You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2010.
Tyler Cowen forwards an email sent by a loyal reader disputing the argument that governments should borrow and spend more when interest rates are low.
But assume that the U.S. borrows an extra trillion of dollars now, due in 10 years (the average debt duration of the U.S. debt is something like 4 years?). Sure, the interest rate is low, but the borrowing is cheap only as long as we assume that during the 10 years the U.S. repays this whole extra debt, compared to what would have happened in the baseline world.
This does not affect the argument in any way. The economic argument for borrowing when interest rates are low says this. Suppose you have a plan for the future about when you will do your spending, borrowing, and repayment. This plan is predicated on your expectations of the path of interest rates. Now suppose that, as a surprise, interest rates are lower today than you expected. Then, other things equal, your original plan is no longer optimal. You should re-adjust and borrow more today.
The operative word here is “more.” I did not write “borrow a lot today.” And in fact the conclusion could be that you don’t borrow at all because if the original plan was to make re-payments, then “borrowing more” means (on net) just repaying less.
There is nothing at all deep about the economics here. And in fact, its rare that there is much deep economics involved when the economics really matters. Economics is really, really easy. What is hard is to use economics faithfully in your rhetoric. Advocates of increased borrowing and spending don’t ever refer to the default plan from which we should be adjusting. And without that (and the default plan probably doesn’t really exist) there isn’t much economics behind the rhetoric.
All sides are guilty. Tyler’s reader should be saying “the price of funds is determined by the path of interest rates, not just their value now and therefore this mutes to some degree the effect on borrowing of a drop in interest rates.” This is another very simple economic point. But it’s hard to resist the temptation to distort it from a simple comparative statement to one that is absolute.
It’s a variation on the old coordinated attack problem or Rubinstein’s electronic mail game. But this one is much simpler and even more surprising. It is due to my colleague Jakub Steiner and his co-author Colin Stewart.
Two generals, you and me, have to coordinate an attack on the enemy. An attack will succeed only if we both attack at the same time and if the enemy is vulnerable.
From my position I can directly observe whether the enemy is vulnerable. You on the other hand must send a scout and he will return at some random time. We agree that once you learn that the enemy is vulnerable, you will send a pigeon to me confirming that an attack should commence. It will take your pigeon either one day or two to complete the trip.
Suppose that indeed the enemy is vulnerable, I observe that is the case, and on day n your pigeon arrives informing me that you know it too. I am supposed to attack. But will I?
Since you sent a pigeon I know that you know that the enemy is vulnerable. But what day did you send your pigeon? It could be either n-1 or n-2. Suppose it was n-1, i.e. the pigeon arrived in one day. Then you don’t know for sure that the pigeon has arrived yet. So you don’t know that I know that you know that the enemy is vulnerable. And that means you can’t be certain that I will attack so you will not attack. And now since I cannot rule out that you sent the pigeon on day n-1, and if that was indeed the date you sent it you will not attack, then I will not attack either.
Thus, an attack will not occur the day I receive the pigeon. In a certain sense this is obvious because only I know what day I receive the pigeon. But the surprising thing is that there is no system we can use to decide the date of an attack and have it be successful.
Suppose that we have decided on some system and according to that system I am supposed to attack on date k. What must be true for me to actually be willing to follow through? First, I must expect you to be attacking too. And since you will only attack if you know that the enemy is vulnerable, I will only attack if I have received your pigeon confirming that you know.
But that is not enough. You will only attack if you know that I will attack and we just argued that this requires that I know that you know that the enemy is vulnerable. So you will attack only if you know that I have received your pigeon. You can only be sure of this 2 days after you sent it. And since I need to be sure you will attack, I will only attack if I received the pigeon yesterday or earlier so that I am sure that you sent it at least 2 days ago and are therefore sure that I have already received it.
But that is still not enough. Since we have just argued that I will only attack if I received your pigeon at least 1 day ago, you can only be certain that I will attack if you sent your pigeon at least 3 days ago. And that is therefore necessary for you to be prepared to attack. But now since I will attack only if I am certain that you will attack, I need to be certain that you sent your pigeon at least 3 days ago and that requires that I received your pigeon at least 2 days ago (and not only yesterday.)
