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Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Interdisciplinary Seminar in Quantitative Methods

Posted on 7:35 AM by Unknown
Local readers will be keenly aware that the most obvious thing that we lack around here is enough seminars to go to each week. After all, there are only two labor seminars, two public finance seminars, two development seminars, two macro seminars, an economic history seminar, an econometric seminar, a Ford School faculty work-in-progress seminar, two international / trade seminars, a health economics seminar, a new energy / environment economics seminar, two applied micro / IO seminars, a high theory seminar, the population center seminar, the survey research center seminars (including the joint program in survey methodology as well as a series specific to the PSID and another series), the quantitative methodology program seminar, the STEIT seminar, the research center on group dynamics seminar and probably some others that I am forgetting.

Given that we live in the center of a "seminar desert", I am delighted to note the arrival of a new seminar that looks to become one of my favorites: the ISQM or Interdisciplinary Seminar on Quantative Methods. You can find the schedule here. The initial meeting today features my friend Susan Murphy from the statistics department on (what I would call) statistical treatment rules. I'll be there.
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Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Cheaters welcome at Harvard

Posted on 12:51 PM by Unknown
This survey of the incoming class, reported in the Harvard Crimson, is a bit troubling.

Of course, this is what folks at Chicago suspected all along.

Hat tip: anonymous insider
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Fantasy economics

Posted on 12:48 PM by Unknown
A proposal (apparently serious) for a REPEC fantasy economist league.

I am speechless.

Hat tip: Charlie Brown
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Monday, September 9, 2013

Assorted links

Posted on 1:37 PM by Unknown
1. How to save Microsoft? Sounds like things have come a long way from when they used to mock the corporate culture at IBM (e.g. "the guy with the neuron is in today").

2. Dissecting a year of ESPN SportsCenter.

3. Klaus Zimmerman on how Europeans can learn useful lessons about inequality from the US.

4. Being an "ambassador" for the UM-Notre Dame night game.

5. Advice on applied econometrics from David Giles. I would generalize (1) to "get to know the basic patterns in the data really well before doing anything too sophisticated." I would tone down (7) a bit, but not too much. I would translate (9) as "be a casual Bayesian".

Hat tip on #2 to ASAK.
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Florida kills its economics doctoral program

Posted on 7:32 AM by Unknown
Coverage from the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Florida Alligator (alternative) student newspaper.

How can you be a flagship and not really have an economics department - let alone imagine that you will make it into the upper tier of public universities?

How can you deal with 600-some undergraduate majors with six faculty members and no gradual students?

More broadly, something is very wrong with Florida's accounting process. Economics majors are really cheap to produce: they consume almost entirely large chalk-and-talk lecture classes, along with a bit of computing. There are no expensive labs or other equipment, and not many small classes. The university should see the department as a profit center. That they do not suggests something is amiss with their budget process (probably having to do with accounting across units, in this case the busyness school and the arts and sciences faculty, as hinted at in the article).

Another way to think about this is as a selective salary cut for the remaining economics faculty. Graduate programs are essentially part of faculty compensation along with being an input into undergraduate teaching. Killing the doctoral program is an indirect reduction in faculty compensation, one that Florida can probably get away with given that the few faculty remaining in the department are relatively close to retirement and so unlikely to move.

Crazy.

Hat tips: Sarah Hamersma who, thankfully, has escaped to Syracuse.
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Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Ronald Coase, RIP

Posted on 4:07 AM by Unknown
Sad news about the passing of Ronald Coase, but it is hard to argue with living to 102.
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State education expenditures

Posted on 2:00 AM by Unknown
I quite liked this CATO site that grades states on the transparency of their published numbers on educational expenditures (and not just because the title is a great pun).

Particularly interesting is the evidence on the lack of public knowledge of expenditure levels presented under the "Why Care" tab.
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  • ▼  2013 (257)
    • ▼  September (18)
      • Michigan 28, Akron 24
      • Game: The Room
      • Obama has lost Second City
      • In praise of payday lenders
      • Interdisciplinary Seminar in Quantitative Methods
      • Cheaters welcome at Harvard
      • Fantasy economics
      • Assorted links
      • Florida kills its economics doctoral program
      • Ronald Coase, RIP
      • State education expenditures
      • Play: My Name is Asher Lev
      • Book: Paying for the Party by Armstrong and Hamilton
      • San Francisco Lusty Lady closes
      • Assorted links
      • Hooking up with the data
      • Washington 38, Boise State 6
      • Michigan 59, Central Michigan 9
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