Stats is Cool, Yet Again

This is an article from a couple of months ago in the NY Times; recommending the benefits of a grounding in statistics for graduate students.

The Obama Jobs Summit

In yesterday's NY Times it was reported that there are six key areas for discussion at this Thursday's Obama Jobs Summit. These areas are: innovative and green jobs, small business incentives, long-range infrastructure plans, encouraging export-oriented businesses, government and private sector partnerships and training for the jobs of the future. Besides members of the business community, attendees will include several economists, including Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, and Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University.

Long-Term Unemployment in Ireland: Duration Analysis of the Live Register

According to an article in the Irish Independent over the weekend, the number of long-term unemployed in Ireland increased by 55% in the year ending October (2009). The article also states that the long-term jobless rate now stands at 2.6%.

"The long-term unemployment figure will continue rising in the next couple of years before peaking at 5%," said National Irish Bank chief economist Ronnie O'Toole.

Friday's publication from the Irish Central Statistics Office (CSO) is available here: "Live Register Age by Duration". Duration analysis of the Live Register is conducted twice a year by the CSO; the current series of half-yearly analyses was introduced in April 1989. The analysis historically related to the second-last Friday of April and October, but there was a minor change in the most recent analysis. (More on this in the comments).

According to the RTE website, the CSO said all age groups showed an increase in the number of long-term claimants in the six months from April to October (2009), with the biggest rise of 53% coming among the under 20's.

Longer school days

The amount of human capital a person is usually proxied by years of education. But of course one can vary the number of days of education per annum or the number of hours per day. The number of days in school in Ireland is comparatively low it appears. So what would be the effect of lengthening the school day? This paper, for Chile, shows that it keeps adolescent girls out of trouble - literally: an increase in full-day municipal enrollment of 20% reduces the likelihood of teen motherhood by 5%

Delaying the Bell: The Effects of Longer School Days on Adolescent Motherhood in Chile
Diana Kruger & Matias Berthelon

http://ftp.iza.org/dp4553.pdf

Graphs in Stata

There's been a lot of talk around here lately about R, and in particular some criticism about the graphing ability of Stata. I thought it was time someone defended Stata. The manual is hard to get to grips with, but there are a couple of really good things about graphs in Stata. Firstly you can get them to look however you want, even like the ones in excel if you wish. Secondly, it's relatively easy to write up your own program once you've found a style you like. Once this is set up you can label, title, subtitle, show percentages on bars etc. automatically. And then you only need to type programname varname. This is especially useful when you have dozens of graphs to do, and is what we've been doing for the Irish Universities Study, an example is below.



Alan's also done some good ones with confidence intervals here.

Someone sent round an example of a map graph in R, but this is also relatively easy (I managed it so it must be!) to do in Stata with SPAMP. There is a useful guide here. Here's one I did of Ireland.

Doing a PhD in Economcis

Via Stephen Kinsella's blog, Albert Ma on doing a PhD in Economics "A Journey for your Beautiful Mind" link here  

Income Contingent Student Fees

A new CEPR insight paper by Oxford's Neil Shepherd argues for income-contingent tuition fees

link here 

Behavioural Economics and Climate Change

Reuters article linked here 

Foreign Policy List of Global Thinkers

Thaler and Sunstein are seventh most influential global thinkers, just behind Bill and Hilary Clinton. The full rankings are below.

link here 

Programme Evaluation and Government Accountability

Via Colm, a US Government Accountability Office report on methods for programme evaluation.

link here 

The report is positive about the use of RCT's, deeming them ethical and feasible under certain conditions but overall concludes:

"GAO concludes that (1) requiring evidence from randomized studies as sole proof of effectiveness will likely exclude many potentially effective and worthwhile practices; (2) reliable assessments of evaluation results require research expertise but can be improved with detailed protocols and training; (3) deciding to adopt an intervention involves other considerations in addition to effectiveness, such as cost and suitability to the local community; and (4) improved evaluation quality would also help identify effective interventions."

Seminar: Karen Jusko

Seminar Title: "The Electoral Foundations of Poverty Relief:  How Electoral Geography Affects Redistributive Politics"

 

Venue: Geary Seminar Room B003/004

 

Date: Tuesday December 1st. 

 

Time: 1pm

 

Speaker: Karen Jusko is an Assistant Professor of Political Science, at Stanford University  and an IRCHSS Visiting Fellow in the  ESF Human Values Institutions and Behaviour (HumVIB) research programme at the Geary Institute.

 

Abstract:  What are the implications of electoral geography – the joint geographic distribution of voters and legislative seats across districts – for social policy? In a series of formal analytic examples, I demonstrate the important role of electoral geography in determining social policy and find that under some conditions, single member plurality systems may yield redistributive policy that is at least as progressive as the policy that would be implemented under proportional representation rules – an outcome that directly challenges the existing literature. This discussion then evaluates empirically the implications of electoral geography for redistributive politics in a broadly comparative analysis of contemporary democratic societies. In countries where electoral geography favors the representation of low-income citizens, we observe greater overall reductions in income inequality through redistribution, and higher levels of social spending.

New IZA Paper: What Can We Learn From Molecular Genetics

Nature, Nurture and Egalitarian Policy: What Can We Learn from Molecular Genetics? 
 by Petter Lundborg, Anders Stenberg
(November 2009)

Abstract:
This brief paper draws attention to molecular genetic research which may provide a new dimension to our understanding of how socioeconomic outcomes are generated. In particular, we provide an overview of the recently emerging evidence of gene-environment interaction effects. This literature points out specific policy areas which may compensate individuals carrying genetic risks, without resorting to gene mapping of the population. Such policies would also increase intergenerational mobility if genetic and/or environmental risk factors are more common in socially disadvantaged groups.

Book Club: Nudge

Its been too long since last book club and there are a number of books lining up that I would really like to discuss in person outside of office time. So, a few of us will meet in the Duke Bar, Tuesday December 8th at 7.30pm to discuss the book Nudge . Let me know by email if you would like to come. Usual group between 5 and 12 people.  In the unlikely event that more than that want to come, I can request a section in advance. You don't really need to have read the book to participate and feel free to come along. I will bring a synopsis for people.

Datamob

Lots of novel public use data-sets here.

Gallup Daily

Just checking out the measures Gallup have been tracking on a daily basis in the U.S. over the last couple of years. Something like Obama's approval rating strikes me as hugely informative with a 60 percentage point difference between the approve-disapprove groups crashing to a 5 point difference in 6 or 7 months. The life evaluations of the US population are clearly responding to economic changes with Christmas bringing about an increased percentage of people 'struggling' as would be expected. The surprise for me was the mood ratings which are practically invariant, with happiness showing a slight decline prior to Christmas which is about the only visible trend aside from weekend peaks and mid-week declines. Contrasting these ratings with the swings in measures of life evaluations, consumer confidence, political confidence, spending, does this mean that emotions are largely unresponsive to such changes?

Fiscal Policy Event

From Philip Lane


Reminder: the SSISI event is tomorrow evening, details are here.  Contributors: Dr Niamh Hardiman (UCD), Mr Blair Horan (CPSU), Mr Colm McCarthy (UCD) and Mr David Croughan (IBEC).
The paper by Niamh Hardiman is already online here.

Labour Market Initiatives in Ireland

I mentioned the details of the Work Placement Programme (and pilot Short Time Working Training Programme) last month. And further information about labour market policy in Ireland. As well as the IBEC graduate internship scheme.

These are separate initiatives to the Employment Subsidy Scheme. This scheme is outlined here on the website of the Dept. of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. And discussed here in an article from the Irish Times, earlier this month. The scheme is managed by Enterprise Ireland; but it is a separate initiative to the Enterprise Stabilisation Fund.

