Another Econ Hopeful

First Working Paper

2011-06-16T14:37:00.002-04:00

So it's been a while but things have been great on the research front (although sometimes it feels like that changes by the day). Yale has been amazing to me, mostly through my advisor - Dean Karlan- who is super-human.

I wanted to use this space to direct you all to my first working paper titled "Bank Insured RoSCA for Microfinance: Experimental Evidence in Poor Egyptian Villages". I was fortunate to work on this project with really great people who I've learned a bunch from. Please feel free to leave feedback and circulate if you'd like. Keep an eye on my research page for future work!

That's all for now.

More Later!

My School Webpage

2009-02-24T23:20:00.004-05:00

Hello World.

It's more than five months since the last update and two years since I got my Yale admit. I mention this only because Yale just sent out this year's class of admits and the kids over at TestMagic were going crazy. It's nice to be on the other side now.

I've finally set up my webpage over on my Yale space and I wanted to put a link to it here. I'm still quite the n00b when it comes to webpages so I hope it'll improve with time. Especially the photo section.

I hope all of you are doing well and for those of you with blogs who haven't updated in months/years take this post as an extra nudge to get you to update us with what you've been up to.

That's all for now.

More Later!

A Breath of Life

2008-09-09T23:45:00.004-04:00

It's been over a year since my last post. The first year is now officially over. I just found out today that I passed my Macro comp and so I'm officially a legitimate second year student. I'm thinking of starting the blog again now that life can start again and I have internet at home.

We'll see.

2007-08-15T15:36:00.000-04:00

Math Camp started a week and a half ago. So far it has been lots of fun. We get homework everyday but the grades aren't being kept track of so there is no pressure. It's just a time to get used to doing school work again and getting to know my classmates- they are a great bunch of people.

The move to New Haven went fairly well and my place is less than a mile from campus. I like it a lot. I have yet to set up cable TV or internet access there and I'm starting to like it that way. It restricts the ways I can procrastinate and so I don't think I'm going to get internet at home during my first year. That puts to question the future of this blog. I'm not sure what to do with it. I've barely been posting anyway. It feels like it's almost become an obligation that I'be been shirking for a long time. I don't want that guilt so instead of saying that I'm going to be closing it down I'm just not going to promise any further posts. This blog was supposed to be for my future self anyway and I think he'll forgive me for taking an indefinitely long vaction from this.

For those that actually checked this every once in a while I appreciate it more than you know and I wish the best for you guys.

That's all for now.

More later? we'll see....

-Adam

It's about time...

2007-06-25T14:04:00.000-04:00

Wow. It's been two months since my last post. It doesn't really feel like two months. Well maybe a little. I find that when I'm in school I can be somewhat productive but once I leave school it is impossible to do any work. And yes, for some reason, blogging seems like work to me. I'm unsure why. I get this sour feeling in my gut when I don't post for a while and I try not to look at how many people have visited since my last update or else I feel guilty. But I've been meaning to post for a while. I think I'm just gonna start posting random things whenever I feel like it instead of trying to have a pseudo-cohesive line of thought from post to post. Anyways, enough thoughts on blogging, on to the real stuff: Economics.

First off for those who are curious, those street signs are the real deal. If you map them you'll find them. We left off last with the end of my UCLA visit. All-in-all visiting the schools was a nice experience. I got to see the West Coast which was nice. For some reason I always envisioned it to be starkly different from here but it is very much more of the same. I guess that is Manifest Destiny for you. Checking out the three schools I was really considering helped me come to my decision without regrets.

So as most of you probably have figured out, I decided to go to Yale. It really just seemed like the place for me. Not only was it only a 2 or 3 hours drive from where I grew up (as opposed to a 6 hour plane ride) the feeling I got from the department was one of warmth and camaraderie. It really seemed like there was a community there that looked out for the graduate students. All of the grad students I met seemed to like the place a lot and were happy with their time there. Cost of living was the cheapest among the three I was considering and yet weather was the coldest :( but in the end I couldn't turn it down. Stanford didn't really impress me as much as Yale did and my new interest in development with my already present interest in Labor, Stanford has little of both, really made the decision for me.

When I informed the department of my choice they were very receptive. It seems like this year they had a very strong yield. As I understood it last year everyone on the waitlist was eventually offered a spot but this year they got enough yeses from the main list that they couldn't accept anyone from the waitlist meaning that the entering class should be a bit stronger than usual which should be great for discourse. I personally know of a handful of students that turned down Stanford, Princeton and Chicago for Yale which gives me confidence that I'm not completely crazy for doing that myself.

The department sent us a list of the new entering class, 21 of us in all of which 7 are females, 6 are Americans and the rest come from Australia, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Columbia, Germany, Iceland, Korea New Zealand, Pakistan and Turkey! I remember I few of them from the visiting day and look forward to meeting the rest during math camp.

Math camp starts August 6th and is three weeks long. The notes are up here. It is supposed to be a time to just get situated and allow us all to get to know our classmates. After the three weeks we get a week off and then the semester starts for real. I'm already a bit nervous and hope to start reviewing some stuff just to build up my intuition over the next few weeks. I hope to be able to muster the willpower to get to studying.

So I'm very excited for this chance. I hope I can hack it. I'm sure this will bring me to the limit of my ability and I'm interested to see where that is. Hopefully I'll start updating with random thoughts from now on.

That's all for now.

More Later!

The UCLA Fly-Out

2007-04-25T23:59:00.000-04:00

So I'm a day late in posting. Apologies. I've been working on my senior thesis and the ball has finally gotten rolling. I guess that is another post though. On to UCLA:

I left Stanford in the middle of a seminar on sub-prime lending and its effect on house prices. I then took the long walk from the Economics department to the train station, got to the airport and started going through the NELS dataset looking for relevant variables as I waited for the plane to board. The flight was very quick, by the time we took off and I finished looking through the magazines they served some drinks and then the captain came on saying we were 15 mins away.

I touched down around 3:30 and took a taxi to the UCLA campus. Traffic was horrendous as the stereotype demands and I didnt get to the Economics department until about 4:15. I entered the seminar room with a professor with an accent talking about his work. The day was supposed to start around noon with a number of presentations and I was able to catch the middle of the applied micro groups talk which is what I am interested in anyway. As the man at the front ended his talk mentioning his current research on Social Security it finally clicked that this was Moshe Bushinsky, my advisor's advisor and co-author. It was nice to have a touch of familiarity in a foreign place. After he was done talking there was a Q&A period and people stuck around for a bit afterwards asking the normal questions on placement and general trends in the dicsipline.

I found a group of prospective students that were making their way to the bar that we were going to be having dinner at and so I tagged along and we reached there without much trouble. The rest of the night was devoted to socializing and there were a few professors there that I got the chance to speak which helped since I had missed most of the day. I got to see Dan Ackerberg who had just been at Stony Brook for a seminar so I got to talk to him some more about his work and his time at Yale doing his PhD. The people there were great and very interesting. One problem was the UCLA program was lacking any structure for Saturday, one was to spend it doing whatever they wanted, the department had nothing planned.

I opted to used Saturday to look around campus. It is a very beautiful place. The funny thing was that the building the Economics department is in is easily the ugliest building on campus and sticks out like a sore-thumb. Everywhere you look you see aesthetically pleasing building and then you see Bunche Hall. Nonetheless the place was very nice as were the people. There did seem to be an intangible difference in students though. I couldn't put my finger on it but it seemed like the students at Stanford and Yale were a bit more focused than the students at UCLA but that could be me projecting what I figured I would see.

Overall it was a nice trip and I got to see a small part of LA. For the sake of continuity there was also another freaky street sign I found walking towards the apartment of the graduate students that I was staying with:

I couldn't get away from it. It was calling me! Twice! Once in Palo Alto and again in Los Angeles. I'm not superstitious though so it didn't really phase me. It was just funny to keep seeing it around. They had a graduate student party Saturday night and I had them drop my off at the airport and I got on my way home Sunday morning. It was a nice trip and helped me solidify my choice- but that seems like a topic for my next post.

Check back soon ;)

That's all for now.

More Later!

The Stanford Fly-Out

2007-04-23T23:29:00.000-04:00

Time flies when you're having fun. It's been nearly three weeks since my last update. A bunch has happened. Let's start on the west coast:

I got to San Francisco International Airport the day before Stanford's admitted student days were to begin. I decided since it was my first time on the west coast I might as well take the train up to San Francisco and look around for a bit. I did lots and lots of walking and had a pretty good time- the hills were no joke! I unknowingly to got off the train in the bad part of town and so was quite surprised to find so many homeless people out on the streets in what I had thought to be an affluent town. As I made my way to the water I found the city began to become more and more like what I expected and was able to take lots of pictures and just have a good time sightseeing. After walking along the shore and getting some clam chowder, as night began to fall I then made my way to the hotel next to the Stanford campus and passed out from the long day of traveling. The hotel was located right off campus at an interesting pair of cross-streets. It could not get more freaky than this:

So yea, I was at a cross-roads, which path should I take?

The next morning we started off with some breakfast and then introductions. They gave us a list of admitted students and I noticed that Stanford actually admitted more students than Yale. I guess they expect lower yield rates which surprised me given Stanford is generally considered a 'better' school. We heard from a few faculty members and one graduate student about the program and had a day of research presentations and food. During the time allotted for professor office hours I decided to go on a self-guided tour of campus. I knew I wouldn't have time for it the next day because I would need to leave early to go to LA. The campus is stunning. The weather was perfect. They have a golf course and offer hand-gliding lessons. It seemed more like a resort than a school. It was just jaw-dropping.

The day concluded with a nice dinner with professors and graduate students and I was able to get a seat next to Tim Bresnahan, the chair of the department at Stanford. After talking about a variety of topics I asked him to comment on Yale's department. He was nice enough to oblige and told me that he had many friends there and he thought it was a great department. The only problem he thought they had was that they couldn't attract the best students out there. This was something that I heard from others as well. I asked how they determine who the top-students are but he couldn't answer me. He told me placements were too easy to manipulate (even though it seems to me that Yale's placement was better than Stanford's over the papst few years). It was a problem that I did not fully buy. I think that even if it is true there isn't that big of a difference. The day ended with dinner and the next day started a bit later. I needed to leave midway through the first talk so I could catch my plane. All in all it was a great time, I met lots of cool people (many of whom I had met at Yale previously) and I learned a bunch about the general environment at the department. I was pretty happy with it and figured I could be happy there. The only problem was that it was so far from home. a six-hour plane ride was not a fun thing to have to do when I want to see my family...

So that was my Stanford fly-out experience. I plan to get to UCLA tomorrow ;)

That's all for now.

More Later!

Yale and Fly-Outs

2007-04-04T02:37:00.000-04:00

I meant to write a new post a while ago but I never got around to it. Sorry. So the past couple of weeks have been fun. I've gotten to be in the drivers seat and have amazing schools try to woo me. It is certainly an unexpected experience. Professors that are much much smarter than you trying to be extra nice and impressive so that you pick their program to pay you lots of money while they train you to be a great economist. Sounds like fun to me!

Last weekend I went to Yale. I took the ferry from Stony Brook over to Bridgeport, about a half hour away from New Haven, Friday morning. The ferry took an hour and fifteen minutes but you don't care. By the time I got to the department there was 4 people already there. The table we were sitting at kept getting bigger and bigger as time went on until the whole room was filled with people. Apparently over 35 people went to Yale's fly-out this year, the biggest group ever. It was a bit crowded. I met lots and lots of interesting people. I was the most boring one coming from New York. I met a bunch of Canadians, and Italians and Germans. I met someone from Argentina, New Zealand (mmm... New Zealand) and even Iceland! All of these people had interesting stories to tell. I even met some Americans which was nice. The weekend was kicked of by Chris Urdry the chair of the department and it went on from there. We had a small talk about why Yale is so great and then a bunch of field presentations and then they had office hours so people could talk to faculty. I instead walked around the area just to get a feel for it. Afterwards they had a talk about living options in New Haven and then a dinner with the faculty. Sadly I was battling a huge headache so I missed out on that. They then had a mini-party at a pub which I stopped in at for a few minutes and then left due to the loud rap music and alcohol. I don't drink. I spent the rest of the night just walking around the area and enertaining myself. It was nice.

The next morning we had breakfast and then a grad student panel where there were 5 students each representing their year in the program just answering questions. All in all it seemed like they were pretty happy and no one was feeling tortured. Eveything seemed doable and well crafted. There may have been a selection bias in terms of who they had sit on the panel. Most importantly attrition is pretty small at Yale which is a good sign. Hopefully I won't need to worry about it. After the panel there were some more presentations. One by John Geanakoplos who was very charismatic. He spoke about General Equilibrium and made it seem interesting. There was also one by Mark Rosenzweig who spoke about development which was very interesting. Afterwars Dean Karlan stuck around and spoke to students for a while. Many people think that Yale currently is the best place to study development. Their faculty is top-notch and they have more on the way. Applied Micro in general seems to be very strong which is what I want to do so so far they are well in the lead. After the presentations there was a tour that I skipped out on and I ended up saying bye and going home.

All in all I was very impressed by the department although New Haven itself is fairly lackluster
. I imagine that New Haven's dullness can be offset by the people there and the fact that it is less than a three hour drive from home, whereas Stanford and UCLA are 6 hour flights. Speaking of 6 hours flights I am about to go to Laguardia for one. I'm off to Stanford until Friday and then UCLA until Sunday. Hopefully all will go well and I look forward to an informative (and fun) time. I've never been to California and San Fransisco and Los Angeles are the two places I'd want to see if I could. It seems like grad school applications were worth it. I'll try to keep you guys informed in a more timely manner than before.

That is all for now (I have a plane to catch!)

More Later!

Decisions Need to be Made

2007-03-15T01:11:00.000-04:00

Hey Guys... It's been some time since I posted. I was debating what to do. When I got into Yale I broadcasted it to the World, all my friends and family and I had people coming out of the woodworks congratulating me. It was nice although some people got hurt that I didn't call them and tell them personally. This time I got into a few more schools and I figured I would try to keep it quite and I did for about two days but I don't want to anymore. Too bad if they feel hurt, can't please everyone. Anyways you guys probably don't care so here is what has happened since my last update:

I was rejected from Princeton which was a bit disappointing because they are amazing at Labor and that's what I was hoping to do. It didn't hurt too much, I never imagined I had a chance at most of these schools anyway. I am waitlisted at Northwestern, UPenn and NYU- all of which I don't really care about anymore. Finally I got into UNC and Michigan. Oh and I got into Stanford too ;). That was a shock! I really couldn't believe it. I figured when I got into Yale they made a mistake but for Stanford to make a mistake as well?!? it's got to be like a six-sigma event sort of thing.

Anyways this make my decision a little harder. I was pretty set on going to Yale but Stanford is an amazing school. Moreso it has amazing weather! I also got a University fellowship from UCLA that gives me my fourth year responsibility free. I haven't heard anything from Stanford about funding yet. I am sort of hoping that I don't get much so that my decision is made for me. Forgive me though, it sounds like I am complaining but really I am not. I am just shocked. It is hard to believe that this is really happening. I just hope that I can come through and deliver on the promise my professors saw in me which I imagine they wrote about in their letters. It is really a shock, I imagine they had to be great.

Also I am starting to feel guilty for being this lucky. I don't really think I am smarter than most of these people on the message boards who aren't getting into these schools. There is this one guy who didn't even get an unfunded offer from any of the schools he applied to when his profile seemed fairly decent.

The final count was 8 ins, 3 waitlists and 4 outs. I would have been happy with just one in. I am truly blessed and have some choices to make. Even though UCLA is probably the best out of all of these schools for applied micro I don't think I can take their offer just for the sake of name recognition. Then for Stanford are they worth being a 6 hour plane ride from home instead of the 3 hour car ride Yale is? Are the departments that different? Is one on the way up or down? Who are their hires this year? What are the schools' attrition rates (which is very important for me since I've seen my current grad course grades!).

Lots of decisions need to be made. I imagine I won't be able to make a decision until I visit both schools. How does one turn down an offer from Yale? How does one turn down an offer from Stanford? Both seem impossible but I'm going to have to. My advisor gave me the emails of a two of his Yale classmates who ended up teaching at Stanford so that I can talk to them to get the unique perspective of people who have been big parts of both departments.

Anyways sorry for the thinking out-loud post... Any advice?

I'll try to keep you guys posted on any info that I come across that may sway me one way or another...

More Later!

UCLA!!

2007-03-02T02:29:00.000-05:00

I got a few dings from some decent schools over the past couple of days. They don't really sting due to the fact that Yale has already said yes and they are a great program. I got the 'thanks but no thanks' emails from Duke, Columbia and Berkeley. I find now that every rejection is just one step closer to me making a decision. It makes my job easier, I don't have to worry about if I picked the right school or not, my path is laid out in front of me. Still it would be nice to get into some other top schools just so that I don't feel like Yale was a fluke.

In the same vein I got an e-mail last night from UCLA! This was my dream school for a long while and it seems that I am one of the only people to get an email from them. No one else on the message board or grad cafe has gotten info from them. Basically the e-mail said that I was accepted with a full fellowship. Pretty darn exciting. They offer slightly more money than Yale does but I imagine since the cost of living is so much higher in LA than it is in New Haven in terms of cost of living Yale's offer is more generous. Either way they are probably both very similar and so it all rests on the strengths of the programs. I look forward to the visitation days at both schools which I believe will be by the end of this month, maybe I can visit UCSD at the same time.

