Some recent working papers at Geary Institute

Our paper on neural correlates of domain specific discounting is currently a working paper. Comments welcome. We are currently examining a number of extensions including gains versus losses, hypothetical versus real scenarios, small versus large amounts and others.

http://www.ucd.ie/economics/research/papers/2008/WP08.10.pdf

Kevin Denny has put up a working paper on handedness and depression. This adds to a number of recent papers on handedness (e.g. http://ftp.iza.org/dp2752.pdf and Denny and O'Sullivan 2007 JHR). It would be good to see this recent work synthesised in to a review as to what the sum total of findings implies for economics and whether these results are ultimately important for accounts of how brain structure and function influences economic behaviour. On the one hand.....

http://www.ucd.ie/economics/research/papers/2008/Wp08.14.pdf

Creative Capital

The personality of corporate brands, such as the creativity of Apple or the honesty of Disney, is so psychologically powerful that the mere sight of their logos, even subliminally flashed on a screen, is enough to make people behave more creatively or honestly, according to new social pyschology research, mentioned in the Financial Post.

I noticed recently that some of Geary's principal investigators have switched over to Apple Mac laptops. They may be trying to get more leverage out of Geary's stock of creative capital... This conference programme from 2005 has lots of useful links for reading about the concept of creative capital.

An interesting paper about the implications of outlier values for PCA

Construction of composite indices in presence of outliers

Date:2008-05-26

By: Mishra, SK

---Abridged Abstract---

Effects of outliers on mean, standard deviation and Pearson’s correlation coefficient are well known. The Principal Components analysis uses Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficients to construct composite indices from indicator variables and hence may be very sensitive to effects of outliers in data. Median, mean deviation and Bradley’s coefficient of absolute correlation are less susceptible to effects of outliers. This paper proposes a method to obtain composite indices by maximization of the sum of absolute Bradley’s correlation coefficients between the indicator variable and the derived composite index.

Basic Instinct

Pete Lunn from the ESRI has recently launched an overview of behavioural economics entitled "Basic Instincts: Human Nature and the New Economics".

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Basic-Instincts-Human-Nature-Economics/dp/0462099202

It is divided in to ten chapters which i give a very short summary of below. The blog isnt the place for a full review but i enjoyed reading it and would certainly recommend the type of people who read this blog put this on their summer reading list. Worth looking at the "people who read this have also read" section on Amazon also. I ordered a few more books while i was looking at this.

1. Believe it when you see it: This is a semi-autobiographical motivation of the book

2. Marketopia versus Muddleton: This overviews two contrasting views of how people behave

3. We have been misled: MISLED is an acronym for Luck, Mistakes, Surprises, Dishonesty, Events and Information all of which, along with rationality, can influence outcomes in bargains

4. What you dont know can hurt you: This overviews a number of rationality deviations

5. Establishing the motive: This examines trust, selfishness and a number of other emotions associated with various real-world games

6. The Elephant on the Corner Billboard: Examines advertising

7 .When in company: Examines organisational behaviour and incentives

8. Business is big...very big: Examines market structure

9. Governing principles: Behavioural macroeconomics

10. Corners and turning points: Behavioural Economics as Scientific Revolution

Further Reading: Useful references to the literature

Aerosmith and Time Preferences

I came across the following quote attributed to Aerosmith's Steven Tyler - a nice round up of low future orientation

"The things that come to those who wait may be the things left by those that got there first."

NBER Paper on Unexpected Income Shocks and Social Effects

From the NBER Website


The Own and Social Effects of an Unexpected Income Shock: Evidence from the Dutch Postcode Lottery

Peter J. Kuhn, Peter Kooreman, Adriaan R. Soetevent, Arie Kapteyn
NBER Working Paper No. 14035Issued in May 2008NBER Program(s): LS PE
---- Abstract -----
In the Dutch Postcode Lottery a postal code (19 households on average) is randomly selected weekly, and prizes – consisting of cash and a new BMW – are awarded to lottery participants living in that postal code. On average, this generates a temporary, unexpected income shock equal to about eight months of income for about one third of the households in a typical winning code, while leaving the incomes of nonwinning, neighboring households unaffected. We study the responses of consumption and reported happiness of both winners and nonwinners to these shocks. Consistent with simple models of in-kind transfers, the overwhelming majority of households who won a BMW convert it into cash. With the exception of food away from home, the only 'own' effects of cash winnings we detect are on durables expenditures and car consumption; these results support a version of the permanent income hypothesis in which durable spending is used to smooth consumption. We detect social effects of neighbors' winnings on two types of consumption: cars and exterior home renovations. Six months after the fact, winning the lottery does not make households happier, nor do neighbors' winnings reduce happiness.
This paper is available as PDF (811 K) or via email.
Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

Twitter Data

I was recently asked by a colleague how useful I consider Twitter to be. I thought it to be just another social networking platform, but it can be used to generate some interesting information.

First of all, the website of Summize Labs is well worth a visit. One can enter a topic in the Summize Labs search engine to find up-to-the-second "tweets" about that topic, then automatically analyze the attitudes expressed in the "tweets". (Tweets come from Twitter - in case you wondering). As an example, the overall sentiment on obama is "swell". This could prove to be a very powerful tool for political scientists, marketers and all kinds of researchers.

Whats more, the Summize Labs blog, desribes how to use a local operator in twitter search, enabling one to search within tweets near a location. For example, you can find what people are saying about Obama near:oregon while he campaigns there. The easiest way to find this operator is to use their advanced search page --- there you will see an input box with "near this place." Just fill it in with your city, state, zip, etc. along with what you are looking for. This combines with GIS with novel attitudinal data --- very powerful indeed! (For those interested in GIS/GPS, Summize Labs use the Google Maps API to interpret (or "geocode") a free-text location as an actual place that can be put on a map).