This goes on. In order for me to attack I must know that you know that I know, etc. etc. that the enemy is vulnerable. And each additional iteration of this requires that the pigeon be sent one day earlier than the previous iteration. Eventually we run out of earlier days because today is day k. This means that I will not attack because I cannot be sure that you are sure that (iterate k times) that the enemy is vulnerable.
I am driving to Chicago from Boston with two kids in the back of my car. Random observations:
1. Julia Child’s My Life in France audiobook is family-friendly. It sent the five year old to sleep and the nine year enjoyed it quietly, as did I. Julia got a couple of rejections before getting her magnum opus accepted by Knopf.
2. Ithaca, Rome, Troy, Seneca Falls, Utica, Syracuse…..Why do so many towns have ancient, classical names?
3. We are staying in Geneva, faux-Switzerland, not Greece or Italy. I recommend the Ramada Inn, right on the lake.
An eternal puzzle is how a husband/father handles visits by his mother without agonizing conflict between the wife and her mother-in-law. Here is my Machiavellian solution. The husband should engineer a conflict with his mother that puts him in the wrong. Then the wife and her mother-in-law will naturally bond in the face of a mutual enemy. Don’t forget the key condition that the crime has to be egregious enough so the wife does not come to your defense. This is why the conflict should not be with the wife: your mother, being your mother, is naturally more inclined to side with you. Added bonus: husband is conveniently ostracized!
FIFA experimented with a “sudden-death” overtime format during the 1998 and 2002 World Cup tournaments, but the so-called golden goal was abandoned as of 2006. The old format is again in use in the current World Cup, in which a tie after the first 90 minutes is followed by an entire 30 minutes of extra time.
One of the cited reasons for reverting to the old system was that the golden goal made teams conservative. They were presumed to fear that attacking play would leave them exposed to a fatal counterattack. But this analysis is questionable. Without the golden goal attacking play also leaves a team exposed to the possibility of a nearly-insurmountable 1 goal deficit. So the cost of attacking is nearly the same, and without the golden goal the benefit of attacking is obviously reduced.
Here is where some simple modeling can shed some light. Suppose that we divide extra time into two periods. Our team can either play cautiously or attack. In the last period, if the game is tied, our team will win with probability 
Then, assigning a value of 1 for a win and -1 for a loss, 
Now we are in the first period of extra time. Here’s how we will model the tradeoff between attacking and playing cautiously. If we attack, we increase by 
If we don’t attack there is some probability of a goal scored, and some probability of a scoreless first period. So what we are really doing by attacking is taking an
In the golden goal system, the event of a scoreless first period leads to value
.
(A chunk of sized 
This inequality is comparing the value of the event of a scoreless first period
Rearranging, we attack if
.
Now, if we switch to the current system, a goal in the first period is not decisive. Let’s write 
Now the comparison is changed because attacking only alters probability-chunks of sized 
,
which re-arranges to
and since 
The golden goal encourages attacking play. The intuition coming from the formulas is the following. If 
And if 
I haven’t checked it but I would guess that the conclusion is the same for any number of “periods” of extra time (so that we can think of a period as just representing a short interval of time.)
In Asia the well-to-do avoid the sun (you’ve seen them with their parasols) because fair skin signals that you don’t spend your days outside, working. In Europe they embrace the sun because a good tan signals that you don’t spend all your time inside, working.
Obama has two focal options in Afghanistan, “Stay the Course” or “Cut and Run”. Stay the Course means continuing the current counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy of “winning hearts and minds” of Afghan civilians. Cut and Run means getting out as soon as possible and leaving the Afghans to deal with their own mess. In either scenario it is optimal to sack McCrystal.
McCrystal is a strong believer in COIN so if you want to Cut and Run, it s better to replace him with someone else, a true believer in Cut and Run. If Obama wants to Stay the Course, McCrystal is a possible candidate. But there is a reputational cost, looking weak, to Obama of retaining McCrystal. Replacing him carries the risk that the COIN strategy fails. But Petraeus is the author of COIN so this risk is minimized if Petraeus replaces McCrystal. So, even if you want to Stay the Course, it is optimal to sack McCrystal.
Pretty simple?
