The Ambrosini Critique

Kids on Halloween.

So says Robert Samuelson in his Washington Post review of Farewell to Alms.

“More important, China’s recent, astonishing expansion (a fact that he barely mentions) demonstrates that economic policies and institutions matter.”

News to me.

While YNS! and EI generate fake inequality data, here’s the real deal:

The gini data (xls) are from the world bank and the income data (xls) are from the penn world tables (oh, that’s log income per capita).

Here’s the plot for “Europe”¹ and the US:

1. Europe has been conveniently defined to get the result I wanted… check the third tab on the spreadsheet for details. [↩]

YouNotSneaky! and Gabriel tag team on a cool exercise. Their point, I think, is that we shouldn’t be surprised when measures of skewness are correlated with averages.

But I’m too busy writing my dissertation on the deep structural links between income levels and income inequality to dig into the details.

“Memo to suburban voucher opponents who “support public education”: you’re already sending your kid to private school. You’re just confused because your tuition fees came bundled with granite countertops and hardwood floors.”
— Megan McArdle

First observation: I often hear someone defend their field of research by saying something like “hey, its not useful today, but someday someone will figure out a use for it.” Most recently I heard a budding choice theorist use this defense (and I wasn’t even attacking his field, he was just being defensive). I generally agree with this line. Further, I think some things are just interesting in themselves and don’t have to ever be “useful” for us to want to know more about them.

This argument is made for science as a whole or for a particular field, but the opposite case is usually made against individual scientists. Scientists, its argued, should stick to their own fields; venturing out isn’t useful. I’m in a math class this quarter that doesn’t, in any way, touch on my research. Several people, including the budding choice theorist, have wondered why I’m bothering taking the class.

Second observation: science and the generation of knowledge, it is well understood, should be an objective and fact-driven process. Of course, I agree with this sentiment, but people often confuse this idea with the one that individual scientists themselves should be unemotional and unbiased.

In both cases, I think the role of individual curiosity in science is being underplayed.

Prof. Knittel on gas prices.

(h/t egghead)

“Which seems highly relevant, since Inglimo would have no defense if he got his client off.”
— “arthur” commenting at VC

I forgot to mention that Tyler Cowen came and talked at UCD last Thursday. Earlier in the afternoon he had the stage all to himself to talk about why people blog¹ and why people read blogs². Felix Simon watched the video of the talk and has a good discussion.

Later on he joined Brad Delong and Greg Clark to talk about Prof. Clark’s book Farewell to Alms (mp4… thanks Gabriel for the link).

1. its a loss leader [↩]
2. to get their own personalized celebrity gossip [↩]

“Baby Boomers… by the way, destroyed the effectiveness of protest by creating a protest culture which emphasized alienation from, rather than solidarity with, the larger culture.”
— Megan McArdle

(I’m thinking about renaming this feature: Brilliant Things Megan Said)