The Employment Subsidy Scheme was originally intended to support the retention of jobs in viable exporting enterprises that might otherwise be made redundant. The scheme has been extended to non-exporting companies; and over 7,000 jobs are to receive direct financial support in the first round. According to the Irish Times, it is hoped that 27,400 vulnerable jobs will be safeguarded during the lifetime of the €250 million scheme. The goal of retaining jobs that might otherwise be made redundant is an important consideration, as this would avoid the problem of deadweight loss.

Another article from the Irish Times (from earlier this month again), says that:

the lessons from Germany, which has experimented with different schemes to varying degrees of success, is that these schemes (employment-subsidy) can work if they are structured correctly... director of Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (Institute for the Study of Labour), German economist Prof Klaus Zimmermann has seen both the merits and flaws of wage subsidies.

“Global wage subsidies to entire industries or all companies to encourage new employment are very expensive and provide no substantial employment effects,” he says. But subsidies granted to individual companies to hire unemployed people have been effective, especially when combined with job-related training.

Although it is aimed at full-time workers, the Government’s Employment Subsidy Scheme has some things in common with Germany’s successful Kurzarbeit, or short-time work programme, in the sense that the cost of paying existing employees is shared, Prof Zimmermann says.

Kurzarbeit, according to ING, "is a form of government work subsidy in Germany in which employees get about 80% of their salary for working half-time. (The German government announced last week it was likely to extend its Kurzarbeit scheme for another 18 months)." This is what Liam and Kevin were discussing in recent posts.

_________________________________________________________________

Addendum: Today, the European Parliament approved Ireland’s application under the European Globalisation Fund (EGF) in support of active labour market measures for redundant workers at DELL and ancillary companies. The European Commission had already approved the Irish application in September. According to the Tánaiste, Mary Coughlan, "EGF funding, when received by Ireland, can and will be effectively and efficiently spent on retraining, upskilling and providing educational and entrepreneurial supports for almost 2,500 redundant workers in the Mid West." More details available here.

Measurement Issues in the QHNS and the Live Register

A number of measurement issues related to the QHNS and the Live Register have been noted on this blog before. The QHNS is the official measure of unemploymemt in Ireland and it is based on more economically meaningful (ILO) definitions (compared to the Live Register). However, it needs to be handled with care because anyone working for pay or profit for one hour a week or more is classified as employed.

The Live Register is a more up-to-date source of information than the QHNS, but it is not purposefully designed to measure unemployment. It includes part-time workers (those who work up to three days a week), as well as seasonal and casual workers entitled to Jobseekers Benefit or Allowance. A press release from the Department of Social and Family Affairs (from earlier this month) highlights another measurement issue related to the Live Register:

"the Live Register figures published by the CSO each month includes all claims awaiting decision. Once a claim is registered, it is counted for Live Register purposes regardless of whether the individual is in receipt of Jobseeker’s Benefit, Jobseeker’s Allowance or awaiting a decision on their claim. This means that the Live Register figure of 423,639 for September 2009, published by the CSO, includes some 14,300 Jobseeker’s Benefit claims and 43,900 Jobseeker’s Allowance claims which were awaiting decision at the end of September."

Attitudes of Economics Graduate Students

Economic Logic Blog  (a consistently good source) points to a new paper by David Colander and colleagues on how students from median graduate schools think compared to those from the top ones.

How Do Median Graduate Economic Programs Differ from Top-ranked Programs? Author info | Abstract | Publisher info | Download info | Related research | Statistics
Author Info
David Colander (colander@middlebury.edu)
Tiziana Dominguez
Gail Hoyt
KimMarie McGoldrick

Abstract

This paper reports the results of a survey of median economics graduate programs and compares it with the results of a survey of top economics graduate programs done by Colander. Overall it finds that while there are some differences in the programs, there are large areas of similarity. Some of the particular finding are that there are more US respondents in median programs than in top programs, median students have more interest in econometrics, history of thought and economic literature than do students at top programs, although after the fifth year, their interest in any field drops significantly. It also finds that students at top schools are much more likely to be involved in writing scholarly papers, and that students at top schools give far less emphasis to excellence in mathematics as a path to the fast track than do students at median schools.

Shorter working week

Germany has responded to falling demand for labour by shortening the working week. The policy seems to have been a success and is about to be extended.
http://www.rte.ie/business/2009/1125/germany.html

Social Dilemmas

This post hopefully opens a thread on "social dilemmas" and I will be posting on this over the next few months. This is just to get some thinking started.

A couple of people who read this blog will remember getting a phone call from me one hot summers day trying to ascertain where to bring a lost dog. I found the labrador while on a rare excursion out of the office. He seemed to me to be dehydrated and lost and while many people looked at him with some worry, nobody was stopping. I walked on as my bus was coming but before boarding I cursed silently and went back to the dog. Not knowing what else to do I bought him a bottle of water and then went back to see where he would go. He eventually went into the shade of some trees in a nearby estate but he really looked tired and I was gripped by the horrifying thought that he might actually die of thirst if I just walked on. At this stage, I began ringing people to find out what to do with a lost dog. The options in general did not seem good including the potential that the dog would be put-down. As it turned out (after some door-knocking), I was able to figure out that the dog was actually in his own neighborhood and I was wrong about him being lost. In fact, in retrospect, the dog may have just stayed with me to make sure I wasn't lost (labradors have very good natures) but it did give me a lot of time to reflect on the nature of social dilemma in modern cities.

How many times do you say no to a teenager who claims to need a euro to get the bus home? What would you do if someone banged loudly on your apartment door claiming to need assistance at three in the morning? You see an older person who is clearly lost and disorientated still standing at the train station after the last train has left. Such social dilemmas are a regular reality particularly for people living in cities. For many of us who grew up in environments where practically every single person we met was known to us, such dilemmas can be particularly upsetting. How we behave in these situations will partly depend on our personal characteristics. In economics-speak, attributes such as our degree of risk aversion, tendency towards loss aversion, social preferences and so on will clearly generate individual differences. Similarly, the characteristics of the potential beneficiary will likely have an effect. Clearly though, there is a market in which such acts take place, a market that is likely broken in several respects with respect to things like adverse selection, asymmetric information, coordination failures and so on. Most of would help the teenager needing the euro if we were sure that their case was genuine. A euro versus a young person without a phone or money missing a last bus and potentially being left on their own in an unfamiliar city is not a big sacrifice. But we would hate to be contributing the hundreth euro of the evening to a drugs fund. Similarly, nobody wants to think that a person is in need of medical help outside one's apartment door but nobody wants to open the door to find a gang of thugs laughing at how easily we were tricked.

Most readers probably remember the remarkable scene from a few weeks back. A woman stumbles on to the track in the boston subway and is saved by the frantic efforts of a fellow traveller in alerting the oncoming driver to stop. You could argue that the altruism shown is not very costly but it looks clear to me that there is an impulse to help this woman and that the chief helper is taking a non-trivial risk of falling on the track himself. Nobody is that altruistic and risk loving that they actually try to physically take her from the track but this looks extremely difficult given the timing and its not clear that a benevolent social planner would recommend this given the risk it would have placed on anyone trying to do this. In general though, the girl did get help. The basic reaction was one of trying to make sure she wasn't harmed even though she was completely unknown to the crowd, who also mostly did not know one another.

There are a number of strands of literature that have attempted to put structure on these problems. Social psychological research has looked in depth at potential triggers for altruistic acts. Game theorists have attempted to model the formal structure of social dilemmas. Experimental economists have examined how people actually play such games in lab conditions. The more recent literature on social capital has looked in detail at the degree to which non-market transactions operate to improve human welfare. If ever a large endeavour of the human mind needed to be plucked from the sky and applied directly in our day-to-day lives, it is this area of research. In particular, looking more closely at field experiments that address particular "market failures" in altruism in urban environments is something that I will be blogging about as I learn more. This may be a good area for students thinking of final year projects. Even examining the potential welfare losses from coordination problems in social dilemmas in dublin itself would be a nice starting point. Are there pareto-improving mechanisms for allowing people to reveal altruism in these settings? I'm sure there are but I'm not fully sure that dog wouldn't have starved had my initial thoughts been correct that day.

