Econometrics, Practice Questions, ECO54 Udayan Roy These Questions Are Based on Chapter 11 of the Ordinary Business of Life by R
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Laws of Wages
LAWS OF WAGES AN ESSAY IN STATISTICAL ECONONICS By Henry Ludwell Moore Economic Cycles Their Law & Cause [1914] Forecasting The Yield & The Price Of Cotton [1917] Generating Economic Cycles [1923] HENRY LUDWELL MOORE Synthetic Economics [I9291 PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 6c I1 progress0 dell' Economia politica dipenderh pel futuro in gran parte dalla ricerca di leggi em- piriche, ricavate dalla statistica, e che si parago- neranno poi colle leggi teoriche note, o che ne faranno conoscere di nuove." PARETO. New Pork: The Mecmillan Company, 1911 TO JOHN BATES CLARK IN ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION I DEDICATE THIS ESSAY CONTENTS PAGE Introduction . 1 CHAPTER I STATISTICAL LAWS A Scatter Diagram . 11 Definition of Terms . 15 Characteristics of Statistical Laws . , . 21 CHAPTER I1 WAGES, MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE, AND THE STANDARD OF LIFE Description of Data . 26 Wages and the Means of Subsistence . 29 Wages and the Standard of Life . 33 Wages of Skilled and of Unskilled Laborers . 39 CHAPTER I11 WAGES AND THE PRODUCTIVITY OF LABOR Description of Data . 45 Fluctuations in the Rate of Wages and in the Value of the Product . , . 46 Fluctuations in the Laborer's Relative Share of the Product and in the Ratio of Capital to Labor . 55 The General Trend of Wages . 61 vii Contents CHAPTER IV WAGES AND ABILITY PAGE An Hypothesis as to the Distribution of Ability. 74 Grounds for the Hypothesis . 76 The Expression of the Gaussian Law in a Form that will facili- tate the Testing of the Differential Theory of Wages . 78 The Standard Population . , . 82 The Application of the Theory of the Standard Population . -
Why Didn't Economists Predict the Great Depression?
Why Didn’t Economists Predict the Great Depression? Leon Taylor KIMEP Social Research Working Paper No. 6 February 2011 © Copyright 2011 Leon Taylor KIMEP Social Research Working Papers ISSN 1996 -7020 2 Why didn’t economists predict the Great Depression? Leon Taylor 1 The Department of Economics and the Office of the President Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research (KIMEP) Almaty, Kazakhstan Draft: January 2011 Version for researchers Abstract Economists failed to forecast the Great Depression, perhaps largely because they had lacked reason to theorize about business cycles. This paper tries to explain the lack of incentives. Since theory is a public good, the market produces too little of it. One non-market incentive, ex post fame, may be proportional to the value of the theory -- and thus induce more theory as its value grows. But fame comes from explaining famous events. A theory may explain a potential disaster so well as to enable policymakers to avert it. Since the event does not occur, its explainer cannot become famous. Theorists who anticipate this paradox will avoid work on the potential event; theorists who work nonetheless on events never to occur will become obscure. Another factor retarding business-cycle theory is scale economies. Learning-by-doing can induce theory by cutting its cost. Scale economies favor the first theories to be well-developed. These dealt with markets – not with business cycles – in the decades before the Depression which redirected attention to macroeconomics. ( JEL classifications: B10, E32) I. Introduction The Great Depression bemused economists of the day. “The slump in trade and employment and the business losses which are being incurred,” Keynes (1963: 148) said in 1931, “are as bad as the worst which have ever occurred in the modern history of the world.” Economists were caught off-guard. -
University of Birmingham Revisiting Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis
University of Birmingham Revisiting Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis Backhouse, Roger DOI: 10.1257/jel.53.2.326 License: None: All rights reserved Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Citation for published version (Harvard): Backhouse, R 2015, 'Revisiting Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis' Journal of Economic Literature, vol 53, no. 2, pp. 326-350. DOI: 10.1257/jel.53.2.326 Link to publication on Research at Birmingham portal General rights When referring to this publication, please cite the published version. Copyright and associated moral rights for publications accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners. It is a condition of accessing this publication that users abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • You may freely distribute the URL that is used to identify this publication. • Users may download and print one copy of the publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or non-commercial research. • If a Creative Commons licence is associated with this publication, please consult the terms and conditions cited therein. • Unless otherwise stated, you may not further distribute the material nor use it for the purposes of commercial gain. Take down policy If you believe that this document infringes copyright please contact [email protected] providing details and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate. Download date: 16. May. 2017 Journal of Economic Literature 2015, 53(2), 326–350 http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/jel.53.2.326 Revisiting Samuelson’s Foundations of Economic Analysis† Roger E. -
Institutional Economics
INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Malcolm Rutherford University of Victoria (This Draft: March 2001) This paper draws on archival work using the James Bonbright Papers, J. M. Clark Papers, Joseph Dorfman Papers, Carter Goodrich Papers, Robert Hale Papers, and Wesley Mitchell Papers, all at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, the Arthur F. Burns Papers at the Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas, and the John R. Commons Papers at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. My thanks to Lowell Harriss, Aaron Warner, Eli Ginzberg, Donald Dewey, Mark Perlman, Daniel Fusfeld, Mark Blaug, and Walter Neale for sharing their recollections of Columbia. Thanks also to my research assistant Cristobal Young. Any errors are my responsibility. This research has been supported by a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada research grant (project # 410-99-0465). 1 1. Introduction In a number of recent papers I have attempted to outline the nature of the institutionalist movement in American economics in the interwar period (Rutherford 2000a, 2000b, 2000c). At that time institutionalism was a very significant part of American economics. In terms of research output and the production of graduate students, the main centers for institutionalism were the university of Chicago (until 1926 and the departure of J. M. Clark), the University of Wisconsin, the Robert Brookings Graduate School (which existed only briefly between 1923 and 1928), and, after the arrival of Wesley Mitchell in 1913, and J. M. Clark in 1926, Columbia University. Columbia University became the academic home of a large concentration of economists of institutionalist leaning, and other Schools and Departments in the University, particularly Business, Law, Sociology, and Philosophy, also contained many people of similar or related persuasion. -
Aggregation Problem in Demand Analysis, 1930S-1950S
Aggregation Problem in Demand Analysis, 1930s-1950s Hugo Chu∗ Abstract This article examines the emergence of the representative agent as the outcome of trans- formations that occurred in microeconomics in the 1930s-1950s years, especially in the subfield of demand theory. To tell this story, I begin with a particular historical inter- pretation of this subfield, propounded by Wade Hands and Philip Mirowski in the 1990s, known as the Hotelling-Schultz Impasse. Although this impasse was abandoned by the end of the 1930s, the testing of the Symmetry Restrictions and the validity of the Integra- bility Conditions continued to draw the attention of different research centers. The Cowles Commission, represented by its research director, Tjalling Koopmans, played an impor- tant role during this stage and, more to the point, in the subsequent emergence of the representative agent in microeconomics through their approach to aggregation problem. The significance of Paul Samuelson's introduction of homothetic preferences into General Equilibrium Theory and its connection to Koopmans's writings during the 1950s is also emphasized. Keywords: Representative Agent, Aggregation Problem, Tjalling Koopmans Resumo O presente artigo examina a emerg^enciado agente representativo como resultado da trans- forma¸c~aoque ocorreu na economia nos anos de 1930 a 1950, especialmente no subcampo da teoria da demanda. Para contar essa hist´oria,eu come¸cocom uma interpreta¸c~aohist´orica particular proposta por Wade Hands e Philip Mirowski nos anos de 1990 conhecido como o Impasse de Hotelling-Schultz. Embora esse impasse tenha sido abandonado ao final da d´ecadade 1930, o teste da Restri¸c~aode Simetria e a validade das Condi¸c~oesde Integrabil- idade continuou a chamar aten¸c~aode diferentes centros de pesquisas. -
Curriculum Vitae for James J. Heckman
September 13, 2021 James Joseph Heckman Department of Economics University of Chicago 1126 East 59th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 Telephone: (773) 702-0634 Fax: (773) 702-8490 Email: [email protected] Personal Date of Birth: April 19, 1944 Place of Birth: Chicago, Illinois Education B.A. 1965 (Math) Colorado College (summa cum laude) M.A. 1968 (Econ) Princeton University Ph.D. 1971 (Econ) Princeton University Dissertation “Three Essays on Household Labor Supply and the Demand for Market Goods.” Sponsors: S. Black, H. Kelejian, A. Rees Graduate and Undergraduate Academic Honors Phi Beta Kappa Woodrow Wilson Fellow NDEA Fellow NIH Fellow Harold Willis Dodds Fellow Post-Graduate Honors Honorary Degrees and Professorships Doctor Honoris Causa, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria. Jan- uary, 2017. Doctor of Social Sciences Honoris Causa, Lignan University, Hong Kong, China. November, 2015. Honorary Doctorate of Science (Economics), University College London. September, 2013. Doctor Honoris Causis, Pontifical University, Santiago, Chile. August, 2009. Doctor Honoris Causis, University of Montreal.´ May 2004. 1 September 13, 2021 Doctor Honoris Causis, Bard College, May 2004. Doctor Honoris Causis, UAEM, Mexico. January 2003. Doctor Honoris Causis, University of Chile, Fall 2002. Honorary Doctor of Laws, Colorado College, 2001. Honorary Professor, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China, June, 2014. Honorary Professor, Renmin University, P. R. China, June, 2010. Honorary Professor, Beijing Normal University, P. R. China, June, 2010. Honorary Professor, Harbin Institute of Technology, P. R. China, October, 2007. Honorary Professor, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, 2003. Honorary Professor, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, 2001. Honorary Professor, University of Tucuman, October, 1998. -
1 CHICAGO and INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS1 Malcolm Rutherford
