Classic Works Book Club

The conversation around Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics was really good. It covers a number of topics that have found new life in recent economics such as the definition of happiness, the extent to which public policy should be concerned with creating happiness as opposed to pleasure, the role of self-control in creating happiness and so on.

For anyone who is interested, on Monday July 14th at 7pm we will discuss Aristotles Politics at the same venue, Ashton's in Clonskeagh. A copy of the book is below from the mit archive.

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.html

Cross-Country Comparisons of Suicide Rates

"GLOBAL suicide rates have increased by 60% in the past 45 years and it is now one of the three leading causes of death for people between 15 and 44 years old according to the World Health Organisation. People in countries with high suicide rates say they are unhappier, according to the “World Database of Happiness” maintained by Erasmus University in Rotterdam. But intrepreting suicide trends is tricky because there is no international standard for reporting and collecting data. Countries with strong religious or cultural strictures against suicide often report lower rates."

Story in the Economist here.

Anchors: Software for Anchoring Vignettes

Anchors is "a complete library of statistical functions for analyzing survey data with anchoring vignettes as an R library." The linked page contains the latest version of the software and documentation for Anchors. The page is maintained by Jonathan Wand at Stanford University.

Position at University of Vienna

50% Post-Doc position at University of Vienna, Faculty of Psychology

The Faculty of Psychology at the University of Vienna is offering a 50% Post-Doc position in the Department of Economic Psychology, Educational Psychology and Evaluation, to be filled at the earliest date possible. Candidates should have a completed doctoral degree in Psychology, or comparable qualifications. The position is limited to 6 years.

This position requires collaboration in research, teaching and administration and the integration in the research centre "Decisions in Work, Organisations and the Economy". Topics of the research centre are decisions in the contexts of (a) taxes and cooperation, (b) business and Entrepreneurship, (c) work, career and wellbeing and (d) money management in the private household. The research centre consists of nine researchers collaborating in a friendly and productive team.

Candidates with good knowledge in the domain of economic psychology and applied social psychology, good knowledge in research methods and statistics, computer skills, and good knowledge of English will be given priority. In addition, teamwork competence, orientation to skill development, interest in teaching, reliability and high work motivation are desirable attributes in candidates. Candidates who are not fluent in German are required to be able to effectively communicate in German within 2 years after their appointment.
For further information please contact Dr. Erich Kirchler (+43-1-4277-47880), Dr. Christian Korunka (+43-1-4277-47881) or Dr. Erik Hölzl (+43-1-4277-47888)

The closing date for applications is July 16th, 2008. You will find details (reference number 47302/JB) and the necessary forms at

http://personalabteilung.univie.ac.at/index.php?id=12553

and

http://personalabteilung.univie.ac.at/index.php?id=10896

The University of Vienna is an equal opportunities employer and intends to increase the number of female employees, especially in senior positions and within its scientific staff

Reminder - ISNE Conference Galway 2008

This is a reminder about the call for papers for the Irish Society of New Economists (ISNE) fifth annual conference. This conference will be held at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG) on Friday 3rd October 2008. Applicants should submit a title and 300-word description of their topic by Monday 30th June to isne08@gmail.com

The conference is intended to provide a forum for new economists (in post-graduate research programs or private/public sectors) to present papers from any area of economics. We strongly encourage those working on economics-based research in all settings to present. Any interested parties that do not have a paper to present, but would like to attend the conference, are also very welcome at the event.

More details are available on the conference website here.


Image of the Quadrangle at NUIG

Google Economics Search Engine

Finally in relation to Google, my colleague Christian Danne sent me an interesting link today about the Google Economics Search Engine: http://ese.rfe.org/

This engine "uses Google to search the contents of more than 20,000 economics web sites. They come from RFE, home pages reported by economists in RePec Author Services, and EDIRC. A Google Custom Search Engine searches these pages. As this technology is still in beta testing, the results might not be ideal. In particular, Google uses an approximation algorithm to search these sites."

Also sent on by Christian was a link on how to find the mathematical programme routine to your problem, if so inclined: http://gams.nist.gov/

Do Ads Work?

Also mentioned in the Times article cited below - "Google is expected this week to roll out another tool designed to show how people browsing the web respond to online advertising. By comparing the behaviour of people who are exposed to particular adverts with those who are not, the company hopes to give advertisers feedback about which campaigns are are successful."

This may be one of the first instances where advertising has been evaluated in the spirit of randomised controlled trials. I'm not aware of the literature on advertising evalauation, but I suspect that its very hard to design a (realistic) experiment when most advertising hits the entire population. However, the targeting capabilties of web advertising mean that treatment and control groups can be established far easier. In saying all of that, we stil have to remember that web advertising is a different beast to other forms of commercial campaign.

Google to give advertisers web-tracking data

An article in today's Times describes how Google today expanded its offering to advertisers by unveiling a service (AdPlanner) which lets one track which websites target audiences are visiting.

"According to reports in the US, Google is planning to gather information about websites from a range of sources, including its own search engine but also third parties and, possibly, more traditional panels which track consumer behaviour online... One Google source suggested that there would be some overlap between the new service and another recent offering from Google called 'Trends for websites' (Ed- Google Trends, as discussed before on this blog --- here), which allows anyone to measure websites' audiences using a combination of Google search data and other information that web users have opted to share about their behaviour. Google's new tool is thought to be similar to another service called Quantcast (also discussed on this blog before --- here)... In addition, AdPlanner is expected to be free - at least to begin with."

Test post

Could we make this an "About post" or the like?

Beattie Scholarships for travel to North America

Sticking with the Chicago theme, today I received a notice on a list from Joshua Klayman at the Center for Decision Research at U of C inviting applications for the JANE BEATTIE MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP for travel to North America. Details below.

We are pleased to announce that the Beattie Scholarship is now sponsored jointly by the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and the European Association for Decision Making. The purpose of the fund is to provide scholarships to subsidize travel to North America for purposes of scholarly activity by a foreign scholar in the area of judgment and decision research, broadly defined. Attendance at the annual SJDM meetings is one example of an activity that would be appropriate for support, but by no means the only one. Note that, although all scholars outside North America are eligible to apply, EADM is sponsoring awards made to members of that organization (including student members), so applicants should please be sure to indicate if they EADM members.

Applications will be accepted until 20 July, 2008.

For more information about the scholarship and how to apply, see this page: http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/joshua.klayman/more/BeattieInfo08.htm

the required application form can be downloaded from:
http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/joshua.klayman/more/BeattieForm.rtf

Chicago Debate on Naming of Milton Friedman Institute

From the Chicago Tribune

An example of the debate below:

"I don't think any institute of any educational institution should be so strongly aligned behind a single ideological program," said U. of C. music professor and department chair Robert Kendrick.

Columbia University economics professor Jagdish Bhagwati laughed when he heard about the latest debate at the Hyde Park campus."It is nonsensical to object. . . . Chicago should be proud it has someone like Milton on its rolls," he said. "Anybody who can claim that Milton was not one of the major thinkers of his time is crazy."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-milton-friedman-flap-18-jun18,0,5015442.story

Smokers offered money to quit

From the BBC.


"Smokers in the poorest areas of Dundee are being offered £150 worth of groceries by the health service if they are able to give up cigarettes."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/7465908.stm

Hopefully, there is a good research design accompanying this because it is a very interesting experiment. one test would be whether the participants substitute to other risk behaviours that would not be picked up in a carbon monoxide test e.g. would they just start drinking lots more to compensate. One version of the depletable willpower resource model would suggest that the participants will be more susceptible to being lured in to other temptations as they battle to stay off the cigarettes. Of course, there is also a large body of work to suggest that smoking is complementary with other risk behaviours so its possible that going off the cigarettes would reduce other risk behaviours.