- Tomato and Watermelon Soup (Cold)
- Marinated Anchovy “Lasagna”
- Tomatoes Stuffed With Squid Over Rice With its Ink and Carranza Cheese
- Grilled Hake With Potatoes and Iodized Mussel Juice
- Pan Roasted Cod With Olive Oil and Olive Oil Cream
- Carmelized French Toast With Ice Cream of Fresh Cheese
- Slightly Spicy Peach Gnocchi With Coconut Ice Cream and Vanilla Juice
Tomato and watermelon, it turns out, were made for each other. The fish was amazingly prepared. Course number 3 on its own would have been the best dinner I had in years. We drank with it a white, slightly sparkling Basque-country wine called Txomin Extaniz (2009), which itself was a revelation: the apple accent was so distinctive I almost mistook it at first for cider. The total price for two: about $2500.
But when you net out the sunk costs of the round trip airfare to Madrid, train from Madrid to Barcelona, flight and bus from Barcelona to Donostia (San Sebastian) and hotels along the way, what’s left is the paltry 100 euros we paid for the Menu al Degustacion at Bodegón Alejandro in the old city. San Sebastian is a pescatarian’s paradise and this was the third of three outstanding experiences we had here.
We were steered away from a Basque pinxto bar in Barcelona because we were told that we would be getting the real thing in San Sebastian. My advice: have your pinxtos in Barcelona or elsewhere and put SS to it’s best use. It may have an absolute advantage but it’s comparative advantage is the restaurant scene. I hereby rank this the best foodie playground in all of Europe for the astonishing density of incredibly high-quality, moderately priced menus.
It is truly unbelievable how easy it is to walk into any generic restaurant here, without reservations, sit down and have a phenomenal meal. And if you get bored of that it has more than its fair share of Michelin 3-stars too.
In a must-read article in the New Yorker (subscription required), Anthony Lane breaks down strategies for singers in the Eurovision Song Contest. All the countries taking part get to vote for contestants from other countries. The main problem – anyone who does not sing in English is at a big disadvantage because voters can’t understand them. Ironically, this means that contestants have to adopt English for the lyrics. This can lead to beautiful poetry:
“Your breasts are like swallows-a-nesting” Sweden 1973
Unfortunately, strategizing only has an impact on a small batch of swing voters because most countries vote along geo-political fault lines. Cyprus votes reliably for Greece and vice-versa. Georgia cannot vote for Russia however mellifluous is the Russian entry. The Scandinavians vote for each other etc etc. The decisive votes for going to come from countries that are largely outside a current zone of conflict . And votes are going to go to “common value” candidates that have not irritated anyone. Ireland is a clear favorite, singing in English and being somewhat removed from the center of any Euro-controversies.
American has imported many entertainment phenomena from Europe (e.g. Simon Cowell). Why not an Amerivision Song Contest which each state submitting a contestant? A Presidential election with red states and blue states only gives us a shallow appreciation of what divides and unites Americans. An Amerivision Song Contest would give a deeper insight into the soul of America. Step aside American Idol.
Claire Bowern is undertaking a large scale survey of regional dialects within North America in attempt to identify patterns of variation along the lines of this:
But with a larger database and more variables.
Please help out and go here to take a short survey and record your voice.
- How will NFL marketing geniuses handle Super Bowl L?
- It is easier to hold your breath underwater because there is no instinct to breathe.
- By revealed preference, everyone is better off when goods are priced $99.99
- The new iPhone 4 gyroscope will make this possible.
- If you find something you have written sitting around at someone else’s house, pick it up and read it. Your state of mind will be such that you see your writing through their eyes.
- Which words are uncapitalized in blog titles?
A hot day in Boston. What could be better than a trip to the leafy sculpture garden at the DeCordova Museum? Try to help the red man climb out of the Earth. Build dams in the stream in the Rain Gates. Tap on the Two Black Hearts to see if they hollow. Try to take out the stovetop espresso maker embedded in one of the hearts.
There is a lot more to see and do in the garden. The Museum itself is in a lovely building. You can see the faux château roofs as you walk around the garden. It has interesting exhibits and a little café that serves pre-made sandwiches and salads. But the Museum is not the reason to go to the DeCordova. It is the sculpture garden that makes it worth the trip.
1. The porn, wine, Chateau Petrus nexus.
2. Pretty girlfriend of Spanish goalie distracted him and caused horrible loss? Perhaps not.
3. Pretty ex-girlfriend of English goalie distracted him and caused horrible mistake? Who knows but sources are similar to 2.