These methods have considerable advantages over Twitter's public timeline, TweetScan and Quotably. But the question remains - is Twitter a very select sample? I don't use it and I don't know anyone else who does...

Geary Institute is hiring!

The Geary Institute is hiring a research assistant to work on the Irish Universities Study. This is a good opportunity to join our team so please pass this on. This year alone members of the group have won IRCHSS scholarships, a fulbright scholarship, several placements on international programmes and in general it is a perfect environment for people to get strong research experience and progress on to PhD in a number of fields. In the behavioural stream here, there are about 20 researchers at PhD and research assistant level working closely together drawing from disciplines such as econonomics, psychology, sociology, public health, neuroscience etc.,


http://geary.ucd.ie/behaviour/index.php/Table/Vacancies/

UCD Images of Research

See below from UCD webpage: worth thinking whether any behavioural, neuro, drm work etc., would create images that would be suitable for this

UCD Images of Research Competition 2008
The Annual Images of Research Competition offers UCD researchers the opportunity to submit compelling digital images created in the course of their research. The Competition aims to find the most innovative and imaginative research images that convey the depth and range of research taking place at UCD.

The Competition is open to all UCD researchers including: academics, postdoctoral fellows, postgraduate students and technical officers as well as staff of UCD’s affiliated teaching hospitals. Researchers can submit more than one image to the Competition and submissions may also be collaborative. A new category for Book Covers is being introduced in 2008 and a special prize will be awarded for the most compelling book cover received.

The winning research images will be used to profile and promote the research taking place in UCD and will be featured in the UCD Images of Research Calendar for 2009.The Competition awards images that best portray some visual aspect or aspects of research. Images must portray research that has been carried out at UCD or its affiliated teaching hospitals.

The Images of Research Competition 2008 is now open. Entries can be submitted using the online application form.Closing date for receipt of entries is 5pm on Friday, 20th June 2008.

Health Care and Behavioral Economics

The Director of the US Congressional Budget Office posted on his blog yesterday that he gave a talk to the US National Academy of Social Insurance about Health Care and Behavioral Economics. The talk emphasises "that effective policy design, including policies affecting health care, must reflect more of the insights from behavioral economics".

Speaking of...

We have posted before about Arjo Klamer's work on this blog, including Conversations with Economists and The Consequences of Economic Rhetoric. In his most recent book (Speaking of Economics - Routledge, 2007), Klamer "examines fundamental disagreements over the nature and purpose of economics"... He claims that "economics is as much about how people interact as it is about the models, the mathematics, the econometrics, the theories and the ideas that come from the enormous aggregate of economics literature. Knowing and understanding economics requires both bookwork and mingling with other economists"

Some chapaters are avilable free to access here: http://speakingofeconomics.com/

From the Nudge Blog

"Got a nudge idea? We want to hear it. The possibilities for great nudges are everywhere. (For a list of favorites from the book, check out our dozen nudges) We invite readers to send their own nudge suggestions to blog@nudges.org. If you submit a nudge that Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler like, we will post it here on the blog and send you an autographed copy of Nudge."

Worth thinking of some suggestions - The "Cigarettes, Alcohol and Rollerblading" episode of Father Ted is a good place to start

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarettes_and_Alcohol_and_Rollerblading

Does Rock Music Create Violence in Pubs?

"An academic study has identified the music that is most likely to trigger violence in Britain’s pubs and nightclubs, and the songs most likely to promote harmony. The study, funded by the NHS, claims to provide the first evidence of a link between music and pub violence.

Researchers from Glasgow University, who monitored the playlists and outbreaks of fighting at eight pubs and bars in Glasgow city centre, found that loud rock and rap music encouraged customers to drink more, increasing loutish behaviour that often spilt over into violence. The pounding rhythms also made it difficult for customers to hear one another, causing misunderstandings."

Read more about this story in the Times here.

New NBER Workng Paper on Barriers to Revealed Preference

How are Preferences Revealed?

John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

NBER Working Paper No. 13976

Issued in May 2008

---- Abridged Abstract -----

Revealed preferences are tastes that rationalize an economic agent’s observed actions. Normative preferences represent the agent's actual interests. It sometimes makes sense to assume that revealed preferences are identical to normative preferences. But there are many cases where this assumption is violated. We identify five factors that increase the likelihood of a disparity between revealed preferences and normative preferences: passive choice, complexity, limited personal experience, third- party marketing, and intertemporal choice... We illustrate these issues with evidence from savings and investment outcomes.

Social Contagion

We discussed on this blog before the possibility that obesity may be socially contagious:

Nicholas Christakis, professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the study, said: "What appears to be happening is that a person becoming obese most likely causes a change of norms about what counts as an appropriate body size. "People come to think that it is OK to be bigger since those around them are bigger, and this sensibility spreads."

Now new research from the New England Jouranl of Medicine has found a similar pattern with smoking cessation: A smoker is more likely to kick the habit if a spouse, friend, co-worker or sibling did.

"Your smoking behavior depends upon not just the smoking behavior of the people you know, but also the people who they know" and so on...

said Dr. Nicholas Christakis, also lead author of the new report.

How Technology Affected Behaviour in the 20th Century

A new IZA WP by Jeremy Greenwood and Nezih Guner, "Social Change", argues that technology has had a profound effect on human behaviour in the twentieth century. Abridged abstract below.

