...C h a p t e r One The Nature of Econometrics and Economic Data C hapter 1 discusses the scope of econometrics and raises general issues that result from the application of econometric methods. Section 1.3 examines the kinds of data sets that are used in business, economics, and other social sciences. Section 1.4 provides an intuitive discussion of the difficulties associated with the inference of causality in the social sciences. 1.1 WHAT IS ECONOMETRICS? Imagine that you are hired by your state government to evaluate the effectiveness of a publicly funded job training program. Suppose this program teaches workers various ways to use computers in the manufacturing process. The twenty-week program offers courses during nonworking hours. Any hourly manufacturing worker may participate, and enrollment in all or part of the program is voluntary. You are to determine what, if any, effect the training program has on each worker’s subsequent hourly wage. Now suppose you work for an investment bank. You are to study the returns on different investment strategies involving short-term U.S. treasury bills to decide whether they comply with implied economic theories. The task of answering such questions may seem daunting at first. At this point, you may only have a vague idea of the kind of data you would need to collect. By the end of this introductory econometrics course, you should know how to use econometric methods to formally evaluate a job training...
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...Y METHODS IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH From Theory to Practice Marguerite G. Lodico, Dean T. Spaulding, Katherine H. Voegtle METHODS IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH Y METHODS IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH From Theory to Practice Marguerite G. Lodico, Dean T. Spaulding, Katherine H. Voegtle Copyright © 2006 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. Published by Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741 www.josseybass.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this...
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...The Tongue and Quill AFH 33-337 1 AUGUST 2004 Communication is an essential tool for the twenty-first century Air Force BY ORDER OF THE SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE AIR FORCE HANDBOOK 33-337 1 AUGUST 2004 Communications and Information THE TONGUE AND QUILL COMMUNICATING IS A POWERFUL TOOL FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AIR FORCE The Tongue and Quill is dedicated to every man and woman in today’s Air Force who will ever sling ink at paper, pound a keyboard, give a briefing, or staff a package to support the mission. Currently, The Tongue and Quill is widely used by Air Force military and civilian members, professional military school educators and students, and civilian corporations around the United States. As United States Air Force employees, it is important we communicate clearly and effectively to carry out our mission. This handbook together with AFMAN 33-326, Preparing Official Communications, will provide the necessary information to ensure clear communications— written or spoken. The use of the name or mark of any specific manufacturer, commercial product, commodity, or service in this publication does not imply endorsement by the Air Force To all you enthusiastic users worldwide, keep up the good fight! SUMMARY OF REVISIONS This revision improved organization; rearranged layout; updated quotes, art and word lists; and added material on preparing to write and speak, writing with focus, communicating to persuade, research, meetings, briefings and listening;...
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...iCHAPTER 1 TEACHING NOTES You have substantial latitude about what to emphasize in Chapter 1. I find it useful to talk about the economics of crime example (Example 1.1) and the wage example (Example 1.2) so that students see, at the outset, that econometrics is linked to economic reasoning, if not economic theory. I like to familiarize students with the important data structures that empirical economists use, focusing primarily on cross-sectional and time series data sets, as these are what I cover in a first-semester course. It is probably a good idea to mention the growing importance of data sets that have both a cross-sectional and time dimension. I spend almost an entire lecture talking about the problems inherent in drawing causal inferences in the social sciences. I do this mostly through the agricultural yield, return to education, and crime examples. These examples also contrast experimental and nonexperimental data. Students studying business and finance tend to find the term structure of interest rates example more relevant, although the issue there is testing the implication of a simple theory, as opposed to inferring causality. I have found that spending time talking about these examples, in place of a formal review of probability and statistics, is more successful (and more enjoyable for the students and me). 3 CHAPTER 2 TEACHING NOTES This is the chapter where I expect students to follow most, if not all, of the algebraic derivations. In class I like to...