From a brief review, there seem to be many papers supporting the effectiveness of financial incentives on smoking cessation certainly in the short run but less evidence for the long-run effects (good Cochrane review below).

http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/15/1/12

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15846705

A recent JAMA paper by Loewenstein and colleagues talks about some of the issues involved in using economics concepts to modify health behaviours

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/298/20/2415

Economics Blog Directory

Thanks to Aaron Schiff who put our blog on his directory and ranking of blogs. We enter at 175/257 which is not so surprising given the fairly targetted readership. I put a webcounter on this lately and im surprised at how many people tune in. feel free to use the comment option if there is anything of interest!

http://www.26econ.com/economics-blog-directory-ranking/

IRCHSS Launches New Research Scheme

From the IRCHSS Website

IRCHSS RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVE

The Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences has launched an exciting new scheme.

Terms and conditionsApplication form completion instructionsFrequently Asked Questions
This scheme will provide funding for 4 Strands:

1. Research Stimulator Grants

These grants will support innovative projects for a maximum duration of 2 years and budget of up to €100,000.Application form Budget sheet

2. Visiting Fellowships

This strand is intended to facilitate knowledge transfer by funding researchers to host an international academic expert and/or visit to a non-Irish higher education institution.Application form Budget sheet

3. Summer SchoolsTaking new directions in research through developing new skills and new methodological approaches is at the heart of this strand.Application form Budget sheet

4. IRCHSS/AHRC Bilateral Networking Grants/WorkshopsThis bilateral initiative will support humanities networking and workshop activities between partners in Ireland and the UK. Application formFurther instructions

Drivers with bumper stickers more likely to be aggressive

A new study shows that bumper stickers, 'window decals' and vanity plates indicate whether a driver will respond to offensive behaviour with aggression. Aggression was measured through such activities as honking, tailgating, blocking traffic or trying to run another driver off the road.

Researchers from Colorado State University report in the Journal of Applied Psychology that automobile "territory markers" predict road rage better than vehicle value or condition. But what surprised most was the fact the content of the items had no bearing on levels of hostility.

"You'd think the guy that has the bumper sticker that says My Kid Beat Up Your Honour Student would be more aggressive than the guy whose sticker reads My Kid is an Honour Student, but that's not the case," says Paul Bell, professor of psychology at Colorado State University. "It's just the fact that there's a bumper sticker there in the first place."

Read more about this study here at canada.com

Dynamics Lab at the Geary Institute

The Dynamics Lab at the Geary Institute focuses on dynamic and complex behaviour in social networks and group processes. It fosters an interdisciplinary approach and brings together researchers from across the university interested in dynamic computational and social network analysis, computational science including agent based simulation in the social sciences, group processes and group decision modeling.

Sexuality and Intra-Household Bargaining

"Committed gay relationships, according to research in Vermont in the US, are happier than straight marriages. A lot of this, it seems, is about equality and sharing. Typically, in a straight marriage, the wife does most of the housework, whether or not she also has a full-time job. She is not happy about this, and who could expect her to be? The result is justified anger and resentment on her part. Also, in straight relationships it often works out that the man is the main income earner as the woman may give up full-time employment after having children. In a gay relationship, both are probably earning at around the same level of income."

Read more about this topic here in the Irish Times.

Big Five Captures Stream of Consciousness?

"In an experiment at the University of Arizona, ninety students spent twenty minutes in private typing into a computer whatever came into their minds, reporting their thoughts, feelings and sensations. They were told their commentaries would be kept private and anonymous, linked only with their scores on a personality test. Nine judges then read these twenty-minute bursts of thought and attempted to rate the personalities of the students who had written them....

The judges rated the students' personalities with a high degree of accuracy (as compared with the students' self-ratings). Accuracy was highest for the Big Five personality dimensions of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability, while being somewhat lower for Extraversion and Openness to Experience."

Read more about this story here in the BPS Research Digest.

An Introduction to Multilevel Modeling for Social and Personality Psychology

Multilevel modeling is a technique that has numerous potential applications for social and personality psychology. To help realize this potential, this article provides an introduction to multilevel modeling with an emphasis on some of its applications in social and personality psychology. This introduction includes a description of multilevel modeling, a rationale for this technique, and a discussion of applications of multilevel modeling in social and personality psychological research. Some of the subtleties of setting up multilevel analyses and interpreting
results are presented, and software options are discussed.

Nelzek '08

The Right and the Good: Distributive Justice and Neural Encoding of Equity and Efficiency

Abstract:

Distributive justice concerns how individuals and societies distribute benefits and burdens in a just or moral manner. We combined distribution choices with functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the central problem of distributive justice: the trade-off between equity and efficiency. We found that the putamen responds to efficiency, whereas the insula encodes inequity, and the caudate/septal subgenual region encodes a unified measure of efficiency and inequity (utility). Notably, individual differences in inequity aversion correlate with activity in inequity and utility regions. Against utilitarianism, our results support the deontological intuition that a sense of fairness is fundamental to distributive justice but, as suggested by moral sentimentalists, is rooted in emotional processing. More generally, emotional responses related to norm violations may underlie individual differences in equity considerations and adherence to ethical rules.

Hse, Anen, & Quartz (2008)

Which country makes most trips to the doctor?

THE Japanese make most visits to the doctor of any rich country. Each person goes 13.8 times a year on average according to the OECD. The high rate could be explained in part by Japan's high ratio of older people who require more care. Americans see a doctor less than four times a year, although the high number people without medical insurance may be a factor. Neighbouring Mexicans are the most doctor-shy.

Story from Economist.com here.

The effects of stress on food choice, mood and bodyweight

This paper examines the effects of stress on the neuroendocrine production of cortisol and links this to potential changes in food choice, mood and bodyweight. Animal and human studies suggest that stressful conditions can result in low mood, increased energy intake, particularly from fatty acids and non-milk extrinsic sugars (NMES), and potential changes in bodyweight.

Roberts '08

EconomicInstrumets.com

EconomicInstruments.com is hosted by the School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy, University College Dublin and supported by UCD, the European Union (Environment Directorate) and ESRI Japan. The objective of the site is to present, in a non-technical fashion, information on the practical use of economic instruments in environmental policy.

Obesity Interventions

"Under a national law that came into effect two months ago, companies and local governments must measure the waistlines of Japanese people ages 40 to 74 as part of their annual checkups. That represents more than 56 million waistlines, or about 44 percent of the population... Those exceeding government limits -- 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women... and suffering from a weight-related ailment will be given dieting guidance if after three months they do not lose weight. If necessary, those people will be steered toward further re-education after six more months."

From the Mises blog.

Eric M. Mindich Conference Videos

The Eric M. Mindich Conference on Computational Social Science was held at Harvard's IQSS last December. All of the talks are now available as vidoes here, incluidng this one (among other things he discusses blogging, bilological science and randomised experiments - he is currently writing up on the largest randomised health policy experiment ever):

Where is social science hitting its limits on BIG problems?
Gary King, Harvard University
(with Nicholas Christakis, Harvard University)

NetMap

According to the Harvard Social Networks Blog, for those using Excel 2007 and Vista, "Microsoft has a rather neat add-in tool that you can download for network visualization, .NetMap. Intriguingly, it includes functionality so that you can convert your e-mail inbox into network data, which you can then visualize." The following is their example of a network image generated from a particular day of e-mail exchanges:

Using Secondary Data from Google Trends!

I have discussed the Google Trends software quite enthusiastically on this blog before, originally here, and more recently here. Now the software has been enhanced to let users get their hands dirty with the secondary data!