"... as technology changes, so might social norms. There were big changes in social norms during the 20th century, especially in sexual mores. In 1900 only six percent of unwed females engaged in premarital sex. Now, three quarters do. It is argued here that this was the result of technological improvement in contraceptives, which lowered the cost of premarital sex. The evolution from an abstinent to a promiscuous society is studied using an equilibrium matching model."

Time Series Econometrics and Happiness Research

An article by Johns and Ormerod in the current edition of the Real World Economics Review (formerly the Post-Autistic Economics Review), examines well the importance of time-series econometrics for happinness research. The conclusion is that well-being evidence is currently not robust enough to guide policy-making.

"From a statistical perspective, any calculation of a correlation between a variable which exhibits a trend and one which does not is fraught with inherent problems. (In technical terms, by definition time series happiness data is integrated of order zero, and GDP is integrated of order one)."

New Findings on Sport Behaviour From ESRI Study

A new ESRI report (mentioned here) shows that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people exercising - despite rising levels of obesity. The study also claims that children nowadays are two thirds more likely to be active than their parents were. Is extra exercise more necessary and less effective in recent times due to massive changes in our diet?

Also, the report says that adults now tend to favour individual sports such as swimming and jogging. This finding emphasises the importance of focusing on participation in team sports when discussing how sport may create social capital.

New Features on the Blog

Thanks to Martin who has added a number of useful things on to the blog

- links to seminar series. Please contact me if you want to add one
- links to funding agencies that fund social science and economics work in Ireland
- upcoming conference deadlines in areas relevant to the group

Let us know if you think we should add anything else

Milton Friedman Institute

See below from the University of Chicago Website


"The University of Chicago is establishing a center for path-breaking research in economics to build upon the strengths of economists throughout the University and to honor the contributions of Milton Friedman, considered by many to be the leading economist of the 20th century.
The University’s investment in facilities will be about $200 million, with half of that amount establishing an operating endowment and the remainder allocated for facilities and other start-up costs. The majority of the funds will be raised in donations from alumni and business leaders around the world."

“The goal of the Institute is to build on the University’s existing leadership position and make the Milton Friedman Institute a primary intellectual destination for economics by creating a robust forum for engagement of our faculty and students with scholars and policymakers from around the world,” said President Robert J. Zimmer. “The Milton Friedman Institute will continue Chicago’s extraordinary tradition of creating new ideas that stimulate the academic world and innovative approaches that influence policy.”
Read more »

ISPA Annual Conference

The Irish Social Policy Association has announced details about its annual conference.

Conference Theme: Who Pays? Access and Equity in the Irish Healthcare System

Date: Thursday 25th September 2008

Venue: Joly Theature, Hamilton Building, Trinity College, Dublin

Keynote Speaker: Sir Richard Wilkinson, Professor of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham in the UK; Dale Tussing, Prof of Economics at Syracuse University; Dr Austin O'Carroll, a Dublin-based GP, who will discuss the issue of access to primary care in Ireland; Dr Vivienne Byers, Lecturer in Health Policy and Management, DIT.

Other Details: The conference will be of particular interest to healthcare professionals, policy makers, academics and anyone interested in developing an understanding of the multitude of barriers to healthcare services.

The finalised conference programme and booking form will be available in early June. In the meantime, for further details of the conference, please contact Ciara O'Dwyer, secretary@ispa.ie.

Some Common Confusions about Hyperbolic Discounting

Rasmusen (2008) suggests that there is much confusion over what "hyperbolic discounting" means. He argues that what matters is the use of relativistic instead of objective time, not the shape of the discount function. The paper is interesting and worth a read. Available here.

Congratulations

This will be announced more formally at a later date but, for now, a big congratulations to five blog members and researchers here who were succesful in the latest round of IRCHSS PhD Scholarships. This is very good news.

Eibhlin Hudson, David Comerford, Christian Danne, Fearghal O'hAodha, Jean Baptiste Chesenau

In search of a diaspora strategy for Ireland

A IIIS seminar will be given on Wednesday, 4th June 2008, at 12.30pm in TCD (IIIS room) by Mark Boyle from the Dept. of Geography in NUI Maynooth. The title is "In search of a diaspora strategy for Ireland". This is a link to Boyle's webpage.

does what happens in space affect health?

We have been looking at heart rate variability as a marker in discounting studies and Michael came across the following paper. I have to say I dont know this area but I like that abstract!!

Journal of atmospheric and solar-terrestrial physics

Non-photic solar associations of heart rate variability and myocardial infarction

Alignment of serial epidemiological, physiological, including electrocardiographic data with variations in galactic cosmic rays, geomagnetic activity, and atmospheric pressure suggests the possibility of links among these physical environmental variations and health risks, such as myocardial infarctions and ischemic strokes, among others. An increase in the incidence of myocardial infarction in association with magnetic storms, reported by several investigators from Russia, Israel, Italy and Mexico, accounts in Minnesota for a 5% (220 cases/year) increase in mortality during years of maximal solar activity by comparison with years of minimal solar activity. Magnetic storms are also found to decrease heart rate variability (HRV), indicating a possible mechanism since a reduced HRV is a prognostic factor for coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction. Longitudinal electrocardiographic monitoring for a week or much longer spans in different geographic locations, notably in the auroral oval, further suggests that the decrease in HRV affects spectral regions other than that around 3.6 s (0.15-0.40 Hz), reportedly associated with the parasympathetic nervous system. Differences in some associations are observed from solar cycle to solar cycle, and as a function of solar cycle stage, a finding resolving controversies. Coordinated physiological and physical monitoring, the scope of an international project on the Biosphere and the Cosmos, seeks reference values for a better understanding of environmental effects on human health and for testing the merit of space weather reports that could prompt countermeasures in space and on earth. Physiological data being collected systematically worldwide and morbidity/mortality statistics from causes such as myocardial infarction and stroke constitute invaluable data bases for assessing changes within the physiological range, for detecting environmental effects and for recognizing endogenous as well as exogenous disease-risk syndromes. Timely and timed intervention may then be instituted to lower risk, in preference to exclusive current focus on treating overt disease. These chronodiagnostics are particularly important for those venturing into regions away from hospitals, such as astronauts in space.