Minimum wages & obesity

The paper below ties together two important but seemingly disparate topics minimum wages and obesity. The argument is that in the US the federal minimum wage fell between 1968 and 2007 thus making fast food cheaper and this should have lead to more obesity.

They find "... that a $1 decrease in the real minimum wage was associated with a 0.06 increase in BMI. This relationship was significant across gender and income groups and largest among the highest percentiles of the BMI distribution. Real minimum wage decreases can explain 10% of the change in BMI since 1970. We conclude that the declining real minimum wage rates has contributed to the increasing rate of overweight and obesity in the United States."

The impact of minimum wage rates on body weight in the United States
D Meltzer, Z Chen
http://papers.nber.org/papers/w15485

LSE Talks

Some of the recent talks in the LSE series (which is now one of the best web seminar resources for economics worldwide) are really worth following. Includes Esther Duflo, Amartya Sen, Michael Sendel, Steven Levitt and many others

link here

Kinsella - Ireland in 2050

UL Economics Lecturer Stephen Kinsella has recently released a book called Ireland in 2050. The book is partly inspired by the classic essay "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" by Keynes and attempts to map out the major changes in Irish economy and society that will take place over the next 40 years. The book is divided into twelve chapters (roughly speaking - introduction, background, demography, leisure, environment, energy, work, suburbs and cities, health, inequality, governance, conclusion). The basic concept of the book is a good one - a neccesary attempt to start some long-term debates even as the immediate present seems urgent enough to occupy the vast share of public debate. The basic thrust of the book is continuity, with the author seeing a 2050 world very similar to our own but one where the growth of China, an aging population, innovations in energy, changing health demands and health technologies, changing gender roles, increased flooding, changing attitudes to work and privacy and so on have left their mark. The average irish householder in 2050 will, among other things, be older, will be more likely to have run a number of businesses, will drive an electric car and view China as an intimate part of their business plans. NAMA is just winding down, Ireland is still heavily embedded in the EU, Dublin has sprawled further, Nuclear power has become a reality and, in general, if you fell into a coma now and woke up in the imagined Ireland in 2050 you would probably figure things out reasonably quickly.

I am inclined to agree with Gerard O'Neill's view that the book is painting a picture of ireland in 2020 as much as in 2050, with many of the trends being picked up processes that are already underway, though this is not a fatal weakness. The author puts together a set of trends that almost every analyst agrees on as important and knits them into a simple vision that can act as a spark to a wider debate. In doing this however, the book does not delve deeply into potential disruptive events that are being widely discussed across many fields. We do not spend much time thinking about the consequence of a major bio or nuclear strike on the US mainland (see for example Martin Rees Our Final Century). Other major debates, such as the implications of human genetic engineering or increasing human-machine interfaces, are also absent from the story of the book. If I could take up any part of Stephen's offer of a row, it would be to debate the extent to which such "black swans" should be an integral feature of our planning. In one school of thought, worrying too much about catastrophic events with low predictability that are outside of our control distract us from the very pressing and predictable problems outlined in the book. Take, for example, the number of people who are now worrying about ancient Mayan prophecies on the back of a new blockbuster peddling another apocalypse story. On the other hand, failure to adapt a society to the potential for catastrophic changes or major disruptive technologies is clearly also dangerous in its way. A debate about the types of human values and institutions needed to get a population through a major disruptive event should be a feature of the row that Stephen is trying to start.

I think this book works well as a first gambit designed, as the author suggests, to start a debate rather than conclude one. It represents a sensible view on a very wide range of issues facing Ireland and other countries in the next forty years and I commend the author for getting this debate going. As a lecturer in several broad economics courses in UL and someone continuously and frantically active as a teacher, researcher and commenter, the author is very well placed to moderate a national debate on the long-term future of the country and I look forward to seeing how this concept develops over the next few years. To make decisions clearly about the future, it is important to be able to see clearly the potential outcomes, to identify with things that are not in our immediate surrounding, to divorce ourselves from current pressures to enable rational thought. This book and follow-ups will help with that. Being able to think far ahead has many potential benefits and I hope that Stephen is successful in bedding this concept into political and popular debate.

Behavioural Economics and Taxation

Via Andrew Leigh, the Henry Tax review post a paper on Behavioural Economics and Taxation.

link here

For God's sake: religion and growth

This is a nice piece discussing work by Barro & McCleary on religion and growth

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/11/15/the_curious_economic_effects_of_religion/?page=full

Yale School of Management - Qn

The Qn Publication of the Yale School of Management is worth following (thanks to online editor Ted O'Callahan for sending us on the hardcopy and details). Q6 is linked below. Includes interviews with Shiller, Choi, Thaler and a number of other leading figures in behavioural economics. Very impressive scope of topics.

link here

Irish Economics Blogs

Over the last couple of years, a number of blogs related to the Irish Economy have started to emerge. Below are the ones that stand out for me. This is clearly a partial list and of course things like politic.ie and boards.ie pre-date economics blogs and have provided a forum for economic debate for a long-time now. What is unusual about the current wave is that Economists are directly providing the content and taking an active part in the debate, opening up an aspect of the Irish public sphere that didn't exist before. Clearly, some people have not welcomed this development, including some billionaires who think Economists should either stick to teaching or start businesses to learn the workings of the real world. I think it is worth thinking and discussing about where this trend will go. We may be at the limit of the current stream in that most people who are potentially interested are now involved and the formats have settled down. One potential development is the growth of these blogs into forums where more substantial content is added. The IrishEconomy blog has added an "irish economy notes" section and we are attempting here (not with much effort for now) to integrate seminar and event videos into the blog. I would hope that we rapidly get to a stage where meaningful online seminars can be conducted through this medium. The technology itself is obviously trivial but it needs people to be interested enough to set it up and enough people to follow to generate a stream of good comments. Stephen Kinsella has spoken about online book-clubs. If anyone watching in wants to use this blog as a guinea pig, then feel free to propose something.

IrishEconomy is now the main blog that deals with Irish Economics issues. It was founded by Philip Lane and currently features two to four posts per day on Irish economics issues.

Turbulence Ahead is run by Gerard O'Neill, Director of Amarach Research. Gerard's blog is consistently high quality, generally taking the form of daily short essays on current issues.

Stephen Kinsella's website serves as a portal for his students but is also regularly updated with essays, rants and resources relevant to economics more generally. Has generated a lot of spin-offs including his recent book on Ireland in 2050. Stephen's model has always interested me as a means of involving the outside world in an academic lecture series. Stephen has also been the most adventurous in using every web technology known to man to disseminate material. As such, it is fair to say that he is an educational pioneer, at least in these parts, and it would be good to see more people following this model.

Ronan Lyons is another prolific blogger, with his blog recently winning a national media award. Ronan's posts tend to be well-crafted usually involving data analysis. He has done a particularly good job this year in starting high profile debates on pay and on property prices.

True Economics is Constantin Gurdgiev's blog. It is opinionated and far more data-driven than the average blog and has been particularly strong on things like NAMA. Good coverage of releases relevant to the Irish Economy.

ALSO (suggestions please)

progressive economics : a blog from the TASC network, generally advocating left-leaning policies. Regularly updated and with good multi-media content.