Speaking of UCSD, they e-mailed everyone saying to expect funding decisions by the end of next week and UNC sent out emails saying to be patient and not to e-mail the department to ask about your status. I guess some people were annoying them. Northwestern has released some news but I haven't heard from them. Sandro Brusco, one of my letter writers, told me that they had called him so I imagine that means they were interested but I don't know what that means now.

I hoped to speak to my main advisor Hugo Benitez-Silva about most of these schools but we didnt have much time to talk during our normal weekly meetings because he was giving a midterm the next day and students kept showing up. I didn't mind, the guy has done so much for me already, so I guess we can just talk more about the schools next week. Apparently he has already decided for me that I'll be going to Yale. He lists his students on his CV and updated it with my name starting at Yale in the Fall. I guess that makes it easier on me, I don't have to debate between schools, it has already been decided :D.

A quick recap of whats happened so far:

In:
Yale (Fellowship),
UCLA (Fellowship),
UMD (Fellowship),
UVA (Assistantship, turned down),
UCSD (Aid Pending)

Out:
Duke (the we know you won't come here anyway rejection),
Columbia,
Berkeley

Waiting:
Stanford,
Princeton,
Northwestern,
NYU,
UPenn,
UMich,
UNC

I'm still amazed that this is really happening...

That's all for now.

More Later!

More Grad News

2007-02-27T22:05:00.000-05:00

I got a call from the Director of Graduate Admissions from UMD today. I was expecting one this week from her last e-mail to me. We had about a 15 minute chat about the program. She saw my last e-mail when I informed her about my Yale acceptance and told me that she would not try to compare her department to any other one and instead would just tell me about her department and let me make the decision. She informed me that the Flagship Fellowship I was awarded is a new university-wide program that departments need to nominate students for and she was happy that their department's request was accepted. I blushed but she couldn't see that. After that she told me that she read my SOP and knew that I was interested in Applied Micro but no particular field (which she said was a sign of maturity to know that I don't know what I want to do for sure) and that due to the department's size I would have many many options of scholars to work with, even herself. She also told me that I may want to talk to John Rust, who was my advisor's adviser, about the differences between UMD and Yale because he left Yale to go to UMD. She was very nice and very helpful throughout. I then told her that my two biggest concerns were placement and attrition. She acknowledged that there was mention on the TestMagic message boards (TONY THEY ARE ON TO YOU!! he he) that they didn't give out a full placement list but she said she would e-mail me one and that they would have it on the website soon. She also told me that attrition due to the comps was about 30% if not a bit lower and that looking at my profile she doesn't think it would be a problem for me. I thought differently considering I completely bombed my econometrics exam a few hours before the call today... All in all it was an interesting phone call and she invited me to the Admitted Students Day, expenses paid. Still something amazing would have to happen for me to pick them over Yale I believe.

Also today I got an email from UVA finally offering my funding. It was 14k for 4 years with teaching responsibilities. I will probably decline their offer tomorrow so they can pass it on to someone else.

All in all I'm still amazed at my admits this year and think my letter writers must have seen something in me that I am missing. Either that or they just wanted to see what kind of pull there letters had ;). I'm already stressing out about whether I'll be able to hack it at Yale, if that is where I end up going. After basically taking this year off and not doing any work I'm going to have to get back in shape. I look forward to the intellectual stimulation. I'll keep you guys updated. Rumor has it UCSD should be mentioning funding soon and UPenn and Columbia should be releasing decisions soon too. 11 more schools to go! If I knew I would have gotten into Yale I could have saved a lot of money.

Stay Tuned!

More Later!

Schools and the NYT

2007-02-26T21:39:00.000-05:00

Wow. It has been an exciting few days. Yale emailed me around 11am on Friday and the email said that a decision has been made and that I should check the website. I figured at that point that I was certainly out of Yale because of what they did last year. From my understanding last year Yale emailed all the people that they rejected and Overnighted admissions decisions to the candidates in the postal mail. Once I saw the email my heart sank. When I saw that it said I should check the website I was thinking 'Why? To prolong the agony?' I then checked anyway and saw the letter that I pasted below and flipped out. FLIPPED OUT. It was a good time. I am still in awe of the decision. It is hard to believe. Earlier today I got the letter that contained the funding offer. Needless to say it is very generous. It includes tuition remission, health care and 6 years of support if needed as well as 3 guaranteed summers. It is very very exciting.

Later on Friday I was informally informed by the Director of Graduate Admissions at Maryland that I was accepted and on top of the normal package at UMD I was awarded the 'Flagship Fellowship' which gives me an extra $40k over 5 years and that the director would call me this week. I e-mailed her back thanking her profusely and saying that I look forward to her call and that I had just gotten accepted to Yale and would be interested to hear any reasons why she thinks I might pick UMD over Yale. I should be getting the official letter sometime this week.

Just a few hours ago I got an email saying I was accepted to UCSD. There was no mention of funding yet but I imagine I may hear later.

This has been insane and unbelievable. I never thought that I would ever be accepted to these places. Just last week I had convinced myself that I would only get into Virginia and was happy with the option. All of this is just icing on the cake. What an amazing cake...

Right now I'm looking forward to hearing from other schools. In a couple of weeks I am going to have some serious decisions to make. Now I'm just sitting back happy even if I get rejected from the 11 other schools I applied to.

On top of all that today I was quoted in the New York Times. Here is the article about the movie Obsession. I'm not too happy with my quote, I qualified the statement I made with a sentence right after that which was left out. ..

Well that is all for now, I have an Econometrics exam tomorrow...... ugh.

Thanks to everyone for all of your congratulations and well wishes!

More Later!

Unbelievable

2007-02-23T11:50:00.000-05:00

Dear Mr.Osman:

Congratulations.

I am delighted to inform you that you have been selected for admission as a full-time student into the Economics Program beginning with the 2007-2008 academic year. Your selection is a recognition by the Faculty of your accomplishments and, especially, of your promise as a scholar and a researcher.

A letter containing the details of our offer has been sent to you via first class mail. You should receive this letter within 5 business days. If, after this period, you have not received your offer letter, please contact us at .....

After you have reviewed our offer you may return to this letter and click here to be taken to your Admissions Reply Form.

Sincerely,

Jon Butler
Dean of the Graduate School

Getting Very Anxious

2007-02-19T14:53:00.000-05:00

So I've started to get very antsy... the incarnation of evil on Earth (aka Test Magic Message Boards) which I check many many times a day have informed me that Duke and UNC have sent out acceptances. I haven't recieved anything yet... Virginia has also sent out some funding offers and I haven't heard from them either. I keep checking my snail mail box everyday and my e-mail inbox every hour... it's getting bad...

I need a new hobby... Maybe I should try studying. Nah. I hope I can become a good student again next year after basically taking this year off .

That's enough of my rantings for now.

More Later!

A Wake-Up Call

2007-02-09T11:02:00.000-05:00

I just got a call, waking me up, from Yale asking for my fall grades. I didn't see anyone else on the forums mention getting a call like that so I imagine ideally it would be a good sign that they are interested in my application. This makes me feel more confidant in my letters of recommendation. The only problem is that my fall grades sucked because I didn't really do any work. I was relaxing and taking a few grad courses to get exposure to the material but didn't even attempt to excel. So the two grad courses I took gave me B's. Two B's in the only grad Econ courses I took? Certainly not good enough for Yale. Eh... who knows? Now I'm going crazy. I wonder if secretary knows what a phone call like that can do to people!

Silly B's!!!!!! Now I am scared of every phone call.

More Later.

Addendum: I was pretty relaxed about the admissions process until this call. I am officially freaking out now. UCSD has also sent out some acceptance emails and yet my inbox is empty :( now there is a rumor that Princeton admitted someone. I have a hard time believing it, it is too early for them. Nonetheless- freaking out.

In at Virginia

2007-02-02T11:19:00.000-05:00

So I've been fairly MIA lately. I would blame it on enjoying my last semester at Stony Brook. Sorry for the lack of posts but last time I figured I would try to make my next post a real update.

So here we are: In at Virginia :) That was quick. February 2nd. Gosh. Don't they have Job Market Candidates to interview? he he. No word on Aid yet. It was a 5:00am e-mail so I imagine any word on Aid would come in snail-mail form. My only problem is I don't know if I had them send it to my home or to my dorm.

Either way it's nice to hear some good news so soon. I really like Virginia, not only do I have a brother down there, rent is really cheap and they are doing some cool work on Econ of Education. My big concern I guess, like with any school, is attrition. And they did have the big cheating fiasco a few years back. Either way, it's nice to know :)

I'll keep you guys updated. You're only the third to know.

More Later!

Winter Break Relaxation

2007-01-08T23:28:00.000-05:00

Since my last update I have a done a lot of relaxing. After finishing finals and checking the status on my applications all systems are go for a nail-biting few months.

I already had a close call with UCLA of all schools! I had to overnight my transcripts ($40!) and then priority mail the rest of my application to meet the dealine, all other schools were OK with my transcripts getting there a little late. Then 6 am December 16th (3am in LA) I was checking my status with UCLA and saw that I had filled out everything in the online form but forgot to hit the submit button! I did right away and after a few unanswered emails and a couple of calls I found out that I am still under consideration. That was scary! UCLA have been one of my dream schools forever.

My grades this semester were as expected. Given that I gave all my classes an undergraduate try I did well on my undergraduate courses and not-so-well on my graduate courses. I was only taking them to help my intuition next year so I don't really mind the B's. My only concern is if the schools that want to see my grades care. So far UMD is the only school that has explicitly requested them... I imagine that I should be hearing from a a school or two by mid-february according to when schools sent out letters last year. Most of them will be a month after that in mid-march. I am surprisingly calm about all this. Now that my apps are out I know there is nothing I can do so whatever happens happens.

Here are links to posts about a paper that tries to predict job market performace from applicant profiles: Marginal Revolution and Greg Mankiw.

Also the Chronicle of Higher Education has an article (now ungated) about a new ranking of faculty output done by none other than my own SUNY- Stony Brook. Some people are big fans of the methodology and other aren't so much. Either way what you guys might care about is the top 10 for Economics:

1-Harvard
2-MIT
3-Yale
4-Johns Hopkins
5-Princeton
6-UPenn
7-Duke
8-Wisconsin
9-UCSD
10-Chicago

I think the two really surprising things is how low Chicago is ranked and how high JHU is. Especially considering JHU only have 15 faculty members. Weird.

Well thats all for now.

More Later!

Application Process: OVER!

2006-12-15T19:49:00.000-05:00

I just pressed the submit button on my Berkeley application. That means that now all my applications are in! Now I just have to check the status periodically to make sure all my things got to the schools on time and to the right place - and then bite my nails for 3 months!

Hooray!!!

Hopefully a real post is coming soon...

Stay tuned ;)

More Later!!

Apps, Apps, Apps

2006-12-04T05:03:00.000-05:00

Hello World!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while.....I feel like I've been trapted for the past few weeks.

Filling out application after application... It's been a mess. But the end is in sight. I decided to apply to 15 schools. Bascially the list you can find a couple of posts below without GSB, Kellogg, USC and Johns Hopkins. All in all this entire ordeal is going to cost me a little over $1500. Thats money! But I hope it will all be worth it come September. All I have left is sending the GRE scores to each school, transcripts and some paperwork to those wierd schools that dont do everything online like UCLA, Berkeley and UNC. And I also have to chase after my reccomenders to make sure they sent it in for all the schools. So far Sandro Brusco has been speedy and has submitted it to almost all schools, Hugo Benitez-Silva submitted it to UVA just this morning so imagine a bunch more will be coming soon and Mark Montgomery has yet to submit it anywhere but I am not too worried. Just a week or so of more paperwork and then it will be over! I'll just have to wait for 14 no's and 1 fine and I'll be good to go!

School has been killer. Senioritis is in full swing. I haven't done anything since thanksgiving, and even then it was the bare minimum. I figure I am going to have to bust my but the next two years so I might as well take it a little easy now. That will probably backfire if any schools want to see this semesters grades but I am hoping most of them won't ask. We are going to follow the whole don't-ask-don't-tell idea with that. It turns out the Measure Theory, one of the hardest math classes I've ever taken, is easy when compared to Micro and Math Stats. Those classes make me sad. I am waiting for the first time I beat the average on a homework or exam or something... I'll throw a mini-party. You guys are invited. :-D

On an amusing note this post from Greg Mankiw links to a few videos on YouTube regarding Harvard Econ Recruiting. Very Funny.

There is a bunch of other things I wanted to link to but its 5am and I have yet to begin my measure theory homework that was due 3 weeks ago.... good times.

That's all for now.

More Later!

Milton Friedman

2006-11-16T17:55:00.000-05:00

Milton Friedman Died Today.

Speechless...

I can't do his work justice of course so here are a few links of smarter people and what they said about him:

Alex Tabarrok
Tyler Cowen
Daniel Drezner

I'll try to update with more people as they post about him.

More Later!

Keep on Keeping on

2006-11-12T21:41:00.001-05:00

Apologies to those that might actually check this periodically for my lack of updates, it has been a crazy few months...

Since the last update a couple of things have fallen into place. First I was able to secure my third letter of recommendation from the professor that I hoped to, Mark Montgomery from my Math Stats class. He seemed pretty comfortable with writing me a letter and told me to come speak to him when I get my final list of schools complete. I would have loved to speak with him this week but he is actually in Kenya doing some research. Yea, I'm jealous too.

I found out that I bombed my first Micro Exam as I had expected I would and then when I spoke to the professor he still said he thinks I should apply at all the places that I had in mind. That was my way of asking if he thinks his letter will be strong and so I guess it won't be horrible. Well, I guess it all depends on the final which I hope I will be able to concentrate on.

I completed the basic draft of my Statement of Purpose and had my advisers look at it. They liked it overall and only had a few minor changes. It's now up to me to tweak it a bit for each school I am applying to. I was planning on finishing the applications to about 8 schools this past weekend but that didn't work out! I figure Thanksgiving is going to be really busy and I hope I can get it all done by then.

Speaking of schools I decided to cut out Johns Hopkins after some amazing help and insight from OME over at the TestMagic boards. They just seem to be a school that has great faculty but just not enough for my tastes. I don't know what I want to study for sure and so I don't want to have my options limited. But I am still looking at maybe applying to a couple of more schools not on my original list below including Washington@St Louis and Rochester. I have to start getting to work. This semester has been pretty lackluster from my own view...

So that is all about that. Just a couple of links about Money and Happiness. This always interested me and Happiness Economics is a brand new area that is starting to get some attention:

BOOM AND GLOOM from the New Yorker about relative happiness.

and Why Living in a Rich Society Makes Us Feel Poor from the New York Times Magazine.

Both are pretty interesting.

Anyway, that is all for now!

More Later

Grad Micro is Hard

2006-10-31T21:23:00.000-05:00

O man. What a semester... You can tell it's bad when I almost look forward to Measure Theory. Math Stats is pretty boring, the professor is good but the material is really dry. Micro the professor is alright, I've had him before so the novelty has worn off, and the material is great but I am getting rocked on the homeworks and the exams. So far I have been below average which is new for me and pissing me off. I know I should be devoting more time to it but I dont see what staring at problems are going to do for me. I need a study group so there could be some discussion going on. I just don't have the drive to excel. Why bust my butt right now when I know it will really count next year. I have senioritis too. What a time to get it... Anyway, sorry about the unadulterated rant.

I am finalizing my school list. It is not an easy task. I have 20 schools I am considering and don't know which ones to get rid of. I don't know what would be a safety and what would a ballpark school. I thought I knew where I would stand but my grades in Micro are making me doubt the strength of a very important letter.

So here is the preliminary list. If you have and gripes about any of the schools on the list I would love to hear them.

Reaches:
Princeton
Stanford
Berkeley
Yale
Northwestern
NYU
Columbia
UPenn
UCSD
Stanford GSB
Northwestern Kellogg

Ballpark (I think):
UMich
UCLA
UMD
Duke

Safety (I hope):
Virginia
USC
Johns Hopkins
UNC

Where would I like to go? I am not sure. UMD would be nice for geographical reasons, as would NYU, Columbia and Princeton and UPenn but those four are a roll of the dice (weighted towards 'no') and UMD has been scaring me a little with their huge class sizes and lack of detailed placement records. One of my advisors said I should look at UMD as a saftey, and I see his point, but he hasn't seen my Micro grades. All of these places have guys doing work I think is interesting but I sort of feel silly applying to 20 schools. I should be able to cut it down some more. I'll probably get rid of UNC and maybe some of the top top school...ugh....

Comments are welcome.

So I am going to go try to work on my SOP. And I have to finish the NSF by next week. I doubt that will happen. I just have to keep reminding myself that in the long run we are all dead.

A quick link: In defense of Napping. Naps are the best part of my day. Another reason I want to be a professor...

More Later!

Happiness, Air Strikes and Business Programs

2006-10-16T03:25:00.000-04:00

During my exam on Thursday I heard the funniest thing I've ever heard a professor say. I like to listen to some music while I study and while I sit for exams generally but sometimes professors don't like that. This time I figured I would ask if it would be alright so I raised my hand and motioned to my earphones and asked "Do you mind?". The professor looks as me weird for a second and says "No, you could smoke dope if you think it will help." I couldn't start the exam for five minutes becuase I couldn't keep from laughing. I could have smoked dope if I wanted... too bad I was fasting.