Writing here on the Google Research Blog, Heej Hwang from the Google Trends team describes how the latest version of Google Trends can now be used to see how popular search terms vary across geographic regions, cities, and languages. Also, the numbers on the graph can now be downloaded to a spreadsheet. (Note: These functions are only available after you've signed in to your Google Account.)

The Trends data can be downloaded to a .csv file (a common format to import/export data), which can be opened in most spreadsheet applications (or easily converted to do so). When using the export function, there is also the choice of using either relative or fixed scaling (scaled to a specific time range). This last nuance is discussed in the post from the Google Research Blog. I look forward to seeing many interesting papers emerging from this novel data source!

Full Scholarships for US Students to Study in Ireland

FROM THE WEBSITE OF THE US-IRELAND ALLIANCE

http://www.us-irelandalliance.org/wmspage.cfm?parm1=2

Apply now for the 2009-2010 George J. Mitchell Scholarship. The deadline is Midnight, Eastern Daylight Time, Monday, October 6th, 2008.

You have 111 days to submit your application for the 2009-2010 George J. Mitchell Scholarship. The deadline is Monday, October 6th, 2008.

The George J. Mitchell Scholarship is a national competitive award sponsored by the US-Ireland Alliance. Named in honor of the former U.S. Senator's pivotal contribution to the Northern Ireland peace process, the Mitchell is designed to introduce and connect upcoming generations of future American leaders to the island of Ireland, while recognizing and fostering intellectual achievement, leadership, and a commitment to public service and community.

All applications for the Mitchell Scholarship must be submitted electronically through this website. Applicants are encouraged to begin preparing their applications well in advance of the deadline. Supporting documents must be received in our office by Monday, October 6th, 2008.
To create an account, simply fill in the information. An email will be sent to you confirming your registration. Once an account is created, the applicant can save and return to the application to add or amend all responses up until the application is submitted.

The George J. Mitchell Scholarship program welcomes applicants of all backgrounds, regardless of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, physical handicap, or political affiliation.

IIIS Discussion Paper - Are Irish Housholds Rational?

House Prices and Economic Risks - Are Irish Households Rational? Dirk G. Baur and Conor McKeating
IIIS Discussion Paper No. 252
AbstractThis study analyzes the evolution of house prices in Ireland and investigates the question of whether Irish households are overexposed to certain economic risks rendering the decision to buy a house too risky and hence irrational. We use a simple theoretical framework to demonstrate the investment options of a typical household and derive the risk factors associated with the purchase of a house with respect to other types of investment. Irish households hold the majority of their investments in property, specifically in their own houses. The empirical results illustrate that this wealth is exposed to inflation, interest rate changes and the business cycle. This exposure, while not problematic in times of low interest rates, moderate inflation and economic expansion, amplifies the risk to the value of households’ investments if inflation increases, interest rates rise or the economy is in recession. We argue that the adoption of the euro has increased this risk because interest rates are exogenous to the Irish economy which could lead to a situation of deteriorating economic conditions and rising interest rates.. Our findings indicate that Irish households potentially underestimate the risk of buying a house. Viewing the purchase of a house as a risky investment could help reduce private debt in the future.
Keywords:
house prices, economic risk, household investment decisions

JEL classification:
D14, E30, E44

Undergraduates as Researchers

Following on from an earlier post on undergraduate research

http://gearybehaviourcenter.blogspot.com/2008/05/undergraduates-as-researchers.html

the Economics Network also has a useful guide on good practice in this area

http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/handbook/ugresearch/

Irish Taxation Commission

Again, would be worth think about how the recent behavioural literature has an impact on the reform of taxation in Ireland.

http://www.taxcommission.ie/TermsofReference.html

“Having regard to the commitments on economic competitiveness and on taxation contained in the Programme for Government, in particular, the commitments to keep the overall tax burden low and implement further changes to enhance the rewards of work while increasing the fairness of the tax system, to ensure that our regulatory framework remains flexible, proportionate and up to date, to introduce measures to further lower carbon emissions and to phase in on a revenue neutral basis appropriate fiscal measures including a carbon levy over the lifetime of the Government, and the guarantee that the 12.5% rate of corporation tax will remain, the Commission is invited, in the context of maintaining an equitable incidence of taxation and a strong economy, to consider the structure of the taxation system and specifically to consider how best the tax system can support economic activity and promote increased employment and prosperity while providing the resources necessary to meet the cost of public services and other Government outlays in the medium and longer term; consider how best the tax system can encourage long term savings to meet the needs of retirement; examine the balance achieved between taxes collected on income, capital and spending; review all tax expenditures with a view to assessing the economic and social benefits they deliver and to recommend the discontinuation of those that are unjustifiable on cost/benefit grounds; consider options for the future financing of local government, and Investigate fiscal measures to protect and enhance the environment including the introduction of a carbon tax. As the introduction of a carbon tax requires a completely new tax charge and structure, the Commission is asked to commence work in this area immediately. The Commission is requested to report on the results of its examination and consideration and to make such recommendations as, and when, it thinks fit to the Minister for Finance but not later than 30 September 2009”.

Green Paper on Pensions

The Irish Government position on Pensions is set out in the following green paper that was released recently

http://www.pensionsgreenpaper.ie/publications_greenpaper.html

The document discusses, among other things; the demographic transition in Ireland, incentives for increasing pension cover, changing retirement policies, the role of pensions regulation, social welfare reform, defined benefit versus defined contribution pensions.

Its worth reading this document in line with Laibson's lectures and the recent literature on behavioural economics of savings and retirment. John McHale gave a lecture a number of years ago that is still worth reading on how pension policy in Ireland could be informed by behavioural economics

http://www.esri.ie/UserFiles/publications/20061205141407/JACB2005_McHale.pdf

CEP Lectures

http://cep.lse.ac.uk/interviews/default.asp

A great resource from Centre for Economic Performance at LSE. Lectures include

- Laibson on psychology of saving and investment

- Krueger on terrorism

- Krugman on Globalisation

IFS report on education participation

Understanding the determinants of participation in higher education and the quality of institute attended: analysis using administrative data (draft report)

Authors: Haroon Chowdry, Claire Crawford, Lorraine Dearden, Alissa Goodman and Anna Vignoles Publication type: IFS Reports, R69 Publication date: February 2008

Higher education (HE) participation has expanded dramatically in England over the last half century; however, access to HE amongst particular groups of students remains a major policy concern. This report makes use of newly linked administrative data to better understand the determinants of participation in HE - and participation in high status universities - amongst those facing socio-economic disadvantage, those from poorly educated families and ethnic minorities. It is unique in being able to follow a particular cohort of children (all state school children in England in Year 11 in 2001-02) from age 11 right through to age 18.
The findings documented in this report show that while there are large raw gaps in HE participation rates by socio-economic status, these differences disappear once controls for prior attainment are included. This suggests that it is not barriers arising at the point of entry into HE (e.g. borrowing constraints) that are most problematic, but poor attainment in secondary schools. Indeed, if results can be improved between age 11 and age 16, those from poorer backgrounds are at least as likely to go on to university as their more advantaged peers. By contrast, most ethnic minority groups are now significantly more likely to participate in HE than their White British counterparts.

Please note: this is a draft report; a full report will be published in June 2008.
Full document / more information [127 KB]

Guide to Blogging in Economics

From the Economics Network of the Higher Education Academy

http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/showcase/ayres_blogs.htm

Africa Development Indicators

From the UCD Library Website - newly available from library on a trial basis

Africa Development Indicators (ADI)A

Africa Development Indicators is the premier data source on the African economy. It contains over 1,000 indicators and time series from 1965 for 53 countries. Data include social, economic, financial, natural resources, infrastructure, governance, partnership, and environmental indicators.