ESRI Policy Seminar

ESRI Policy Seminar: "Building Regulatory Capacity"

Venue: ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2
Date: 26/11/2009
Time: 16:00
Speaker: Cathal Guiomard, Commission for Aviation Regulation.

This paper aims to assess the current capacity of the regulatory system in Ireland (encompassing both independent regulators and their parent Departments), in terms of both inputs and outputs, and recommend how it can be improved. It describes the current economic regulatory landscape in Ireland, in particular the rate at which new regulators have been created, or new functions added to existing offices, in recent years. The consistency of the stated rationales for these regulatory actions with the Government’s Better Regulation agenda is explored.

The paper describes the current resourcing of the main economic regulators, in terms of their financing, staff numbers and the professional qualifications of staff. This represents the input side of the equation. On the output side, the paper summarises the findings of recent efforts to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of both regulators and their parent Departments, such as the Review of the Economic Regulatory Environment published by the Department of the Taoiseach; the Report of the Government Task Force on the Public Service; and the Report of the Organisational Review Programme (Pilot Phase) covering the Departments of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food; Enterprise, Trade and Employment; and Transport. The paper recommends actions to build both regulatory capacity (in independent regulators) and policy capacity (in Departments), focusing on the appropriate division of responsibilities; the necessary resources, skills and strategies; and communication between regulators and Departments. Finally, it calls for increased emphasis on ex-post evaluation and academic study, and the creation of clear and mutually agreed performance targets for regulators.

No booking required. All welcome.

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

Does Onsite Healthcare Save Money for Companies?

The SAS software corporation thinks so, to the tune of $5 million a year; as mentioned on page 3 of this NYT article. The article provides some useful insight into how major corporations motivate highly-skilled employees; SAS seems to be a more sedate version of Google. There is also some discussion about current developments in the world of statistical software: SAS has modified its software so any program written with R works seamlessly with SAS technology.

From Easterly's blog

I had to bring this to your attention
http://aidwatchers.com/2009/11/african-leaders-advise-bono-on-reform-of-u2/

Variable Selection Methods in Regression

There has been discussion at recent journal clubs about some related econometric issues such as omitted variable bias, multicollinearity and control variables, parsimony in regressions, and more broadly - how to select variables for an econometric model. This article by Bruce Ratner ("Variable Selection Methods in Regression: Many Statisticians Know Them, But Few Know They Produce Poorly Performing Models") is a useful overview of five wisely used selection methods (Forward Selection, Backward Elimination, Stepwise, R-squared, and All-possible Subsets).

The Sentiment on the US Economy from Twitter

The Analytic Bridge blog describes an exercise conducted by Life Analytics where 10000 tweets containing the word economy were collected with the purpose of finding out what people think and how they feel about the US Economy and the economic crisis. The exact details of the methodology don't seem to be documented, but the following are some results:

- US President tells that the economy gets better but people don't feel the same.

- Economy cannot be getting better while at the same time there are layoffs.

- People expressing very negative feelings after losing their jobs.

Teaching Stata

Many of us use Stata for research or teaching or both. This article by Karen Robson, untill recently working on the Youth Inequalities project at Geary Institute, is worth a look:

Teaching Stata—Some reflections after 8 years of training experiences
Karen Robson
This presentation focuses on the author’s 8 years of experience teaching Stata to international audiences—primarily at the Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis and Collection in the United Kingdom, but also in the World Bank funded statistical capacity-building initiatives in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania. The author has recently co-authored (with David Pevalin) The Stata Survival Manual, published by Open University/McGraw Hill. The author will focus on common student questions and some approaches she has used to assist students in learning the software.
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ebg:iesewp:d-0810&r=edu

Immigration and the economy

Immigration is an important issue for the Irish economy and a relatively new one at that. It is also quite a sensitive one with people taking quite partisan approaches. So its important to keep an eye on what the evidence actually shows. See this paper for the US by G Peri:

Abstract
We present three main findings, two of which are quite new in this literature. First, we confirm that immigrants do not crowd-out employment of (or hours worked by) natives but simply add to total employment. Second, we find that they increase total factor productivity significantly and, third, that such efficiency gains are unskilled-biased—larger, that is, for less educated workers.

http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gperi/Papers/peri_accounting_sept_09.pdf

Academic Etiquette

Via Gary King's page, this guide to academic etiquette from the Chronicle of Higher Education has some gems

link here

While we're on the topic...

It should be noted that Wednesday's match was played in Saint-Denis, France. I admit it is unlikely that Swedish referee Martin Hansson was aware of the social-science literature (for example here and here) indicating that he may be biased in favour of the home team.

In that case it may benefit the man to draw his attention to some research closer to home.

The current crisis in Ireland: will we get a replay?

This paper reports experimental results on how to predict football results, a talent we could have done with recently.
Dijksterhuis A, Bos MW, van der Leij A, & van Baaren RB (2009). Predicting Soccer Matches After Unconscious and Conscious Thought as a Function of Expertise. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19818044

CSO Releases

Thanks to Michael E. and others for pointing out a number of important CSO releases including the Statistical Year Book for 2009 and the results of the 2008 SILC survey. The major changes in construction, prices and employment mark the Year Book out as a historic document though the figures refer to 2008 mostly so do not encapsulate the stark collapses witnessed throughout this year. Even so, ample proof that we are living in interesting times.

link here

A Message From Thierry

Hello, Irish Behavioural Economics Blog. I am doubtful that your PhD students will finish their theses on time and I laugh at their prospects of publishing in good journals. Ha ha ha!

The Technology Safety Net

We're constantly told that the SmartEconomy is the key to getting Ireland out of the doldrums. I generally agree with the idea, but not with the bulk of the documents associated with it. The facts about the smart economy, innovation and technology in Ireland would suggest that we have a long way to go to realise progression. For one, we have a relatively low level of broadband penetration in Ireland. The most recent figures show that about 58% of Irish households have access. The debate about the government doing more to help with the roll out is well advanced but to little avail in terms of action or policies. No doubt much progress is required on the demand side but the part of the 'build it they will come' nonchalance that is conveniently overlooked is the issue of price (As i recall that event was free). It's generally agreed that more needs to be done on broadband at this level.

Related to this is the issue of dissemination is household technology. CSO figures tell us that about 35% of households in the country don't have a computer! Imagine. With computing technology experiencing huge reductions in price it might be worth considering the feasibility of a tax-initiative to bolster demand among these households. If we can do a 'bikes to work' scheme then why not a 'computers to learn, connect, search, explore, find' scheme. The bike idea is capped at 1,000 euro (aside: surprising how many 800 euro imported bikes are being bought at the moment, given recessionary times!) and offered over five years, as i understand. It is available at both the higher and lower tax bands. The computer scheme might be targeted best at the lower band. Understandably, tax expenditures are not the flavour of the month but one has to wonder... if we're serious about the SmartEconomy and technology/information lead recovery then we need to be proactive and have national policy guide the way in practical ways. I don't think we need to read about the benefits of having a computer with internet access but it might be worth considering some for a moment - information, training, education, job-search, social connection. Even a basic-user level it's utility is clear and potential enormous. I think in any CBA it would look quite good against tax relief on a car scrappage scheme, to mention one wonderful idea thats out there at the moment.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, good, bad, or indifferent.

Finally, to declare a particular interest, one associated benefit that you may not be thinking of is the ability to participate in National Household Panel Surveys which are the backbone of statistics gathering in the 20 most developed countries internationally. Or should I say 21. Go Geary, go!

Economists for Cancelling Christmas

The papers on the deadweight loss of christmas are very well known including featuring on the odd december blog post. Now you can read the book!

link here

Upjohn Institute for Employment Research

Further to the post below, the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, MI produces lots of useful work on employment, unemployment & related matters.
http://www.upjohninst.org/

Irish Economic Association Conference: Belfast 2010

The twenty-fourth annual conference of the Irish Economic Association will be held from 23rd to 25th April 2010 at the Stormont Hotel, Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Association invites submissions of papers to be considered for inclusion in the conference programme. Papers may be on any subject in Economics, Finance and Econometrics. The deadline for submissions is Friday 15th January; the full call for papers is available here.