The exam went alright, I guess I'll find out for sure when I get it back. This week shouldn't be too bad, just a Micro problem set due tomorrow that I imagine I will bomb and that's pretty much it. Next week I have exams in both Micro on Tuesday and Measure Theory on Wednesday. That is going to be a rough week. Not only that but Monday night, less then twelve hours before my Micro exam, the Giants and Cowboys will be playing each other. This is going to be a problem, especially since they are both 3-2. Dilemmas...

Well I actually have a few interesting links this time around. I know, its been a while:

I've been slowly reading Dan Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness for a while and Greg Mankiw just linked to this presentation he gave at the TED conference. He is a professor of psychology at Harvard who does "Happiness Research". The first half of the video is pretty much his summary of what I have read so far so I imagine the second half is the summary of what I have left to read. Very Highly recommended. 22 mins long though...
Apparently they are still bombing Iraq regularly with air strikes. This should get more media. I imagine most people, like myself, figured it was a ground war at this point.
For those Econ PhD aspirants take a look at this page with statistics about the UCLA programs admissions decisions as well as a couple of other programs like Davis and Minnesota. I was amazed.

Also, I met with my Micro professor and we spoke about graduate programs in general and I asked for a few recommendations of programs I should consider and he mentioned Chicago. I was floored, does he really think I could handle Chicago? How could he think this? We have had one HW and I didn't do too well on it. I'm still confused, I will ask again for more serious recommendations after our first exam is handed back. More importantly though he recommended that I take a look at Business PhD programs. He knows I am more micro minded than macro and he said the the Business programs are basically Econ PhD programs minus the macro which sounded pretty good to me. Also funding is more readily available. I have to do some serious research because each business school has like 3 or 4 separate departments in it which makes it hard to get a complete picture of the program. Any advice would be appreciated.

Well that's all for now.

More Later!

And We Inch Closer...

2006-10-09T00:38:00.000-04:00

Wow. I don't remember ever being as busy and as lazy as I feel now. Classes are a serious drain on my times as well as my extra-curricular activities but an extended feeling of "just leave me alone" has been with me since week one. I think I might have senioritis. This is the worst semester to get it. I guess a classes update is in order.

ECO 500 - Microeconomics: The professor has been out for the past two weeks so the TA has been teaching classes. We had our first homework, four questions, two of which I got wrong. I think the rest of the class did too so I am worried but not too worried. I really think this class is going to help me a bunch next year when I take it for real. I should have an exam coming up soon but he hasn't set a date. So far we covered the first 3 chapters of MWG and just started chapter 6. It should start to get really hard really soon.
ECO 520 - Mathematical Statistics: We have basically covered the majority of the undergraduate course at this point plus we went a little deeper showing how we can use linear algebra in many situations to make the techniques more useful. This class has no homeworks although we will have a presentation at the end of the semester showing our proficiency in STATA which we are learning too. I have an exam on Thursday that shouldn't be too bad (it covers chapters 1-3 in Mittlehammer) but right after that things should also get really hard.
MAT 324 - Real Analysis, Measure Theory: This is such an interesting class, too bad it is ridiculous. We have the third homework due this week and I am still trying to hand in perfect solutions to the first one. A lot of these concepts are hard to get my head around. This is the first time where I can have the solution of the problem explained to me multiple times and I still don't get it. I have an exam coming up on the 25th. My biggest concern right now is that this class is listed only as "Real Analysis" on my transcript. My competition is 4 other people, two of which want to go onto Math PhD programs, another who was ranked in the 70s in the Putnam competition and a fourth that I think I can handle. I have a feeling I might get a B in this class after getting an A in the true real analysis course. How unfair.
HON 495 - Senior Thesis - This has at least been enjoyable. I meet with the professor every Monday and we usually just sit and talk about the profession in general. Last time we spent a half an hour talking about how publishing in Economics works. It was really interesting. He also gives me a bunch of interesting things to read. So far I have read a dissertation on the gender wage gap by one of the the prior PhDs here and I read this paper by Cornell professors about median grade information and grade inflation. I found it to be really interesting. Right now he has me reading Human Capital by Becker and he said he has a few more things that go well with that for me when I meet him tomorrow. These 1 hour a week meetings are the highlight of my semester right now.

The Islamic holy month of Ramadan is now about half way through. This year I made the GPA-killing mistake of heading up the organization that caters to the 500 or so Muslims on campus and it has been eating up my time. During Ramadan we have a free dinner every night for those who fasted during the day and that takes up a good 3-4 hours of my day. Two more weeks and then I may be able to get back to normal studying habits.

Once Ramadan finishes I plan on starting the application process. By that time I will be asking for recommendation letters as well as recommendations as to where I should be applying. I think I might warn them that my performance in their classes aren't really a good indicator of my ability because most of my time is spent on outside responsibilities but I don't know if that would be a wise thing to mention. It might make it look like I don't care about their class or that I am just making it up to look better... I guess we will see in two weeks.

Also, the new edition of Cawley's A Guide (and Advice) for Economists on the U. S. Junior Academic Job Market is available. Apparently last year the average salaries for Economics PhDs getting positions are PhD granting institutions rose to $86k for nine-months. Now most of us don't go into academia for the money but this doesn't hurt.

Well I think that's all for now.

More Later!

A Quick Update

2006-09-25T01:13:00.000-04:00

School has gotten into full swing... I haven't really felt like I should give myself time to blog so I haven't lately. So far Math Stats has been pretty straight forward, in hindsight I should have taken the math for economists class although I have a feeling I would have had a decent time with that too. Micro hasn't been too bad yet except that it has been taking a lot of class time because the professor is going to be taking one or two weeks off in the middle of the semester so he wanted to make up the time now. The first problem set is due next week so I will realize how hard it is fairly soon. Measure theory is probably my most demanding class at this point. I was rocked on my first problem set and the second one seems to be even harder. I sometimes just want to laugh out loud in that class... the professor will just talk and talk and explain something that I would have sworn was impossible only a few minutes before. It is really interesting stuff. There was this one time where he must of used the word "infinity" 12 times in a 30 second span. It was rediculous. But it is also really cool.

I also met with my thesis advisor earlier last week. I told him I was hoping to just use this semester to do an extensive literature review and really define my topic well and use next semester to do the brunt of the work, giving myself time to adjust to graduate level econ work as well as time to work on my apps and (although I haven't mentioned it to him yet) the ability to deal with Ramadan which started a few days ago. In Ramadan I have to fast from sunrise to sunset everyday for thirty days and even though it does save time because one no longer has to eat breakfast or lunch one also loses the time right back when you are in charge of feeding a couple of hundred people everynight at sunset. The logistics, with set up and clean up really takes a lot of effort. So so far it hasn't been too bad but I imagine it will get much worse very soon. I just have to force myself back into studying mode and hit the library a few times a week. It is just so hard to get there...

On another note with the Giants performing horribly I no longer lose the greater part of my Sundays to the TV. For the past couple of weeks I have been turning it off after the first 30 mins or so... *tear* ... if only they could play the first three quarters as they do the fourth.

That is enough for me. Off to reading a former doctoral students dissertation on the gender wage gap.

More Later!

School, Tests and Football

2006-09-11T00:29:00.000-04:00

Today begins the first full week of school. I have already gotten a problem set in Measure Theory and will probably be getting a couple from my grad courses this week. I had hoped for a little more leisure time but no one said this was going to be easy. I am also awaiting a response from my thesis advisor on the timing for our first meeting. That should be interesting and definitely blogable. I'll keep you posted.

Only a couple of links:

A good post from the Becker-Posner blog about how US students score lower on international exams of math and science but still outperform in terms of returns on human capital. I thought it was a good read.
A funny article from the Chronicle of Higher Education about how family members don't understand how academia works.

On a differnt note football is back. I am pretty happy with the Giants performance yesterday night. Even though they lost (arguably due to a bad call by the official) they played very well against a great team. The only concern I have is that their schedule this season is killer. Either way it should make for entertaining sundays.

Thats all for now.

More Later!

Fall '06 Classes

2006-09-07T01:26:00.000-04:00

Its been a while since I've posted. School has started up, yesterday being the first day of class and so far it's been pretty awesome. The first couple of days (or weeks) usually are because there isn't much to do. A quick overview of my classes:

MAT 324 - Measure Theory - The last pure math course I will have to take at Stony Brook to graduate (yeay!) Too bad it is the hardest undergraduate course offered. One good thing (I think) is that there are only 3 other people in the class so its nice and cozy. The professor, Chris Bishop, seems very knowledgable and seemed very enthusiastic about the course so I am cautiously optimistic. Here is the book. Here is the class page.
HON 495 - Honors Research - I am doing a year long Honors Thesis with Hugo Benitez-Silva, a labor economist. I had him as my professor last year in ECO 310 (computational economics). He is a really cool guy and I look forward to getting to work with him in a one-on-one setting. I currently plan on researching whether or not double majoring has any significant effect on a students college GPA and whether there are any combinations that have significant correlations (for instance Math and Economics).
ECO 500 - Microeconomics I - The graduate micro sequence with Sandro Brusco. He is a good teacher and very clear. The only problem that I have heard is that he only awards one A per semester and this years class is much larger than intended at about 20 students. Bye bye A. Here is the book (of course).I am also auditing the first few classes of Advanced Industrial Orginazation with him to get a taste for the subject at a mature level.
ECO 520 - Mathematical Statistics - with Mark Montgomery who from what I heard likes to not show up to class. I also heard that the class is similar to the undergraduate one which I find hard to beleive but I guess I will find out soon. If it is I think that would be a plus, it would give me more time to focus on getting that A in micro and not looking like a dunce in Measure Theory. Here is the book.

That is the gist of it for the semester. I am sure you will hear some moaning about those classes sooner or later on the blog :-)

That's all for now.

More Later!

Back from Outer-space

2006-08-28T22:23:00.000-04:00

Hello All! Back from my trek- it was awesome. Physically it was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life but it was still definitly worth it. Here is one of the many pictures I took along the trail. It was really amazing how beautiful the natural world was even less than an hour drive from NYC.

(blogger is giving me a hard time uploading the pic, hopefully I'll get it up soon)

I was just glad to be out of work and reconnecting with nature. It is really a refreshing feeling to only worry about whether or not the next water source was dry and hoping you can get to it before the water you are carrying runs out. It really puts the rest of our 'problems' in perspective.

So I am back now and it took me some time to catch up on all thats gone on in the weeks I was gone. Especially on the econ blog scene... I used to think these guys don't blog enough but it took me hours to read all that I missed on only 5 or so blogs. The guys at MR, NMD and Greg Mankiw are amazingly prolific.

School starts up in a week. Next wednesday to be exact. Although we start later than most it seems we don't really get any breaks this semester other than Thanksgiving. I am excited and a little scared at the same time. Grad Micro and Math Stats as well as Undergrad Real Analysis II and research while fulfilling my other obligations to some organizations that I am part of and applying all at the same time if going to tax my stamina. I hope I am up to it.

So only one link today and hopefully some really content later in the week: apparently research has been done showing that taller people are smarter. The only problem is I have three older brothers and they are all taller than me. I guess I just won't tell them about this one. It's a good thing they don't read this blog. :-)

That is all for now.

More Later!

NY/NJ Appalachian Trail

2006-08-12T21:09:00.000-04:00

I had my last day for work yesterday. Not only was my boss on vacation but the person under him that was, I guess, my other boss had decided to work from home. They know all about my trip so they let me get out of there at around noon. That is how a last day should be.

Now about my trip: I will be hiking the NY/NJ part of the Appalachian Trail. Here is the full map (1mb pdf) from the National Parks Service and here is the part we plan on doing (starting from Conn to the end).

We will be starting tomorrow morning taking the 5:23am train to get to the 6:00am ferry to Manhattan. Then we will be going from Grand Central to the AT stop that is only open on the weekends. From there we will be following the AT until the Delaware Water Gap, about 160 miles away. Along the way we will be carrying our lives on our backs with periodic stops (about every 3 or 4 days) to replenish our food stock and hopefully every day we will be able to find a water source. Food and water will probably weigh as much as the rest of our equipment so the more we eat the lighter our packs will get. We will be sleeping in shelters when we find them and our tent when we don't.

All in all I am very excited. When you are forced to sit in an office for 8-10 hours a day in the most developed city in the world it really makes you want to get out there and reconnect with nature.

So understandably I won't be able to get on the internet so this blog won't be updated for a couple of weeks. Feel free to check out the archives if you are bored or start frequenting some of the blogs on the blogroll.

Although, for kicks, check out this news clip from a British station about the Israel-Palestinian conflict where the interviewee flips out on the interviewer.

Anyway thanks for reading!

More Later (assuming I don't get eaten by a bear or fall off a cliff or something)!

A Few Funny Links

2006-08-09T14:32:00.000-04:00

Nothing special today. See post title :-)

Group apologizes for taking three years worth of Taco Bell sauces
Some AOL searches from messed up people.
Exploding Egg (less funny, more cool)
Misfit Toys - I love worth1000, its just a great site for photography and photoshop!
40% of World of Warcraft players addicted according to 'expert'. Thankfully I decided not to play it a while ago. My GPA has thanked me.

More Later!

CVs, Tenure and Evaluations

2006-08-08T09:41:00.000-04:00

Now that it is the last week of work and the guys here sort of figured out that I am not in it for the long run it seems like they stopped caring about me. It's awesome! So I have been able to check out a bunch of interesting websites lately...

Looking at different econ department homepages I stumbled upon the CV of Aaron Yelowitz, an associate proffesor of economics at the University of Kentucy. Graduate of MIT, looking at his CV it seems like he was denied tenure at UCLA and then went to UK afterwards. I found two things interesting, first he posts his teaching evaluations from UCLA and UK on the site (the UCLA ones have student comments) and second I haven't seen too many CVs with people who were denied tenure. The first one I noticed was Olivier Armantier which I saw yesterday. It seems like he was denied tenure at Stony Brook and went to UPitt to start over. I probably just haven't been looking at the right places to find the faculty who were denied but it does sort of shakes up my idea of life after graduate school...
It seems like AMD is going to stop using the ATI name altogether. I think that's a mistake- but what do I know... seriously. (UPDATE: it seems this is false...)
AMAZING pictures with photoshop techniques and tutorials. A lot of these just seem unreal. Well, I guess they are considering they are photoshopped.

Thats all for now.

More Later!

My GRE Experience

2006-08-07T13:44:00.000-04:00

Thanks to all you guys who wished me good fortune on the GREs. It wasn't as bad as I expected. I think I lucked out because after the two writing sections and the break, I had a verbal section and then a math section and the an optional research section which I got out of right away. Mercifully I didn't have to do the unknown research section. After finishing the required sections I wasn't about to sit for 45 minutes doing another exam while I knew I could just get out and get my score.

And so I got my score: 590V 800Q. I can now breathe a sigh of relief. The verbal, I think, is good enough considering the amount of time I spent on it. I was very impressed with the Kaplan book and their list of 150 commonly used GRE words. I tried to memorize them and got about half way through but I saw about 8 words on the test from that list that I wouldn't have otherwise known. Now I just have to wait for the percentiles and the AWA score. I think I did well on the AWA but as Andy said in his GRE post a year ago "this may mean that I actually blew it and I am just that clueless..." Anyway I'll forget about it for a while because I won't know the results until I come back from my trip, assuming their turnaround time is over a week, and knowing ETS - is has to be.

All-in-all I think this should be enough to stay competitive. Nothing too special to set me apart from the pack in either a good way or a bad way. I'll just have to let my LORs do that for me. Great... more pressure for this semester :-)

Also if you checked out the comments on the previous post Ryan from Fairly Obvious Observations plans on posting some first year survival tips on his blog soon so don't forget to check his page if you think you would benefit from them. Hopefully they'll be up before the semester starts.

Well, that's all for now.

Off to more trip planning!

More Later!

GREs, FOO and CCA

2006-08-04T12:05:00.000-04:00

Only one more week until the end of my internship (Yeay!). Only one more day until I take the GREs (Yikes!). And only 9 more days until I start my 150-mile hike (the north-eastern most trail to the south-western most trail) of the NY/NJ sections of the Appalachain Trail, but more on that in later posts.

Yesterday I found that my masochistic tendencies surfaced when I took a look at the GRE forums at Test Magic. Apparently people don't usually take the GREs after two weeks of pseudo-studying during their commutes to and from work. Many people spend three months in intensive study before they take it. Oopsy! So in a bout of fear I decided to skip a mandatory Dinner Cruise around Manhattan for my internship and instead go home to study. Even though I got a "that was very unprofessional" e-mail from the internship coordinator I think it was worth it. I downloaded the PowerPrep software from the ETS website and took a practice test. It wasn't too bad. Anyway, still freaking out a bit but it will all be over in 24 hours.

Well a few links before I get back to the boards to freak myself out:

A very short and funny article from The Onion: Libertarian Reluctantly Calls Fire Department - the title says it all.
Two new blogs to check out:
Fairly Obvsious Observations - written by, from what I gather, two PhD students at Northwestern going onto their second year. So far a couple of great posts and I hope they keep it up.
Center for College Afordability - written by a professor at Ohio University also from NW. (link via MR)

Well that is all for now!

More Later!

Words, Plasmas and the Wage-Gap

2006-08-03T10:28:00.000-04:00

I took another practice GRE last night, did fine on the Quant but I bombed the Verbal. I dropped 180 points from the time before. I think it really just comes down to the luck of the draw: do you know these words or not. You could memorize 6000 words and still get stuck with the 100 or so you didnt study. i just want saturday to come and pass. I'll just look at this as a real practice exam. I can always take it again.

