A reflection of developmental economics

The beautiful girls (boys) at the other table in the library. They're compelling, they pull at your heartstrings, something _needs_ to be done. But what're you going to do?

Straw Men

One thing that's surprised me about econ grad school is how unimportant the rationality assumption of econ seems. It's such a fun thing to attack if you're some kind of nerd and want to show everyone how annoyingly nerdy you are (aren't we all?), but once you get down to business, there really are bigger fish to fry. Complete markets, homogeneity of agents, symmetric information, all seem to have profound consequences when one relaxes them, and one can see these consequences in stylized models.

Anyway, I've thought of a nice one-liner for showing how much more annoyingly nerdy I am than any other annoyingly nerdy nerd and I thought I should jot it down here for everyone including myself to ignore:

Everyone knows Newton's laws are wrong. That doesn't mean that using them to model a ballistic missile is silly.

Ok, I gotta polish that up a bit.

the value of ad-hoc (non-sober)

It's Friday night, I owe myself a post.

Intuition is like assholes. Everyone has one.

So are ad-hoc models.

What's the value of an ad-hoc model? Economic formalists may want to admit some modesty. We (should) know that our models are imperfect. If we permit only formal models, we express hubris. The value of ad-hoc models, is that they have the potential, the potential to advance the science, assuming that our assholes (our intuition) has some value.

I will readily admit that despite the lack of a formal foundation for arbitrarily regressing variables on other variables, and despite my distaste for such practices, that there is obviously a potential for such "models" to add to our understanding of society.

What Financial Economics could learn from Langhorne Slim

Start your talk in a suit and hat. Work up a fury. End it in a wife-beater.

It's not what you optimize, it's how you optimize it (non-sober)

Reflections on Hill Climbing Likelihood Maximization: Consider Alice and Bob with the same preferences. Alice choose the Hill Climbing Method. Bob goes for it with straight-up Newton Raphson.

Which economy has more growth? Stability? Does Alice slow and steady win the race?

Can I buy a vowel? (non-sober)

When do people buy vowels in Wheel of Fortune? They're buying signals.

A harder problem: what if Trebeck (or whoever) is playing the game too. When does he sell a vowel?

Intuition, Maths, Pornography.

Good intuition is like pornography. (I know it when I see it)

Good math is like... ...