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Wednesday, September 26th

ideas


1. schooling in capitalist amerikkka

is it possible to see the channels through which schooling affects outcomes later in life? christiano wants to see the effect of social clubs on wages later on by implementing a stuctural analogue to andy's height paper. is it possible to identify whether or not school helps people by making them better worker bees? bowles and gintis didn't do a good job of this in their 2002 paper (which may be why it was relegated to the journal of the sociology of education). even if someone has a better attendance record than someone else, this is plausibly (or even "more plausibly", some argue) due to home conditions or motivation that is entirely derived from reasons not related to having been conditioned to arrive at work on time. selection effects are tough to get around. it seems that schooling in capitalist america used marxism as an identification assumption.

also interesting: how about conspicuous waste aspect of social clubs? conditional on the educational outcomes, background, whatever, more clubs mean you're doing the same as others with less time. and how the fuck does one test this as well?

2. efficacy of political campaigns

if i have information on prior knowledge of voters, how much they were subjected to advertising, posterior knowledge of voters, and votes, i might be able to fit a model of political campaigns as advertisements. identification assumption: more informed voters will be less affected by the informational affect from advertising.

obvious problems:
a. how to voters obtain different priors? i'd need a panel data set to account for individual heterogeneity. outside of this, i'd need to do a keane-wolpin workback to some initial heterogeneity, which isn't appealing b/c i'll have the answer that all the differences are due to differences in initial endowments, and i'm not sure that this will allow me to think of political campaigns much at all, since the initial distribution would eat up most variance.
b. political parties clearly strategize w.r.t. advertising campaigns between states. i don't think i have any way of estimating this right now. would be a much better story if i estimated the equilibrium instead of the one-sided decision theoretical problem. what data would i need for this?

more coming later. i'm just afraid this computer might shit off randomly.
Nirav on 09.26.07 @ 11:35 AM EST [link] [No Comments]


dream night 9.26.2007


it's about koreans and italians mostly.
italians: i'm working with or for merlo. i need his help. he is wearing that black striped shirt it seems he's always wearing and white jeans. i think he's lost some weight. he's just bought a flight to see his wife in maine tomorrow. he's leaving and i can't talk to him and it's really frustrating. he doesn't seem to notice me. something about me chasing him in an airport (probably the next day) and getting chased or arrested by the police in the terminal. lots of levels, switchbacks on handicapped ramps, jumping over sides, and non-consistent ramp connections.

koreans: there's a war going on. on the wall there's a huge glowing world map. it's got the south pole in the middle and expands out from there. south korea and some other places are pulsing red. skoreans are hatching a war plot, i don't know what side i'm on but the dream alternates b/t war room, where i am aware of own body, and watching skoreans in a submarine. the sub is actually a blue-tinted but otherwise clear tupperware container. one can see directly inside and there is no periscope.

high school jumping around: bringing my bike down from mcneil (no bike lock), can see a crowd of people on a green just east of mcneil (in place of frat house and locust walk there's now a rolling green). people are all huddled around something. apparently there's a great bouncy ball in the middle and i finally see it and grab it and throw it while jumping. i can jump like birds can fly. i can jump like superman. it's effortless. in fact, i gain energy every time i jump. i see david blackwood, just run to him, not breathless. i climb into a tree and throw a ball to clint page. i am a running jumping machine. i am a golden retriever but better configured for a jumpy lifestyle.


Nirav on 09.26.07 @ 11:08 AM EST [link] [No Comments]