Anyway- two female related links:

It seems that those of us looking for wives in this day and age have lucked out. Girls have become more practicle. Diamonds are no longer a girls best friend. What is? Plasma. As in the TVs.

The study found that 77 percent of women surveyed would prefer a new plasma television to a diamond solitaire necklace, and 56 percent would opt for a new plasma TV over a weekend vacation in Florida.
Even shoes lost out. The study found that 86 percent would prefer a new digital video camera to a pair of designer shoes.

New excuse: "Oh but honey I bought the Plasma TV for you!"

And Marginal Revolution links us to a site talking about a new NBER paper trying to explain the gender-wage gap. It seems to make sense to me and the result is fairly significant.

Thats all for now.

More Later!

Crazed Seattle Shooter

2006-08-02T09:10:00.000-04:00

So we all heard about that crazy guy in Seattle that went into a Jewish center and killed a bunchy of people. The loser got in by threatening to shoot a 13 year old girl and ended up killing one employee and wounding 5 others. Apparently he was brought up "Muslim" but only showed up on the holidays of the year.

What is interesting is that he apparently converted to Christianity last year. This guy is just mentally ill. The Seattle PI reports:

...Haq started studying the Bible. In December, he was baptized by Montelongo. The ceremony brought tears to Haq's eyes, Montelongo said.

A few months after he was baptized, Haq stopped attending the men's group meetings. Montelongo last heard from Haq in a message that said he was going to Seattle to find a job. He said he tried to call Haq several times but never reached him.

So the guy is insane. That should have been apparent because anyone who does anything like this is insane.

The problem is why would he call the police and say:

"These are Jews and I'm tired of getting pushed around and our people getting pushed around by the situation in the Middle East."

I don't really think he has anyone will claim him as part of thier group so the 'our people' is not applicable. The Muslims that he shunned growing up have wiped there hands of him and the Christians that he was converted by can't reach him and I am sure won't even try anymore.

Its confusing and frustrating. I will be trying to follow this as it progresses. he should be having his first court apperance on Saturday. Seattle does support the death penalty, this seems like a case where it may be used.

One of my brothers loves consipracy theories and he sees one here. We won't get into it but if I see it floating around the internet I'll link to it just for fun. It's always nice to have a conspiracy theorist around, makes you feel more grounded...

Sorry for the off-topic post.

More later!

GREs, MIT and Lott v Levitt

2006-07-31T10:42:00.000-04:00

I plan on taking the GREs on Saturday morning. I'm a little nervous. I am not too concerned about my ability to answer enough questions correctly but I do doubt my stamina. After having to write two essays and then take either one or 2 verbal sections I hope that by the time the quantitative sections rolls around I won't be beat. My problem is that by the time I am 5 questions into the verbal section I just want to get it over. Yesterday on a practice exam I stopped reading the passages and just picked answers to get it over with. Still, if I get what I got on the practice exam I won't be too sad. Any tips on how to deal with the boredom of the GREs?

Imagine getting a job offer from MIT. Happy right? It happened to Alla Karpova who then got an e-mail from Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa in the department telling her not to come because she wouldn't be finding a supportive department behind her. Not as advice on the inner-workings of the department, no, instead a thinly-veiled threat to stop a competitor from setting up camp on his home turf. Even after promising not to work in his area further e-mails caused Karpova to turned down the job offer. Ouch. Here is the story.
Also, apparently there has been a law suite filed against Steve Levitt of Freakonomics fame by another academic economist, John Lott (his blog). The issue is about a comment in Freakonomics that Levitt wrote saying that other economists have replicated a study that Lott did about "More Guns, Less Crime" and were not able to get the same results. Lott wants the book to stop being sold until this part is taken out. It comes down to the definition of replicate. I think this is all ridiculous and childish. How did Lott think this was going to help his case? Maybe he could have just responded to the criticism instead of suing Levitt. Either way here is a blog page with a bunch of updates and links about the case.

Well that is all for now.

More Later!

Update: In an effort not to be completely one-sided an anonymous commenter pointed me here, Lott's response to Levitt's motion to dismiss. It makes a couple of good points, this is more serious than one word for Lott because for any academic your reputation is your career. I'm interested to see what the courts have to say. I can't find if and where he is part of an academic department though so if anyone finds it, it would be appreciated.

Washington University Econ

2006-07-27T15:42:00.000-04:00

Two posts in one day. Dont get used to it.

Apparently Washington University - St. Louis has hired 6 tenured econ faculty. Two come from UCLA :-( another from Minnesota (sorry Andy) and another from Rochester as well as Iowa and San Andres. They also expect to hire another 6 in the next 3 years.

Here is the free article from the Chronicle.

Makes me rethink about my unintentional desicion to completely ignore the school. My eyes are now open and my ears are perked. Although looking at their website it seems like they are a big Macro school although also a lot of IO people too...

More Later!

Some More Links

2006-07-27T14:06:00.000-04:00

What? This blog is supposed to be about economics? No....

Maybe next time.

No more cash in Monopoly. This seems awesome.
Cool T-Shirt. No the pic-link isn't broken. Thats the point...
Best Toaster Ever! Too bad it doesn't exist... yet!
On a more serious and sad note: The Taliban has gone the economic route and is now recruiting, not by converting people to their ideology but, by paying them three times more than the Afghan Government. Basically their idea now is :Kill your countrymen because I will pay you to.

More Later!

Three New Links

2006-07-25T15:22:00.000-04:00

Alright fine, I admit, I've been a horrible blogger. One update a week? Geez. So today my guilt had prompted me to blog but I am going to try to lessen commentary and just put links. Two and a half weeks left of this intership. Thank goodness for college.

CRACK (Children Requiring a Caring Community) You have to read this article. They pay crack addicts to take birth control!
Never noticed this page on EconPhD.net before. It is general stats and rankings for Econ journals. Rates quality on a 0-1 scale. Thought it was interesting, it gives a quick snapshot for those who are still in the dark about Journals.
AMD bought ATI. Wow.

Thats all for now... back to work :-(

More Later!

Posner on Gender inequality

2006-07-18T11:29:00.000-04:00

I was planning on posting a nice decent link-full post which I have halfway done and saved but I just had to put this up here once I read it. It is from the Becker-Posner blog, the link you can find to your right. The perfect excerpt was highlighted by Greg Mankiw. This is from Richard Posner, the noted legal scholar who would be considered one of the geniuses that he speaks about below. Best paragraph I've read in a while. The ending is a knocker:

(T)he mean performance of women in college and university is superior to that of the men, but the variance of male performance is greater and as a result there are more male geniuses. There is no reason why the difference in variance should result in higher average male earnings; that higher average is probably the result of women's spending less time in the work force because of pregnancy and child care. Women's greater proclivity for child care may well have a biological basis, as may the difference in variance that I mentioned. In the "ancestral environment"--the term that anthropologists use to describe the prehistoric period in which human beings reached approximately their current biological state--women who were "steady" would have tended to have the maximum number of children, while natural selection might favor variance in male abilities because variance would produce some outstanding men who would tend to reproduce more than other men including the "steadies") in the polygamous conditions of prehistoric society. If the explanation based on evolutionary biology is correct, women will continue to be "underrepresented" in high-achievement positions in many fields; why anyone should care is beyond me. (emphasis added)

That's just funny!

More Later!

2006-07-12T14:36:00.000-04:00

They have finally realized that I am capable of being a productive member of the team so I have started getting some work! Its pretty awesome. Work days are just flying by now. I haven't really been given a chance to do much blogging. When I get home I still have just enough energy to eat, hang out with me dad for a little bit, watch some TV in a non-attentive state and then pass out. Every day makes me happier I don't want to go into the corporate world.

Anyways, there were a couple of nice links in the blogophere today from the likely sources:

From New York Magazine Happiness: A Users Manual (link via NMD). Two that I thought funny: "Fire your therapist if he so much as mentions your childhood", "Ask the next person you meet on Match.com to marry you." and of course to safeguard your happiness "Don't watch the Knicks", well unless you are a masochist.
An interesting post from Marginal Revolution about a paper confirming that men and women can never be just friends. There will always be an attraction there.
Another post from MR about how to see if you are built to be an economist.

That is all for now.

More Later!

Admission Fees for Economics

2006-07-07T13:11:00.000-04:00

Applying to Graduate school isn't cheap. I complied a quick, and hopefully accurate as of this writing, list of departments and their admission fees assuming you are an American applying online. Some schools have higher fees for international applicants. If you notice that any of these are off or if you know of a few more departments and their costs it would be greatly appreciated if you mention them in the comments. I have only listed the schools that seem like a possible place that I would actually apply to. Basically the first 25 places that came to mind.

NYU - $80
Columbia - $75
Brown - $70
UMD - $60
UCLA - $60
UCSD - $60
Princeton - $65
Yale - $85
Duke - $75
Cornell - $70
Upenn - $70
Penn State - $45
Harvard - $90
MIT - $70
Stanford - $105
Berkeley - $60
Northwestern - $60
Umich - $60
UCSC - $60
Wisconsin - $45
BC - $70
Virginia - $60
Johns Hopkins - $60
Cal Tech - $50
UNC - $70

Mean: 67......Median:65......Mode:60

That is all for now.

More Later!

Addendum: Kerry Crowe from the awesome Crowebar blog informs me that NIU's application fee comes in at an impressive $30. Also undergrad applications are free!

Addendum II: Andy mentions that Minessota is $55 and, much worse than that, the great majority of schools require an offical GRE score sent to them from ETS which tags on an extra $15 per school after the first 3 schools which are included in the cost of taking the GRE.

Time to Degree

2006-07-05T14:58:00.000-04:00

The laptop came in and it's a beauty. Civ IV, of course, is stunning. The sheep move. Enough said. The computer is noticeably faster than my older one. It came with memory card readers too which was a very pleasant surprise. I was able to sell my old laptop on eBay with a dead motherboard for $250! It sold really fast at the "Buy It Now" price which leads me to believe that I under priced it. You would think an Economics nut would get supply and demand right... All in all it's a win for me because I was about to throw it out but decided to check eBay on a him.

On the Economics PhD front here is a paper about time-to-degree using data covering an estimated 61% of new PhDs in 2002! It comes down to an average of about 5 and a half years, an increase from the 5.25 years in 1997. Harvard, MIT, UCLA and NYU had degree lengths of 5 years or less while Maryland, Stanford, Berkeley and Yale had times greater than 5.5 years. Something to keep in mind when applying!

Factors that sped up getting the degree were writing a set of essays, coming from a top 50 liberal arts college (coming from a school with a top 50 economics department didn't help), and being awarded a fellowship. Having a child during the course of study whether a man or a woman added a significant amount of time to the track.

I guess I will have to transfer and make sure to secure a fellowship to NYU or UCLA to be out on time. That should be easy enough........

Also I was hoping do another department summary. Any suggestions as to which school?

That is all for now.

More Later!

My New Laptop

2006-06-29T13:38:00.000-04:00

I finally bought a laptop. I stayed with Dell because they seem to still have the best prices. I might have gotten a no-name laptop of similar specs for a little cheaper but in the end Dell is great. Here are the important specs:

Inspiron E1505 Intel Core Duo processor T2300E (2MB Cache/1.66GHz/667MH)
Operating System Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
LCD Panel 15.4 inch Wide Screen XGA Display
Memory 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz, 2 Dimm
Video Card 256MB ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON® X1400 HyperMemory™
Hard Drive 60GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive
Combo/DVD+RW Drives 24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive

An all fo that for a little more than $700. Pretty good if you ask me. Free shipping and about $60 for NYS taxes :-(

I am pretty happy with having a Gig of RAM and I am a big fan of the size of the video card. I heard though that the card is only half that in reality. It is 128 dedicated and 128 shared. As long as CIV IV works well I will be alright. The computer is also windows Vista compatible so that is a plus.

Dell claims it is already made and just waiting to be picked up and shipped. I should have it by sometime next week. CIV IV here I come!

That is all for now.

More Later!

Warren Buffet's Gift

2006-06-26T15:59:00.000-04:00

So Warren Buffet, the second richest man in the world, has decided to give the large majority of his wealth, more than $30b of his $40b, to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. He had originally planned on giving away all of this money after he died but he changed his mind. Now, normally when someone plans on giving away all of their money they plan to do it when it can't benefit them anymore on earth and so they give it all away after they die. Warren Buffet, on the other hand, had a completely different reason for holding on to the money until he died which he spoke about in this interview:

I always had the idea that philanthropy was important today, but would be equally important in one year, ten years, 20 years, and the future generally. And someone who was compounding money at a high rate, I thought, was the better party to be taking care of the philanthropy that was to be done 20 years out, while the people compounding at a lower rate should logically take care of the current philanthropy.

So what he is saying is that he wanted to maximize his contribution to philanthropy worldwide and he didn't discount the future at a high rate so since he figures he can increase the amount of the contribution by holding onto it and investing it he would do the best by the world if he kept all that money growing under him.

It was a great idea but he finally found someone, a couple of people actually, who would be able to utilize his money now so well that it would be equal to the utility the world would get if he compounded the money. It seems like it was a classic intertemporal utility maximization issue.

Also, the funniest part of the interview:

Does it occur to you that it's somewhat ironic for the second-richest man in the world to be giving untold billions to the first-richest man?

When you put it that way, it sounds pretty funny. But in truth, I'm giving it through him - and, importantly, Melinda as well - not to him.

That is all for now.

More Later!

Back to the Basics

2006-06-22T13:58:00.000-04:00

Yes! I am very excited about this post. It is actually economics related. Not only that be economics graduate schools related. Not only that but pretty original because I haven't really seen this link anywhere else. It is sort of like I am a blogger with something interesting to say. Just like the good ole' days. I guess this is how reporters must feel when they break a cool story. Probably a few times better though. Alrighty enough fluff here goes:

Attrition in Economics Ph.D. Programs, Wendy A. Stock, T. Aldrich Finegan, and John J. Siegried, May 2006. So as the title suggests it is a study measuring the factors that influence overall attrition rates at 27 institutions. They found that two year attrition rates were lowest (15%) in the schools ranked in the top 6 and second lowest (18%) in schools ranked in the top 7-15. Those ranked 16-30 had 30% attrition after two years while those ranked between 31-48 had 39% and those ranked higher than 48 had, on average, 33% attrition. I don;t think this is too surprising. They don't mention which schools gave them data but I have a feeling some of the schools that are known for having high attrition (Chicago) probably opted out of participating in the study. I imagine the three schools in the top six might have been Yale, Princeton and Harvard where attrition is known to be low. That is just a guess though. It seems to me that the authors were surprised that 16-48 had higher attrition than those ranked over 48 but that looks to be normal. It is much more competitive in that bracket so I am sure some schools want to cut people off to improve their average graduate quality. When you come from a school ranked lower than 48 I don't think you worry too much about it.

The paper says that some of the indicators that determine attrition are GRE quant scores (negatively related), being from the US (PR), Having a research assistantship (NR), having an undergraduate Math degree (NR), and a few other things as well. It was calculated that women have high attrition rates than men.

All in all it was a good, quick (9 pages) paper that studies a subject that doesn't get enough attention. Although understandably once you get through the PhD program you might not care too much about why those who didn't... didn't.

That is all for now.

More Later!

Work and Wisdom Teeth

2006-06-19T14:03:00.000-04:00

Work has gotten a little better. I guess the people here needed to adjust to having an intern but I still have way too much time on my hands. At least I have heard of some interns that actually have work to do so it is not all bad throughout the company. I hope that by the end of the week they would have had enough of me sitting on the internet all day and will finally start giving me enough work to make the day go by quicker. Comically when I actually get work I now get a little annoyed. For a second or two I think "Why are you disturbing me?" and then I realize that I am at "work". All in all I see an upward trend. I hope to stop complaining soon :-)

On a different note I had my wisdom teeth removed on Friday. It was pretty cool. I got to the dentist and they had me sit in that big chair and they stuck an IV into me and the next thing I know it is 45 mins later and they are done. I woke up briefly twice during the operation but I went right back out after a few seconds. Needless to say Saturday and Sunday was not too fun and walking into work with a swollen right cheek is embarrassing. The problem is the swelling went down a little so that it is noticeable only if you look for a while so those that have spent more than a couple of minutes with me are usually thinking "That guy looks weird" and are too embarrassed to ask. I'm over it already.

Still debating on what laptop I should buy. It comes down to a choice: $500 for a bottom-of-the-barrel-but-adequate-enough-for-what-I-want-laptop or a $800-$1000 good-to-go-for-a-few-years laptop. I think I will go with the latter. Any suggestions?

A couple of links that are pretty cool:

An article about a lunch interview with Gary Becker. (via GM)
"How to Cheat Good" (sic via NMD)

Once upon a time this blog was about Economics. Sorry about the recent posts, take solace in the fact that I do intend to get back to the econ.

That is all for now.

More later!

HSBC Summer Internship

2006-06-14T13:33:00.000-04:00

Prepare for a rant...