The Centre of Full Employment and Equity

I heard about the The Centre of Full Employment and Equity (at Newcastle, Australia) via Colm's Twitter page (linked at the top left hand-side of the blog). Lots of interesting stuff for labour economists.

Ferdinand on Open Access

A big one for anyone working in research - its hard to see the massive subscription model lasting well into the future given that inexpensive alternatives are proliferating so widely

link here

Experiments

Experiments play an important role in behavioural economics but they are often criticized for a variety of reasons. This paper defneds their role.
Lab Experiments Are a Major Source of Knowledge in the Social Sciences
Armin Falk, James Heckman

Laboratory experiments are a widely used methodology for advancing causal knowledge in the physical and life sciences. With the exception of psychology, the adoption of laboratory experiments has been much slower in the social sciences, although during the last two decades, the use of lab experiments has accelerated. Nonetheless, there remains considerable resistance among social scientists who argue that lab experiments lack "realism" and "generalizability". In this article we discuss the advantages and limitations of laboratory social science experiments by comparing them to research based on non-experimental data and to field experiments. We argue that many recent objections against lab experiments are misguided and that even more lab experiments should be conducted.

Paying People to Work Shorter Hours

Take a business with say forty employees. The company is offered 5 per cent salary directly paid to them provided they shorten the working week of their existing employees and continue to pay them the same salary. This reduces the incentive to lay workers off and may lead to hiring. A short article by Dean Baker proposing this is linked below. It has got some traction including being mentioned in the NYT by Krugman and even made a brief appearance on the hallowed irisheconomy.ie stage. It would be good if people can think about this. If there is any result that has emerged from the linkage of economics and psychology that is robust, it is that unemployment is destructive of human potential in every wage imaginable, damaging health, psychological well-being, creativity and creating intergenerational effects that are likely very large even if we don't fully account for network and wider social effects. More debate about how society should handle labour market fluctuations is needed. This is one idea and hopefully we can start discussing properly many more, informed by what we are starting to learn about the interaction of psychology and the labour market.

link here

"Germany has used this policy to keep its unemployment rate at 7.6 percent, about the same as it was before the recession. Imagine if workers in the United States, like workers in Germany, were dealing with the recession by putting in four-day weeks (while getting paid for five) or getting an extra two weeks of paid vacation. This sure beats being unemployed."

Does Competition Affect Giving?

Duffy and Kornienko (2009) ask Does Competition Affect Giving?

Charities often devise fund-raising strategies that exploit natural human competitiveness in combination with the desire for public recognition. We explore whether institutions promoting competition can affect altruistic giving - even when possibilities for public acclaim are minimal. In a controlled laboratory experiment based on a sequential “dictator game”, we find that subjects tend to give more when placed in a generosity tournament, and tend to give less when placed in an earnings tournament - even if there is no award whatsoever for winning the tournament. Further we find that subjects’ experimental behavior correlates with their responses to a post-experiment questionnaire, particularly questions addressing altruistic and rivalrous behavior. Based on this evidence, we argue that behavior in our experiment is driven, in part, by innate competitive motives.

Oxytocin & empathy

The role of oxytocin in influencing trust has been explored by behavioural economists. This study shows how a polymorphism in a gene that encodes for the oxytocin receptor predicts empathy. This is related to work on a genetic basis for autism which is characterized by low empathy.

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1116/3?rss=1

A Healthy Recovery

IT article today indicates that an additional 10,000 full medical (GMS) cards are being issued per month. I would estimate that the number of people with voluntary PHI is currently falling at a third of this rate, i.e., ~ 3,000 per month. It's worth taking stock of these numbers and the effect they will be having on service demand and quality.

All public sectors are facing considerable funding cuts next month but I would urge caution in what is done in the public health sector. It's vital to recognise that this current trend in GMS coverage when budgets and labour remain fixed means a heavier work-load for each individual public health worker. When labour is fixed and funding is falling, as is widely expected in the near future, the situation is exacerbated. We need to think carefully about what broad brush-stokes will really mean. In other public sectors we might expect an increase in demand - more people might choose to finish school, there might be an increase in theft and property crime. But public education and justice are fundamentally different; their services are both less labour-intensive and less sensitive to demand (there aren't an additional 10,000 criminals being reprimanded or school-aged kids showing up each month!). Forthcoming policy needs to consider these facts and design an appropriate response that will ensure quality of service to the patient and fair conditions for staff.

Along with considered measures it now makes increasing sense to seriously revisit the issue of average length of in-patient stay. According to the ESRI's most recent 2007 national report, GMS medical card holders were discharged after an average of 7 days; about 3 days longer than non-GMS discharges. Of course there are a number of reasons why this is the case but to date we have no evidence on the matter.

Robert Shiller: Bubbles Forever

Robert Shiller's short new article from Economists Voice on why bubbles in property will happen again

link here

Marcel Das - LISS Panel

Below is the video of Marcel Das presenting the Liss Panel at our recent Economics and Psychology event. This is quite simply fantastic. A fully representative panel of the Dutch population surveyed monthly. All data is fully available to scientific researchers. And you can apply to place your questions. It is one of the finest resources ever made available to social scientists and I really strongly encourage everyone to look at the LISS website, and to register yourself to use the data and to think about whether your work would fit in terms of an application to host questions on the panel.

As Marcel notes in the talk, the Tilburg team and their colleagues and funders have gone to great lengths to make this available. If you are using the data, please register. Otherwise, they do not have evidence to present on the usage of the resource.

Economic Psychology Ireland - marcel das

International Workshop on Applied Economics of Education

The Department of Economics, Lancaster University and the Department DOPES, Universita' Magna Graecia are jointly organizing a workshop in Applied Economics of Education. The workshop will be held at the Universita’ Magna Graecia, Germaneto Campus Edificio delle Scienze Giuridiche e Sociali (Italy) from Monday 14th to Tuesday 15th June 2010. Keynote lectures will be given by:

* Christian Belzil (École Polytechnique, Paris)

* Hessel Oosterbeek (Universitet van Amsterdam)

* Ian Walker (Lancaster University)

Submissions to the conference can be made until March 1st. More details are available here.

Research by Susan Dynarski

In advance of Susan Dynarski's visit to UCD on December 3rd, it is worth looking at her research publications (here and here). Some recent work by Dynarski is as follows:

(i) Complexity and Targeting in Federal Student Aid: "Puzzlingly, there is little compelling evidence that Pell Grants and Stafford Loans, the primary federal student aid programs, are effective in achieving this goal (increasing college enrolment)."

(ii) Building the Stock of College-Educated Labor: "Even with the offer of free tuition,
many students continue to drop out, suggesting tuition costs are not the only
impediment to college completion."

(iii) The Lengthening of Childhood: "Almost every state has increased the age at which children are allowed to start primary school. This change is remarkable given the strong evidence that, in the United States, starting school later decreases educational attainment."

I would be willing to facilitate one of these papers in a journal club before December 3rd.

Beyond Diabolic Governance in Hyperbolic Ireland

An incisive article in the SBP by Prof. Ed Walsh that tackles head-on one of the biggest and most blatant problems in the country - effective governance. The current dismal economic situation is expressed as a result of mismanagement and it is made clear that without constitutional reform we're unlikely to be headed anywhere better.