CHICAGO AND INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS1 Malcolm Rutherford University of Victoria 1. Introduction For most economists the terms “Chicago economics” and “institutionalism” denote clearly antithetical approaches to the discipline. Various members of the modern “Chicago School” have made highly dismissive remarks concerning American institutionalism. Coase has commented that American institutionalists were anti-theoretical, and that “without a theory they had nothing to pass on except a mass of descriptive material waiting for a theory, or a fire” (Coase 1984, p. 230). Some of these attitudes have their roots in the interwar period, most obviously in Frank Knight’s bitingly critical attacks on the methodology and policy positions of institutionalist and advocates of the “social control” of business (Knight 1932). Nevertheless, what this presentation seeks to reveal is a much more complex interrelation between institutional and Chicago economics. To fully understand this relationship it is necessary to begin with the early years of the Chicago Department of Economics. 2. Chicago Economics and Institutionalism 1892-1919 The Chicago Department of Political Economy was begun in 1892 with Laurence Laughlin as its head. While Laughlin was extremely conservative in his economic and political views, and very much at odds with the historicist or “new” school influence in American economics, he built a department that was extremely diverse in its interests and had significant representation of those critical of “orthodox” economics (Nef 1934). Most obviously, Laughlin brought Thorstein Veblen with him from Cornell, and shortly thereafter placed him in charge of editing the Journal of Political Economy. As Hodgson has argued (Hodgson 2004), Veblen’s years at Chicago (from 1892 to 1906) were remarkably creative ones. -
An Abstract of the Dissertation Of
AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF Kristine C. Harper for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History of Science presented on April 25, 2003. Title: Boundaries of Research: Civilian Leadership, Military Funding, and the International Network Surrounding the Development of Numerical Weather Prediction in the United States. Redacted for privacy Abstract approved: E. Doel American meteorology was synonymous with subjective weather forecasting in the early twentieth century. Controlled by the Weather Bureau and with no academic programs of its own, the few hundred extant meteorologists had no standing in the scientific community. Until the American Meteorological Society was founded in 1919, meteorologists had no professional society. The post-World War I rise of aeronautics spurred demands for increased meteorological education and training. The Navy arranged the first graduate program in meteorology in 1928 at MIT. It was followed by four additional programs in the interwar years. When the U.S. military found itself short of meteorological support for World War II, a massive training program created thousands of new mathematics- and physics-savvy meteorologists. Those remaining in the field after the war had three goals: to create a mathematics-based theory for meteorology, to create a method for objectively forecasting the weather, and to professionalize the field. Contemporaneously, mathematician John von Neumann was preparing to create a new electronic digital computer which could solve, via numerical analysis, the equations that defmed the atmosphere. Weather Bureau Chief Francis W. Reichelderfer encouraged von Neumann, with Office of Naval Research funding, to attack the weather forecasting problem. Assisting with the proposal was eminent Swedish-born meteorologist Carl-Gustav Rossby. -
Leontief and His German Period✩ Harald Hagemann*
Russian Journal of Economics 7 (2021) 67–90 DOI 10.32609/j.ruje.7.58034 Publication date: 31 March 2021 www.rujec.org Leontief and his German period✩ Harald Hagemann* University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany Abstract Wassily Leontief jun. (1905–1999) moved to Berlin in April 1925 after getting his first academic degree from the University of Leningrad. In Berlin he mainly studied with Werner Sombart and Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz who were the referees of his Ph.D. thesis “The economy as a circular flow” (1928). From spring 1927 until April 1931 Leontief was a member of the research staff at the Kiel Institute of World Economics, interrupted by the period from April 1929 to March 1930 when he was an advisor to the Chinese Ministry of Railroads. In the journal of the Kiel Institute, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, Leontief had already published his first article “Die Bilanz der russischen Volkswirtschaft. Eine methodologische Untersuchung” [The balance of the Russian economy. A methodo logical investigation] in 1925. In Kiel Leontief primarily worked on the statistical analysis of supply and demand curves. Leontief’s method triggered a fierce critique by Ragnar Frisch, which launched a heavy debate on “pitfalls” in the construction of supply and demand curves. The debate started in Germany but was continued in the USA where Leontief became a researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in summer 1931. The Leontief–Frisch controversy culminated in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (1934), published by Harvard University, where Leontief made his sub sequent career from 1932–1975. His later analysis of the employment consequences of technological change in the 1980s had some roots in his Kiel period. -
Milton Friedman, 1912–2006