Just as I get ready to head back to Evanston, I find a great coffee shop for work near MIT!
I like Crema Coffee in Harvard Square for its coffee and even its food. Unfortunately, it’s too crowded and noisy for work. 1369 Coffee House is a little better for work but the products are worse. And both branches, Central and Inman Square, are a bit cramped. But a few blocks south of Central Square I found Andala Coffee House. There’s table service, so the prices are a bit higher than you might expect. The mint tea and hummus were well worth the extra few bucks. There’s an outside patio, a porch that sticks out over the street and, as you come in, a large room with lots of windows. It was a little chilly to sit outside and the porch was full so I had to settle for the large room. It was fine. The music is mellow and there is some quiet, pleasant chatter in the background. I worked for two hours at high concentration and left regretting I had not found Andala earlier. I’ll be back often over the next couple of weeks.
Here’s what my students said about me, presented in the form of a word cloud:
What are the primary teaching strengths of the instructor?
What are the primary weaknesses of the instructor?
Please summarize your reaction to this course focusing on the aspects that were most important to you.
Vast mineral resources in Afghanistan have recently been discovered by American geologists.
Nigeria has oil, Angola has diamonds but neither has a stable political system or a booming economy spreading wealth to all its citizens. GDP fell by 1.3% per capita on average in OPEC countries from the late sixties to the late nineties. On the other hand, Norwegians are quite happily enjoying their oil revenue.
There are economic reasons for a resource curse. The price of the resource can fluctuate on world markets and so can the income of the producer. The income generated by the resource can push up the price of non-tradables and distort domestic allocation of inputs. But I would guess all of these pale into insignificance with the political implications of a resource curse.
If the force of law is weak, there is an overwhelming temptation to steal resources. Rents are dissipated by fighting or defensive expenditures. Leaders are short-termists and over-extract resources fearing they will be out of power soon.
The rule of law must precede development. A windfall can provoke contests not prevent them.
You (the sender) would like someone (the responder) to do you a favor, support some decision you propose or give you some resource you value. You email the responder, asking him for help. There is no reply. Maybe he has an overactive Junk Mail filter or missed the email. You email the responder again. No reply. The first time round, you can tell yourself that maybe the responder just missed your request. The second time, you realize the responder will not help you. Saying Nothing is the same as saying “No”.
Why not just say No to begin with? Initially, the responder hopes you do not send the second email. Then, when the responder reverses roles and asks you for help, you will not hold an explicit No against him. By the time the second email is sent and received, it is too late – at this point whether you respond or not, there is a “No” on the table and your relationship has taken a hit. The sender will eventually learn that often no response means “No”. Sending a second email, while clearing up the possibility the first non-response was an error, may lead to a worsening of the relationship between the two players. So, the sender will weigh the consequences of the second email carefully and perhaps self-censor and never send it.
Then, Saying Nothing will certainly be better than Saying No for the responder and a communication norm is born.
Here is the advice from Annie Duke, professional poker player and the 2006 Champion of the World Series of Rock, Scissors, Paper:
The other little small piece of advice that I would give you is that people tend to throw rock on their first throw. Throwing paper is usually not a good strategy because they might throw scissors. You should throw rock as well.
The key is, and this is the best piece of advice that I can give you, if you do think that you recognize the pattern from your opponent, it’s good to try to throw a tie as opposed to a win. A tie will very often get you a tie or a win, whereas a win will get you a win or a loss. For example, if you think that someone might throw a rock, it’s good to throw rock back at them. You should be going for ties.
If at first it sounds dumb, think again. The idea is some combination of pattern learning and level-k thinking: If she thinks that I think that I have figured out her pattern and it dictates that she will play Rock next, then she expects me to play Paper and so in fact she will play Scissors. That means I should play Rock because either I have correctly guessed her pattern and she will indeed play Rock and I will tie, or she has guessed that I have guessed her pattern and she will play Scissors and I will win.