Alternative approaches to evaluation in microeconomics

a mammoth survey of evaluation methods by Blundell and Costas-Dias. If anyone's willing to set it up, this is a great one for a journal club.


Abstract
This paper reviews a range of the most popular policy evaluation methods in empirical microe-
conomics: social experiments, natural experiments, matching methods, instrumental variables,
discontinuity design and control functions. It discusses the identification of both the tradition-
ally used average parameters and the more demanding distributional parameters. In each case,
the necessary assumptions and the data requirements are considered. The adequacy of each ap-
proach is discussed drawing on the empirical evidence from the education and labor market policy evaluation literature.

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctp39a/Blundell-CostaDias-Dec-2007.pdf

Leibniz Network on Non-Cognitive Skills

I was at the Leibniz network conference for a number of days. The keynote speakers were Profressor James Heckman and Peter Gollwitzer.

Implementation intentions were one large theme in the conference. Information on this concept is below. Some of the evidence suggests that performance in many tasks can be substantially improved through adopting simple "if-then" rules that free up cognitive resources.

http://www.psych.nyu.edu/gollwitzer/

There were also several papers on skill acquisition and the technology of human skill formation. Example of this is below

http://www.annalsnyas.org/cgi/content/abstract/1038/1/179

The next meeting will be in March 2009

Theory of Moral Sentiments Book Club

On Tuesday May 27th a group of us will be meeting to discuss Adam Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiments" at 7.30pm in Ashton's in Clonskeagh. Anyone who is interested can download a copy of the book here and is very welcome to join us.

It seems that at some point in most of my favourite papers that apply behavioural and psychological insights to economic decision-making, there is a reference to Adam Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiments". Usually, these papers report some results that confound economic orthodoxy, then point out that this finding would not have surprised students of economics over 200 years ago because of Smith's 1759 work. For example,
"Smith first suggested there existed a strong link between the development of a nationalistic-oriented government, the rise of a capitalistic economy, and the expansion of an empathic gaze toward another's plight" (Henrich, Boyd et al. 2005)
"This idea is certainly not new. Adam Smith used a two-self model much like ours in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)." (Thaler and Shefrin, 1981)

And to reassure the non-economists, this is a book that has universal appeal. It comprises a series of lectures originally delivered to 16 year old boys and the language and examples are chosen with the intention of engaging that audience. The result is a lively and provocative text that spells out the implications of its nuanced arguments. These arguments probe the origins of sympathy, admiration, self-respect and other things that are at the rich core of living. It is a work that speaks to the human in everyone.

"Proposals for massive expansion of psychological therapies would be counterproductive across society"

In the current issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry, there's a lively debate article inspired by the initiative, inspired by Layard's work, to roll out CBT centres on a massive scale. Summerfield, who argues against this, basically firstly argues that our definitions of mental illness are not adequate to see these condtions as simply requiring a straightforward "intervention" - many are problems of living and "part of life." This of course is a very old argument within and without psychiatry.

Secondly he argues (without providing much, in fact anything, by way of evidence) that such an expansion of psychotherapies will inevitably lead to prolonged work absence, disability, and a huge social and individual cost in terms of loss of productivity, efficacy etc.

It's worth a look - David Veale defends CBT vigorously. The commentary by King is also good, and does make the point that, like many of these exercises, the debaters barely engage with each others real arguments...

UCD Scholarcast

There is a lot of academic material available as downloadable podcasts on the web these days including whole courses from elite universities. Would be interested to see if there is much analysis on this e.g why do people put such material up; does it benefit people who use it in the same way formal education does; does it reduce the premia to going to top places etc.,

UCD has started its own one which looks like it will be good.


"Welcome to UCDscholarcast

This website is dedicated to the publication of quality academic scholarship in audio download format. UCDscholarcast provides downloadable lectures, recorded to the highest broadcast standards to a wide academic audience of scholars, graduate students, undergraduates and interested others. Each scholarcast is accompanied by a downloadable pdf text version of the lecture to facilitate citation of scholarcast content in written academic work."



http://www.ucd.ie/scholarcast/index.html

You are your mobile!

Like this guy, soon you will be indistinguishable from your mobile according to Roy Want of Intel Research. The key idea in this area is that the mobile phone can be taken as a proxy for the person. We have already seen the rapid integration of phone, photograph, music, and internet services in the iphone. Windows mobile devices do all this with addition of microsoft office and other pc products. There area many life domains that can be quickly synthesised into the mobile including credit card payments, things like eazy pass, and also security access to buildings etc.

The next notch up is mobile sensing. On the one hand the capacity is there with bluetooth functionality on most mobiles and blackberry mainstreaming gps in their devices. However, the future of these devices will be to produce feedback to the user about their physical and social evironment and their internal psychophysiology. This can be in real-time and in the form of summary feedback with a key aspect being real-time data streaming to online analysis systems with instant individualised reporting, advice, and collaborative planning.