SUBSCRIBE NOW AND RECEIVE CRISIS AND LEVIATHAN* FREE! “The Independent Review does not accept “The Independent Review is pronouncements of government officials nor the excellent.” conventional wisdom at face value.” —GARY BECKER, Noble Laureate —JOHN R. MACARTHUR, Publisher, Harper’s in Economic Sciences Subscribe to The Independent Review and receive a free book of your choice* such as the 25th Anniversary Edition of Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government, by Founding Editor Robert Higgs. This quarterly journal, guided by co-editors Christopher J. Coyne, and Michael C. Munger, and Robert M. Whaples offers leading-edge insights on today’s most critical issues in economics, healthcare, education, law, history, political science, philosophy, and sociology. Thought-provoking and educational, The Independent Review is blazing the way toward informed debate! Student? Educator? Journalist? Business or civic leader? Engaged citizen? This journal is for YOU! *Order today for more FREE book options Perfect for students or anyone on the go! The Independent Review is available on mobile devices or tablets: iOS devices, Amazon Kindle Fire, or Android through Magzter. INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE, 100 SWAN WAY, OAKLAND, CA 94621 • 800-927-8733 • [email protected] PROMO CODE IRA1703 PREDECESSORS Milton Friedman, 1912–2006 ✦ JULIO H. COLE Let us now praise famous men. —Ecclesiasticus 44:1 ilton Friedman, who died in the early morning of November 16, 2006, was a world-famous economist and an ardent and effective advocate of the Mfree-market economy. Much of his celebrity derived from his role as pub- lic intellectual, an aspect of his work that was reflected largely in popular books such as Capitalism and Freedom (1962) and the hugely successful Free to Choose (1980)— both coauthored with his wife, Rose, and the latter based on the television docu- mentary of the same title—and in the Newsweek opinion columns he wrote for many years. -
PAUL A. SAMUELSON Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts Nobel Memorial Lecture, December 11, 1970
MAXIMUM PRINCIPLES IN ANALYTICAL ECONOMICS PAUL A. SAMUELSON Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts Nobel Memorial Lecture, December 11, 1970 The very name of my subject, economics, suggests economizing or maximizing. But Political Economy has gone a long way beyond home economics. Indeed, it is only in the last third of the century, within my own lifetime as a scholar, that economic theory has had many pretensions to being itself useful to the practical businessman or bureaucrat. I seem to recall that a great economist of the last generation, A. C. Pigou of Cambridge University, once asked the rhetorical question, “Who would ever think of employing an economist to run a brewery?” Well, today, under the guise of operational research and managerial economics, the fanciest of our economic tools are being utilized in enterprises both public and private. So at the very foundations of our subject maximization is involved. My old teacher, Joseph Schumpeter, went much farther. Instead of being content to say economics must borrow from logic and rational empirical enquiry, Schump- eter made the remarkable claim that man’s ability to operate as a logical animal capable of systematic empirical induction was itself the direct outcome of the Darwinian struggle for survival. Just as man’s thumb evolved in the struggle to make a living - to meet his economic problem - so did man’s brain evolve in response to the economic problem. Coming forty years before the latest findings in ethology by Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen, this is a rather remarkable insight. It would take me away from my present subject to more than mention the further view enunciated by Schumpeter [1] in launching the new subject of econometrics. -
Revisiting Herbert Simon's “Science of Design” DJ Huppatz
Revisiting Herbert Simon’s “Science of Design” DJ Huppatz Herbert A. Simon’s The Sciences of the Artificial has long been con- sidered a seminal text for design theorists and researchers anxious to establish both a scientific status for design and the most inclusive possible definition for a “designer,” embodied in Simon’s oft-cited “[e]veryone designs who devises courses of action aimed at chang- ing existing situations into preferred ones.”1 Similar to the earlier Design Methods movement, which defines design as a problem solving, process-oriented activity (rather than primarily concerned 1 Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the with the production of physical artifacts), Simon’s “science of Artificial, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT design” was part of his broader project of unifying the social Press, 1996): 111. Design research sciences with problem solving as the glue. This article revisits review articles typically start with Simon’s text as foundational. See, for Simon’s ideas about design both to place them in context and to example, Nigel Cross, “Editorial: Forty question their ongoing legacy for design researchers. Much contem- Years of Design Research,” Design porary design research, in its pursuit of academic respectability, Studies 28, no. 1 (January 2007): 1–4; remains aligned to Simon’s broader project, particularly in its and Nigan Bayazit, “Investigating definition of design as “scientific” problem solving. However, the Design: A Review of Forty Years of Design Research,” Design Issues 20, repression of judgment, intuition, experience, and social interaction no. 1 (Winter 2004): 16–29. in Simon’s “logic of design” has had, and continues to have, pro- 2 See Hunter Crowther-Heyck, Herbert A.