Using Google Trends to Analyse Economic Sentiment Via Search Engine Behaviour

Gord Hotchkiss has an interseting and wide-ranging article about emotions, search engine technology and economic sentiment on searchengineland.com - "Human Hardware: Risk vs Reward, Expressed through Search". Hotchkiss talks about how our moods drive our actions.

"If we’re in a good mood and looking to acquire, we will be considering purchases. Consideration requires information, which will often be sought through a search engine... There’s the consideration that happens when my washing machine dies and I decide to buy a new one this weekend. But then there’s a much more subtle, much more emotional consideration that is prevalent when the nation’s mood is running high."

Hotchkiss also asks - what if our mood turns to anxiety about the future? "We still search, but we search for different things. We search for information needed to help us weather the storm. Or, we search out of a desperate desire need to know just how bad things are." To illustrate, Hotchkiss presents the following Google Trend graph which shows the relative search volume and news coverage volume of "house plans" (blue line) and "foreclosures" (red line) in America over the last few years:


The use of the Google Trends software to analyse economic sentiment via search engine behaviour (over the economic cycle) is a further demonstration of how useful the software is. The novelty of doing research with Google Trends was discussed on the blog before (here).

Behavioural Economics

From the Nudge Blog

"It’s one thing to write a book. It’s another thing to generate some book sales. It’s another thing entirely to get a Beltway resident, particularly one with enhanced voting rights (ie. a member of Congress), to take your ideas seriously. Despite all the knocks on do-nothing politicians, Washington is awash in ideas. A majority of politicians just don’t like most of them.
One crude measure of attention is a mention in the Congressional Record. The word “economics” has appeared 1,420 times since January 2005. The phrase “behavioral economics” has appeared once.**"

I dont think this will come as a huge surprise but, just for the record, i searched the Irish debates in our houses of parliament and cant find a reference to it. While "behavioural change" strategies are prominent in many debates about transport and the environment, the reference are to public relations campaigns primarily.

http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/

Economists and Community

If you were interested in Stephen Marglin's book on how Economics undermines community then the following attack of it recently published in Science is worth reading.

here

The final line gives a hint as to the direction of the argument.

"I note in closing that the lead dust-jacket blurb for this volume was provided by the noted economist and social theorist Bianca Jagger (sic). Whatever was Harvard University Press thinking?"

Weintraubs critique is difficult to fully parse. He is mostly suggesting that Marglin just hasnt read enough about the history of economic thought to build up a proper argument and thus has presented in his book an oversimplified and static account of economics when in fact the development of economics contains many layers.

It would be good to see someone actually attack also the core premise that economics undermines community. There is a large literature on whether studying or working in economics leads one to be more selfish and the results are not nearly as conclusive as some people believe. See, for example the reference below. However, it is a different question as to whether the focus on individuals as being responsive to monetary incentives as opposed to ethical systems can undermine institutions. Its not a trivial idea and it would be good to see a full critique by an economist who disagrees with Marglin's core premise rather than the methodology.

Frey and Meier, 2003 B.S. Frey and S. Meier, Are political economists selfish and indoctrinated? Evidence from a natural experiment, Economic Inquiry 41 (3) (2003), pp. 448–462. Full Text via CrossRef View Record in Scopus Cited By in Scopus (15)

Frey et al., 1993 B.S. Frey, W.W. Pommmerehne and B. Gygi, Economic indoctrination or selection? Some empirical results, Journal of Economic Education 24 (1993), pp. 271–281. Full Text via CrossRef


PS He references the following book that sounds very worth reading

W. O. Coleman, "Economics and Its Enemies: Two Centuries of Anti-Economics (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2002)."

50 Euro Notes and Self-Control

A recent IZA discussion paper - "Fungibility, Labels, and Consumption" (by Johannes Abeler and Felix Marklein) - discusses how the fungibility of money is a central principle in economics. The principle implies that any unit of money is substitutable for another and that the composition of income is irrelevant for consumption. However, a number of issues arise in relation to this issue. The first is whether the more relevant explanation is self-control: do some people find it hard not to spend an entire 50 euro note if it is in their wallet? One commitment device may be to only carry smaller denominations that are more in line with budget constraints.

Of course, another issue is that commitment devices imposed at the time of cash withdrawal at ATM machines shouldn't really matter in this age of credit-card and debit-card finance. Abeler and Marklein find that many people do not treat money as fungible - "When a label is attached to a part of their budget, subjects change consumption according to the suggestion of the label... The findings lend support to behavioral models such as narrow bracketing or mental accounting." However, it is debatable as to whether the labelling issue in the fungibility experiment translates to everyday scenarios. This is due to the presence of credit in real-world financial decision-making. Furthermore, the issue of self-control might be more salient than labelling in everyday scenarios.

Why Women Do Better in College

Posner discusses gender issues in higher education on the Becker-Posner blog (here). He asks why there are proportionately more women going to college and outperforming male students. He suggests one answer which is that women may get more out of college than men do. "Maybe they gravitate to fields in which college learning is more valuable than it is in the fields that men gravitate to. Suppose that men have a comparative advantage (as they probably do) in jobs that involve danger, disagreeable working conditions, upper-body strength (of course), and financial risk. Those are jobs to which going to college, or in some instances (such as financial risk taking) concentrating once there on academic performance, may not contribute a great deal."

New IZA Paper on Risk Aversion

A new IZA WP on risk aversion by Christian Pfeifer provides more evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Details below.

A Note on Risk Aversion and Labour Market Outcomes: Further Evidence from German Survey Data

Using the large-scale German Socio-Economic Panel, this note reports direct empirical evidence for significant correlations between risk aversion and labour market outcomes (full-time employment, temporary agency work, fixed-term contracts, employer change, quits, training, wages, and job satisfaction).

Friday 13th

A study published on Thursday by the Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics (CVS) showed that fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday than on other Fridays. "I find it hard to believe that it is because people are preventatively more careful or just stay home, but statistically speaking, driving is a little bit safer on Friday 13th," CVS statistician Alex Hoen told the Verzekerd insurance magazine.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080612/od_nm/luck_odd_dc

New RAND Study on Education

A new RAND Study provides a primer for using economics to help guide early childhood policy initiatives. "Such research could promote a reorientation of child and human services toward investment and prevention, moving away from the current system that seeks to “treat” problems that develop later in life, according to the report." More details about the report are available here, and the document (by M. Rebecca Kilburn and Lynn A. Karoly) is available here.

Multiple selves or willpower?

For me, explaining and resolving revealed conflicting preferences is the great contribution that behavioural economics has to make. An excellent alternative to the multiple selves model (Ambrus and Rozen 2008, see Martin's post below) is Ozdenoren et al's "Willpower and the control of Visceral Urges" (2006). They extend the conventional discounted utility model to incorporate willpower. Behaviours that appear incompatible with orthodox intertemporal decision theory, such as saving the best til last, are explained by modelling willpower as a depletable resource, the stock of which can be uncertain. Unlike the multiple selves model, which points to a discontinuity and throws its hands in the air, the willpower model is tractable.

