econ nobel

Daniel Davies d_squared_2002 at yahoo.co.uk
Wed Oct 11 11:04:39 PDT 2000


--- Rob Schaap <rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au> wrote: >
>
> > ... estimating how the duration of unemployment
> affects
> >chances of getting a job. Heckman is also a leader
> of applied
> >research in these areas."
>
> Let me guess ... the chances diminish, right?
>
>
> >"Prior to McFadden's contributions, empirical
> studies of such choices
> >lacked a >foundation in economic theory.
>
> Never mind the foundation it has in the bleedin'
> obvious ...

No really fair, I think. All sorts of things are bleedin' obvious -- I could probably think of three or four if you gave me a week, but you can't include everything in your models. So you abstract from the ones which look most difficult, and hope that ignoring them doesn't mess things up too badly. Blokes like Heckman and McFadden come along and prove that various common simplifying assumptions in fact *do* fuck things up, too badly, and they kick the whole profession out of the habit of using whole classes of wrong and damaging models (more likely, they kick this class of models downstairs to the ghetto of ideologues and think tank bunnies like John Lott and his ilk (ulk ulk))
>
> ... so empirical research is finally getting to the
> stage where it can come
> to agreement with the bleedin' obvious, eh? Well,
> we shouldn't mock. It's
> found the otherwise plenty of times before.

Neoclassical economists have only changed the world; the important thing is to describe it.


>
> Wish they could tell me why I keep sending babble to
> LBO when I've other
> things to do ...
>
Apropos of which, I forwarded your theory to Nick Glydon, the UK's number one technical analyst, who pronounced it "interesting" and said he'd get back to me. You may be launching that hedge fund yet ... though my previous get-rich-quick schemes such as male lactation and the Unemployable Anarchist Employment Agency came to grief, I feel that it's different this time, and we'll all get rich, quick.

d^2


> Cheers,
> Rob.
>
>
>
>

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