http://xkcd.com/1478/
Friday, January 30, 2015
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Characteristics of a Top Paper
From Prof. Nick Bloom's Labor Economics syllabus (Winter 2015):
In my view successful papers need to do at least two of the following three things: (1) Have excellent motivation (that is answer an important question – a good test of this is would a paper, say the New York Times, find the results interesting enough to write up); (2) Have excellent measurement (often using a new dataset, sometimes assembled by the author – this would be new data, rather than say the 1000th paper using Compustat or the CPS); and (3) Have excellent identification (showing clear causation, often with a natural or field experiment).
In my view successful papers need to do at least two of the following three things: (1) Have excellent motivation (that is answer an important question – a good test of this is would a paper, say the New York Times, find the results interesting enough to write up); (2) Have excellent measurement (often using a new dataset, sometimes assembled by the author – this would be new data, rather than say the 1000th paper using Compustat or the CPS); and (3) Have excellent identification (showing clear causation, often with a natural or field experiment).
Friday, January 9, 2015
Thursday, January 1, 2015
Happy New Year!
Sometimes, I find (or think of) interesting pieces of advice on how to do economics. The problem is that I forget about this stuff, and I don't have a good place place to store it so that I can remind myself. My new idea for the new year: I will store my ideas and discoveries on the world wide web! Welcome and enjoy!