The specific reform proposed is changing the electoral process to a List System:

"whereby members of parliament are elected partially from local constituencies and partially from party lists of individuals who have proven records of distinguished national and international achievement: many from business and the professions"

Such a system would increase the pool of management talent and their ability to govern by quelling incentives for the all too common and clearly retrogressive process of myopic pandering to local constituents for re-election. I fully agree that Ministers need to focus on the major national issues and plan strategically for a better future - difficult and unpalatable decisions need to be made in the next few months and years to steady the county and secure prosperity for the future. Walsh essentially makes the point that if our constitution is preventing this, we need to change it.

Some interesting points in the article:

"Our system ... deters the government from moving swiftly and taking difficult decisions.... the pool from which a Taoiseach draws when forming a government is limited indeed, because in effect it bypasses leaders of enterprise and the professions with the necessary strategic management skills and experience...”

“Our system … draws over 80 per cent of the Oireachtas from a group of some 1,000 people: the members of local authorities. While a county or city council would certainly be a source of pleasant and well-intentioned people it would be an unlikely source of the experienced talent required to strategically guide national policy and effectively manage a multibillion budget"

"The Oireachtas has not risen to the occasion by conveying a new seriousness appropriate to these dangerous times; rather it has continued the pursuit of trivia and political bloodsports in a raucous way that has not enhanced its standing."

".... the quality of national governance can not exceed the quality of those who govern."

Evaluating the Impact of the UCD New ERA Widening Participation Initiative

This is the title of a half-day conference to be held in UCD on December 3rd. Full details (including where to RSVP) are available here. The study examines the performance of the New ERA programme across 3 domains: increased access from disadvantaged school, retention rates and overall exam performance. Kevin Denny will present the results. Susan Dynarski, (Professor of Education and Public Policy, University of Michigan, USA) will deliver the keynote address.

Measuring International Technology Spillovers and Progress Towards the European Research Area

This is the title of a new ESRI WP by Iulia Siedschlag. "The objective of this paper is to contribute to the development of an evidence-based system to monitor progress towards the European Research Area (ERA) and a knowledge-based economy."

Behavioural Economics and Business

Am in early stages of planning a new year event on the implications of ideas from behavioural economics for the private sector in Ireland. If anyone would like to help on this, leave comments or preferably email. I will post more details as the idea becomes better formed. We are currently working here both with Gallup Europe and with Amarach. We would like to see more companies at least thinking about behavioural economics and what it implies for them.

World Bank Working Paper: Commitment Devices for Smoking Cessation

Put your money where your butt is : a commitment contract for smoking cessation

Gine, Xavier
Karlan, Dean
Zinman, Jonathan

Abstract

The authors designed and tested a voluntary commitment product to help smokers quit smoking. The product (CARES) offered smokers a savings account in which they deposit funds for six months, after which they take a urine test for nicotine and cotinine. If they pass, their money is returned; otherwise, their money is forfeited to charity. Eleven percent of smokers offered CARES tookup, and smokers randomly offered CARES were 3 percentage points more likely to pass the 6-month test than the control group. More importantly, this effect persisted in surprise tests at 12 months, indicating that CARES produced lasting smoking cessation.

World Bank Working Paper: Diasporas

Diasporas

Author Info
Beine, Michel
Docquier, Frederic
Ozden, Caglar

Abstract

Migration flows are shaped by a complex combination of self-selection and out-selection mechanisms. In this paper, the authors analyze how existing diasporas (the stock of people born in a country and living in another one) affect the size and human-capital structure of current migration flows. The analysis exploits a bilateral data set on international migration by educational attainment from 195 countries to 30 developed countries in 1990 and 2000. Based on simple micro-foundations and controlling for various determinants of migration, the analysis finds that diasporas increase migration flows, lower the average educational level and lead to higher concentration of low-skill migrants. Interestingly, diasporas explain the majority of the variability of migration flows and selection. This suggests that, without changing the generosity of family reunion programs, education-based selection rules are likely to have a moderate impact. The results are highly robust to the econometric techniques, accounting for the large proportion of zeros and endogeneity problems.

Obama Retirement Policies

Again via Nudge, the New York Times outlines Obama's Retirment Initiatives. For any students in the behavioural economics class, or people interested more generally, this is one of the clearest uses to date of the literature in behavioural economics in shaping an important public policy.

The option of allowing people to take their tax refunds in the form of government bonds simply by ticking a box is really clever and should be looked at in Ireland, though would be quantitatively less significant over here.

link here

Marshmallow Experiments

Anyone around here either physically or online will have heard of the famous Mischel Marshmallow experiments that examined the patience of children, measured by their ability to delay consumption of a marshmallow in exchange for getting two marshmallows later on. We tried to replicate them here but we kept eating the marshmallows before we could recruit the participants.

Nudge blog has a description of the famous experiments along with some video - link here

Melbourne Conference

Via Colm, below is a link to a recent conference at Melbourne on the economic situation in Australia. I am listening to the recordings in the background as I work here. This is a very well themed conference in terms of the balance between short-run and long-run policy. Includes sessions on innovation, education and getting people back to the work.

link here

IZA Paper - Public Health Consequences of Job Loss

The Public Health Costs of Job Loss

Author info | Abstract | Publisher info | Download info | Related research | Statistics
Author Info
Kuhn, Andreas (kuhn@iew.uzh.ch) (University of Zurich)
Lalive, Rafael (Rafael.Lalive@unil.ch) (University of Lausanne)
Zweimüller, Josef (zweim@iew.unizh.ch) (University of Zurich)
Abstract

We study the short-run effect of involuntary job loss on comprehensive measures of public health costs. We focus on job loss induced by plant closure, thereby addressing the reverse causality problem of deteriorating health leading to job loss as job displacements due to plant closure are unlikely caused by workers' health status, but potentially have important effects on individual workers' health and associated public health costs. Our empirical analysis is based on a rich data set from Austria providing comprehensive information on various types of health care costs and day-by-day work history at the individual level. Our central findings are: (i) overall expenditures on medical treatments (hospitalizations, drug prescriptions, doctor visits) are not strongly affected by job displacement; (ii) job loss increases expenditures for antidepressants and related drugs, as well as for hospitalizations due to mental health problems for men (but not for women); and (iii) sickness benefits strongly increase due to job loss.

Irish History Online

For those interested in history, this may be useful:

"Irish History Online is an authoritative guide (in progress) to what has been written about Irish history from earliest times to the present. It was established in association with the Royal Historical Society Bibliography of British and Irish History (of which it is now the Irish component) and London's Past Online."

N.B. Particular attention is being paid to enhancing coverage of the Irish abroad: during 2008 over 500 new records on the Irish abroad were added, including many references collected in libraries in the U.S.A. and Canada.

Choosing Industry or Academia

A nice piece in PlOS Computational Biology

link here

Structural versus Atheoretical Econometrics

John Rust's take on the debate is available on the website below.

link here

comments are a response to a paper by Michael Keane. the Keane paper makes points that are similar to the Deaton "randomisation in the tropics" article that created so much debate earlier this year. The Keane paper contains some interesting discussions of the role of quasi-experiments in economics, the extent to which "atheoretical" exploration of relationships has led to progress in other sciences, the importance of validation and related issues.

link here

Day of the Week Again

A new IZA working paper. Weekends are worse. The findings in this paper are very counter-intuitive. The findings are not the result of something funny going on in the specifications. Figure 1 on page 39 is a straight descriptive graph showing well-being by day of the week. Wellbeing in Germany is lowest on Friday, Saturday and in particular Sunday, which is different to the USA and different to the Irish findings Gerard produced. The German sample is certainly large and well sampled. The authors point out that their data allow them to put forward a range of controls but the findings are robust to these. I think the most important issue is that the simple descriptive stats are so out of line with what one would expect. Initially, I wondered whether there was a simple miscoding of the satisfaction variable but its average value is what you would expect, and it reacts to unemployment and so on in the manner one would expect (and the authors are both experienced published analysts).

