ole Ole!!"

here/

Historical Health Patterns

Examining historical patterns of health and their effects on current patterns is one of the most exciting aspects of modern economics that i can think of. below are some recent examples of this. Great stuff!

http://web.mit.edu/costa/www/costa_kahnsubmissionfinal.pdf

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/dcutler/papers/cutler_miller_cities.pdf

http://www.nber.org/~almond/jmp3.pdf (this was published in a slightly amended form in JPE)

http://web.mit.edu/costa/www/draft4chicago.pdf

http://web.mit.edu/costa/www/demog3.pdf

income shocks and wine-growing regions

A paper by Banerjee and colleagues examining the effects of income shocks on children's later health. very interesting methodology

http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/download_pdf.php?id=1458

Web Interventions for Quitting Smoking

On 31st May, on the World Day without Tobacco, the European Commission launched a personalised e-mail aid service, "web-coaching", designed to help people who want to stop smoking. As soon as they register people receive mails at regular intervals to help them in their bid to stop smoking. In the first month the mail is daily. After the second month reminders help to check and see whether the person has not abandoned and for coaches to provide real advice to improve their life as a former smoker.

http://en.help-eu.com/pages/index-2.html

"Time is the Crisis of Truth"

This Wiki page is quite interesting:

"The problem of the future's contingents is a logical paradox first posed by Diodorus Cronus from the Megarian school of philosophy, under the name of the "dominator", and then reactualized by Aristotle in chapter 9 of De Interpretatione. It was later taken on by Leibniz. It concerns the contingency of a future event. Deleuze used it to oppose a "logic of the event" to a "logic of signification". Diodorus' problem concerned the question: "Will there be a sea battle tomorrow?" According to this question, two propositions are possible: "yes, there will be a sea battle tomorrow" or "no, there will not be a sea battle tomorrow." This was a paradox in Diodorus' eyes, since either there would be a battle tomorrow or there wouldn't be one: according to the basic principle of bivalence (A is either true or false), one of the two proposition had to be right and therefore excluded the other. But this poses a problem, since the judgment on the proposition (whether it is right or wrong) can only be made when the event has happened. In Deleuze's words, "time is the crisis of truth" ^[1]. This problem thus concerns the ontological status of the future, and therefore of human action: is our future determined or not? The future, putting in stakes the category of possibility, here poses problems to logic which are discussed to the present time".

Inspired Buildings Will Inspire People?

This OECD working paper describes how a recently completed primary school in Cherry Orchard illustrates how architecture can contribute to creating a safe and warm environment in a difficult area and can meet the particular needs of the student community.

Architect’s works have such an impact on the way people behave that the development of a new field devoted to the analysis of problems associated with this impact is emerging, as described in this paper, Ethics versus Aesthetics in Architecture (Lagueux, 2004).

Civil Wars and Educational Outcomes

David Frankel has a new paper: How Does Family Structure Affect Children’s Outcomes? Evidence from the Civil War.

"We propose a novel approach to measuring the causal effect of family structure on a child’s outcomes. In a war, some fathers are killed in action and cannot return to their families. This creates a natural experiment in which the effects of a father’s absence can be tested. Using data from the U.S. Civil War, we find no evidence that a father’s death in the war affected his child’s labor income as a young adult. We also find no effect on labor force participation or the chance of being married in 1880. Daughters of fathers who died were less likely to be students in 1880, although we find no such effect on sons".

It would be great to do similar analysis on the effects of the Civil War in Ireland.

How Academics Can Change The World

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced a $105 million grant to create the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. The institute will be run by Chris Murray, a Harvard professor and global health leader who's been recruited for the job. The institute will evaluate international health programs and spending, and it will offer a master's degree program for 25 to 40 students.

The new institute has a web site: www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org

The institute was to have been at Harvard, but software mogul Larry Ellison last year rescinded a promised gift of $115 million, citing leadership concerns after the departure of former Harvard President Lawrence Summers.

One key measure that Murray developed — called Disability Affected Life Years, or DALY — was derided by public-health leaders at the time, who accused him of making unethical judgments and comparisons about disease and suffering.

One of Murray's colleagues said one person who took a shine to the work was Bill Gates, who began carrying the pair's summary book with him everywhere. Whenever someone would ask him for money, Gates would quiz them about their "burden of disease" measurement.

Eventually, the wider public-health community — and the World Health Organization — also came to embrace the measure, now seen as an important yardstick in health-care accountability.

Colleagues of Murray describe him as hard-working, focused and possessing an uncanny ability to unearth meaning from obscure data.

In an e-mail, Harvard School of Public Health Dean Barry Bloom said Murray is "one of those rare academics who've really changed the world."

See more on the story here.

UK Government plans to curb excess drinking

A Home Office spokesman said: "What it is going to be looking at is three broad-based groups. That includes underage drinkers, binge drinkers and slightly older stay-at-home drinkers who may not know what damage they are doing to themselves."

The link between promotions of alcohol by brewers and retailers is also expected to come under the spotlight. The British Medical Association has already called for alcohol advertising to be banned because of rising levels of binge drinking.

One potential recommendation is a new wave of tough advertising campaigns, based on the existing "Know Your Limits" advertising which uses shock tactics to deliver messages about the dangers of drink.


See more here.