She is essentially saying that players are good at recognizing patterns and that most players are at most level 2
Research note: why are we wasting time analyzing penalty kicks? Can we get data on competitive RoShamBo? While we wait for that here is an exercise for the reader: find the minimax strategy in this game:
My male colleagues at Kellogg are a clean-shaven, short-haired bunch. The first hypothesis is that the “business casual” atmosphere at a B-School makes the a clean-cut JCrew look focal and any deviation from it socially uncomfortable (though I have no qualms about ignoring it!). But colleagues on the Econ Dept, which is outside the B-School, also largely subscribe to this norm. Even short-sporting, flip-flop wearing, oldish-wannabe-surfer-economists from Southern California seem to shave daily. I can remember this pattern from grad school: the Europeans were pretty casual about shaving and the Americans were much more likely to have the clean-cut look. There was no business casual social norm to conform to in grad school, so I don’t think that explanation carries all the water.
Another rationale for the buzz cut can be safely dismissed: if you think that having sticking with short hair saves on visits to the barber, you’re wrong. For this rationale to work, you have to be willing to have long hair too, otherwise you’re going quite often to the barber to keep it short all the time. So if you are unwilling to go long, going short keeps your barber nicely employed.
I am led then to the Jeff Van Gundy explanation:
My dad said, ‘You can’t have normal-length hair until high school.’ It was a form of discipline.
Not only is it is a form of discipline, it is a signal of discipline. You are disciplined enough to have regular haircuts and, by extension, shave regularly. On the other hand, Europeans are busy counter-signaling: you are undisciplined and do incredibly well on exams, so you must be really smart! No wonder Europeans and Americans can have such a hard time communicating with each other.
Hmmn. After all this analysis, I guess I still have to work out what look to adopt. After all, some scruffy people are hirsute because they truly are undisciplined. Gotta make sure I’m not in that group.
David Byrne, singer of the Talking Heads, solo artist, and blogger, is suing Charlie Crist for the use of the song “Road to Nowhere” in an advertisement for his Florida Senate campaign. One of the reasons given is interesting. Because the law requires that permission be granted:
… use of the song and my voice in a campaign ad implies that I, as writer and singer of the song, might have granted Crist permission to use it, and that I therefore endorse him and/or the Republican Party, of which he was a member until very, very recently. The general public might also think I simply license the use of my songs to anyone who will pay the going rate, but that’s not true either, as I have never licensed a song for use in an ad. I do license songs to commercial films and TV shows (if they pay the going rate), and to dance companies and student filmmakers mostly for free. But not to ads.
Note that if there were no requirement to ask for permission then there would be no such inference. (Not that it would change things in this case because David Byrne is opposed for other reasons as well.)
Ryan Avent’s self-styled populist post takes to task a rich man’s tax-conscious balance sheet dance:
As far as I can tell, this is entirely within the law. But I don’t think it’s improper to declare it obscene. Shameful, even. With a fortune of that size, additional wealth is about little more than score-keeping.
Everyone has this natural response to a rich person desiring to avoid taxes. We all think like Ryan does:
But let’s be honest for a moment. According to this Bloomberg story, Mr Lampert is worth $3 billion. If he earns just 1% per year on that fortune—and he certainly earns much more—then he takes home $30 million in income. Per year. That’s 600 times the median household income in America. It’s more money than a person can reasonably spend. With that much money you can binge every day, and yet the money will just keep accumulating.
But you don’t have to think much longer than that to see a different side of things. Since Mr. Rich is beyond the binge-every-day constraint, there are lots of other things he can do with his money besides bingeing. For example, if you were Mr. Rich you could probably think of a lot of loved ones you would like to make happy by sharing your wealth with them. Or perhaps you understand that money is what determines what gets done in the world and maybe you have very strong feelings about what should get done.
Like maybe you want to be able to donate to artists or schools or libraries. Maybe you want to help prevent HIV infection. Is it so obvious that a rich man, already beyond bingeing, who wants an extra dollar is being more greedy than a middle-class man who wants to get a dollar closer to the bingeing stage?
Let me be clear that I don’t believe that all of the Mr. Riches are trying to be Bill and Melinda Gates. But I don’t see how you can conclude just from the fact that someone is rich that they don’t have reasons that we would be completely sympathetic to if we knew them.
And if I were a smart do-gooder who thought that everyone on Wall Street was evil the obvious thing to do would be to start a hedge fund, rip them off, and spend their money to meet my goals.
Ghutrah greeting: gappy3000.
Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon, including Tyler Cowen, Greg Mankiw, and even Sandeep. They are all trumpeting this study whose bottom line is that student evaluations of teachers are inversely related to the teacher’s long-run added value. The conclusion is based on two findings. First, if my students do unusually well in my class they are likely to do badly in their followup classes. Second, if my students evaluate me highly it is likely that they did unusually well in my class.
I am not jumping on the bandwagon. I have read through the paper and while I certainly may have overlooked something (and please correct me if I have) I don’t see any way the authors have ruled out the following equally plausible explanation for the statistical findings. First, students are targeting a GPA. If I am an outstanding teacher and they do unusually well in my class they don’t need to spend as much effort in their next class as those who had lousy teachers, did poorly this time around, and have some catching up to do next time. Second, students recognize when they are being taught by an outstanding teacher and they give him good evaluations.
The authors of the cited study are every time quick to jump to the following conclusion: older, experienced teachers, and especially those with PhD’s know how to teach “lasting knowledge” whereas younger teachers “teach to the test.” That’s a hypothesis that sounds just right to all of us older, experienced teachers with PhD’s. But is it any more plausible than older experienced teachers with tenure don’t care about teaching and as a result their students do poorly? Not to me.
Dear 310-2 students who will be filling out evaluations this week: please don’t hold it against me that I am old, experienced, and have a PhD.
Compare two studies of a medicine’s effectiveness. In the first study there was a placebo control group. Subjects who actually got the medicine believed with 50% probability that they were taking a sugar pill. In the second study there was no placebo control. Those who got the medicine knew it.
Those who actually got the medicine had better outcomes when they knew it than when they were unsure.
Our group at Columbia has completed preliminary work involving metaanalyses of randomized controlled trials comparing antidepressant medications to a placebo or active comparator in geriatric outpatients with Major Depressive Disorder (Sneed et al. 2006). In placebo controlled trials, the medication response rate was 48% and the remission rate 33%, compared to a response rate of 62% and remission rate of 43% in the comparator trials (p < .05). The effect size for the comparison of response rate to medications in the comparator and placebo controlled trials was large (Cohen’s d = 1.2).
The lead article in the June 2010 edition of the Journal of Political Economy is
| Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors | ||
| Scott E. Carrell and James E West | ||
Student evaluations may not be a good signal of teaching quality because
“Professors can inflate grades or reduce academic content to elevate student evaluations.”
The authors argue that if a student takes Calculus I, say, their performance in Calculus II is a good signal of how well they learned the material in Calculus I. So their study:
“uses a unique panel data set from the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) in which students
are randomly assigned to professors over a wide variety of standardized core courses. The random assignment of students to professors, along with a vast amount of data on both professors and students, allows us to
examine how professor quality affects student achievement free from the usual problems of self-selection. Furthermore, performance in USAFA core courses is a consistent measure of student achievement
because faculty members teaching the same course use an identical syllabus and give the same exams during a common testing period. Finally, USAFA students are required to take and are randomly assigned
to numerous follow-on courses in mathematics, humanities, basic sciences, and engineering. Performance in these mandatory follow-on courses is arguably a more persistent measurement of student learning.
Thus, a distinct advantage of our data is that even if a student has a particularly poor introductory course professor, he or she still is required to take the follow-on related curriculum.”
Their methodology:
“We start by estimating professor quality using teacher value-added in the contemporaneous course. We then estimate value-added for subsequent classes that require the introductory course
as a prerequisite and examine how these two measures covary. That is, we estimate whether high- (low-) value-added professors in the introductory course are high- (low-) value-added professors for student
achievement in follow-on related curriculum. Finally, we examine how these two measures of professor value-added (contemporaneous and follow-on achievement) correlate with professor observable attributes
and student evaluations of professors. These analyses give us a unique opportunity to compare the relationship between value-added models (currently used to measure primary and secondary teacher quality) and
student evaluations (currently used to measure postsecondary teacher quality).
Their findings:
Results show that there are statistically significant and sizable differences in student achievement across introductory course professors in both contemporaneous and follow-on course achievement. However,
our results indicate that professors who excel at promoting contemporaneous student achievement, on average, harm the subsequent performance of their students in more advanced classes. Academic rank,
teaching experience, and terminal degree status of professors are negatively correlated with contemporaneous value-added but positively correlated with follow-on course value-added. Hence, students of less
experienced instructors who do not possess a doctorate perform significantly better in the contemporaneous course but perform worse in the follow-on related curriculum.