What is the best thing about summer interships? Since you asked I'll tell you: there is a certain freedom coming from the knowledge that you are only there for ten weeks and then you leave. With a group of 67 interns here at HSBC if you show up and even attempt what they ask of you (which as of now hasn't been much) you can't really worry too much about getting fired. The biggest worry on the minds of these interns is that they need to impress the people around them so as to merit a full time offer for next year at the end of the ten weeks. I am in the great position of knowing that even if I get a full time offer I am fairly certain I am going to turn it down. I have other plans :-). So I have a stress-free, nice paying job in the investment banking division of one of the worlds largest banks that gets me out of the house. The only thing that would make it better is if it wasn't so boring. They seem to underestimate interns because there hasn't been a day yet that I have been given enough work to occupy me for more than a couple of hours. Not only that but the other interns that I have spoken to are the same way. I know one who has spent most of his time watching the world cup on TV because they just don't give him enough to do. Ready for the sickening part? These interns, to show that they are team-players, and of course for the full time offer, stay at work for sometimes more than 12 hours a day. They pull 12 hour days when they only have enough work to occupy them for a fifth of that. I have heard of some IB interns who will just sit at their desks after hours to make it seem like they work really hard. Personally I am only here as long as I have to be. 5pm I am out of here. So the real issue is why do they even have an intern program if they aren't going to work us? One reason that comes to mind is that they have money to burn. They have been treating us to dinners and bowling and we've had open bars events for 4 of my first 7 days so far. (I never realized how much people drink until this past week. I don't drink so it has just been interesting to watch.) The good thing about it is that I have more than enough time to read economics blogs. I know I shouldn't be complaining, it's a nice deal, but dissapointing. I came here to learn but it doesn't seem like that is happening. I didn't really want to start blogging at work but I just don't have anything else to do. If only greg mankiw and marginalrevolution posted more...

That is all for now.

More Later!

HSBC and the Cobert Report

2006-06-07T00:47:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I finally started working on Monday and it has been a little hectic. The people at HSBC have been very nice. So far we have just had orientation and some training which has just been a two day intensive finance 101 sort of course. Today is the last day of that and then I should get onto the the real work. They have me working in Operational Risk Management. From what I have gathered that is basically the department that takes care of any costly mistakes. Whenever someone or something makes a mistake that costs the company more that $10k they report it to us and we fix it and put procedures into place to make sure it never happens again. For instance ... I am scared to get into details because I am not sure what I am and am not allowed to say - so I won't. Anyway once I get settled I hope to write a little more about it. I have just been trying to adjust to the new sleep schedule.

Also today I have tickets to see The Colbert Report. Hopefully I will be able to make it. I will keep you informed.

That is all for now.

More Later!

Books, TV and Rules

2006-05-24T02:22:00.000-04:00

What is a good way to see if you are having a relaxing vacation? Check to see if you know what day of the week it is. I didn't know yesterday was Tuesday. That made me all happy inside :-).

I got my last grade back and it was a surprise A. I love those. The classes where you already decided you are getting an A- after taking the final and some miracle happens to make it otherwise. Differential Equations wasn't a hard course, I just found it annoying. I am just glad it is over.

Not much going on over here. Just reading and playing video games. Speaking of which if anyone is into fiction this is certainly the best book ever. A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. It is the first of the series titles A Song of Ice and Fire. It gets labeled as a fantasy novel but it is so rich in detail it makes you think you are reading historical fiction. It is so deep that there is a 15 page character list in the back that you might have to use every once in a while. This is my second time reading it and I love it even more. Highly and completely recommended.

Also ABC has started streaming their primetime shows over the internet after they are played. Now I no longer have to be in front of the TV Wednesdays at 9 to catch Lost I can watch it almost commercial free here, at their website, whenever I want. I hope this catches on.

Lastly, and probably most interestingly, Greg Mankiw's Rules of Thumb for Economists (warning:pdf).

Well that is all for now.

More Later!

Blu-Ray, FFXIII and St.Louis

2006-05-18T00:17:00.000-04:00

Back at home for the Summer. I have a couple of weeks off and then I start the Internship. I am pretty happy about that. I just have to figure out what to do with my two weeks. It has been raining and so that has ruined the beach volleyball plans. Mercifully, Civ IV has taken its place but I can only play that 12 hours in a row, I know- I am a wimp.

I am waiting on one more grade that should be posted either today or tomorrow. I ended up getting a 99 on my Econometrics final which is pretty awesome. I dodged that bullet and so my Econ 4.0 stays intact, at least until next semester when I take the two grad courses. Bring it on. Sad to admit it but I liked that stuff so much that I read a couple of chapters in the metrics book today for fun. It is a first for me, learning school stuff for the heck of it. I am not too proud of reading a technical textbook on my first day of vacation.

To get away from the academic vein here are a few links:

HD-DVD or Blu-Ray? I vote Blu-Ray. Why? Well they just made a 200 gig blu-ray disk. Pretty awesome. If Blu-Ray is adapted I am sure in less than a decade these disks will make storage trivial.
Final Fantasy XIII, yeap that is 13! Here is the poor-quality trailer (at least it loads quickly). They claim that it is not prerendered graphics that we are seeing and that it is all in real-time. **Drool**
Also, St. Louis is silly.

More Later!

Finally - Summer Vacation

2006-05-16T05:51:00.000-04:00

I have an Econometrics exam in 5 hours that I should be studying for. Either way right after that I will have completed my Junior year. Thank God! It was a good year, not terribly difficult but I think I learned a lot from Math Stats to Econometrics, Abstract Linear Algebra to Real Anaylsis. I got a lot out of the way. I can now look forward to some real economics next year in those graduate courses.

My summer will be spent at HSBC working as a summer intern in their corporate investment banking division. It should be good experience and I hope to learn a lot. My only concern is that it is in Midtown Manhattan which is about an hour and a half from my house, using public transportation... at least I will get a lot of reading done. I start June 5th so I have a couple of weeks to relax and play beach volleyball and Civ IV. I end August 11 which gives me close to a full month off before school starts extremely late this year on September 6th. I might just go traveling.

Anyway enough procrastination a couple of links and then off to hit the books (or more accurately, print-outs):

Should there be an organ market? A few persuasive arguments coming from Greg Mankiw (No permalink, just click show original post at the top).
I've been reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. It is a slightly depressing book that basically says that once the world completely flattens the US is in trouble because it doesn't have a populous who are willing to act as responsible as other countries like India and China who have citizens who save and work very hard for little. Sure, he might have a point but these articles make it think we still have a good amount of time before things get too bad around here. Why? Because they are so bad in those places. First the university system in France is in shambles (MR) and China has been pumping money into their University system but to no avail. They still value rote learning over other forms which dampens their creativity. Many students are dissatisfied. Sure things will get better for them in the future but the US is still way ahead of the curve. (CoHE/subscription).

That is all for now.

More Later!

Actual Econ Links

2006-05-12T01:27:00.000-04:00

I should start the big-time studying today. I have Diff-Eq and Urban Politics on Monday, Econometrics on Tuesday and then an end to this not-so-exciting semester. The most exciting thing is that now with this done I finally get to start talking seriously to my professors about what schools I should be targeting. Looking forward to the fall....

Of course I have to pick my schools based on concentration areas. In that vein:

The classification system for the journal of Economic Literature. This is a great list to see what fields and subfields are around. They all seem like titles to chapters in an Econ textbook.
Also the new "Survey of the Labor Market for New Ph.D. Hires in Economics in 2006-2007" For Ph.D. granting institutions the starting salary average is $84K. Pretty decent if you ask me!

That is all for now. Wish me luck on my exams, even though luck doesn't exist.

More Later!

Computers, Game-Theory and Econometrics

2006-05-09T00:39:00.002-04:00

So it ends up that my motherboard decided it was time to pass onto the other side. The tech support guy told me that it would be more cost effective to buy a new computer as opposed to getting it fixed. I have a feeling he is right so I am on the market. If anyone has any suggestions please feel free to comment. I decided I will need another laptop because I actually take it with me places. Any inside tips on specs I should be looking for or websites I should be frequenting would be appreciated.

On to the Game Theory Extravaganza (how often do you get to use that word?!) It was pretty cool sometimes and pretty boring most of the time. Maybe because I don't know enough GT to appreciate all of the papers that were being presented. One cool thing was that John Nash was there and I got to take a picture with him that I plan on posting up once I get my external hard drive hooked up.

Aumanns lecture was just a repeat of his nobel lecture which you can find on the nobel website. It was pretty cool and he was a good presenter. When asked about how it feels to win the nobel he said "It is like I spent all of my life in manufacturing and now I am in sales." Pretty funny. He liked to use a lot of hebrew and quoted scripture a few times. The Q&A session was annoying because most of the questions were from non-economists who didn't really understand the terminology so it was pretty much a waste. It was cool to see him and the nobel prize in the lobby. He has been at Stony for the summer for about 17 years now and he will be here this summer. If only I was staying, Imagine getting a letter from him!

In conclusion it was pretty cool, especailly seeing all the big named economists there and seeing my professors, some of whom I look at with awe, look at them with awe.

Finals week is upon me. I have my first final Wednesday in Comutational Methods. Then I have DiffEqs and Urban Politics on Monday and Econometrics on Tuesday of next week. The thing with the metrics final is the professor set up the grading system that there are 3 exams, each worth 30% and homeworks worth 10% if you dont take the final. If you do take the final, all four exams are worth 22.5%. Currently with the 3 exams I have an A- but because of his system the only way to pull my grade up to an A is to score above a 98 on the final. I have to talk to him about that. It doesn't seem fair. I am just freaking out because that A- will kill my Econ 4.0 and I am sure it won't look good to grad schools who will see that I got A in all my Econ classes except what can be assumed to be the hardest one. I am a little worried... I shouldn't complain, I could have bigger problems.

Sorry for the rant. One of these day you might find substance in the blog. Just don't count on it.

Finally: PS3 comes out November 17 for $499 for the 20 gig version and $599 for the 60 gig version. Just a month before my Grad micro final takes place. Awesome timing!

More Later!

Massive Computer Problems

2006-05-02T01:26:00.000-04:00

I was planning on having a summary of the awesome lecture Dr Aumann gave as well as post a picture or two but my computer broke. I don't know what happened. All of a sudden it froze and then it wouldnt turn back on. Finally it began to turn on sporadically and freeze again. I reformated and while I was reformating it would freeze. Tha rules out a software problem which means it is hardware which sucks! I have to see what I am going to do about it. I guess Dells are only good for 3 years...

Hopefully I will update soon, at least as a break between studying for finals...

Game Theory Extravaganza

2006-04-26T06:13:00.000-04:00

Well, I just noticed yesterday that the next few days isn't only about Aumman. It sort of is but it is really about game theory. They are having a Symposium in his honor. So today, tomorrow and Thursday -all day- they will be having speakers present papers about GT. A quick speaker list (in order of presentation):

Dov Samet (Tel-Aviv University)
Eric Maskin (Princeton University)
Daijiro Okada (Rutgers University)
Barry O'Neill (UCLA)
Ori Haimanko (Ben Gurion University)
Jean-Francois Mertens (CORE)
Dirk Bergemann (Yale University)
Roberto Serrano (Brown University)
Abraham Neyman (Hebrew University)
Truman Bewley (Yale University)
Bernard de Meyer (University of Paris I)
John Geanakoplos (Yale University)
Benjamin Polak (Yale University)
Shmuel Zamir (Hebrew University)
Srihari Govindan (The University of Iowa)

And that is just today. Tomorrow includes Aumann, John Nash and Lloyd Shapley among others. So I will be pretty busy. If I understand anything I will try to post it here... It is pretty exciting. You can find the program here but you will need to click on the link that says symposium program, for some reason I can't find a direct link.

Oh, and a quick link about Muslim Astronauts. Very interesting and actually pretty funny.

Anyways, I have an exam in a couple of hours in ODEs... Boring....

That is all for now.

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Aumann, HDDs and Law

2006-04-25T01:23:00.000-04:00

Robert J Aumann is coming to Stony Brook on Thursday to give his signature "War and Peace" lecture which you can find online here. Here is the flyer for the lecture. Aumann used to spend the summers here at Stony Brook working in their Center for Game Theory in Economics (here is the press release). I already RSVPed so that I am assured a seat. He is supposed to be starting at 4pm and his lecture will be followed by a Q&A. One of the professors here is actually a student of Aumann (Y Tauman) and so I am sure he is pretty happy about him coming here, although he is on leave so I don't know if he will be around. This should be a good time. I remember how great it was when Jagadish Bahwati came to give a lecture and I imagine this should be just a good. I will try to update on Thursday an tell you all how it went.

Semester is coming to a close. I am a little concerned about my grades, especially since these are probably the last grades that graduate schools will see. Hopefully as finals week rolls around I will step up and do what needs to be dont. I am extremely happy about the fact that I am almost done and look forward to it finally being my turn.

Here are a quick couple of links:

Largest. Harddrive. Ever. 1.36 million gigs! And I used to be happy with my 200 gigs...
Something to tell your boss about if you are ever caught surfing the web...

That is all for now.

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Research, Fallacies and BareWiki

2006-04-19T01:08:00.000-04:00

I spoke to my ECO 310 professor today about the honors research paper he is planning on advising me on next semester. He seems pretty happy about it, as am I. I asked him if he thought me only taking 4 courses - 12 credits next semester would look bad on my application and he said he didn't think so. I plan on taking Grad Micro 1, Grad Math Stats, Real Analysis 2 and the research paper as a class. It should be a serious semester that I hope to step up for unlike this semester where I haven't really done much.

Just a couple of links:

I got this off of NMD and I think it is awesome and insightful. The sunk cost fallacy, why people don't give up and get out when they should.
50 ways to take notes. I think Barewiki has a lot of potential. Here is the page I made. This would be awesome for a class where you and a bunch of people you know can take notes concurrently and edit others notes and add commentary.

That is all I have for you today.

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Primes, Iran and Mileage

2006-04-17T00:38:00.000-04:00

Back at school and I don't think I will be leaving for a month, but then the semester will be over. Now the only problem is that all the assignments that I have been delaying are catching up to me and so I have way too many papers to write. I guess it is sort of a good thing, I don't get to write enough as it is anyway.

Jury Duty was a breeze. I showed up at the court house, they found out I was a full-time student and then told me they would postpone it for two years. If that is the case then I guess I won't have to do jury duty until 2012 when I am done with my PhD. Sounds good to me.

A few links:

This seems pretty random. A illegal numbers. They have to make the Prime ones illegal...
This is pretty crazy: Imagery of Iran's nuclear sites on Google Earth.
According to this the next Toyota Prius is set to offer 94mpg. Amazing.

That is all for now. Time to get back into the school mindset.

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Vacation, Jury-Duty, and LTC

2006-04-12T00:44:00.000-04:00

Ahhh.... Spring Break (read: lethargy). I have been almost completely unproductive. The only thing I really did was take over the world once. Sure it was in Civilization IV but it is practice for when I do the real thing.

I have jury duty this morning which I hope will be quick. I can't really stay on a case for too long since school starts up again on Monday. Any day I miss will be hard to make up given how close we are to the end of the semester.

Not much to report here. Just a couple of links:

A comparison of Google and Long Term Capital, a company back in the 90's made by a group of really smart guys how tried to make a lot of money. I am not too concerned about google but it was a good recent history lesson for me. (via NMD).
A first-person account of an untenured professor teaching and speaking about Middle Eastern politics in academia. A small excerpt:
Being a scholar of anything having to do with Islam, the Middle East, or the Arab world has become, in the post 9-11 era, a full contact sport.
Charging Middle East scholars with "anti-Semitism," "liberal bias," and "support for terrorism" has become (in fashion parlance) the new black of right-wing political discourse. Entire Web sites are devoted to exposing academics with expertise on the Middle East as dangerous radicals who pose a threat to the young minds of America. I have seen many of my professors, colleagues, and friends over the past few years placed on such blacklists.

Well that is all for now. Court opens up early...

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Exams, Mankiw and E-H D D

2006-04-05T01:03:00.000-04:00

Exams, exams, exams. Yeap... three of them. One at 8:05am this morning (Diff Eqs) and another at 2:20pm today (Computational Methods in Econ). Then Econometrics at 12:50pm Thursday, then a very late spring break. Wish me luck, I will certainly need it. This stuff isn't hard, I understand it all, I just haven't found the motivation to sit down and master it. I know it, I just figure let me have a computer do all the computations while I sit back and interpret.

Anyways:

Greg Mankiw's blog. Pretty cool. I loved his Macro textbook when I used it for class. It was very clear and well written in my opinion. (NMD)
Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe. Another one for the Economic History textbook. (NMD)
I just bought this external hard-drive. My files from my new camera have been taking up all my space. I need to expand. At this point I have less than half a gig of free space on my hard drive due to the 9 gigs of pictures and video sitting pretty in a corner.

That is all for now.

More later!

Exams, Emulators and Entrepreneurship

2006-03-30T02:29:00.000-05:00

I have a week full of exams coming up next week right before spring break. My school seems to be a little stingy with they vacation days this semester. Many schools I know have at least a week and a half. To tell you the truth it doesn't matter. This semester is almost like a vacation anyway. I have Computational Methods in Economics on Wednesday as well as Differential Equations and on Thursday I have Econometrics which I finally started studying for. I am not sure why I am scared of Econometrics, I can do that math, its fairly trivial so far, I just seem to miss some things on the interpretation. At least that is what happened on the last exam. I hope to remedy that in a week.

The weather has finally gotten nicer. This past week playing Softball, Volleyball and Tennis really makes me want to move to some place warmer where I can do so more often.

Anyway a few links and back to the books:

I have had an unhealthy addiction to this for a couple of days. It is a Nintendo Emulator. I have been playing Super Mario 3 a lot, which is by far the best Super Mario game ever.
How much money you would need to be independently middle-class. The idea is this is how much you would need so that your interest and dividing are enough to cover you bills without having to work. An excerpt about what that actually means:
At a party, when someone asks, "What do you do?" You answer: "In event of what?
It comes out to about 3 million dollars.
Straight Talk about Graduate School and More Straight Talk on Grad School both nice reads, well more like one long nice read.
A book about entrepreneurship Go it Alone. (via NMD)

That is all for now.