A practical example is building the capacity into phones to sense if someone you know is in the area at the moment. How many times do we have missed connections, pass familiar faces without noticing, or bump into those we don't want to see!

But more exciting from a research perspective is the possibility of collecting data which users generate proactively and feeding back advice in order to aid in behaviour change. The author of the article here talks mostly about Bodymedia Sensewear which is a wearable computer which assesses accelerometry, heat flux, and galvanic skin response continuously throughout the day. This then analyses the output of these sensors to produce results which are more than the sum of their parts in that they produce novel data from multiple sensor sources. Their algorithms are refined continuously through constant consumer data streaming across the globe.

Sony ericsson have integrated an accelerometer into a recent mass marketed phone. It is not unfeasible that future technologies will combine wearable sensing technologies and bluetooth or body surface wireless transmission to build a picture of the persons life where they can receive feedback on their activity levels, their heart, their locations across the day, the kind of pollutants they were exposed to, the noise levels in their surrounds and so on. This will produce a platform for those interested in health behaviour to collect data on a wide-scale and test and tailor interventions to those interested. So next time someone asks you how are you, the answer might be 'hold on a second, let me check my phone!'.

Pervasive computing 08

National Time Accounting

For those interested in DRM, well-being, time-use etc., there is an amazing set of links to future chapters on the NBER working paper site. Authors include Cutler, Layard, Blanchflower, Krueger, Kahneman

http://www.nber.com/books/krue08-1/

Are Ya Buying or Selling Tickets?

An article in the Observer at the weekend describes how investing in tickets to see major bands is more lucrative than buying shares in the publicly listed companies. Tixdaq, a research company that monitors the 'secondary ticketing' market, has set up an index tracking the 100 best-selling tickets for sale on eBay. The avearge value of resold tickets (over the last three months) was 117 percent more than their face value. Over the same period, the FTSE 100 rose by just 6 percent.

There has been a lot of negative coverage about ticket touts in the British music media over the past year, but what makes tickets to see major bands any less fit for speculation than say - shares in a tech company, or ounces of 24 carat gold? One possible bone for contention is that the secondary market for concert tickets is untaxed, and so no revenue from speculation ends up with the government. With the relevant data on eBay being compiled by Tixdaq, maybe that will soon change?

ESRI Seminar

ESRI Research Seminar

"Microcosting Approaches to Valuing Neonatal Intensive Health Care"

Dr Stephen Kinsella
Department of Economics, University of Limerick

Prematurity and extremely low birth-weight (ELBW) is a well recognised financial burden on health care in the developed world. Cost of treatment increases with decreasing gestation. While cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses have been calculated and extrapolated, it is frequently the average and the median that is sought. An extremely high cost however is always possible at the beginning of each case, and in some, the eventuality. This study examines one such case, and attempts to determine the total cost from conception to discharge from the special care baby unit.


Venue: The ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2

Date and Time: Thursday 15th May 2008, at 4 p.m.

Delay discounting

How best to mathematically represent discount curves is an open question in the area of intertemporal choice. Two recent articles focus on (1) representing the discount rate in a more intuitive fashion , and (2) intertemporal choice behavior is better understood in terms of
temporal cognition and human temporal cognition in intertemporal choice follow the Weber–Fechner law, rather than Stevens’ power

Publish or Perish Software

The Publish or Perish Software is free to download and very easy to use. it uses google scholar and pre-programmed algorithms to give you a score for an academic on several common metrics such as h-indices etc., - a useful way of keeping track of your own progress if you are an academic and concerned about your productivity. its available on the website of Anne-Wil Harzing. her website also contains a lot of very useful papers about the use and abuse of these types of metrics

http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm

Gambling in Britain

The UK Gambling Commission recently released the results of the 2007 Gambling Prevalance Study conducted by NATCEN. The results are available below. Its amazing that given the widespread increase in gambling in Ireland over the last 10 years that we can only guestimate the number of problem gamblers in the Irish population.

results here from Gambling Commission Site

Some highlights include

- Sample of 9,003 representing a 53 per cent response rate

- 68 per cent of population gambles to some degree

- 57 per cent play some form of Lotto game

- Gambling falling from 72 per cent to 68 per cent from the 1999 survey

- About half per cent of the UK adult population identified as "problem gamblers" so roughly about 250,000 people. No increase since 1999.

- highest among 16-44 year olds, people whose parents had gambling problems, single people, people with poor health, Asian/Asian British, Black/Black British, lower education

- problem gambling highest among spread betters, fixed odds betting terminal users, betting exchange users and online gamblers.

Neuroeconomics and Ageing

A really useful overview of an NIA workshop on the potential contribution of neuroeconomics to the study of ageing is available below

here

Hedonic adaptation and the role of decision and experience utility in public policy

Following on from Kahneman & Sugden's 2005 paper Experienced Utility as a Standard of Policy Evaluation there have been several reviews in the area most notably Dolan & White (2007).

Loewenstein & Ubel (2008) update the literature further reviewing emotional adaptation and providing a comprehensive review and critique of methods for measuring experienced utility.

Lowenstein et al point to the absence of inclusion of measures of experiences of life meaning and purpose in studies of experienced utility criticising the sole use of momentary affect measures.

Huppert et al (2005) in their proposal to the ESS argue for the inclusion of measures of positive functionings rather than positive feelings "The eudaimonic approach is operationalised by measures of autonomy, or self-determination, interest and engagement, aspirations and motivation, and a sense of meaning, direction or purpose in life."