Abstract
Psychologists and behavioral economists have documented that individuals often make intertemporal choices that are inconsistent with the conventional economic model. To explain intertemporal choices better, psychologists have offered, and provided experimental support for, a “willpower depletion” model which predicts that a person who exerts self-discipline in one activity will behave as if he has less self discipline available to exert in other activities. We formalize a willpower depletion model and investigate how willpower constraints affect the canonical problem of how to divide a cake (or paycheck or workload) over time to maximize utility. We find that a consumer behaving optimally subject to willpower constraints acts in ways that others have described as anomalous. This consumer reveals a preference for increasing paths of consumption, a preference for commitment, and time-inconsistency in preferences. We also study the optimal allocation of willpower between the intertemporal saving activity and other activities that require self-discipline. Finally, we show how the ability to build willpower by its exercise further influences the optimal path of consumption.

What is the behavioral in behavioral economics?

Last week I attended the workshop "What is the behavioral in behavioral economics?", held at Trento in Northern Italy. The papers and posters were interesting and the debate was good so it was quite a useful session.

Erik Angner, Assistant Professor in Philosophy and Economics at University of Alabama at Birmingham gave a very interesting presentation. Angner's primary interests are in the history and philosophy of social science, and he has also written in relation to the measurement of subjective well-being (for example, here). With George Loewenstein, he is currently writing a book manuscript with the preliminary title Foundations of Behavioral Economics, which is to be published by Princeton University Press. Angner also has a working paper that develops a model of student performance.

It was a collaborative effort with Loewenstein that Angner presented in Trento - "What is the relationship between neoclassical and behavioral theory?". Some of the content from the talk is covered in this SSRN paper (forthcoming in Philosophy of Economics) by Loewenstein and Angner: "Behavioral Economics". In this paper, the authors discuss the historical origins of, and the specific form taken by, behavioral economics. I'll give some more comments on it at a later stage.

Early Birds Get Better Grades

College students who are "morning people" may have a higher chance of graduating near the top of their class. In a study at a Texas university, early birds had an average grade point average (GPA) that was a full point higher than night owls: 3.5 vs. 2.5. Read more about this story here on CBS News. The researchers at Texas University offer some thoughts as to why morning people do so much better.

"One possibility is that it's easier to get to your classes on time and study if you get up earlier... And, if you go to bed early, you'll be less tempted to go out drinking or engage in other activities that can have negative influences on academic performance... (Furthermore)... you may be able to improve your grades by making yourself more of a morning person..."

Also mentioned in the CBS News article is a paper University of Colorado researchers which reported that college students who suffer from insomnia and other sleep problems tend to have lower GPAs.

Some Interesting Google Blogs

I recently discovered that Google are behind a lot of interesting blogs. You can see the full range of these offerings on the sidebars of the blogs that I link to in this post. The first one I saw was the Google Public Policy Blog, Google's views on governmnet, policy and politics. The most recent post in that blog is by Iarla Flynn, the European Policy Manager at Google Ireland, and it discusses the upcoming vote by Irish citizens on the Lisbon Treaty.

Another Google Blog that caught my eye is the Google Finance Blog, which provides news and views from the team at Google Finance. The most recent post on that blog, by Matthew Simmons (Google Market Data Gnome) describes "how real-time last sale prices for NASDAQ listed stocks are now available on Google Finance and other Google search properties - prices will update automatically, once per second, to reflect current market conditions."

Finally, the main Google Research Blog covers some of the issues that are broached on the aforementioned blogs, plus more. I've put this and Google's Public Policy Blog on the blogroll below. A post on the Google Research Blog from the 6th June (here) picks up on the debate about ways to save on gas and avoid driving, with the suggested tactic to encourage take-up of public transportation (Dave C might be interested in this).

Furthermore, the 6th June post describes how Google are working with public transportation agencies to get bus and train schedules, and integrate this information into Google Maps. They have just launched transit directions in Google Maps for mobile so that people can get this information when they are out and about in more than 50 cities across the globe. "Right now transit directions are available on the latest Google Maps for mobile release on BlackBerry and many Java-based phones." For more details, see the Google Mobile Blog.

IZA Discussion Paper - Schools, Skills, and Synapses

Schools, Skills, and Synapses

James J. Heckman(May 2008)

Abstract:This paper discusses (a) the role of cognitive and noncognitive ability in shaping adult outcomes, (b) the early emergence of differentials in abilities between children of advantaged families and children of disadvantaged families, (c) the role of families in creating these abilities, (d) adverse trends in American families, and (e) the effectiveness of early interventions in offsetting these trends. Practical issues in the design and implementation of early childhood programs are discussed. Text: See Discussion Paper No. 3515

Yes, You Can, Derive

Thanks to Stephen Kinsella for linking up to this audio-visual treat:
http://www.stephenkinsella.net/2008/05/24/i-will-derive/

Blogs and Democracy

A very interesting debate (thanks to Nudge blog for pointing this out) about whether blogs are good for democratic engagement is available on the link below. Linking behaviour on blogs to counter-views is seen as an important pattern of behaviour in the role of blogging in democracy. Susstein also gives some interesting views on how self-regulation might improve the blogosphere. Volokh gives also some strong points on the importance of not censoring blogs and the improvement blogs can bring in terms of democratic debate

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/11548

ESRI Seminar

ESRI Research Seminar
Knowledge-intensive Clusters, Regional Innovation Systems and New Policy Approaches

Dr. Michaela Trippl
Institute for Regional Development and Environment
Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration
Email: michaela.trippl@wu-wien.ac.at

In the last years, a substantial body of research has shown that the regional level plays a key role for the generation of new knowledge and its economic exploitation. Essential contributions in this respect have been made by the regional innovation systems (RIS) approach and conceptual work on knowledge-intensive clusters, which highlight the crucial importance of spatial proximity and favourable institutional structures at the regional level for innovation activities. A key objective of the presentation will be to provide an overview on the current debate on the foundations of regional innovation. The presentation will be divided into two parts. The theoretical part will deal with the rise in importance of RIS and knowledge-intensive clusters in the emerging knowledge economy. Special attention will be given to the nature and geography of knowledge linkages which are regarded as crucial elements of RIS and high-technology clusters. Furthermore, the character of new innovation policy approaches in stimulating a dynamic development of cities and regions will be discussed. The empirical part will deal with the metropolitan RIS of Vienna. It will present the key results of a recently finished research project on innovation and knowledge linkages in the Vienna software cluster. Moreover, the nature of ongoing changes of the RIS and the role of innovation policy in promoting Vienna’s transformation into a “regional knowledge economy” will be analysed.
Venue: The ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2
Date and Time: Thursday 12 June 2008, at 4:00 p.m.

Details of forthcoming ESRI Seminars can be found at WWW.ESRI.IE

Revealed Conflicting Preferences

A new Harvard working paper by Ambrus and Rozen (2008), "Revealed Conflicting Preferences", examines preference revelation in the context of a multiple-self model. An interesting read for myself, Michael and Dave C who are planning a symposium related to research like this in the future. The paper is largely mathematical but resolves around the concept of IIA (indpendence of Irrelevant Alternatives); this concept is also used by micro-econometricians when testing in the multinomial choice model, so there is a case for trying to master a theory paper like this. Abstract below.

"We consider the use of multiple selves or rationales for rationalizing choice functions that may violate axioms of rationality, when the relationship between the choice set and how conflicting preferences are aggregated is made explicit. For a broad class of preference aggregators, we show that the number of selves required to rationalize a choice function is at most a linear function of the number of violations of the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA) that the choice function exhibits. In particular, any choice function can be rationalized with a finite number of selves using any of the aggregators belonging to this class. Applying this framework to choice over menus, we examine the revealed preference implications of anticipated IIA violations."