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Internship, Classes and Memories

2006-03-28T00:22:00.000-05:00

So my interview went well :-) they offered me the position as a summer analyst at HSBC. The day started with an introduction to the company (I didn't know HSBC has only been in America for 8 years) and the we had 1-on-1 interview, followed by lunch, a 1-on-1 presentation and then a group exercise and that was it. It went from 10am-4pm. I met a guy interviewing there that actually lived about 5 mins from me who goes to SUNY-Binghamton. On the ferry ride home I got a call telling me that I got the position (there were 20 positions to be had) and so he congratulated me and waited for his phone to ring. I felt horrible. It is still possible he got it, they might call him at a later date. Anyway, although it is basically finance I still think it will be a good experience. I will probably learn a lot and if I impress them I will have to deal with a full time offer that will tempt me to forget about grad school... hopefully I don't impress them, although that would be hard. My only problem with the position is that it is on 40th and 5th so its an hour and a half commute for me each way taking a train, ferry and subway. I will get a lot of reading done...

Classes are going alright. Mostly boring. Don't know why this semester is like this. Everything can be done last minute so it is. It has made me really lazy.

A couple of links and then off to more procrastination:

A funny site thingsmyboyfriendsays.com (personally I think her boyfriend sounds like a fun guy).
Remember this sound?

Sorry, no substance today.

More later!

Wiki, Finance and Absurdity

2006-03-23T00:54:00.000-05:00

I Love Wikipedia. I think I use it too much but it is just so good. Anytime I want to learn about something I go there. I have used it a lot over the past few weeks. Of course it has the problem of possibly having wrong information but on the popular and well known search items you can't really go wrong. I have an interview with HSBC on Friday for a summer internship (ahhhhh) and first thing I did was go to the HSBC Wiki website. It is a lot easer to learn about the company there and to learn about it on their website. Maybe that is a problem with their website or maybe I just like the Wiki too much.

A few links:

You have probably seen this but Google Finance is up! (via NMD)
I love PostSecret and I thought this one was amazing.
What people think are the most absurd things they believe.

Finally, Congrats to Andy on finishing up the admissions season with an amazing batting average of .667 with some beautiful admits. I look forward to finding out where he is going and I also look forward to annoying him with questions next year when I have to go through the hell that is applying.

That is all for now.

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Penn State University

2006-03-20T01:21:00.000-05:00

In an ongoing series of Economics Department Reviews I decided to do Penn State. The PSU Economics Department has a unique reputation of being a school that is great even though it is not highly ranked. It is usually considered to be an undervalued department and has recent been very successful in their recent placements. Three years ago they placed graduates at MIT and Cornell and two years ago they placed a graduate at Harvard- all tenure-track. Interestingly last year they didn't place anyone at an American university. This years placement should be a very big implicated of the direction of their placements. The rankings put them at 29 overall (USNWR) and put them competitive in the Micro, IO and trade fields.

It is a small and selective department. With an entering class of under 20 and close to 500 applications received a year it is one of the riskier "safety schools". They also said that their 2004 averages on the GRE were 779/549/4.6 (Q/V/A) which leaves little room for error like any other top program.

Their program seems pretty standard. One thing that seems different is that they give their core exams in the middle of the second year, actually at the beginning of the 4th semester. Unlike many other places that give the exams at the end of the first year PSU waits an extra semester. I am not sure if that would be a good thing or a bad thing. They seems to fund most of their students. it was said that 17 of 19 incoming students got financial aid. No word as to what kind of Aid.

Penn State from what I hear is a big sports and party school. I would imagine the weather is pretty much like New York's and it isn't too far away from my family in New York. It will certainly be considered when I come to apply to schools.

Any additional information would be appreciated.

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Research, Data and Laws

2006-03-15T01:06:00.000-05:00

So I spoke to my professor about my research ideas and he had a lot to say. I always read about how peoples ideas get shot down by their advisers but it never really hit me. Thankfully he didn't shoot it down but when he was talking to me about it all I could think about was how much it much stink to get it shot down when you really like an idea. Anyway, my idea is to see if there is an effect endowment has on graduation rates in the top 100 national universities while controlling for SAT scores and other academic indicators. Basically I want to see if the richer the school is the better a chance you have of getting through it. It all came from a comment my professor had about how attrition rates in poorer economic departments were probably higher than richer ones because in poorer ones one has to TA or RA for money and woouldn't have as much time to do individual work. Anyway, if you have any thoughts or comments about the idea they would be greatly appreciated.

A couple of links and I am gone:

Here is a data set called "Baccalaureate and Beyond". It is supposed to be very deep. One of the former graduate students did her entire dissertation using it. My professor said he would try to forward me the dissertation. I will have to do some data mining to see if I can use it.
Dumblaws.com: What more do I need to say?

That is all for now.

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UMD, Introverts, Hitmen

2006-03-13T12:58:00.000-05:00

I spent the weekend at the University of Maryland - College Park. I was there for a zonal conference for a club I am involved in. It was a pretty good time. I actually skipped out on a few speeches for the chance to go on a self-guided tour. The campus is beautiful, when I get back to my computer I will try to put a couple of pictures up. I went to the Tydings building which houses the Economics Departments and walked around for a little while even though it was desolate on Saturday afternoon (which bodes well, I hope they were all out playing softball or something). Anyway I hope to add a UMD review up by the end of the week. I will probably put the pictures up on that instead.

I didn't get to speak to my professor about my research idea, he had to step out of the office for personal reasons, so I will try to do so tomorrow. I will keep you posted. I think it is a good idea, let us see what he thinks...

Just a couple of quick links:

This link is making its way around. It is about introverts. I think a lot of my friends should be required to read it and maybe they would understand me a little better. An funny quote from the piece:
Are introverts arrogant? Hardly. I suppose this common misconception has to do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed, more refined, and more sensitive than extroverts. Also, it is probably due to our lack of small talk, a lack that extroverts often mistake for disdain. We tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours.
I just bought this book from the campus bookstore at UMD. It seems like it is going to be an interesting read. Once I get through it hopefully I will put up a quick review.

That is all for now. Off to 6 hours straight of class. What is this High School again?

More Later!

Work, Decisions and $39

2006-03-08T00:18:00.000-05:00

Hey! Sorry for the lack of posts lately. The drought might continue for a little bit. I have had a very busy week but I think things should cool off a little bit soon. I had an Econometrics Exam today that was postponed from last week due to a snow storm.I think I aced it, thankfully. Now I have a Differential Equations Exam in a few hours which I have to study for. Also I am hosting an event about the Danish Cartoons Thursday night here on campus. If anyone is going to be in the area and is interested the information is here.

Also, I plan on speaking to my professor on Thursday about a research paper I am planning to write. More on that after it happens.

A few quick links and then off to studying:

Andy is getting his results from his applications to Econ PhD programs. So far he has gotten into a few schools, most notably UMD with AID! I wish him all the luck with his remaining applications. I have been checking his site non-stop for the past few weeks. It reminds me of when I was doing that to Chris Silvey's site a while back. A year from now you should check back here to see how I did. Hopefully just as well as those two guys.
A link to a guy who wrote to 100 different companies asking for free stuff. It is called the $39 Experiment. It is pretty cool. Stolen off of MR.
A first person from The Chronicle of Higher Education about a professor who can't stop thinking about a student he had twenty years ago who committed suicide. Chilling. (and free!)

That is all for now...

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Scientific Quotations and Admissions

2006-03-02T01:53:00.000-05:00

I was just flipping through the channels instead of studying for my econometrics exam today and I stopped at fox news for a second because on "Your World w/Cavuto" they had Gene Simmons talking about President Bush and National Security. Come on....

Just a quick couple of links because I really should be studying:

A short dictionary of scientific quotations. I thought this was pretty cool. You can find some really nice quotes, one of my favorites is, not too surprisingly, by John Maynard Keynes:
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.
Harvard Acceptances this year on the Test Magic Forum. What a trip that must be to get one of those calls.

That is all for now. Time to study.

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Yale, Timing and Legalization

2006-02-28T01:14:00.000-05:00

Over on the Test Magic message boards the word is that Yale sent out their admissions decisions today. It seems that of all the extremely overqualified students on that board only 3 or so got in. The reality that Econ Admissions is killer is setting in for a lot of these guys with 3.8s and 3.9s that got a rejection letter.

Personally I am just surprised that Yale sent out their decisions in February. I would have expected them to do it at the earliest in the first week of March. I wonder whether there exists, and if so what is, the strategy behind picking a date to send out admissions decisions. I don't think anyone would be able to find the data on that but it would be a great paper. I have no idea where to start. One would also have to take into account that some schools send out admissions decisions and funding decisions separately and others do it together. Yale does it at once.

Make sure you check back here in a year to hear me complain about not getting in.

Over at Newmark's Door there is a post about the war on drugs and Prof. Newmarks opposition to the legalization of drugs despite being a libertarian. I think his first two points don't really hold any water:

His first argument is that in the past some countries or states legalized some drugs and then they decided it wasn't good and so we should take the hint and not even try. Of course I am paraphrasing it in my own words but I think that it is clear that we can't go on what has happened in the past with these drug legalization laws. Just because other places couldn't get it right doesn't mean we can't.

His second point is that since no other industrialized nation has done it we should take note and realize that neither should we. I think that is another argument that is baseless. If we go back a few hundred years none of the thirty most industrialized nations had universal suffrage, does that mean we shouldn't have adopted it? This argument seems to say that we shouldn't lead and should only follow what others have done.

Personally I don't know if we should legalize drugs or not but I lean towards the legalization side. It seems to me that those who really want drugs are going to get them one way or another and if we legalize them they will probably be safer in the long run. It is sort of like prohibition back in the 20's. For the record I do not condone smoking, drinking or drugs in anyway, I never have and never plan to do any of them.
On a completely different note here is a cool webpage with a bunch of cool pictures concerning desktop wallpapers and the true wallpapers behind them.

That is all for now.

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University of Southern California

2006-02-24T07:51:00.000-05:00

To continue my quest to review all of the information on the websites of the top 40 economics departments in the USA here is USC.

The University of Sothern California's economics department is 40th in the National Research Council's rankings of economics departments and 32nd in econphd.net's ranking. The school in is located in Los Angeles so you know the weather is fairly temperate there during the winter and warm in the summer. They not only offer doctorates in Economics but also a doctorate in Pharmeceutical Economics and Policy and a doctorate in Policitcal Economy and Public Policy. They are supposed to be good in Econometrics and Industrial Orginization as well as Financial economics.

Interesting things I found on their website:

It says "Application deadlines are normally April 15 for the fall semester" but in the broschure it says the deadline is actually February 15th. They go on to say they only admit for the PhD for Fall.
"Incoming students are offered full funding for five years. They receive one of two types
of funding, both of which include full tuition remission...The first type of funding
package is a $17,000 teaching or research assistantship, involving 20 hours of work per
week, for five years. The second type of funding package involves a fellowship stipend of
$23,000 per year, for two years, and a teaching or research assistantship for three years.
Our goal is to fully fund every student that remains in the Ph.D. program in one of these
two ways."
"During recent years, our graduates have found tenure track positions at the following universities: Alabama- Birmingham, Baylor, Carnegie Mellon, Delaware, Florida State University, Indiana, North-Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY-Buffalo, USC, Western Florida, and Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the United States, and Beijing, Dalhousie, Guelph, ITAM, McGill, Melbourne, La Trobe, Oslo, Sydney and Singapore National University, in other countries."
I dont know why the would put this in their broschure: "Los Angeles, love it or hate it, is one of the great cities of the world." Love it or hate it? If I hated it I don't know if I would go to the school.

They also have a fairly active seminar program. I don't really know if there are any specific proffesors there that are very well known. It seems that with their garauntee of full funding and their beautiful campus and amazing sports teams it might be a good school to consider in the 30-50 bracket. If anyone has any more info about it please comment and I will make sure to add it.

That is all for now.

More Later!

Future, Prelims, Faculty

2006-02-22T01:06:00.000-05:00

I think my DiffEqs exam went fine. I didn't ace it but I can make up for that. So far the semester has been alright. My favorite class by far has to be Basic Computation Methods in Economics. I wasn't planning on taking it, mostly because it has "Basic" in the title but it has been more difficult and consequently more fun then I had thought. It is finally a quantitative class in college that makes you think and have fun at the same time (Real Analysis makes you think, the fun part isn't there). Anyway, I am glad I took it and look forward to the rest of it.

To the future: I still plan on blogging about my meeting with Professor Silva (who is teaching the computational eco course). It was pretty good and I dont want to forget. I also plan on reviewing the websites of all of the top 40 econ department websites. I have to start. All I have is Davis done and I want to keep going. Someone tell me it is a good idea so I have motivation. Finally I want to get mentioned on Marginal Revolution and Newmark's Door again. That was fun :-)

A couple of links:

Apparently UIUC, University of Illinios at Urbana Champaign's Econ Department doesn't give preliminary examinations to their PhD candidates:
Do you give prelims.?

No. The department assesses performance in the core courses based on grades in those courses. In order to remain “in good standing,” economics Ph.D. students must achieve a B+ average (3.33) or better in all of the three sequences: micro theory (Econ. 502-504), macro theory (Econ. 503-505) and econometrics (Econ 507 and 508).
I don't know of any other schools in the top 40 that do that. Well, maybe becuase I haven't done my review of many schools yet. I have to get on that. I wonder how that affects their attrition rates.
I have been looking at the people my professors do co-author their papers with. It gives me hope that maybe a letter from them might mean something. Two of the professors I hope to get letters from work with people from Duke, UMD and UCLA. Oh man, UCLA. If only...
101 Funny Writing Tips from (Link via NMD)

That is all for me.

More Later!

Professors, Admissions and Bird-Flu

2006-02-20T06:39:00.000-05:00

Firstly, Welcome to all of you readers from Newmarks Door (Addendum: AND Marginal Revolution! I guess I hit the jackpot today!). To be honest, I have been reading those blogs for years now and to get a mention was pretty cool. Anyway, enjoy and I hope you like my blog.

I have my first Exam in Differential Equations in about an hour and a half. It is open book and doesn't seem to hard. In an effort to not over-study I am worried that I under-studied. I guess I will find out in a couple of hours.

A few links and then I am off to the test:

This always concerned me: Marginal Revolution a while ago talked about Obsolete Professors here and here. (I think Newmarks Door did too but I cant find it right now). The idea that in the not-so-distant future higher education is going to go through a complete upheaval due to the internet and distance learning is a scary one. Even though the posts are a couple of years old they are still relevant. My concern is, going for my PhD in economics and hoping to become a professor, that although it might not happen in the next decade or even two decades it might have a really bad effect on me. Although it may never happen, my guess is that in between a decade and two decades from now (precisely when I should be going up for tenure) this is going to be on everyone's mind. Would they still need to hire professors? If so would they actually give them tenure? Even if it doesn't happen but the committee thinks it might would they be willing to bet one me? If an academic job is out of the question is it still worth going for the PhD? Should I even consider this scenario now? Any ideas?
Going through the archives at MR I found a couple of posts (first by TC and then this one by Craig Newmark actually) about econphd.net and what they feel about it. Pretty cool to look at real quick. I guess it goes to show that all of those things we hear on the internet about graduate school admissions isn't too far off.
Bird Flu now is in India, France and Egypt. I am sure the guys over at Marginal Revolution are going to be concerned about this. That is where I learned what I know about bird flu in the first place. I guess now I should read up some more.
I still find it annoying that blogger's spell check claims that blog is a misspelled word...

That is all for now. Wish me luck :-)

More Later!

Agreements, Answers and Misunderstandings

2006-02-16T00:26:00.000-05:00

Alright, so I my last post was picked up by Chris Silvey. Here is what he said, here was Toribasu's original post and here is my original response with Andy's questions in the comments section.

Where to begin...

Here is what I responded to Chris with, he is concerned over the magnitude of the reaction:

First, like I said later in the post "I do not condone any of the violence that has started due to this, I think it is a huge overreaction, but I think that the boycotts were well within reason". Certainly any violence that has materialized due to this cartoon is ridiculous as you said. They are only cartoons but it is the idea behind them that is troubling.

I had two problems with Taribasu's post. First was his inaccuracy in saying that October 17th was the "Original Publish Date" of the cartoons in the Egyptian paper El-Fajr. It was misleading and may have had people believe that it was Egyptians who originally published this cartoon. That is the easy part.

The second, and as I see it more serious, problem with his post was saying that this was "More evidence that this ‘outrage’ was orchestrated by those who want to turn the War on Terror into a war on Islam". Once again it seemed as if he were implying that it was Egyptians who made these cartoons up so that they can manipulate people into turning the war into something it is not. It seems to me that if anyone was trying to turn the War on Terror into a War on Islam it was the artists of those cartoons and the editors that let the printing go ahead. The cartoons such as this one and this one clearly imply that the Prophet Mohammed was a terrorist and that he would condone suicide-bombing, or any sort of attack on civilians. History has shown that this was not the case.

How can this not be seen as trying to meld terrorism and Islam? I feel that this was what started this who debacle in the first place. The large majority of Muslims are moderates, and the terrorists are a very very small minority who sadly are very very visible. Most Muslims disown the terrorists and what they stand for and when they see people equating their religion and the most beloved human in their lives with people that they despise and feel are heretics it is going to rile them up. Again, as I said before the violent actions that took place are inexcusable.

