UNDP Economist to speak tomorrow

The Economist's Society is having Richard Schiere, an UNDP economist, come to speak tomorrow, Wednesday November 30th. It will be in HW 415 at 1:00 p.m., and refreshments will be provided.

The topics will cover China and the Global Economy. If you're available, I would encourage you to go. My personal congratulations to the Economist's Society for setting this up.

Micro Update

Um, what's up with Melanie and the shotgun? We couldn't get her away from it.

From Prof. Conning:

Dear everyone in 701,

I've posted problem set 4 to the web link and I've set the due date in slightly under two weeks time: Thursday December 8th.

It covers materials from Chapter 12 (General Equilibrium/Edgeworth boxes) as well as 13 (Monopoly), 14(other types of imperfect competition) and Chapter 15 (Game Theory).

Some of you have asked me if you should read all the material in the chapters given that we have such limited class meeting time. I've identified sections of the textbook below that you can safely skim or ignore because we will not cover it in class (except perhaps for a brief in-class mention that will show up in the notes):

CH 9, Skim lightly (basically know how to setup and solve profit maximization but don't worry about elasticity rules)
CH 10, Skim (you should know this from earlier courses)
CH 11, Skim (you should know this from earlier courses)
CH 12, can skim/skip 349-356 on Existence
CH 21, just read 610-615
CH 15, can skip 463-467 on Games of Incomplete Information

See you next Thursday (we will wrap up General Equilibrium and Welfare and move into Imperfect Competition and Games),

Give the turkey a kick.....

...and let's go grab a beer. This Wednesday, wannabe economists once again descend on Phoenix Park (67th and 3rd) to ring in the holiday weekend.

I'll be there at 7:30 p.m. See you there.

Internship Opportunity at the UN

Jorge Vargas, a fellow undergrad, is the one to thank for the following (and Prof. Filer for the distribution):

My name is Jorge Vargas and I am an Undergraduate Econ major at Hunter College. My wife works at the UNDP - Human Development Report Office (HDRO) and they are looking for an intern to assist the Statisticians in the elaboration of the report.

Although the internship is not paid, we both thought this would be a good opportunity for a Hunter student to gain some experience and networking connections.

While HDRO would prefer a graduate student, they would consider an excellent undergrad. I know they are looking at other universities, too, so I trust you would be able to reach as many qualified candidates as possible in short time. My wife is copied in this message since she is the focal point to receive all applications. She can be contacted for further details at:

melissa.hernandez@undp.org

For those of you that did not receive the e-mail, and would like to see the description of the internship, e-mail me, and I'll forward you a copy.

Awesome, Jorge. Many thanks.

The IRS VITA Program

Alex Asnes has asked Tams and myself to get the word out about Hunter's IRS VITA program. For 18 years the Hunter Accounting Society has provided low-income families with tax preparation assistance through trained economics and accounting students. While there's not enough room on the blog to discuss the program in length, here are some highlights:

• IRS software training will take place during the Winter Break. It requires two eight-hour days of training. The first day needs to take place during the week of January 9-13, and the second day of training takes place during the week of January 17 - 23.
• The volunteer commitment is four hours a week from Febraury 15 to April 17. You'll be working directly with families and fellow Hunter College students.
• In order to register for the program students must send their full name, address, phone number and emailto our organization at huntervita@yahoo.com .

Not only is this a karmically sound way to spend your time, but you'll be gaining some valuable experience as well. This posting does not do Alex's e-mail justice, so if you'd like me to forward you a copy, feel free to e-mail me.

More announcements.......

First, the new Spring graduate schedule has been distributed by Prof. Filer. If you did not receive his e-mail, and you're a part of the BA/MA or MA program, please send him a message and he'll add you to the distribution list.

Here are the courses being offered next semester:

Econ 703 - Macroeconomics Mondays 5:30 - 7:20 Professor Sangeeta Pratap

Econ 722 - Econometrics Thursdays 5:30 - 7:20 Professor Deb

Econ 710 - Monetary Theory Tuesdays 7:30 - 920 Professor Thapar

Econ 715 - Public Finance Mondays 7:30 - 9:20 Professor Balsam

Econ 730 - Development Economics Wednesdays 7:30 - 9:20 Professor Filer

Econ 741 - International Finance Thursdays 7:30 - 9:20 Professor Kearney

There are additional, helpful comments included in Prof. Filer's e-mail. If you need me to forward it to you, please let me know. Also, for those of you that want to avoid the time-dependent extortion that takes place in our bookstore, I'll hopefully be posting the required textbooks soon.