Rockonomics and superstar effects

Alan Krueger investigates the economics of the rock industry. Some findings that jump out:
The top 5% of bands take in 84% of concert ticket revenue, up from 62% 25 years ago
The four biggest music promoters (Universal, Sony BMG, Warner, EMI) handle over 90% of the within-market revenue!
The number of concert tickets being sold appears stable or decreasing whereas revenue from ticket sales is increasing substantially: Concert tickets are rapidly becoming very expensive!
The real price of home audio equipment has more than halved in the last 25 years
The return to increasing one standard deviation in "star quality" has increased significantly over the last 25 years, partially explaining the recent clammering for stardom (anyone see the BB9 auditions,,,shiver!)

Krueger presentation

From NUIG Website

WORKSHOP: Empirical Analysis of Suicidal Behaviour

A workshop on analysing suicidal behaviour will be held in the Department of Economics, NUI Galway on June 18th, 2008. The workshop will begin at 9.00 a.m. The aim of the workshop is to present empirical research whose focus is the explanation of suicidal behaviour. The venue is Room 116 in the Cairnes Building which is located on the North Campus of NUI Galway. For further information about the workshop please email Brendan Kennelly at brendan.kennelly@nuigalway.ie or ring 091 493094. The number of people attending the workshop is limited and people are required to register their interest in attending the workshop with Brendan Kennelly before the workshop. People attending will be expected to have a good understanding of econometric or statistical techniques.

SPEAKERS
1. Mary Daly (Federal Reserve Bank, San Francisco): Relative Status and Well-Being: Evidence from U.S. Suicide Deaths

2. Antonio Rodríguez (Universidad de Castilla La Mancha): Political institutions and suicide: An empirical analysis of data from Switzerland and the U.S.

3. Paul Corcoran (National Suicide Research Foundation): TBA

4. Ella Arensman (National Suicide Research Foundation): TBA

5. Eoghan Garvey and Brendan Kennelly (NUI Galway): The Determinants of Suicide in the OECD: Time Trends and Time Series Analysis for Panel Data

6. Liam Delaney, Kevin Malone and Emer Carey O'Loughlin (UCD): Explaining recent trends in female suicide rates in Ireland

Aristotle's Ethics

Thanks to Dave C., who did a very good job of navigating us all through the Theory of Moral Sentiments.

On the 23rd June at 7pm in the same venue (Ashton's Clonskeagh) I will moderate the next one. As well as being a bugger for the bottle, Aristotle wrote many works that are frequently invoked as being strong ancient influences on economic thought. All of his books, by their nature, have relevance to economics but some can be thought of as more directly relevant than others.

Rather than discuss the Politics, i would like instead to discuss the Nicomachean Ethics which carries on from the theme of ancient books that are now increasingly relevant as economics looks more to behavioural foundations. In particular, the Ethics contains some very famous discussions of happiness and how to live a good life that echo very strongly in modern discussions around well-being, procedural justice etc., Indeed, Michael posted recently about some papers that direcly incorporate some Aristotlean concepts

http://gearybehaviourcenter.blogspot.com/2008/05/hedonic-adaptation-and-role-of-decision.html


A hardcopy can be purchased anywhere and a free soft-copy is available below

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html

A model for relating the impact of environmental characteristics on health

Causal inference regarding the impact of place on health is constrained by limited attention to the biological plausibility of associations. The utility of such evidence also requires demonstrating that place-based exposures precede effects on health. We propose a conceptual framework that integrates time and two plausible biosocial pathways by which the geospatial clustering of social disadvantage might be viewed as causally related to the development of cardiovascular and
glycemic disease. The framework distinguishes environmental risk conditions that condition the expression of individual behavioural and psychosocial characteristics, and socioeconomic
and material conditions that influence regulatory systems through conscious and non-conscious mechanisms.

Daniel et al. (2008)

Preferences for the blog

If we were going to find out how much people valued the blog, the recent literature would suggest a number of strategies as well as asssessing satisfaction.

(i) A simple mechanism would be to count number of users times length of time stayed on and to place a time valuation using this

(ii) The blog is free and a public good and instead we could experiment with subscription charges (not planned!) to estimate a demand curve.

(iii) Rather than using an actual market, we could ask people hypothetically how much they would be willing to pay to subscribe to the blog

(iv) we could examine which brain areas are active when people are reading the blog (and see if these change if we pretend that the author of the blog is a nobel-winner!)

(v) We could randomly assign a group of people at time t in to a condition where they promise to view the blog each day and examine whether they are happier than a control group at time t+1.

(vi) We could set up a hurdle to getting in to the blog (e.g cumbersome log-in) and examine the effect on site-views.

(vii) We could get a population data-set from a Scandinavian country and examine whether birth outcomes of children born immediately before and immediately after the blog was available in this country were systematically different.

(viii) We could ask people the things that they value most in their life and analyse how the blog fares in the answers

Or i could simply get back to work!

Mechanisms for Assessing Preferences and Satisfaction for Publicly Provided Goods in Ireland

Information about performance of public services as assessed by the users is not in very large supply in Ireland. Like most areas of life where information is rationed, many alternative forms spring up in its wake

I have a brief list here of the different types available in Ireland and have added this post to the permalinks on the side. If any others come to mind, please add them to the comments and i will put them on the post. As well as websites and regular inspections, many departments of course conduct surveys and polls at different intervals and I dont try to record all of these.


Unofficial Sites
One of the most prominent is Ratemyteachers. This allows students and former students to give their teachers grades and to make comments. These are publicly displayed on a website that anyone can view

http://www.ratemyteacher.ie/

A website called Irishhealth.com offers several methods for users to recall their experience of various aspecst of the Irish health system. One feature of the site is "Rate My Hospital". Over 12,000 people have recorded votes for the hospitals and ranking analyses are available as standard on the site.

http://www.irishhealth.com/

http://www.irishhealth.com/hospital/

There is a real question about how reliable these type of data can be viewed. Clearly, there is the possibility that only people who are trying to make a statement will use them or people who have a direct interest (e.g. if you are a teacher would it not be possible to spend a few hours on different computers singing your own praises? - judging from the site about 20 ratings would be enough to tip the balance in your favour!)

Official Government Sites

The Health Information and Quality Authority provides statisical information on quality of care in Ireland. Details of their work is available on the site below

http://www.hiqa.ie/

School Inspection Reports from the Department of Education can also be viewed

http://www.education.ie/insreports/school_inspection_report_listing.htm

From RWJF Alerts - Resarch leading to Policy

RWJF Announces $300-Million Commitment to Improve Quality of U.S. Health Care
Disparities in the Quality of Care Spur Nation’s Largest Health Care Philanthropy to Attack the Problem in 14 Communities Across AmericaWith increasing reports of dangerous deficiencies in the quality of health care, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is making a $300-million commitment to improve quality in regions across the United States. The commitment to improve health care in 14 communities—together covering 11 percent of the U.S. population—is the largest effort of its kind ever undertaken by a U.S. philanthropy. Known as Aligning Forces for Quality, the community-focused program aims to lift the overall quality of health care, reduce racial and ethnic disparities and provide models for national reform.
Underscoring the scope of the problem, RWJF also released new research showing that the quality of care people receive can vary dramatically depending on their race and where they live. The new research, conducted by the Dartmouth Atlas Project at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice for the Aligning Forces for Quality initiative, analyzes Medicare claims to illustrate staggering variations in health care quality across the country. Researchers examined five different measures of care at the state level and in the 14 Aligning Forces for Quality communities.
Read the news release.
Download the report.

Edge: World question centre

Leading thinkers discuss/disclose when they have been forced to change their mind on their theories, including this piece by Kahneman on "the sad tale of the aspiration treadmill".

Kahneman mentions the Gallup World Poll which was posted on here before. Gallup don't do things by halves polling well over a 100,000 people and representatingof 95% of the worlds population they showed a correlation of over .4 between GDP and life-satisfaction. Hard figures to argue against though it doesn't completely discount the Easterlin paradox of diminishing returns to GDP increases.