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...CHAPTER 1 TEACHING NOTES You have substantial latitude about what to emphasize in Chapter 1. I find it useful to talk about the economics of crime example (Example 1.1) and the wage example (Example 1.2) so that students see, at the outset, that econometrics is linked to economic reasoning, if not economic theory. I like to familiarize students with the important data structures that empirical economists use, focusing primarily on cross-sectional and time series data sets, as these are what I cover in a first-semester course. It is probably a good idea to mention the growing importance of data sets that have both a cross-sectional and time dimension. I spend almost an entire lecture talking about the problems inherent in drawing causal inferences in the social sciences. I do this mostly through the agricultural yield, return to education, and crime examples. These examples also contrast experimental and nonexperimental data. Students studying business and finance tend to find the term structure of interest rates example more relevant, although the issue there is testing the implication of a simple theory, as opposed to inferring causality. I have found that spending time talking about these examples, in place of a formal review of probability and statistics, is more successful (and more enjoyable for the students and me). 3 CHAPTER 2 TEACHING NOTES This is the chapter where I expect students to follow most, if not all, of the algebraic derivations. In class I like to derive...
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... In his “flat” world, your wages are set in Shanghai. In fact, most of the footloose relationship-free jobs in apparel and footwear and consumer electronics departed the United States several decades ago, and few U.S. workers today feel the force of Chinese and Indian competition, notwithstanding the alarming anecdotes about the outsourcing of intellectual services. Of course, standardization, mechanization, and computerization all work to increase the number of footloose tasks, but innovation and education work in the opposite direction, creating relationship-based activities—like the writing of this review. It may only be personal conceit, but I imagine there is a reason why the Journal of Economic Literature asked me to do this review. 1. Prologue hen the Journal of Economic Literature asked me to write a review of The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2005) by Thomas Friedman, I responded with enthusiasm, knowing it wouldn’t take much effort on my part. As ∗ Leamer: Anderson Graduate School of Management, Department of Economics and Department of Statistics, UCLA. Thanks for comments from my brother, Laurence Leamer, my UCLA colleagues at the Political Economy lunch (Dan Treisman and Michael Ross), Eric Rasumusen, John Talbot and my former students, Christopher Thornberg, Peter Schott and...
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...1992, 1995, 1999, 2004; (with J. Aronson), 2008 Readings About the Social Animal, 1973, 1977, 1981, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2004; (with J. Aronson), 2008 Social Psychology (with R. Helmreich), 1973 Research Methods in Social Psychology (with J. M. Carlsmith & P. Ellsworth), 1976 The Jigsaw Classroom (with C. Stephan et al.), 1978 Burnout: From Tedium to Personal Growth (with A. Pines & D. Kafry), 1981 Energy Use: The Human Dimension (with P. C. Stern), 1984 The Handbook of Social Psychology (with G. Lindzey), 3rd ed., 1985 Career Burnout (with A. Pines), 1988 Methods of Research in Social Psychology (with P. Ellsworth, J. M. Carlsmith, & M. H. Gonzales), 1990 Age of Propaganda (with A. R. Pratkanis), 1992, 2000 Social Psychology, Vols. 1–3 (with A. R. Pratkanis), 1992 Social Psychology: The Heart and the Mind (with T. D. Wilson & R. M. Akert), 1994 Cooperation in the Classroom: The Jigsaw Method (with S. Patnoe), 1997 Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion After Columbine, 2000 Social Psychology: An Introduction (with T. D. Wilson & R. M. Akert), 2002, 2005, 2007 The Adventures of Ruthie and a Little Boy Named Grandpa (with R. Aronson), 2006 Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) (with C. Tavris), 2007 Books by Joshua Aronson Improving Academic Achievement, 2002 The Social Animal To Vera, of course The Social Animal, Tenth Edition Sponsoring Editor: Erik Gilg Executive Marketing Manager: Renée Altier Art Director: Babs Reingold Senior Designer: Kevin Kall...
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...THE B L A C K SWAN The HIGHLY I mpact IM of the PROBABLE Nassim Nicholas Taleb U.S.A. $26.95 Canada $34.95 is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpre dictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9 / 1 1 . For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. A BLACK SWAN Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don't know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate oppor tunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the "impossible." For years, Taleb has studied how we fool our selves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this reve latory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don't know. He offers...
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