The job market for economists is revving up again, and I’m thinking about the gauntlet of graduate education that the rookie economists have just survived to get to this point. I want to raise a few questions—typical academic navel-gazing about “the state of the field”. Basically my message is that I think the time has come to retire and replace the first year graduate economics “canon”. Hopefully I can justify myself with some (leading) questions.
Economics
Economic methodology, internationalization, and writing style
This one’s really for the economists. Just wanted to record some jumbled thoughts while I work my way through The Nobel Factor by Avner Offer and Gabriel Söderberg. It’s about the relationship between economic methodology and the sociology and political context of the discipline, through the lens of the economics Nobel.
Producing knowledge from information
Thinking today about an old, abandoned line of research of mine. How about this: when information is cheap, knowledge is expensive.
“Reason” is not value-neutral
Zipping across my desk this afternoon is “The Difference Between Rationality and Intelligence“, an article title conceived in a laboratory to make my eye twitch and take possession of my clicking finger.
Some of my research on targeting in networks
A topic that I’ve researched a bunch over the years is the interaction between people in a network of relationships and an outsider who wants to tell or sell them something. You know something about the structure of the network that people belong to: who talks to who. Which people do you send messages or promotions to?
Psst: study what you want
Hot on the heels of my post yesterday about rhetoric and valuation in higher education, Steven Pearlstein has an article today for the Washington Post that gets at similar questions from a different angle: parental pressure to get a “practical” degree.
A short story about how to spend $300m
This is the first paragraph from a really neat economics paper by Budish, Cramton, and Shim (QJE 2015):
What is not measured is lost
In a column yesterday, Tim Harford asks “are universities worth it?“. Surely a topic worth discussing. Yet there is an asymmetry in Harford’s summary of the debate. While Harford explicitly considers not just money but also time and intellectual resources as opportunity costs of running higher education, his taxonomy of the benefits is restricted to the financial.
Open access journals and resources for economists
I made a new page here to keep a directory of open access journals and other resources in economics. What I’m hoping to keep track of in particular are outlets to which researchers in economics to submit their work, with no or minimal fees to them, so that if it selected for publication it will be freely available to anyone who wants to read it.
Econ 101 day zero: last-minute reflections
Sometimes the story is so good that you forget it’s just a story.
Jim Campbell 