The Age of Milton Friedman

Andrei Schiefer (who is the world's most cited economist) reviews two books on evidence on the success of market mechanism. A version of the paper from his site is below

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/shleifer/files/friedman3.3.pdf


Ireland features in a paragraph in the essay including quotes from ESRI researchers in a recent edited volume by Balcerowicz and Fisher. Below are two illustrative quotes from Schleifer himself.

"As much as any other country in the world, Ireland embraced the prescriptions of Milton Friedman: trade openness, low taxes, low regulations, and balanced budgets."

"Starting as one of Western Europe’s laggards, became the richest country of the region in the span of one generation."

Does Ireland really illustrate the success of market mechanisms? We certainly lowered taxes, got down the budget deficits and got rid of many anti-business regulations but in general Ireland is still very centrally guided in many core areas.

When you think of how big a role the Irish state places in direct provision of services (we still publish very large documents that are the equivalent of central medium term plans for infrastructure, education, research, health services etc.,) , as well as coordinating research investment, promoting exports etc., its hard to claim that Ireland is a model of the benefits of decentralised decision making. Also, the role of EU structural funds, flows of money from access to EU financial markets, access to US technology (facilitated strongly by direct Irish state coordination) have also been put forward as reasons for rapid growth. This is not to say that we might even do better if we follow Friedman and Schliefer and get the government out of even more things but the last 15 years is definitely not a clean experiment in the use of market mechanisms to stimulate growth. Based on the current evidence from Ireland, it would be hard to disprove that centralised agreements stimulate growth. The model of the state as a predator certainly seems to capture some features of the Irish economy during the darker days but is harder to reconcile with the creation of bodies like IDA, Enterprise Ireland etc.,

Much of Ireland's current strategy is predicated on the idea that we stimulate foreign direct investment through massive state financed research and development initiatives. The Strategy for Science Technology and Innovation is below and while it certainly offers a number of measures to stimulate private sector innovation, it is clearly also heavily driven by ideas of centralised mechanisms to plan sectoral growth and even direct government provision of large scale research infrastructure and knowledge. While the overall emphasis on being competitive is certainly in keeping with Friedman this document and other core Irish policy documents are far more optimistic about the role of the state as being a fundamental mechanism for directly coordinating activity toward improving competitiveness. The outcome of this latest incarnation of Irish economic policy will be of huge interest to economists.

http://www.sciencecouncil.ie/reports/acsti060618/060618_asc_ssti_report_webopt.pdf

Behavior Modification

For those of us working in public policy, the journal "Behavior Modification" provides reviews of a broad range of techniques and interventions used to alter behaviour in a wide variety of domains. Scanning recent issues, there are reviews of environmental interventions, such as the impact of advertising on body image, and many evaluating micro interventions such as mindfulness and cognitive behavioural training. Well worth a look

A Carbon Tax For Ireland

A new ESRI working paper proposes a carbon tax for Ireland

http://www.esri.ie/UserFiles/publications/20080603145207/WP246.pdf

Interdisciplinary Series at Geary

For the last two years, we have run an interdisciplinary at the Geary Institute as part of the Behaviour and Health programme. This is broader than the Tuesday Geary series and generally attracts work that is more exploratory. The seminar is also conducted in a more informal workshop atmosphere. It accomodates diverse types of forum such as journal clubs, work-in-progress presentations, peer learning sessions, topic reviews etc., as well as traditional paper sessions.

The link to the seminars that have been conducted previously are below:

http://geary.ucd.ie/behaviour/index.php/Home/Interdisciplinary-Seminar-Series.html

We will be picking the pace back up on this series over the summer and in to the next term. There will not be a regular time-slot for this and in general, I am happy to take proposals from anyone who wishes to give a workshop. I will distribute the announcements with as much notice as possible on the Geary list.

Please email me over the summer if you would like to contribute a session to this series or have suggestions.

ESRI Policy Seminar

“Education Policy Under the Scottish Parliament”

Prof. David Raffe
Centre for Educational Sociology, University of Edinburgh

The Scottish Parliament was established in 1999 with devolved powers including education and training. However, Scotland already had its own education system, which had been administered separately under the UK government. Policy since 1999 has been a mixture of innovation (charting new policy directions), continuity (maintaining pre-existing policy directions) and avoidance (resisting policy directions favoured by the UK government). This presentation will review recent Scottish policy in five areas of education and training: the organisation of secondary schools; the curriculum; qualifications; student funding; and skills strategy. It aims to provide educationists and those interested in policy with a flavour of current Scottish developments. It also offers a provisional assessment of the impact of devolution within the UK on Scottish policy, and the issues raised by this experience.

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

Date and Time: Thursday 5th June 2008, at 4 p.m.


Details of forthcoming ESRI Seminars can be found at http://www.esri.ie/

Donating our time

How important is pro-social behaviour in the delivery of public services?
Date:
2008-05
By:

Paul Gregg Paul A. Grout Anita Ratcliffe Sarah Smith Frank Windmeijer
URL:
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bri:cmpowp:07/197&r=cbe

A number of papers have posited that there is a relationship between institutional structure and pro-social behaviour, in particular donated labour, in the delivery of public services, such as health, social care and education. However, there has been very little empirical research that attempts to measure whether such a relationship exists in practice. This is the aim of this paper. Including a robust set of individual and job-specific controls, we find that individuals in the non-profit sector are significantly more likely to donate their labour, measured by unpaid overtime, than those in the for-profit sector. We can reject that this difference is simply due to implicit contracts or social norms. We find some evidence that individuals differentially select into the non-profit and for-profit sectors according to whether they donate their labour.

Keywords:
pro-social behaviour; public services; donated labour; motivation
JEL:
H11 J32 J45 L31 L32

Black Market Economics in Ireland

The Irish National Accounts are below

http://www.cso.ie/statistics/nationalacc.htm

The estimates for public expenditure are here

http://www.finance.gov.ie/ViewDoc.asp?DocId=-1&CatID=13&m=f

If you look around the CSO websites, you can get a rough idea of how much money and people are in the legal part of the economy. However, there is a lot less known about the hidden part of the economy.

In general, there has been little influence of economics on the debate in crime in Ireland with law and sociology being the dominant disciplines in the field along with psychology. This might make sense but there is still a big gap in our understanding of the economic aspects of criminal markets and too few papers being circulated on the topic. Below are just some random links that might stimulate someone thinking of potential topics for next year.

Steven Levitt's homepage contains downloadable copies of his papers that offer several methodologies for examining illicit markets.

http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/home.html

The publications of the UCD Institute of Criminology are below and there is much useful data here.

http://www.ucd.ie/criminol/Publications.htm

http://www.esr.ie/Vol34_3OSullivan.pdf


The National Crime Council offer a literature list

http://www.irlgov.ie/crimecouncil/research_cri.html


The Irish Crime Figures can be found here

http://www.garda.ie/annreport.html


A review of the economics of crime is given below

http://ideas.repec.org/h/eee/labchp/3-52.html


A number of topics are relevant in terms of economics of crime in Ireland that we now little about.


Drug Consumption is detailed in a number of descriptive works such as the one below.