Examples of Eudaimonic Well-being items are:

I feel I am free to decide for myself how to live my life.
In my life I do not get much of a chance to show how capable I am.
I generally feel free to express my ideas and opinions.
In my daily life, I frequently have to do what I am told.
The things that I do give me the feeling that I really know who I am.
I feel that life is full of opportunities.
My life has been a continuous process of learning, changing and growth.

Loewenstein et al argue that circumstances matter to people independent of their influence on moment to moment experience and believe that despite its flaws decision utility has the "advantage of capturing these values in a way that experience utility does not — e.g., if an individual cares about meaning, he or she can incorporate that concern into their choices."

Towards the end of the article the authors sway back towards experienced utility
"In summary, whether it comes to government policies that influence individual decisions or policies that directly affect people's situations, the ideal welfare criterion will involve a hybrid consideration of both decision and experience utility. Ultimately, people need to be given as much decision making autonomy as is possible. But the decisions they make should be informed, as much as is possible, by a deep understanding of their consequences for experience utility."

Subjective Well Being

A source of inconsistency not noted in Dolan et al is the effect of survey artefacts. In answer to the question "Do people mean what they say?", Bertrand and Mullainathan (AER, 2001) find that people answer what is true for them at the point of answering but that their interpretation of the question can be skewed by question ordering, framing and context. For example, asking how frequently one dates is heavily correlated with life satisfaction if the dating question comes before the life satisfaction question, but there is virtually no correlation if the life satisfaction question comes first.

Les evenements de soixante-huit perpetuate privilege

Maurin and McNally (JLE 2008) use a nice instrument to test for the returns to a year of third level education, and find that they are significant not merely for the direct recipient but also for their children:

The famous events of May 1968, starting with student riots, threw
France into a state of turmoil. As a result, normal examination procedures
were abandoned, and the pass rate for various qualifications
increased enormously. The lowering of thresholds at critical stages of
the education system enabled a proportion of students to pursue more
years of higher education than would otherwise have been possible.
For those on the margin of passing their examinations, additional years
of higher education increased future wages and occupational levels.
Interestingly, the effect is also transmitted across generations and is
reflected in the educational performance of children.

Review of the economic literature on the factors associated with subjective well-being

"There is increasing interest in the “economics of happiness”, reflected by the number of articles that are appearing in mainstream economics journals that consider subjective well-being (SWB) and its determinants. This paper provides a detailed review of this literature. It focuses on papers that have been published in economics journals since 1990, as well as some key reviews in psychology and important unpublished working papers. The evidence suggests that poor health, separation, unemployment and lack of social contact are all strongly negatively associated with SWB. However, the review highlights a range of problems in drawing firm conclusions about the causes of SWB; these include some contradictory evidence, concerns over the impact on the findings of potentially unobserved variables and the lack of certainty on the direction of causality. We should be able to address some of these problems as more panel data become available."

Dolan et al. (2008)

More or Less

BBC Radio 4's 'More or Less' was an idea born of the sense that numbers were the principal language of public argument.

"There were few places where it was thought necessary to step back and think about the way we use figures - in the way we often step back to think about language. What do they really measure? What kind of truth, if any, do they capture? Yet no politician, no economist, and in recent years no doctor, teacher, chief constable or any number of others, has been able to make a case or answer one without regaling you with numbers..."

More or Less can be heard on Mondays on BBC Radio 4 at 1630BST and is presented by Tim Harford. More information here.

Everythingonomics

On his Australian economics blog, Andrew Leigh mentions an article by Deirdre Macken on the steady expansion of economic research into non-traditional areas (or as she calls the phenomenon, 'Everythingonomics'). The article profiles Justin Wolfers, Tim Harford, and Andrew Leigh; and highlights the non-traditional focus of the topics in the current edition of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Transferrable Skills

Its seen as increasingly important that PhD people in Economics develop transferrable skills to facilitate employment across sectors other than academia. I wonder will stand-up comedy skills count in this agenda.

Introducing the world's first stand-up economist.

http://www.standupeconomist.com/

his interpretation of Mankiw's principles is below

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVp8UGjECt4

Association for NeuroPsychoEconomics

From their website


"WELCOME to the Association for NeuroPsychoEconomics

The Association is the premier scholarly organization for scientists and professionals in neuroscience, psychology, business, and economics.The Association’s Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics is the first peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes research on neuroeconomics, neuromarketing, neurofinance, and organizational decision neuroscience besides more classical topics from behavioral, economics, and business research.

Order your issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics (Vol. 1, No. 1, 2008) today.The Association also hosts the annual NeuroPsychoEconomics Conference. The next meeting will be in Munich, Germany on October 9 and 10, 2008. You may submit your manuscripts until July 15, 2008 (see call for papers). Relevant topics include: consumer behavior & neuromarketing, behavioral finance & neurofinance, organizational behavior & organizational decision neuroscience as well as behavioral economics & neuroeconomics."