TA Positions for the Spring Semester

From Prof. Filer:

Dear MA and BA/MA students:

Once again the department will have TA slots available for the spring semester. These will be assigned to all double sections of 100, 200, and 201. Each slot will involve about 6 hours of direct contact a week (prep time will be extra) and pay about $2475 for the semester.If you are interested, please respond to me BY DECEMBER 1st with the following information:

Name
ID Number
Courses (and sections) you are interested in being a TA for
Days of the weeks and hours in each of these days you ARE AVAILABLE to
attend classes and/or hold office hours.

Once I have your responses, I will circulate the information to faculty teaching these sections for their preferences and begin the matching process.

Thanks
Randy Filer

Last announcement

The semester is quickly winding down, and the Society for Economics is looking to have an end-of-the-year bash. We're looking for feedback as to when and where. While I can't positively promise a lot of money from our funds for the event, I will say that each time we've gone out everybody's had a good time. Again, your feedback is important - especially when it comes to scheduling a time that everyone has free.

A few announcements

Law and Economics Announcement

From Prof. George:

Dear Law & Econ Students,
We have a lot of reading for tomorrow. The textbook has an overview of the basic law & economics of the legal process. I've also assigned four papers. The two theory papers (Priest & Klien, Bebchuk) represent the key ideas about disputes selected for litigation. The two Waldfogel papers empirically test the two theories. None of this material is covered in our text.

Because the papers are closely related, we will cover material in all of them. However you do not need to study the mathematics of the theory or the empirical tests, just familiarize yourself with the ideas and the basic mathematical approach.

Lisa

Research Assistant Position Available

From Prof. Filer:

This is a very good opportunity to build your resume for those interested in Ph.D. applications. I do not know if it is paid, but this is the type of internship we could arrange course credit for if you are selected.

An opening for a part-time research asistant (10 hours per week) is now available at the International Longevity Center. The RA will participate in a research project studying the income and expenditures of older households in 12 countries. Current analysis focuses on France and the US, and is primarily based on national budget surveys. This work is under the direction of Drs. Charlotte Muller and Oleg Volkov.

The RA would be assisting in table preparation and contributing to the analysis for the final France-US report and also in updating ILC's international database on Economic Status of Older Persons [ESOP]. Statistical and computer skills are necessary.


Household budget surveys support comparisons of income sources, living standards and quality of life as indicated by consumption patterns, and productive engagement as revealed by reliance on earnings, subjects of interest in the context of population aging.

Would you kindly post this announcement? Interested students should send their c.v. to Dr. Muller at
charlottem@ilcusa.org

Learn from my mistakes....

....and start using the do-file editor.

A couple of you have asked me why I insist on using the do-file editor rather than punching the commands directly in Stata. The reasons are several, and they are all tied into a data set that I was using over the summer:

1. The do-file is a convenient way to maintain all of your required data revisions, so you don't have to do them again....and again.....and again. For instance, if I wanted a particular subsample within a given dataset and I know I'll have to keep using this data, rather than trying to remember all of the filters I applied to it, I just have to refer to my do-file (or even better - just run it) and it's there - every time.
   
2. One time, I came up with a particularly good estimation that fit with my intuition by including some additional variables. I left it alone for a couple of weeks, and then tried to draw them from memory. Didn't work out very well. I should have maintained this new estimation in my do-file.
   
3. Stata prompts you in the end if you want to save the changes that you've made to the data. It could be something benign, like keeping the variable age-squared in your file ,or it could be that you dropped a few variables and Stata would like to know if you'd like to keep this change permanent. Bad idea. Really. I made a revision permanent to a dataset that I painstakingly compiled over several days. Not only do you lose your data, but if you're tempted to run your estimations again on the revised dataset, you're never quite sure if you're including things that should be in there. Cardinal rule number 1 - never permanently modify your original sample - even if you're sure that the revision is 'safe'. Better to keep your modifications limited to your do-file. I cannot emphasize this enough.
   

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions. Better yet, ask Prof. Deb. If you don't know what a do-file looks like, I'll post one on the blog that I made for Homework 5 on Friday.

Attention law and econo-nerds

As if there weren't enough literature from class to satisfy your appetites, I thought I'd draw your attention to a blog being run by the big dogs themselves, Gary Becker and Richard Posner. I've browsed through a couple of their postings, and while I carry the humble opinion that our blog contains much richer content, Becker and Posner hold their own discussing various contemporary issues. As an aside, I'm all for posting the mugs of various contributors on this blog as well.

Here's the link - it'll also be posted permanently under 'econ on the web':

http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

For somewhat ego-inflated postings that also discuss economic issues, here's Brad DeLong's blog:

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/

Speaking of egos, if you're like me and yours took a bruising after this round of midterms, feel free to join me for a drink this Wednesday night at (where else) the Phoenix Park pub after 6:00 p.m. Professors are more than welcome to join us as well.

Feeling like being an economist is not your speed? I know the feeling. This site may provide some solace. How is being a cowboy the number 3 worst job?

Are you kidding me?