“NACD and DAIRU (2003) Drug use in Ireland and Northern Ireland: First results from the 2002–2003 drug prevalence study. Bulletin 1. Dublin: National Advisory Committee on Drugs (NACD) and Drug and Alcohol Information and Research Unit, (DAIRU).”

http://www.nacd.ie/publications/documents/Bulletin1CIFinal.pdf
http://www.irlgov.ie/crimecouncil/research_dru.html

Prostitution: Several recent economics papers have outlined theories of prostitution.

http://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/v110y2002i1p181-214.html

http://ideas.repec.org/p/rdg/emxxdp/em-dp2004-13.html

In terms of economic crimes:

Fuel Smuggling is widely discussed in the media.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/1219/northcrime.html?rss

Burglary in Ireland is analysed in the following working paper by Denny et al

http://www.ucd.ie/geary/publications/2004/crime.pdf

Crime Gangs are widely discussed in the popular media and in a number of books. Levitt's work on this is widely known.

Hedonomics: Bridging Decision Research With Happiness Research

Hedonomics studies (a) relationships between presentations (how a given set of outcomes are arranged among themselves or relative to other outcomes) and happiness and (b) relationships between choice (which option among alternative options one chooses) and happiness.

Findings are reviewed by Hsee et al. (2008)

Neural correlates of mentalizing-related computations during strategic interactions in humans

Abstract: "Competing successfully against an intelligent adversary requires the ability to mentalize an opponent’s state of mind to anticipate his/her future behavior. Although much is known about what brain regions are activated during mentalizing, the question of how this function is implemented has received little attention to date. Here we formulated a computational model describing the capacity to mentalize in games. We scanned human subjects with functional MRI while they participated in a simple two-player strategy game and correlated our model against the functional MRI data. Different model components captured activity in distinct parts of the mentalizing network. While medial prefrontal cortex tracked an individual’s expectations given the degree of model predicted influence, posterior superior temporal sulcus was found to correspond to an influence update signal, capturing the difference between expected and actual influence exerted. These results suggest dissociable contributions of different parts of the mentalizing network to the computations underlying higher-order strategizing in humans."

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/105/18/6741

The computational models for reinforcement learning are worth a look over also, there's a lot of thought condensed into these two pages! http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/105/18/6741

Prof. John O'Doherty will be discussing 'Model based analysis of fMRI' at the Mathematics Applications Consortium for Science and Industry(MACSI) at TCD on Wednesday 4th June, the room is the Salmon Lecture Theatre, Hamilton Building.http://www.tcd.ie/Maps/hamilton.html

Prof Andrew Oswald on economics, psychology, medicine, and the study of well-being

Happiness, health, and economics- Oswald talks about focusing effects and happiness, lag in impact of positive events on happinesss, how the mind may influence the body and health, how blood pressure, heart rate, cortisol can be used as proxy's for well-being. In relation to the potential diminishing returns to real income identified in several data sources including the world values survey and concludes that "economists have probably been wrong to believe that economic growth makes us happier", "policy in the coming century will need to concentrate on non-materialistic goals", so GNH not GDP, Kruegar & Kahneman would agree. Some obvious target points are economic disadvantage levels, subjective positive experiences and life appraisals, and the promotion of enjoyed activities, the best of which based on minimal unpleasantness index scores in the US and France are walking, making love, exercise, and playing... so more of this is clearly needed! Spending 21% of your life in the most unpleasant activity of all, work, doesn't help either so making work more like play may be the best option...

Prof. Oswald publications: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/oswald/

Techno-surveillance visualisation

Stamen design produce travel time maps, self-reported crime maps, property development mapping and numerous other innovative ideas and brilliant visualisations. I particulary like the cabspotting project where an arterial network of human movement through san francisco is mapped through time and split by cab speed to produce striking images.

For research, starting with an analysis of existing gps and fare pickup data generated by inbuilt taxi technology and subsequently integrating a non-invasive heart and galvanic skin monitoring system (e.g. through a specially designed cover wrapped around the steering wheel) would produce an account of both taxi driver well-being based on traffic impedance, time of day, length of shift, and influence of the passenger based on area/time of pickup, and this study would also produce an account of the movement of people throughout the city at different time points.

Addictomatic.com

I took a few minutes to play with the applications linked on the summize site

I liked Addictomatic - it essentially pools all the different types of searches together. im sure the techies among us could point to other (and maybe better ways of doing this) but this was pretty informative for me (even to see how many different ways of putting things on the net there exists. Would be worth someone finding (or doing a review) of the academic search engines like scholar, web of science etc., how fast are these moving?

http://addictomatic.com/

Twistori is interesting and you could see how this type of thing would have research applications to emotion researchers. They focus on basic emotions as well as thinking and belief.

http://twistori.com/

The basic summize search is interesting. I dont know how much has been done to use these as tracking tools in things like risk perception research. We are doing traditional style media monitoring for one of the projects and its pretty cumbersome (but as Martin pointed out likely to be representative of a bigger audience although I keep an open mind on this)

http://summize.com/

We think- The power of mass creativity

Charles Leadbeater, a leading thinker on innovation and creativity puts himself ahead of the competition in the popular management/economics literature by embodying his 'you are what you share' moto, placing the first 3 chapters of his new book 'we think' on his website.

He gives novel examples of how communities can generate ideas towards solving complex problems such as the 'i love bees' game where thousands of gamers shared insights generated through clues distributed in the network to form plans which eventually resulted in a synchronised wave of 'ah-ha' moments to solve the problem.

Leadbeater's insights are charmingly conveyed: to achieve the venerable zenith of frontier thinking and innovation your company only needs four people; a computer nerd, an academic, a hippy, and a peasant.... though any liberal blogger phd student from rural Ireland knows that. In this way the knowledge of villages is conveyed, elaborated on with scepticism, and the ideas are tested before being released into the 'wild' of the internet and given life by computer nerds. Nice!

Here is a link to his TED talk

He talks about the mountain bike as an entity emerging from collaboration rather than a lone genius, or a large corporation. My personal favourite example in this realm is the 2007 Noble prize for medicine shared by Capecchi, Evans, & Smithies, for the 'invention' of the knock-out mouse by combining methods pioneered by individual researchers who then modied genes in embryonic stem cells and injected those cells into fertilized mouse eggs to make it possible to rear mice with discrete genetic modifications that would be inherited between generations (see Noble Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2007).

He disagrees somewhat with the idea that clusters of creative individuals in 'special' places such as cities is the best way to generate innovation as this model does not give appropriate weight to the consumer as co-producer of the product and the idea of 'invention through technology usage'. He uses the phrase 'pro-ams' to incorporate those who take their leisure pasttimes quite seriously and generate ideas which are personally important to them, and which they are willing to share. Consumer driven innovation and the user as producer models are clearly best seen in the main microsoft competitors, systems such as Linux, Firefox etc.

However, generalising this model to other forms of production is the main problem that I haven't seen answered yet. Anyone who has listened to the Ray Darcy show on Today FM in the mornings, whether or not this is something you like(!), will know that the user as producer model can definitely generalise to other medias if enabled by a structured system and a group of open-minded facilitators.

In social science research we have consumers as designers to some extent in that qualitatively assessed ideas are embedded in quantitative tools. But there is more here in terms of the value of consumer feedback for intervention and theory testing and modification.

Hypertension and happiness across nations

From Blanchflower & Oswald 'Journal of Health Economics' '08

Data from the ESS, Eurotrends, and Eurobarometer are used to test the relationship between well-being and reported hypertension:

In surveys of well-being, countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands emerge as particularly happy while nations like Germany and Italy report lower levels of happiness. But are these kinds of findings credible? This paper provides some evidence that the answer is yes. Using data on 16 countries, it shows that happier nations report systematically lower levels of hypertension. As well as potentially validating the differences in measured happiness across nations, this suggests that blood-pressure readings might be valuable as part of a national well-being index. A new ranking of European nations’ GHQ-N6 mental health scores is also given.