Miscellaneous

Blogging / Commentary / Miscellaneous — No Comments
17
May 13

Public Service Announcement

I received an email yesterday which began as follows:

Instead of a private response back, I would prefer to see your answer as a post on your blog where you leave the comments open for people to respond for several years unlike many of your other posts where I noticed that the comments sections section was already closed.  I had just finished reading your post about [the inverse farm size--productivity relationship] and was going to leave a comment asking for you opinion about [spam].
Since the comments section was not open, could you please make a seperate (sic) post to express your opinion about it.  And then let me know when that is up, as I try not to subscribe to too many people’s blogs.

Since I receive several such emails every month — many of which address me by my first name and, oddly enough  ask me to post an “infographic” of some sort — I figured it was time I made a public service announcement: Continue reading →

Commentary / Miscellaneous / Social Sciences — No Comments
16
May 13

Big Dumb Data?

This month’s issue of Foreign Affairs has a great article (you’ll need to log in to read the whole thing, ufortunately) on the rise of big data, which Wikipedia defines as

a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications.

So far, so good. As a development economist, I have to make do with 500 observations more often than not (the largest dataset I have ever worked with had about 8,000 observations), so I obviously welcome ever larger datasets. Continue reading →

Economics / Grad School / Miscellaneous / Social Sciences — 2 Comments
13
May 13

Job Market Advice I: The Summer and Fall Before Going on the Job Market

[Note: I started writing this post in early April 2013, soon after going on the job market for the second time in my career and receiving four offers. Since then, I have added to this post whenever I thought of a helpful piece of job market-related advice. – MFB.]

It’s that time of the year again, when graduate students who are about to enter their final year in economics and related disciplines are getting ready to go on the job market.

Going on the job market is a harrowing experience for most people, however, so I thought I should help job-market candidates by sharing my advice.

This post is the first in a series of three. Today, I’d like to discuss what you should be doing the summer and fall before you go on the job market. The next installment will be posted in the fall and will cover ASSA interviews.

Before Interviewing at ASSA

  1. Your number one priority at this time should be finishing and polishing your job-market paper (JMP). This isn’t so much because search committees will read your JMP closely when trying to select candidates to interview but because once the academic year starts, you will realize that being on the job market is a job in and of itself. The more complete your JMP by the time the academic year starts, the less you’ll have to worry about it during the year, and the more time you’ll have to devote to other things. Perhaps more importantly, the more complete your JMP by the time the academic year starts, the more time you have to fix the potential mistakes it contains and to incorporate the comments you receive on it. Continue reading →
Culture / Food / Miscellaneous — Comments Off
02
May 13

The Importance of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Movies

Via Open Culture, a mini documentary about the importance of food in Quentin Tarantino’s movies.

From the restaurant scene in which tipping is discussed at length in Reservoir Dogs to Calvin Candie’s seeming addiction to sweets in Django Unchained and from Big Kahuna Burgers (“The cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast!”) in Pulp Fiction to the apple strudel in Inglourious Basterds, it’s all there:

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Africa / Celebrities in Africa / Development / Economics / Impact Evaluation / Miscellaneous / Poverty — 1 Comment
01
May 13

Does International Child Sponsorship Work?

We have all seen the commercials on television. Many of them readily fall under the broad name of “poverty porn,” and most of them feature resigned-looking developing-world children set against a sad soundtrack. All of them ask us to help by sponsoring a child in a developing country.

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But does international child sponsorship work? In a new article (older, ungated copy here) in the Journal of Political Economy, Bruce Wydick, Paul Glewwe, and Laine Rutledge give an answer that is bound to surprise many development cynics:

Child sponsorship is a leading form of direct aid from wealthy country households to children in developing countries. Over 9 million children are supported through international sponsorship organizations. Using data from six countries, we estimate impacts on several outcomes from sponsorship through Compassion International, a leading child sponsorship organization. To identify program effects, we utilize an age-eligibility rule implemented when programs began in new villages. We find large, statistically significant impacts on years of schooling; primary, secondary, and tertiary school completion; and the probability and quality of employment. Early evidence suggests that these impacts are due, in part, to increases in children’s aspirations.

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