I prefer weekdays to weekends myself for the most part but I had assumed (and many people agree) that was due to me being weird. Perhaps Germanic is a better description.

link here

PDF organiser

Mendeley

I spent some time trying to find a PC equivalent to papers for mac- Mendeley is a great way of organising PDFs you have stored on your computer. It works similarily to how itunes works... you have pdf's stored somewhere and it links to it. It also can create bibliographies in word similarily to endnote, and although I haven't used this function yet I imagine it's pretty user friendly.

At the moment it's a beta version and free can be downloaded from:

http://www.mendeley.com/

You download it to your desktop. If you add a Mendeley bookmark to your internet explorer/firefox PDF information can be exported from google scholar amongst others.

Early intervention reduces teenage pregnancy

"Ten controlled trials and five qualitative studies were included. Controlled trials evaluated either early childhood interventions or youth development programmes. The overall pooled effect size showed that teenage pregnancy rates were 39% lower among individuals receiving an intervention than in those receiving standard practice or no intervention (relative risk 0.61; 95% confidence interval 0.48 to 0.77)." from Harden et al. in the BMJ

Seminar Ouellet-Morin. Early LIfe Stress and Cortisol

Dear Colleagues,

Isabelle Ouellet-Morin (King's College) will be giving a talk "Shaping effects of early life stress on cortisol secretion in childhood" in the Behavioural Seminar Series as follows:

Speaker: Isabelle Ouellet-Morin

Seminar Title: "Shaping effects of early life stress on cortisol secretion in childhood"

Venue: Geary Seminar Room B003/004

Date: Tuesday 17th November

Time: 1pm

All Welcome

Blog Development

Just a usual reminder that I am happy to keep evolving the blog if people have suggestions.

For example

- Journal Links at the side?

- Seminar Series that I have missed

- Upcoming Conference Deadlines (will update these later)

- Other Blogs we should include on the sidebar

- Other links to audio and visual sites at the side

- As per previous suggestions, we will shortly begin to start including our own audio and video material. The Geary podcasts are already available from the sidebar but we will also start posting material such as videos from last Friday's events.

Superfreakonomics

Have read Superfreakonomics. Wouldn't change much in Tim Harford's excellent review. The sections on prostitution and terrorism have been criticised as being more obvious than the counterintuitive findings in the first book, but I certainly found them gripping to read and the street prostitution piece in particular is a really good story about how to collect and use a dataset. I am surprised that the ethical issues associated with using things like surnames on bank accounts as data in terrorism profiling have not received more debate. As for the controversial climate change chapter, it really will not be of much interest to people who are interested in Freakonomics for Levitt's ability to assemble and dissect novel data to produce economic findings.

Every day is Saturday

Related to Gerard O'Neill's previous post about Sunday being the happiest day of the week, Cafe Hayek reports that Saturday is the day of the week Gallup has found that consumers spend the most. Based on the latest psychological findings Barack Obama has decided that all days should now be called Saturday, according to the report.

link here

2000 Posts Since January 2007

I wanted to get there before someone else did.

2,000 posts on Geary Behavioural Economics Blog Since January 2007.

In the words of one of our favourite collaborators "have yiz nothing better to do yiz clowns"!!

Articles referenced in Aoife O'Grady's talk

Yesterday Aoife O'Grady from the Department of Transport gave us a very thought-provoking thought on the specific challenges of policy evaluation in the domain of transport.

Here are links to the articles that she cited:

Dept for Transport Social research on Attitudes to Road Pricing, Climate Change and the Role of the Car - see http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/scienceresearch/social/

Blamey and MacKenzie (2007 "Theories of Change and Realistic Evaluation: Peas in a pod or apples and oranges?" in Evaluation, 2007; 13; 439

Connell, J.P., A.C. Kubisch, L.B. Schorr and C.H. Weiss (1995) New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives, vol. 1, Concepts, Methods and Contexts. Washington, DC: Aspen Institute.

Fulbright-Anderson, K., A. Kubisch and J. Connell, eds (1998) New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives, vol. 2, Theory, Measurement, and Analysis. Washington, DC: Aspen Institute.

Pawson, R. and N. Tilley (1997) Realistic Evaluation. London: SAGE
Weiss, C.H. (1998) Evaluation: Methods for Studying Programs and Policies. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Randomised Evaluation of a Parenting Programme

Donal O'Neill presented at the economics seminar on Friday. He has a new working paper on an early childhood intervention in Ireland.



A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Early Childhood Intervention: Evidence from a Randomised Evaluation of a Parenting Programme
by Donal O'Neill (October 2009)

Abstract:
A number of researchers and policy makers have recently argued that the most effective way of dealing with long-run disadvantage and the intergenerational transmission of poverty is through early childhood intervention and in particular policies aimed at supporting the family in early childhood development. In this paper we carry out a randomised evaluation of one such programme aimed at improving the skills and parenting strategies of parents, particularly those who find their child's behaviour difficult or challenging. Our evaluation shows that the treatment significantly reduced behavioural problems in young children when measured 6 months after the intervention. Furthermore our detailed cost analysis, combined with a consideration of the potential long-run benefits associated with the programme, suggest that the long-run rate of return to society from this programme is likely to be relatively high.

Nutrition Symposium

Via Colm, videos from the 6th Nestle Nutrition Symposium available at link below. Includes video talks from Heckman and Fogel

link here

Geary Institute Seminar: Andrew Chesher

Dear Colleagues,

Professor Andrew Chesher will be giving a talk: "Structural econometrics with discrete data" in the Behavioural Seminar Series as follows::

Speaker: Andrew Chesher

Seminar Title: "Structural econometrics with discrete data".

Relevant Papers:

http://cemmap.ifs.org.uk/wps/cwp3008.pdf

http://cemmap.ifs.org.uk/wps/cwp2309.pdf


Venue: Geary Seminar Room B003/004

Date: Tuesday 10th November 2009

Time: 1pm

Lunch will be provided and Prof Chesher will be available in the afternoon to talk to anyone who is interested. Please contact geary@ucd.ie for a time slot.

All welcome

Douglas Almond on the effect of maternal fasting

nice VOX interview with Douglas Almond

link here

Ferdinand on the Nature of a University

University are not just public sector bodies there to implement latest government policy

link here

A non-benefit from education?

There is quite body of research looking at the effects of education on health. Generally these papers look at physical health and find a positive relationship. This one looks at mental health and finds no effect.
Does Education Shield Against Common Mental Disorders?
Edvard Johansson,Petri Böckerman,Tuija Martelin,Sami Pirkola,Karí Poikolainen
The paper examines the causal effect of education on common individual mental disorders in adulthood. We use a representative population health survey and instrumental variable methods. The estimates point to mostly insignificant effects of education on common mental disorders. We find that the length of education reduces the BDI (Beck Depression Inventory) measure at the 10% significance level, but has no effect when using the GHQ-12 (12-item General Health Questionnaire) or the probability of severe depression as a measure of mental health. These results cast doubt on the view that the length of formal education would be a particularly important determinant of common mental disorders later in life.
http://www.etla.fi/files/2380_Dp1202.pdf

Improving non-cognitive skills

This addition to the literature on non-cognitive skills examines how a remedial education can actually enhance those skills.

