What econs do

Recently on twitter I decided to write a bunch of acronyms.  In my defence I noted:

@robhosking @TheNationTV3 @Tim_Watkin I just made what you said into acronyms – as that is 35% of what economists do.

— TVHE (@TVHE) September 5, 2014

Now a couple of points were left unsaid here.  What is the other 65% and how did I get my data.

The other 65% falls into three categories.  15% is made up of using esoteric terms to describe often obvious social phenomenon.  Another 10% is made up of using metaphors as a way of communicating these esoteric terms.  And the final 40% is mentioning data points.

The data set used to decompose what economists do into these categories is an unbalanced panel from the last 7 years.  Given selection bias in my sample and the fuzziness of quantifying what fits into certain categories I used a bit of calibration (to fit the data to known population parameters), smoothing, hedonic adjustment, and judgement to adjust the data.

In other terms I made it up.

Proper posts will be back soon – I have been working on posts about NZ election policies.  They won’t be that detailed, but hopefully they will be of interest.