For example:
As an illustration, the introductory calculus professor in our sample who ranks dead last in deep learning ranks sixth and seventh best in student evaluations and contemporaneous value-added, respectively.
Required reading for all serious teachers and students and Deans. Ungated version
The World Cup starts tomorrow and I just filled out my bracket. In academia Americans are a minority and people are intensely nationalistic. So the optimal bracket strategy is to have USA advance as far as I can before even I burst out laughing (it turns out that’s the semi-finals this year) and also give preference for under-represented countries. Based on a cursory survey of our department’s demographics, the team that maximizes quality per department representative is Spain. So Spain is my team to win it all this year.
The World Cup is paradoxical because the group stage is exciting and the elimination stage is extremely boring. There are probably many reasons for this but often people focus on the penalty shootout. You hear arguments like this. Playing it safe gives you essentially a coin flip. And if the other team is playing it safe, taking risks and playing offensively can actually be worse than waiting for the coin flip.
I have heard proposals to hold the penalty shootout before extra time. The winner of the shootout will be the winner of the match if it remains tied after extra time. The uncertainty is resolved first, then they play.
The rule would have ambiguous effects on the quality of play. For sure, the team that won the shootout would play defensively and the disadvantaged team would be forced to play an attacking game. There would be exactly one team attacking.
But that would be less exciting than a game in which both are attacking so the rule change would be a net improvement only if most extra-time games would otherwise have neither team attacking.
Here is a theoretical analysis of the question by Juan Carillo. I am not sure I can summarize his conclusions so help would be appreciated. Here is an empirical analysis.
My first post on this topic was prompted by reading newspaper stories about Afghanistan and having lunch with Jim Robinson shortly afterwards. (For example, Karzai is sacking trusty lieutenants and moving to form a coalition with the Taliban and perhaps Pakistan.) But who has thought deeply about this issue and come up with some interesting insights? The answer is of course: Roger Myerson. He has an informal overview of his thoughts on state-building. To understand his ideas fully, you have to read the overview. Here are a few insights I pulled out that are most related to my earlier post.
One issue I raised was: How do you ensure political competition is constructive not destructive? Myerson says the key is that the losers in any political competition feel they have the opportunity to win a future competition. Otherwise, what choice to they have but to compete from outside the political system and trigger conflict?
An alternative might be to install a puppet dictator who faces no competition. But here I repeat my earlier point: this dictator will be rapacious and steal from his citizens. To keep him in line, constructive political competition is necessary.
Myerson’s overview has his thoughts on how to build constructive national and local competition. Again, I recommend you take a look.
With news of a shaky, insecure Hamid Karzai and bad news coming out of Afghanistan every day, it may be too late to ask how a new system of goverment should be created. But it’s an interesting question nevertheless! Here are some possibilities.
A state must at the very least protect property rights. Citizens must be protected from each other and contracts must be enforced to facilitate trade. More subtly, citizens must be protected from the state itself. Otherwise, the fruits of their labor can simply be confiscated by the state and they will have little incentive to engage in productive economic activity.
This kind of state exists in many Western democracies. A judicial system enforces contracts. A politician who interferes in lawful activity faces checks and balances to limit his ability to be rapacious. The checks and balances can come from other branches of government or through political competition. This is about the best system found so far. If it could be established in Afghanistan and Iraq, it would be great!
Another kind of state has an elite (or a dictator) which enforces property rights. They tax their citizens for the enforcement. The elite is tempted to steal from the citizens: there are no checks and balances. What potentially restrains the elite is that any expropriation will lead to a loss of reputation. The citizens know they stand of being ripped off tomorrow if they work hard today. A patient, far-sighted elite which is secure in power might then have the right incentives not to steal from its citizens.
The third scenario is a little like the first. The state/government does not have monopoly power, it faces competition. But the competition instead of leading to better behavior leads to worse behavior. To stay in power, the government has to kill off other warlords. The threat of being thrown out of power generates short-sighted rational strategies. Exploitation and theft are widespread. This most resembles present-day Afghanistan.
How do we go from one kind of state to another? Which is the best system to set up from an outsider’s perspective?
