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The news of deaths from bird flu in Indonesia is pretty scary. Although, as I’ve mentioned recently Indonesia has made a lot of progress in many respects, the handling of this threat so far seems to show the worst of both worlds: all the ill ffects of authoritian habits combined with the timidity of weak politicians. There have been a lot of coverups, and an unwillingness to tackle the necessary but unpopular task of slaughtering affected flocks of birds. Things seem to be improving...

from Lars Syll In their book Mastering ‘Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect Joshua Angrist and Jörn-Steffen Pischke write: Our first line of attack on the causality problem is a randomized experiment, often called a randomized trial. In a randomized trial, researchers change the causal variables of interest … for a group selected using something like a coin toss. By changing circumstances randomly, we make it highly likely that the variable of interest is unrelated to the many other...

Despite growing diversity in research, the theory flow of economics, often referred to as neoclassical, continues to dominate teaching and politics. It developed in the 19th century as an attempt to apply the methods of the natural sciences and especially physics to social phenomena, In the search for an “exact” social science, social relationships are abstracted to such an extent that calculations are possible. The neoclassical economics department primarily poses a question: How do...

If Labor plans to keep its promise of emission reductions by 2050, serious action must be taken as time is running out, My latest piece for Independent Australia argues that if the 2050 target is taken seriously, Labor must have policies for 2030 similar to those taken to the 2019 election. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

from Asad Zaman In a sequence of posts starting with  Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics,  I have argued that the attempt to reduce multiple indicators to one number always introduces subjective elements relating to choice of factors, and relative weights to be assigned. By using technical jargon to justify choice of weights, the value judgments involved in this choice are concealed under a cloak of objectivity. This creates a modern form of rhetoric, where the arguments are made using...

from Dean Baker In spite of completely missing the crash of the stock bubble in 2000-2002 and the housing bubble in 2007-2010, people tend to think that the big actors in the stock market have great insight into the economy’s prospects. While I won’t claim to have a crystal ball that predicts the future of the economy (I had warned of both of those crashes), I did learn arithmetic in third grade. There are some simple and important statements we can make about future stock returns, based...

from Lars Syll Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard recently argued that fiscal stabilization policy “is far too politicized to substitute consistently for modern independent technocratic central banks.” But instead of considering how this defect might be overcome, Rogoff sees no alternative to continuing with the prevailing monetary-policy regime – despite the overwhelming evidence that central banks are unable to play their assigned role. At least fiscal policy might in principle be up to the task...

from Asad Zaman This continues a sequence of posts on how objective looking statistics conceal hidden values, because a positivist approach prohibits open expression and discussion of value judgments. Previous posts in the sequence are: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics, Subjectivity Concealed in Index Numbers, and The Values of a Market Society. Countries compete with each other on the GDP numbers, without any awareness of the values which are embodied in such competitions. Such...