It sort of reminds me of the whole Salman Rushdie incident where if there was never a price on his head for his book Satanic Verses no one would really know about it. This is very similar here; the cartoons have a much wider audience now that there is a big fuss about it. It seems like it has had the opposite effect of what the original protesters in Denmark wanted.

Again, to me it seems that if anyone is trying to turn the war on terror into a war on Islam it is the artists. Maybe Toribasu disagrees with me or maybe he just wrote his post very quickly without intending it the way I took it.

Of course, forgive me if I said anything inaccurate or hurtful, it was unintentional. Keep in mind I am understandably a little biased and a little tired.

And in response to Andy's comments which were:
"How do you mean stop something like this from happening again? The only way that I can imagine such a guarantee is to restrict the freedom of press throughout the world."

That is true but it was not my intention. What I meant was to stop something like this from happening again casually. Equating the Prophet Mohamed with a terrorist is like equating Jesus with a baby-killer (which would also offend Muslims because of their great respect for, and love of, Jesus). Freedom of Press is essential and should not be impeded but for a major newspaper in Demark to print something this hateful is unacceptable. If this were to happened here with a cartoon insulting any of the Judaic prophets in a major newspaper we would hear cries of "Anti-Semitism" instantly and we would see boycotts galore. The difference is it would have been peaceful and that is exactly what the Muslims should have done.

And Andy also asked:
"Do you mean that the Danish government should apologize? Or the newspaper? ""

I believe that the Danish government already expressed regret and after looking into it more the Newpaper did publish an apology. But from what I found the apology came at the end of January, close to three months after they were origianlly published. It took more than just the protest of the near quater million Muslims in Denmark to actually get the newspaper to apologize. It seems to me to be an empty apology.

Finally, I personally never meant this to get political or religious or anything. I want this blog to be about economics. I have a feeling everyone involved is the same way and I doubt there are any hard feelings floating around, and if there are my apologies. It certainly was interesting though :-)

More Later!

Shootings, Cartoons and Salaries

2006-02-14T00:05:00.000-05:00

I have a Math Stat quiz in Econometrics today. I have yet to begin to study for it. Wish me luck. I intend to retype my longest post ever that I lost on monday but I am not sure when. It was pretty depressing but worse things have happened. The problem was I was using one of the school computers and when I went to spell check it refreshed the page. The meeting was pretty awesome though and I hope to get it to you sometime after my quiz.

A few quick links and then I am off to be productive;

You have probably heard/read about it. Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face. You can imagine what he does to his enemies (...Guantanimo anyone?). Not only did the78 year-old millionaire get shot but he is also getting blamed for it. Here is an article saying it was the guys own fault for getting shot in the face by the VP.
This is a post by Toribasu on Chris Silveys blog about the "Original Publication Date" of the offensive Danish cartoons. Basically Torimasu says that the original date of publication was October 17th but, while reading the arabic in the picture of the newspaper, it clearly (for anyone who knows arabic) says that it was printed in a Danish newspaper during the first week of Ramadan which would have been October 7-10. Toribasu claims that that is "More evidence that this 'outrage' was orchestrated by those who want to turn the War on Terror into a war on Islam.". I don't think so.

I think it was reprinted so that people who were offended by these when they were printed in Denmark could gather support to stop something like this from happening again. Even nice depictions of the Prophet in Islam are considered sacrilege and , as we can see, insulting pictures can cause riots. I do not condone any of the violence that has started due to this, I think it is a huge overreaction, but I think that the boycotts were well within reason. I think they are still waiting for an apology. And I certainly don't believe that this counts as "More evidence that this 'outrage' was orchestrated by those who want to turn the War on Terror into a war on Islam."
Craig Newmark has a post about the salaries of Economists who work in the University of California system. Not too shabby. If only real estate prices were not crazy.

Thats all for now.

More Later

Rage against blogger

2006-02-08T11:16:00.000-05:00

I just spent an hour writing about my meeting with my professor. Then blogger lost it.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhh

Steelers, Freedman and Princeton

2006-02-06T00:03:00.000-05:00

Addendum(2/20/06): Welcome NMD and MR readers. Feel free to check out the rest of the blog. It is mostly just the rantings of an undergrad hoping to become an economist. Hope you find something you like.
-----
A quick off topic note: I am not a big fan of the Steelers. Was it me or were those officials really bad? Now to tell you the truth it doesn't matter to me when the Giants aren't in it but there were some really bad calls. It was a fun game to watch though. I should have been doing homework...

I plan on meeting my Computational Methods in Economics professor tomorrow. I am not really quite sure what to talk to him about. We know of each other, he sees me at the economics seminars all the time but we have never actually spoken to one another expect through e-mail. He seem a little enthusiastic about my hope of becoming an academic economist. I really hope we hit it off. If I can get into his good graces things are going to look a lot brighter. If anyone has any ideas as to what I should ask him or talk to him about it would be greatly appreciated.

Here is a cool paper called The Search for Talent: Doctoral Completion and Research Productivity of Economists. This paper considers the factors that may indicate success in completion rates and publishing rates of students applying to Princeton in 1989. An interesting tidbit about admissions:
Two members of an admission committee read most of the application folders (85 percent, 293 out of 344) and ranked them on a scale of 1-9, for a variable range of 2-18. The average applicant rating score was just over 7, just about half of the average for students admitted to Princeton's program (i.e., 13.0). Note that the Sum of Ratings score was partly based on information not retained in the department's files... such as the student's undergraduate GPA, relevant coursework, and content of letters of reference.

The paper goes on later to say that the best advantage one can have in admissions it to go to an elite school because it is much more probable to get a letter of recommendation from a prominent scholar.

Here is a great interview with Milton Freedman (link via MR). The guy is 93 and still amazing. Here is an excerpt I thought was great:

Q | The US Treasury debt is held mainly by China, Japan and South Korea. Is the huge foreign balance of payments deficit a problem for the US and world economy?

Friedman | I don't think so. It may well be a statistical mirage. If you look at the balance sheet, the US is heavily in debt. If you look at the income account the amount of interest the US pays abroad it is almost exactly equal to the amount of interest that it receives from abroad. American assets held abroad are earning a higher rate of return than foreign assets held here.
That is understandable because what is most attractive about the US to people and countries with wealth is that it can provide security, insurance really, against political instability. Nobody is afraid that the money they place in the US is at risk of expropriation or of in some other way being taken away. For this safety, the wealth holders of the world are willing to accept a lower rate of return. US assets abroad, in contrast, are riskier and thus yield a higher rate of return.

He is 93! If only....

Well that is all for now. Time to do some homework.

More Later!

Adjusting, Completing and Labor

2006-02-03T01:19:00.000-05:00

Trying to adjust to a new schedule has never been fun. Hopefully I can get back to regular postings soon. Anyway, I am starting to like my classes, they are getting more interesting. This is sort of like the Honeymoon period, things are going smoothly without much stress. Later the mid-life crisis (also know as midterms) kicks in and if you get through that you have your last test (some-one dies) and the marriage is over. I know, bad analogy, I am tired.

Just a couple of links today:

This paper Survive then Thrive, is about the observable factors - before admission - that indicate success at the three stages of an Economics PhD: core exams, field exams, dissertation. It is a pretty cool paper. It actually stresses the importance of the Quantitative section of the GRE as well as prior research experience as indicators of completion. The only problem is that it covers only students from Syracuse which is ranked 56 by the NRC.
This is a web page for an Advanced Labor Theory course taught by Hugo Benitez-Silva to undergraduate in 2002. It has all of the lecture note and exams and homeworks. I figured since I wouldn't have the time to take a Labor Theory class I would just read through these to get an idea about the subject. Maybe someone else would find it interesting.

That is all for now. More Later!

This Semester's Classes

2006-01-30T22:22:00.000-05:00

I have been feeling a little under the weather lately, so I am going to cheap out on this post and just tell you about my classes this semester. Last semester went very well - surprisingly I aced it. I certainly didn't think that was going to happen but I did want at least one perfect semester so now I can relax a little.

This semester I am taking 5 classes for 18 credits. The first of which is:

HON 301- This is just a class that I have to take because I am in the Honors College here are Stony Brook. The professor has some experience in Washington with nuclear non-proliferation and so it seems like the entire course is going to be talking about those issues. These are the two books we are using. The course seems pretty harmless.
POL 327- This course is called Urban Politics. I am taking it to satisfy one of the general university requirements. It seems to be an interesting class. So far it seems that the entire class is going to be going over this book. The guy talks about a lot of things that someone would have learned in regular history classes or even from the NYT but every once in a while I actually learn something. Again it seems pretty harmless.
AMS 361- This is the first class I am taking in the Applied Math department in my school. It is CAL IV: Differential Equations. It is the second to last math class I have to take for my major. I am taking it in the AMS department because I know the teacher who is teaching it in the MAT department and she is horrible. This is the website for the course. I hear it is pretty good. The only problem is that it is at 8:05 in the morning on Monday and Wednesday so I will probably miss a lot of the classes.
ECO 310- This is the bread an butter of my semester. It is with Hugo Benitez-Silva, who I hope to get to know well. He graduated from Yale in 2000 and he does labor and health Economics. This course is called Basic Computational Methods in Economics but it seems to me to be an advanced micro course. So far it has been really interesting. The only problem is that there is no textbook for the course but there is a website. Although the lack of a textbook is sort of good because we aren't constricted by it and its cheaper that way. I am really excited about this class.
ECO 321- Econometrics. I am taking it with a new professor here. This is the second course he is teaching at Stony Brook so I am not sure what to think. This is the book we will be using, I bought it today for about 119 dollars. It hurt. Hopefully it will be a nice class. I am sure you will hear more about it in the future.

So that is a run down of the classes I will be taking this semester. I wrote a lot more than I thought I would. Hopefully I will get into more substance soon.

More Later!

What A Trip!

2006-01-30T07:08:00.000-05:00

I am still alive. That is always a plus. I actually got back to the states a few days ago but I have been suffering from a case of serious jetlag. Also going from the airport straight to school was not conducive to getting back to my normal self. My trip was amazing and a great respite from school and life in general but more on that later. I plan on having a more substantial post tomorrow. This is just to ease my way back into blogging. Thanks for all those people who keep checking back periodically. I appreciate it.

I am going to try to put up my first picture of this blog. This was taken in Mecca, Saudi Arabia at the Kabaa. A quick explanation for those who don't know: Muslims believe that the Kaaba's foundations were laid by the prophet Adam and the original building was built by the prophet Abraham and his son. Muslims call it "the house of God" and turn towards it when they pray. They don't worship the Kabaa itself, they worship the God of Abraham above it. (Figuratively above it of course.)

That is all for now.

More Later!

Leaving on a Jet Plane...

2005-12-23T03:13:00.000-05:00

So I actually did ace my Mathematical Statistics final and the class. My other two exams were fine. I haven't gotten the grades back for those classes yet so I don't want to comment. It was a killer week though and I am glad it is over. Now I have a month to relax before school starts again.

This blog is meant to be about school, economics and economics graduate school. I try not to venture into anything deeper than that. I am going to break from those themes in this post. It is about what I will be doing for the next 33 days.

I will actually be going to Egypt tonight. My plane leaves from JFK at 6:45pm going from NY to Cairo. 11 Hours! It is most certainly going to be uncomfortable. I will be spending about a week in Egypt, visiting my extended family. I will be going all over the place but I suspect about half of the time I will be in or around Cairo. On the 31st I'll be back on the plane for a two hour ride to Saudia Arabia. I will be spending two and a half weeks here doing all of the touristy things that people do in Saudia Arabia (yes there are toursity things to do in Saudia Arabia). Half way through my Saudi trip I will be embarking on Hajj - the pilgramige that every Muslim has to do once in their lives - which will take me from Mecca to Medina and everywhere in between. It should be an amazing experience that I will be sharing with about 2 million other Muslims. After that I will be going back to Egypt for a week and then I will be back in the states. I will be going from the Airport right back to Stony Brook because I would have already missed the first two days of school.

So that is next month in a nut shell. I don't know how often I will have the chance and the ability to blog. I guess you will just have to check back here periodically to find out. I hope to update soon, maybe even with some pictures from my new digital camera.

Wish me luck (even though luck doesn't exist).

More Later!

Hypothesis Test This!

2005-12-20T12:57:00.000-05:00

As far as I know, I just aced my Math Statistics Final. Woo Hoo. Now I have Real Analysis in 4 hours and Linear Algebra at 8am tomorrow. Don't these people know that 8am is not functioning time for college students. Actually its not really functioning time for anyone!

Hopefully I'll get one or two more substantial posts in before Friday which, by the way, is when I will be starting my vacation. I'll be going to Egypt and Saudia Arabia this winter. I'll fill you in on the details soon.

Back to studying...

More Later!

Finals, Finals and Finals

2005-12-16T00:55:00.000-05:00

I finally started studying for my finals. I had a 6 hour review session for Linear Algebra yesterday and it got me to break out of my stint of extreme laziness. It was actually a really good time. It was a group of about 15 of us and our TA (who goes above and beyond the call of duty... a 6 hours review session just because the students asked even when he has his own finals to study for!). So we sat in the seminar room in the Math tower and relaxed. Relaxed because we still have a week until the final. It is amazing how mutual pain can help a group of people bond.

So anyway, as my finals approach - 2 on Tuesday and 1 on Wednesday - blogging will be light. I plan on reviewing the USC econ department soon. You'll notice on the side bar I have added a new group of links that I hope to enlarge over time to encompass the top 40 departments. I want to go from the bottom up and since USC is ranked forty that'll be next.

On a nicer note there are two great posts on Chris Silvey's site. One is about the Prius and how driving a Prius actually is helping give those Hummer drivers better gas prices. What it doesn't mention is that it also gives Prius drivers cheaper gas too. The other great post is that Chris is going to be a Dad. Very exciting. Oh how his blog has progressed. Great things happen when your not in grad school...

Thats all for now.

More Later!

The Home Stretch

2005-12-13T01:50:00.000-05:00

In nine days it will be over. How it will end is still up in the air though. After an extended weekend of relaxation (and taking over the world multiple times in CIV IV) I am back on campus just in time for my last day of classes. I have the rest of the week to study before my exams next week. I have Math Stats and Real Analysis on Tuesday and then I have Linear Algebra on Wednesday and then I go back home and await my grades. I just hope that I will be productive this week.

The reason why I am back on campus a day late is because after requesting them in April I final received tickets to see the Daily Show with John Stewart for today. As I got to the studio there was a sign saying that it was canceled. Canceled! After waiting 8 months. Apparently one of the staffers committed suicide over the weekend. So I missed my last Linear Algebra class and Real Analysis recitation for nothing. At least I got to eat dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe...

A few links and then I am off:

A free article from the Chronicle about staying conscious of the Job Market as you pursue your PhD
A post over at Marginal Revolution about what one would choose if they could have three new constitutional amendments. The comments are the heart of the post. Personally I would pick 1)Congressional and Senatorial Term Limits seems to be a good idea, maybe 8 and 3 respectively. 2)Some major electoral revisions although I am too ignorant to get into details. 3) One person said he would put a sunset provision on every law. I think that would be very interesting. Although it may lead to a lot of useless votes and paperwork. I think we should also do something about tariffs and free trade. Broad enough? I think so.
Finally, a nice link for Newmarks Door, "18 Tricks to Teach Your Body."

That's all for now.

More Later!

Awesome Xoogle Blog

2005-12-08T01:17:00.000-05:00

A really quick post before I go on to my final Linear Algeba homework:

Newmark's Door had a link to this blog. It is about Google and written by people who have left the company. It seems that these guys love Google and were really happy to work there, usually in retrospect. (If you want to read it from the begining and hate going backwords because of how blogs are setup you should try this link.) I spent well over an hour reading all the posts today. It was really great and it makes you really want to work at the company. I wonder if they want summer interns....

That's all for now.

Time for some self-afflicted torture also know as LA HW.

More Later!

Classes, Seminars and Healthcare

2005-12-07T00:39:00.000-05:00

Three more assignments and three more exams and then I'm done with this semester. I am very glad that this semester is ending. I only have two more math courses to take, a bunch of useless required courses and a whole bunch of Graduate Econ courses that I will be taking for fun and then I am done with my undergraduate career. I just summed up 18 months in 3 sentences.

Speaking of what I have left to take over the next 3 semesters, I am considering for my senior year taking Grad Micro I & II, Grad Math Stats and Grad Metrics, as well as writing an honors thesis and taking Intro to Measure Theory (which they call Real Analysis here). Just curious what you guys think about taking the Grad Econ classes as opposed to taking more math courses like Topology or Abstract Algebra or maybe Differential Geometry.

On a different note, we had a seminar today in the Econ Department. The paper that was presented was titled What Happens when WalMart comes to Town: An empirical analysis of the discount retailing industry.It was pretty good, although I had to leave an hour through. It seems that for the majority of the hour I was there the professors of my department spent it asking questions about the model and drilling the girl who was presenting. It was interesting. They do that a lot. I am not sure if that is typical. I guess presenting papers isn't as easy as I thought.

Finally today, a great article from slate (found at MR) about medical tourism. Pulling the same quote out:

A bone-marrow transplant costs $2.5 million in the United States. Doctors in India can do it for $26,000.

also

Why go to the hospital in Boston if you can stay in a five-star hotel in Thailand? A record 1 million tourists traveled to that country last year for health care. Using Thailand's success as a model, countries like India, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines have established governmental committees to promote medical tourism.

