Matt Nolan

What econs do

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

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.

Matt Nolan

Woops

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I have just accidentally purchased 6 books on methodology, mostly economics but one from sociology and one general philosophy of science book.  As I’m supposed to be estimating a whole lot of things at the moment, this combined with these new books may leave me a little quiet …

Hopefully I can get up from my slumber to write about the election during the weekend (and have the posts go up over the week).  But if it doesn’t happen, here is the excuse.  I’m time inconsistent and my best precommitment mechanism was to not buy the books – and it failed me.

Note:  One of the books appears to be premised on the idea that economics is returning to sociology, and that eventually they’ll combined into the same discipline (called sociology).  This isn’t the sociology book – this is one of the philosophy of economics books which I purchased under a bundle of “economic methodology books”.  I will report back once I’ve read it – there is a different one I want to read first, to see if it is a better introductory book than a few others I already own (specifically this fellow I learnt from – with a pdf version appearing here it seems).

I love introductory books, even in areas where I have read a bit of the literature, as the people who can communicate the ideas most clearly are often those that understand it most deeply.  Not always, but often.

Matt Nolan

Food: Getting lost in social constructivism

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After reading both the Stuff article and the initial article on Gareth Morgan’s blog and the follow up, I am convinced both Gareth and Geoff Simmons (GG) have inadvertently become extreme social constructivists – but may not realise it yet.

Now I hate it when people just whip out rhetoric like “social constructivist” and don’t explain it – so what do I mean, how have they gone this way, and what do we know about this type of framework so we can analyse it?

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Matt Nolan

Study at Vic day today

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It is study at Vic day today, so if you or someone you know is a Year 13 then the Year 13 needs to head up to Victoria University – so that we can convince them that they should study Economics. [Economics is up at10.25 at HM205 and 1.10 at HM104.]

But if you can’t make it, here is a brief plan of what I’m aiming to cover (with quotes at the top which I will throw in at random times).

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