Their mailing list subscription is below

http://www.jnpe.org/e_mailinglist.html

Sex Hormones and Discounting

Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2008

Sex hormonal modulation of hyperbolic discount factor in men

Taiki Takahashi, Kikue Sakaguchi, Mariko Oki, Toshikazu Hasegawa

Hormones in the brain have many types of visceral influences on social behavior and economic decision-making. Although hormone-associated visceral effects attract attention in neuroeconomics, little is known regarding the relationship between sex hormones and hyperbolic discounting. Furthermore, although the “discount factor” (a parameter indicating patience in intertemporal choice) is economically relevant and has neural correlates, most neuroeconomic studies on intertemporal choice have been focusing on neuromodulation of logged discount rates, which sometimes results in difficulty in interpretation. This study was aimed to examine linear correlations between chronic sex hormone levels and hyperbolic discount factors of gains and losses in healthy male students. Participants’ salivary sex hormone (testosterone) levels were also assessed. We observed a positive linear relationship between testosterone levels and hyperbolic discount factor of gains; while no linear relationship between testosterone levels and discount factor of losses was observed. The results indicate that (i) chronic elevation in testosterone may be associated with patience (indicated by a discount factor) in intertemporal choice on gains, (ii) testosterone is unrelated to discounting of delayed losses. Implications for sex hormone-related visceral effects on problematic decision-making (e.g. addiction) and possible neuroendocrinological mechanism (e.g. conversion of testosterone into female hormones in the brain) are discussed.

hedonic adaption

Theres a very interesting paper in the latest J Public Economics by Oswald and Powdthaveeb

Does happiness adapt? A longitudinal study of disability with implications for economists and judges

This paper is an empirical study of partial hedonic adaptation. It provides longitudinal evidence that people who become disabled go on to exhibit considerable recovery in mental well-being. In fixed-effects equations we estimate the degree of hedonic adaptation at — depending on the severity of the disability — approximately 30% to 50%. Our calculations should be viewed as illustrative; more research, on other data sets, is needed. Nevertheless, we discuss potential implications of our results for economists and the courts.

critique of pure reason

am up against some very tight deadlines (and have not even had bank holiday time off). what better time to reread the "Critique of Pure Reason" and follow up with some references I promised to send people on philosophy of science in economics. An excerpt from the opening page follows.

"That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how is it possible that the faculty of knowledge be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, partly rouse our power of understanding into activity, to compare, to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of sense impressions into a knowledge of objects which is called experience? In respect of time, therefore, no knowledge of ours is antecedent to experience, but begins with it"

"But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that it all arises out of experience. ....... It, is therefore a question which requires close investigation whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sense impressions. Knowledge of this kind is called apriori, in contradistinction to empirical knowledge, which has its source, a posteriori, that is, in experience".

A few people were asking for references to philosophy of science and economics. Standard references to Kuhn, Lakatos, Popper, Feyerabend etc., can be found anywhere so i wont give biblio's.

Redman's book is below which is extremely well regarded and worth reading.

http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Philosophy-Science-Deborah-Redman/dp/0195082745

Arjo Klamer has written a number of works. A sample article from his site is below

http://www.klamer.nl/docs/making_sense_JEM.pdf


His book "Conversations with Economists: New Classical Economists and Opponents Speak Out on the Current Controversy in Macroeconomics" is really worth reading.

Deirdre McCloskey's work (including recent book) is well known and a google search will work for this. Similarly Mark Blaug's work on "how economists explain" should be read by everyone.

The Journal of Economic Methodology and the Journal of Economic Philosophy are two other outlets to scan.

Some nice references in the paper below

http://www.philoek.uni-muenchen.de/luetge/Luetge-Synthese.pdf

Societies like Heterodox Economics, Post-Austistic Economics etc., also include a lot of philosophy of science work on their programmes.

As usual for those annoyed at me for leaving lots of things out, that's what the comments are for!

Lifetrack: Lessons from Intel exploratory research

Feedback in problematic life-domains may motivate change and goal-achievement over time. Intel investigate "tools for personalized, longitudinal self-investigation that help end users learn about the conditions and variables that impact their social, cognitive, and physical health".

Here is the lifetrack inteface which enables you to track changes in important life areas over time:http://architecture.mit.edu/house_n/data/tracking/lifetrack.html

Here is the life-domain and goal-selection questionnaire: http://architecture.mit.edu/house_n/data/tracking/sortingexercise.html

Including lay-descriptions of behaviour change techniques such as those recently described by Abraham & Michie (In press) or even framing feedback in ways to promote regret or to use social norms in a web community to motivate behaviour may all help the person achieve their aims. A personalized non-invaseive ubiquitious computing approach with integrated tailored health promotion services to provide a sustainable business model may be the way to go with this. Research, technology, and consumer driven feedback are synthesized to refine the system enhancing effectiveness and user-experience. This makes large-scale panel data collection possible through providing a useful service to those interested in proactive health technologies.

User reactions to this service are documented here

Interestingly, the researchers also include a page which details which kind of personal information they would like to have tracked over time. The number one aspect is heart rate followed by time of going to sleep, short term memory span, muscle tone, and use of space. TV watching, drinking, and smoking feature at the bottom of the list surprisingly.

We track heart rate in our recent Day Reconstruction Study and many of the participants were very interested in their heart rate over the course of the day. Producing this data in a readily accessible and useful format is something which would be of great interest to people. Going one better intel aim to produce a device which infers mood from heart data and provides feedback via mobile phone to those need a stress intervention (for more see: Technologies for Heart and Mind). Again user generated content is fed back into the online system to refine algorithms for identifying mood and providing feedback.

It's as hard to get into an "almost-Ivy" now as it was to get into Princeton in the 1970s

Another recent article in the Economist describes how it's as hard to get into an "almost-Ivy" now as it was to get into Princeton in the 1970s.

"Admissions season has just concluded, and it has been another record year. The big four—Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and Yale—all took less than 10% of their applicants for the first time ever. Harvard accepted just 7.1% of those who applied".

This intensity of applications is attributed to "a (peaking) population bump which has increased the college-aged cohort for the past 15 years just as higher percentages of students have decided to enter university. Add to that two other factors: an intensifying obsession with big-name colleges rather than the ones that are cheapest or nearest to home, and the rollout of big new financial-aid packages at the best universities".