Why not go to an exotic locale and have the operation you would have had here for cheaper and wring a vacation out of it too. I am sure there are a load of reasons but hopefully when I am old enough to have have these sort of operations most of the kinks would have worked themselves out.

Thats all for me for now.

More Later!

UC at Davis

2005-12-05T00:29:00.000-05:00

Torturing myself with the Graduate Econ Admissions forums over at Test Magic, as usual, I ran into this paper called How to survive your first year of graduate school in economics (pdf). It was written by a PhD student at UC-Davis. It gives tips on how to deal primarily with your preliminary exams and leaves the rest up to you. It is a nice thing to read and it is meant, I believe, to calm down a graduate student and tell them that it is ultimately going to be alright. I imagine that this idea holds true at UC-Davis' Econ department but wouldn't work too well at a place like Chicago which I hear is supposed to be cut-throat (I also hear that UPenn and UVa are the same way. Does anyone know if this is true or of any other schools that are like this?)

Looking around UC-Davis' website I found that they have posted their Preliminary and Field Exams as well as the answers to them. This is a great way for people wonder as to whether or not their school matches up in terms of curriculum to UC-Davis. They also have posted a syllabus for their Math Camp.

Although I really was interested in placement this is all I found on the site:

The Department is proud of its job placement record relative to similarly-ranked departments. Over one-half of Ph.D. graduates get an academic job, including placements at top fifty universities (Tennessee, Oregon and Washington State since 1993). The remaining students usually obtain employment as economists in the California state government, the federal government or their own national government in the case of some foreign students.

So all in all, without intending to do any of this research, I now believe that Davis would be a decent safety school. According to their FAQ they have about a 38% admissions rating.

Also their highs in the winter are in the low 50's. A plus for me.

All of this gives me an idea. I may start some posting summaries of websites and info of different Economics programs. This would be a great thing to look at when I am applying next year if I can do it for all top 40 programs (NRC has Davis at 38, right above Stony Brook).

We shall see.

More Later!

Football, Books and Classes.

2005-12-02T02:07:00.000-05:00

I played a rough game of tackle football last night. I am horribly sore. It was worth it though. It was only my second game of tackle football ever and I am liking it more and more. One of the things I really like about football is that it is almost a turn-based strategy game. Every down is a chance to strategize and think of which play will fool the other teams defense. I don't know of any other sport that is like that.

Anyway, searching through the Test Magic forum I happened upon this post that turned into a post about Real Analysis. Interested in the books that those people use in comparison to what we use here I went on a hunt. I found this page called What I Learned by Teaching Real Analysis and it is pretty cool. I was trying to find a ranking of books and their difficulties but instead I found that they use the book we use at LSE for their Real Analysis course. This just makes me a little more annoyed that our course is called Intro to Analysis. It sort of cheapens it. Interestingly enough, on a lighter note, when I was looking at my unofficial transcript the other day I saw that they listed the description of that class as "Introduction to Anal" which I think gives the wrong impression. ;-)

Well that is all for now. I am going to go nurse my bruises.

More Later!

Make-Ups, Auctions and Pitfalls

2005-11-30T00:17:00.000-05:00

I took the makeup exam for my real analysis class. I'm guessing this was the exam he made up and thought was too easy so didn't give it to us. It was too easy. I think everyone in the class aced it. I am starting to feel a little more comfortable with these classes. Figures, now that the semester is ending. Not that I am complaining... I can't wait for this semester to end. Especially since I made up my schedule for the spring and I have Fridays off. I plan on getting into my future schedule later.

I decided on the camera that I want. I picked the 7 megapixel Casio Exilim Z750. It is a beautiful camera with loads of options. 6th ave electronics has it for about $325. Now I just have a buy a memory card for it and I will be set for a while. Maybe I will start putting up some photos on the blog. That would be new.

A few links and then I'm off:

By the time you check this the auction should have ended. The signed Freakonomics book went for a tidy sum. I even bid on it (knowing of course that I would be outbid.)
Speaking of Freakonomics the Wall Street Journal ran an article about how the abortion leading to lower crime argument was flawed. Here is Steve Levitts take on it.
A great read: Landing an Academic Job, the Process and Pitfalls. Its a heartbreaker but very interesting.

Thats all for now.

More Later!

Links, Questions and Cameras

2005-11-28T23:10:00.000-05:00

This post brings us back to the mundane. Of course the one hundredth is great, even the one hundred and first is interesting but now that we are on post number one hundred and two we are no longer remarkable. I think I will trudge on anyway.

School is dragging. I am looking forward to the end of the semester and the winter break. I have a few more exams and a few more assignments and that's all. Saying it like that makes it seem more doable.

A few links and then off to study:

Links complied by Masa Kudamatsu a PhD student at LSE which are relavent for every stage of an Econ PhDs development. (via Chris Silvey)
A cool post at Marginal Revolution with more practice questions for Tyler Cowens Macro class. This time the questions are supposed to be from students.
I am in the market for a new digital camera. If anyone has any tips I would love to hear them. So far I have been using 4 sites to help me with my decision: DC Resource, DP Review, Steves DigiCams and Cheap Stingy Bargains. The first three are awesome for camera research, the last one is good for some nice e-deals.

That is all for now. More Later!

Happy Turkey Day!

2005-11-24T00:37:00.000-05:00

I love Thanksgiving. Everyone has off from work so it is a great time for get-togethers. Taking a break from school is always nice. Eating turkey with family during that break is even better.

Just two quick links and then off to watch football, what else are get-togethers for?

The Xbox 360 is going for a lot on eBay. Classic supply and demand here. If only I jumped on the bandwagon. People are doubling , even tripling their money very quickly with this. Maybe when PS3 hit the market I may be able to capitalize.
Beware. There is a new e-mail virus going around. I would imagine that most people who are slick enough to read blogs would know not to open an attachments from an unknown person but just in case...

The e-mail informs the recipient that the user's "IP-address" has accessed more
than 30 illegal Web sites and that the attachment contains a list of questions
that need to be answered. The e-mail also includes an authentic phone number for
the FBI or CIA.

More Later!

MY ONE HUNDREDTH POST!

2005-11-21T01:21:00.000-05:00

Wow. Who would have thought? I actually made it to a hundred posts! I haven't given it up. Truly I didn't think I would make it. I figured I would give up long before. It is because of ALL of my many (2) readers that I keep it going. So if you are reading this leave me a comment... anything at all. Make me think people actually care. :-)

It has taken me about 9 months to get a hundred posts. That means I have been averaging about one every three days. Hopefully I will reach the 200th post quicker than that. Stay Tuned!

Enough celebrating, back to business. Thankfully last week has is over. My three exams are over and done with now. I should be getting the results for all of them back this week so I may soon enter a depression. Turkey should come right in time to cheer me up. My RA exam went so poorly that the professor said he will probably give a make-up to the entire class because we didn't do too well. He said he made an exam, thought it was too easy and then made a harder one and gave it to us. The make-up will be in a week so I will have to cut my Thanksgiving holiday short. I hope it'll be worth it.

A few links and then I'm off:

Here is a flashback to my first post. Now that I look at it it seems that I was pretty much on the mark. Especially about using it to "vent about classes". I seem to do that a lot. It also came to my attention that no one wished me luck in that post... You can make it up by commenting in this one.
XBOX 360 comes out on Tuesday. It is highly anticipated and it has been said it will revolutionize home entertainment by being a complete media hub. Most people, including myself, will wait to see what Sony does with its PS3 in April before picking a system. The HD-DVD, Blu-Ray War will also weigh in heavily on the decision.
Tim Harford is selling Steve Levitt's book Freakonomics on eBay for charity. It is the first book that Steve Levitt ever signed. If you haven't read it, it is a fun and quick read that you should pick up if you have the time. I wonder how much it will go for. My guess: $843, actually it will probably go for more than that. I am sure some of the people that read that book will have money lying around anyway.

Well that is all for me now.

Thanks for Reading!

More Later!

Tests, Boredom and Treaties

2005-11-17T00:25:00.000-05:00

My Linear Algebra Exam went well today. As did my Sociology exam (*snicker*) . If only my analysis exam goes as well as my sociology exam I'll be a happy camper. All I had to do for SOC was read over the notes about 30 mins before class and I was good to go. Linear Algebra on the other hand took about 12 hours to study for and real analysis... well lets just say whatever I put in won't be enough. I am actually 'studying' for analysis right now. It just can't keep my attention. Linear Algebra is more interesting. That is saying a lot if you know what I mean.

Either way after today I only have my finals to do in a month and I am done with the semester. Time flies. This time next year I should be finishing up my semester as well as finishing up my applications. It should be crazy stressful but I look forward to it.

The real reason why I wanted to post (other than getting away from my analysis text):

There was an awesome post for Marginal Revolution (as always). It is so good I will link to it and copy it verbatim:
In the late 1790s the US was having difficulty with Muslim pirates in the waters off Northern Africa. After some difficulty, a treaty was signed in 1796 with the Bey of Tripoli promising friendship, trade and an end to hostilities. The 11th article of the treaty provides a remarkable contrast between how these sorts of issues were handled by the founders and how they are handled today. It reads:

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

The Treaty was read aloud in the Senate and approved unanimously. In his proclamation John Adams said, "I John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the said Treaty do, by and with the advice consent of the Senate, accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof." The treaty was published in a number of leading newspapers. It never aroused any opposition.

This is amazing. If only our government would adhere to the secular vision of the fore-fathers. We always hear of how this is a country built on Judeo-Christian beliefs and by Christian framers but this was what they really wanted. They saw the problems in 17th and 18th century England. I think the fore-fathers would be very unhappy right now with the bush administration.

That is all for now. More Later!

Learning, Graduating, and Blogging

2005-11-15T02:34:00.000-05:00

I just have to get through this semester. Then it gets easier. Then it gets much harder. I just hope that Econ Grad Courses are more interesting than these math courses I am taking. Sure, its amazing and great to know but analysis isn't that much fun. Doubts linger as they always do in the middle of a semester. I suspect they will pass.

A couple of links:

There is always so much information out there about how to get into a good grad school but you don't usually find info about getting out of graduate school. Well, here is a website about a self-published book called How to Get Out of Grad School. A few free articles in this section might be helpful.
A chronicle article promoting academic blogging. It is in response to prior articles claiming that one should not blog as a member of the academy because it can only do damage. Hopefully by the time I actually go on the job market this site would have evolved enough so that it in the least doesn't matter.

That all for now. More Later!

Studying, Studying, Studying

2005-11-14T01:51:00.000-05:00

I don't know if you have noticed but I have started making the titles of my post three words. I like it. Usually it is just a one word description of the links that I use. It is a lot easier than having to think up something meaningful each time. Lazyness begets effiecency to some degree...

So as I have mentioned I have three exams this week. The advantage of taking Real Analysis and Abstract Linear Algebra at the same time is that Linear Algebra becomes fun. If I took them both seperately I would probably hate both equally. Both are fairly rigorous so studying for one helps with the other. All in all I wish I studied like this consistently. It won't happen though. Not this semester at least.

A couple of links and then I am off:

Chris Silvey, the guy who started it all for me when it comes to Economic Blogging seems to have started posting regularly again. He stopped after he dropped out of the graduate program at Cornell. Glad to see him back at the keyboard.
An article about "When a professor loses it". I little excerpt:

...One professor (not at Illinois) who suffered a breakdown after he was denied tenure ...responded in part by stripping naked and climbing into a college building by hauling himself up a wall, holding onto ivy, and climbing in. The professor was eventually able to reverse the decision and to win tenure.

Sounds fun.

More Later!

Suing, Negotiating and Buying

2005-11-10T01:29:00.000-05:00

I have actually been studying for my exams coming up in a week. This is a first for me: actually working a week in advance. I guess that is what happens when you have to make up a total of three months of work. I wish I could be this productive on a regular basis. I am going to try to stay in all week to study. Real Analysis is killing me but LA is becoming more bearable. And then I have my stupid Sociology exam which I won't pay attention to until an hour before (which ends up being right after my LA exam). Either way if I keep up being productive I should be happy with myself.

Interesting note: my bad spelling has helped out my blog. I get a lot of referrals from people who misspell something and google and get referred to my blog because I also spelt it wrong. Who would have thought not being able to spell would be useful?

A few links and then back to work:

A physics post-doc working for Stony Brook in a lab in Chicago (which I didn't know they had) is suing the school for not giving her maternity leave. Conflicting reports from her and the school. It is a good free article from the Chronicle about post-docs in general.
Another free article from the Chronicle about how negotiating your job offer can mean a lot in the future. It claims that a $3 000 raise in your starting salary, using some quick math, can give you an extra $150 000 in income over 20 years. You should negotiate perks as well. I will have to keep that in mind in 7-9 years when I am on the job market.................................................
Stony Brook made two huge purchases recently: Southampton College and the Flowerfield property. The former will supplement SBUs marine science program and give it a base on the water and the later which is adjacent to the Stony Brook Campus will be used to build a Center for Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology (CEWIT). Both should be really cool additions to the University. Not that it will make a difference when I am here, but once Stony privatizes as it really wants to do, this stuff will make my degree worth more :-).
In the blogger spell-checker provided by Google, Google is not in the dictionary. Just like blog and blogger as mentioned before. Wierd.

That is all for now. Back to Bartle and Sherbert.

More Later!

Adjuncts, Airfares and Secrets

2005-11-07T22:58:00.000-05:00

Another week of homeworks and studying. Actually the only exciting thing this week is being able to finalize my schedule. For some reason I like making schedules. It's weird.

From The Chronicle of Higher Education about adjuncts:

The increased use of instructors who are not on the tenure track correlates with declining graduation rates, particularly at public comprehensive institutions, said Ronald G. Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. He spoke during a panel discussion at a conference organized here by the TIAA-CREF Institute, the research arm of the pension-fund giant.

The growing dependence on adjuncts also could obstruct the pipeline for graduate education, Mr. Ehrenberg warned. Students who are not encouraged to do research by faculty members who are actively engaged in their own studies may be less likely to pursue doctorates, he said.

The president of NYU countered by saying that being able to hire adjuncts from the community helped enrichen and deepen the law schools faculty. I agree that that is possible but I doubt that most schools are hiring adjuncts for that reason.

FareAlert. A site that sends you an email when there are crazy deals on hotels and airfare, usually when there is a glitch in the system or something. Deals that they have had include $2 a night at Hilton Tokyo and Chicago to Manchester for $0+taxes. Pretty cool if you get there while they are still valid. (Link from MR)
As always check postsecret at the beginning of every week. I love this site.

That is all for now.
More Later!

2005-11-04T02:01:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the light blogging as of late. I have been uber busy with everything. Things should slow down a little bit and after my 3 exams on the 16-17 I should be free until finals. Exciting. I came home early to have a long weekend of relaxing with family before getting into the Exam 2 studying phase. So far it has been very nice, so nice I dread going back to school...

CIV IV: I bought it and once I got it, being understandably excited I installed it and ran it. It loaded up and then froze on me. I restarted the computer and it froze again. Restarted again, froze. Installed it on my desktop, got past the freeze but everything became black. How exciting... the game I have been waiting forever for is too much for my computers to handle. Go figure. I don't know what I'll do... At least this will make me waste less time on it, maybe I'll do alright this semester after all.

A nice post from the guest blogger at MR. It talks about airline miles and in very simple and basic economics explains why they are at their peak value now and that it is best to use them instead of using money. Its a good read.
Spring Semester Schedules have been posted. It looks like I might get off with Fridays off. I haven't had that since my first semester. Its exciting.
Interesting fact: the spell check here at blogger.com considers blog, blogger and blogging all misspelled words. A little weird if you ask me...

That's all for now.

More Later!

2005-10-31T01:12:00.000-05:00

A week free from exams and assignments after today. As is usual that means I will be wasting time like there is no tomorrow. I have to learn how to get myself to work. I know once you get through the first two years of classes in a PhD program it is basically up to you to motivate yourself and set your own goals and schedule. If only I can do that now...

A few links and then off to finishing my Linear Algebra homework due today:

My Giants. I never really got into a sport like I have this year in football. Thankfully the Giants are helping me out by winning. (And winning BIG).
From my roommate: building your own Lego creation in 3-D. It allows you to buy your creation if you like it. A potential huge time killer.
An interesting post from MR about Wal-Mart and the adverse selection that occurs due to its generous healthcare plans.

More Later!

Free Time

2005-10-26T00:36:00.000-04:00

I have a nice little break over the next couple of weeks from school work. All I have is a few homework assignments due here and there but that is pretty much it. Then I have three exams in 30 hours, then I have a break until finals. It seems that exams like to bunch up, sort of like the robots from iRobot (I know, left field, I am even confused). So with lack of work you can guess that I am not doing the right thing and reading ahead, no, I am just relaxing. Anyway relaxing has let me catch up a little with my blog reading. Here goes a few links:

Wal-Mart (who I was starting to like) is stopping video-on-demand services from taking off. There is a 45 day window from when a DVD comes out on the market to when it is allowed to be shown on TV, even on HBO and the like. Wal-Mart won't let studios get rid of that. Here is the story (from MR). It is more interesting than my summary makes it sound.
Speaking of movies: sometimes find that you don't have time to watch an entire movie? Try Movie-A-Minute. Pretty funny.
IGN loves Civ IV (9.4 of 10). I can't wait until I go home and pick it up. I figured I would have it delivered there so I wouldn't waste my life away on it. Now that I have free time I wish I didn't. Can't wait!

Thats all for now.

More Later!