Targeting Non-Cognitive Skills to Improve Cognitive Outcomes: Evidence from a Remedial Education Intervention
Holmlund, Helena & Silva, Olmo
A growing body of research highlights the importance of non-cognitive skills as determinants of young people's cognitive outcomes at school. However, little evidence exists about the effects of policies that specifically target students' non-cognitive skills as a way to improve educational achievements. In this paper, we shed light on this issue by studying a remedial education programme aimed at English secondary school pupils at risk of school exclusion and with worsening educational trajectories. The main peculiarity of this intervention is that it solely targets students' non-cognitive skills – such as self-confidence, locus of control, self-esteem and motivation – with the aim of improving pupils' records of attendance and end-of-compulsory-education (age 16) cognitive outcomes. We evaluate the effect of the policy on test scores in standardized national exams at age-16 using both least squares and propensity-score matching.
http://ftp.iza.org/dp4476.pdf

No Country for Young Men

This article in today's Irish Times highlights the growing problem of unemployment among young people. It is good to see discussion of this aspect of David Blanchflower's talk from Monday. Blanchflower has done the world a strong service by highlighting in stark terms the problems associated with unemployment among young people. This issue is a low priority in current policy in Ireland with only token gestures currently being made to address the issue. We are lucky that Blanchflower has at least gotten people's attention on this.

link here

Economics Psychology Conference

Thanks to everyone who showed up at the conference yesterday. It was a brilliant day and exactly why it is great to work as an academic. There was a lot of really terrific ideas and huge potential for development, further interactions and debate.

Thanks to Emma Barron who ran things, and to Karl Deeter for recording the talks. I will post some of these talks on the blog over the next few weeks.

The basic aims of the conference were to:

- bring together people working at the interface of economics, psychology and neuroscience nationally
- showcase existing labs and infrastructure nationally
- provide a platform for PhD students working in the area
- develop interaction between different sectors to help expand the range of applications
- highlight models of international best practice

Michael Daly was the first speaker, on morningness and cortisol, followed by David Comerford on expenditure measurement, Martin Ryan on subjective labour market skills matching and then Mirko Miro on environment and well-being. The second session started with Jonathan Murphy on the neuroeconomics of time discounting, followed by Pete Lunn on loss aversion and Stephen Kinsella on experimental auctions to price electricity. Marcel Das, Director of Centerdata in Tilburg outlined the LISS panel, which is one of the best resource globally for social scientists (post to follow). Katherine Carman, also of Tilburg, presented on health risk perception and preventive health. Gerard O'Neill, Director of Amarach research outlined his monthly surveys on well-being and expectations and in particular examined the effects of day of the week on well-being. The keynote speaker Arie Kapteyn gave a wide ranging discussion of the determinants of life satisfaction in different domains, examining issues such as how different domains are weighted, how to measure life satisfaction, how to compare scores across countries and the implications of the findings for how we think about economic growth.

I hope people will keep in touch and I could already see a lot of interesting discussions happening after the sessions. We will begin organising an event for next year quite soon. It will be in November once again, and likely in Dublin or Maynooth. I already have a lot of ideas for how to develop this session. I am certain though after yesterday that it has a place and is worth continuing.

Happiness in Europe

IZA Discussion Paper

Happiness in Europe: Cross-Country Differences in the Determinants of Subjective Well-Being
by Peder J. Pedersen, Torben Dall Schmidt
(October 2009)

Abstract:
The purpose in the present paper is to use individual panel data in the European Community Household Panel to analyse the impact on self-reported satisfaction from a number of economic and demographic variables. The paper contributes to the ongoing discussion of the relationship between life satisfaction and income. The panel property of the data makes it possible to study also the impact on satisfaction from income changes as well as the impact from acceleration in income and changes in labour market status on changes in satisfaction. A number of demographic variables and individual attitude indicators are also entered into the analysis of both the level of satisfaction and the change in satisfaction from one wave of the survey to the next. We find a strong impact from the level of income in all countries, an impact from change and acceleration in income for a smaller number of countries, a strong impact from most changes in labour market status and finally important effects from a number of demographic variables.

Falk and Heckman - Lab Experiments in Social Sciences

IZA Discussion Paper

Lab Experiments Are a Major Source of Knowledge in the Social Sciences
by Armin Falk, James J. Heckman
(October 2009)
definitive version published in: Science, 2009, 326 (5952), 535-538

Abstract:
Laboratory experiments are a widely used methodology for advancing causal knowledge in the physical and life sciences. With the exception of psychology, the adoption of laboratory experiments has been much slower in the social sciences, although during the last two decades, the use of lab experiments has accelerated. Nonetheless, there remains considerable resistance among social scientists who argue that lab experiments lack "realism" and "generalizability". In this article we discuss the advantages and limitations of laboratory social science experiments by comparing them to research based on non-experimental data and to field experiments. We argue that many recent objections against lab experiments are misguided and that even more lab experiments should be conducted.
Text: See Discussion Paper No. 4540

Education @ Geary November 9th Monday

A reminder that there will be a one day symposium of research on education at the Geary Institute on Monday November 9th, starting at 9.30am. Full schedule below

Session 1 Early Childhood
9.30-10.00 Kelly McNamara “Evaluation of the Preparing for Life Programme: Two years on”
10.00-10.20 Sarah Finnegan “Differential teacher and parent ratings of school readiness in a disadvantaged community”
10.20-10.40 Carly Cheevers “Maternal parenting behaviours and child internalising and externalising behaviours: Evidence from a school readiness survey”

Coffee (20 minutes)

Session 2: Youth Inequalities
11.00-11.20 Veruska Oppedisano “Endogeneity in educational production functions: Evidence from PISA”
11.20-11.40 Peter Robert “Educational market, school choice, student performance”
11.40-12.00 Mary Doyle “The Marginalised on the Margins”
12.0.12.20 Dorren McMahon “The Impact of Social Origins and School Systems on Educational Transitions in Europe and the USA”

Lunch (40 minutes)

Session 3: Open session
1.00-1.20 Amélie Petitclerc “Social selection factors for participation in child care”
1.20-1.40 Sylvana Côté “Participation in child care and risk for infections”
1.40-2.00 Kevin Denny “The effect on education on pro-social behaviour: evidence from a quasi-experiment”

Coffee (20 minutes)

Session 4: Higher Education
2.20-2.40 Orla Doyle “The impact of a university access programme on student performance”
2.40-3.00 Cathy Redmond “Predictors of third level student grades: Evidence from Irish universities”
3.00-3.20 Martin Ryan “Job satisfaction & matching amongst post PhD researchers”


http://geary.ucd.ie/images/stories/news_items/Geary_Educational_research.pdf

Geary Institute Podcasts

The GI Podcasts are now available directly as links from the homepage. These give a flavour of the nature and scope of the work presented during seminars and events here. There will be many more of these being added during the year to come.

link here

Rate of Return from the Perry Pre-School Project

This is a vitally important paper that should be read by anyone with an interest in childhood development and policy.

link here

DEW Conference Videos

Videos from the DEW Event are now available

link here

November 6th Economics and Psychology

Dear All

We are having the second annual Irish Economics and Psychology Conference at the Institute of Bankers in the City Centre on Friday. Full details are on the link below. Speakers include Gerard O'Neill, Marcel Das and Arie Kapteyn.

http://sites.google.com/site/econpsychireland/


I had said previously that no registration is required but it would help greatly if you could email emma.barron@ucd.ie beforehand to confirm attendance.

Some brief notes:

We have no budget for lunch for attendees but there is a very good set of cafes on site so people can purchase their own lunch.

We will provide coffee at the 3.40 break.

Best Regards

Liam

Gallup on Exercise, BMI & Depression

I'm not sure we need 250,000 interviews to tell us this but interesting nonetheless:



It's worth noting that exercise without weight loss has been proposed as a successful way to intervene in obesity (body composition but not weight changes):


Potentially more interesting is the finding that there doesn't appear to be a linear relationship between exercise and the likelihood of depression with those exercising 7 days a week having a higher rate of depression than those exercising 3-4 or 5-6 days and around the same as those exercising 1-2 days (more here).