Is it time to lower America's drinking age?

A recent article in the Economist describes how at the height of the Vietnam war, many Americans asked why an 18-year-old could die for his country but not drink a beer. Now the same question, given topicality by Iraq, is part of a renewed effort to lower the drinking age across the country.

The article says "Spurred by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the Reagan administration in 1984 ordered states to raise their drinking age back to 21 or lose 10% of their federal highway funds. The states buckled under this fiscal blackmail but—surprise!—under-age drinking did not disappear. In some ways, the problem got worse. Besides making criminals of millions of young people, the “21” law encourages the young to binge in secret".

Now public opinion is growing against the "21" law in some states, and this is happenening at the same time that rumours emerge about an increase in the legal drinking ages to 21 years in Ireand. Read a previous post on this blog about that story here.

There is also a interesting game theory angle on this story. If all the states stick together and maintain their resolve by mutual assurance, then the threat to cut 10% of their federal highway funds will be non-credible. The federal government has as interest in maintaining a federal highway too!

"2 out of 3, 0.0 BAC"

Clearing up misconceptions about how much college students drink can reduce alcohol consumption on campuses, according to a study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Researchers led by Robert Foss of the UNC Highway Safety Research Center used voluntary breathalyzer tests to measure the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of students returning at night to their living quarters.

In an initial sample of over 2,000 students, the research team found that on 'party nights,' two out of three students hadn't had a drop to drink. Calling their campaign "2 out of 3, 0.0 BAC", the research team publicized their findings through on-campus talks and posters distributed to every dorm room. When the researchers polled students much later, 91 percent of respondents had heard of the slogan. More to the point, the fraction of students returning home with alcohol in their bodies had decreased by 15 percent.

Read more about this research here in Psychology Today.

Eirvana

Éirvana is the title of a new UCD School of Economics working paper by Cormac Ó Gráda. The paper looks at the state of Irish life now that "the Irish misery index (the sum of its unemployment and inflation rates) has edged above ten per cent and aggregate employment has virtually stopped growing". Various data on items such as life satisfaction, alcohol consumption rates, life expectancy and suicide rates are considered.

Social science PhD students short on quantitative skills

Doctoral students in the social sciences are failing to develop the research skills required for an academic career in the field, according to a research paper.

While students prefer to use qualitative methods of research in their PhDs, job vacancies for academic posts indicate a need for quantitative research skills such as computer programming and handling statistics, according to a paper by Rose Wiles, a research fellow at the University of Southampton.

"There is a dire shortage of properly trained quantitative researchers," one employer told Dr Wiles, whose paper "Methodological Approaches at PhD and Skills Sought for Research Posts in Academia: A Mismatch" was published in the International Journal of Social Research Methodology.

Read more here in the Times Higher Education Supplement.

Undergraduates as researchers

I have said on many occassions that i think undergraduate research experience is something that should be promoted highly. this post follows up on a promise i made to send on some links to people who are working on this.

In Ireland, the ESRI have recently hired some summer interns and funding for summer projects is also available to science and engineering students (through Science Foundation Ireland) and to undergraduates in health-related disciplines (through the Health Research Board). Many people also work in various capacities on different projects.

Rather than make a detailed assessment of it (which i am doing in another context) this post just highlights some of the recent papers that may be useful for people who either have undergraduates working with them or are thinking about it.

A set of reports conducted by SRI for the National Science Foundation are available below and provide lots of information on these programmes

http://www.sri.com/policy/csted/reports/university/index.html#urosynthesis

Some other references worth consuling include:

Ehrenberg's paper on encouraging undergraduates to conduct research

http://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v95y2005i2p184-188.html

Hathaway, R. S., Nagda, B. A., & Gregerman, S. R. (2002). The relationship of undergraduate research participation to graduate and professional education pursuit: an empirical study. Journal of College Student Development, 43, 5, 614-31.

Janke, E. M. (2006). The promise of public scholarship for undergraduate research: developing students’ civic and academic scholarship skills. Higher Education in Review, 3, 51-68.

Kardash, C. M. (2000). Evaluation of an undergraduate research experience: perceptions of undergraduate interns and their faculty mentors. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 1, 191-201

Nagda, B. A., Gregerman, R. S., Jonides, J., Von Hippel, W., & Lerner, J. S. (1998). Undergraduate student-faculty research partnerships affect student retention. The Review of Higher Education, 22, 1, 55-72.

Seymour, E., Barrie-Hunter, A., Laursen, S. L., & Deantoni, T. (2004). Establishing the benefits of research experiences for undergraduates in the sciences: first findings from a three-year study. Science Education, 88, 4, 493-534.

Google Earth launches Streetview

Google are rolling out a new version of Google Earth which will allow the viewer to virtually move through 3D views of the city with the kind of clarity where you will eventually be able to window shop using the programme! San francisco and a few other US cities have been transformed into the 3D format as have the key buildings of historical signficance from most major cities. Here is a view of Dublin from Google Earth v4.3 released recently. The spire, customs house, liberty hall, and george's quay house are all visible in 3D.

Bruce Sacerdote

The work of Bruce Sacerdote is very well worth consulting for those interested in examining, inter alia, causal effects of families and peers, intergenerational transmission of human capital. The Darthmouth random roommate assignment study and the Korean-American adoption studty are very relevant to discussions among the group.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~bsacerdo/

His paper on slavery and intergenerational transmission should be read by everyone looking at intergenerational transmission here/