Do No Harm: Perform the Transplant

While the Hippocratic oath does not actually contain the words "Do no harm", the modern version does suggest:

I will treat without exception all who seek my ministrations, so long
as the treatment of others is not compromised thereby.

So, if you have a willing patient and a willing donor, as a physician why should you care how they came to you? In this CNN story: a man was initially denied a transplant operation due to the means he used to find a transplant - a web page - matchingdonors.com. While websites like this help draw donors in, so would cash. Oh well.

One of the money quotes:

His saga highlights the plight of some 80,000 Americans who are waiting for an organ transplant. There is growing pressure to bypass the official United Network of Organ Sharing and use private services such as the Massachusetts-based Web site instead.

And another one from the ethicists:

Medical ethics specialists said going around normal channels for organs poses
risks.

Amazing. Only professional ethicists could think skirting "normal" channels to save your life was unethical.

Keywords: Organ Donation, ECO120

We Get What We Deserve

If get our political information from actors then we deserve to have crappy Presidents. Right now, across campus droves of giddy women (of all ages) are lining up to hear Leonardo DiCaprio talk about the election. This from a guy who cheated to get through high school. From his biography:

He wasn't good in class, finding it hard to focus on academic studies. Indeed, he'd take to cribbing off his peers' papers and become known as Leonardo Retardo. Instead, he concentrated on breakdancing for his peers at lunchtime, and playing practical jokes on the neighbours.

They say he was bright as a kid, although he doesn't appear to have gone to college, but apparently that doesn't matter. Of course if this woman showed up to talk about anything...I'd be there.

Great Writers

How to be a great writer? Don't write like Veblen. Cafe Hayek has a great post on what Mencken thought of Veblen's tedious writing. In Mencken's words:

[It is] a cent’s worth of information wrapped in a bale of polysyllables.... It was as if the practice of that incredibly obscure and malodorous style were a relentless disease, a sort of progressive intellectual diabetes, a leprosy of the horse sense. Words were flung upon words until all recollection that there must be a meaning in them, a ground and excuse for them, were lost. One wandered in a labyrinth of nouns, adjectives, verbs, pronouns, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and participles, most of them swollen and nearly all of them unable to walk. It was, and is, impossible to imagine worse English, within the limits of intelligible grammar. It was clumsy, affected, opaque, bombastic, windy, empty. It was without grace or distinction and it was often without the most elementary order.... Worse, there was nothing at the bottom of all this strident wind-music – the ideas it was designed to set forth were, in the overwhelming main, poor ideas, and often they were ideas that were almost idiotic. The concepts underlying, say, “The Theory of the Leisure Class” were simply Socialism and well water.

Orwell has a genius essay on how to recognizing crappy academic writing, and more importantly how to avoid it. In his collection:

Orwell, G. (1956). The Orwell reader; fiction, essays, and reportage ([1st ed.). New York,: Harcourt.

Of course, let us not forget our discipline's best writer, my hero Dierdre McCloskey.

Keywords: writing, ECO120, ECO301, ECO305

What? Bush Can't Count?

The President either knowlingly lied (which wouldn't be a first) or he seriously misspoke. He said:

Non-homeland, non-defense discretionary spending was raising at 15 percent a year when I got into office. And today it's less than 1 percent, because we're working together to try to bring this deficit under control.

Marginal revolution and Brad Delong both point this out as well. If this isn't true, there where is he spending the money? To listen to Kerry speak you would think Bush wasn't spending enough, on anything, let alone non-defense, non-homeland security discretionary spending. Well according to this report by Cato, here is where he is spending it.

From page 2 (the first number is te change in spending under Regan in the first three years and the second is the change in Bush's spending in the first 3 years):

Table 1. Spending by Department
Percent Change in Real Outlays in First Three Years
Department Reagan Bush
Agriculture -13.2% 8.5%
Commerce -29.0% 9.6%
Defense 18.6% 27.6%
Education -21.8% 60.8%
Energy -19.6% 22.4%
Health & Human Services 9.0% 21.4%
Housing & Urban Dev. -3.7% 6.1%
Interior -4.6% 23.4%
Justice 1.2% 11.0%
Labor -29.4% 56.0%
State 9.5% 32.5%
Transportation -13.0% -1.3%
Treasury 31.1% -7.0%
Veteran Affairs -3.9% 29.4%
Total Outlays 6.8% 15.6%
Sources: Budget of the U.S. Government and Mid-Session

I hope Kerry means that Bush isn't spending money on the right programs, not that he isn't spending enough money.

Keywords: Deficit, Fiscal Policy, ECO120, ECO305, ECO301

To All Students

From craigslist via the Door. A female Professor says the things we all think:

Things I'd like to tell students that would probably get me fired.

You’re not nearly as cool as you think. Class clowns were funny in high school, but not now.

If you miss class, don’t ask me if anything important happened. Lecture happened. If you didn’t want to go – your money, your grade. What do you expect anyways? That I’m going to answer, “Yes, actually, on the one day you missed I decided to give a pop quiz that counts for 50% of your grade. Oh yeah, and then we discussed the answers to the final and then I gave everybody cookies. Too bad you missed it.”

I don’t really like it when I see you guys in the bathroom. I’m always afraid I’ll fart or something, and then it’ll be around the department and I’ll get some lame nickname like Dr. Farts. On a similar topic, how do you know when I fart in my office? Invariably, there’s a knock on my door immediately afterwards, and I have to answer it while trying to position my body for maximal obstruction of air. And, it’s kind of a catch 22. It’s not like I can go to the bathroom and fart, because of the above issue.

I’m a better liar than you. It’s because I’m really smart. When I was an undergrad, I got out of all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. Deaths in the family, tears on command, cars breaking down, feigning symptoms of depression, you name it, I used it. I know when you’re trying to bullshit me. Don’t try. And while I’m very sympathetic if it’s legitimate, I’m a bitch if you lie to me.

I’m also a good writer. And the thing is, good writers notice writing style. If you try to plagiarize, I will be able to tell. And, I will give you hell for it and I will report you and you will be sorry because I will make you re-write the paper and take an ethics
course to boot.

I’m not actually all that good at keeping my mouth shut. Please don’t tell the other faculty what I say, unless it’s good and about them; or it’s something you learned that you thought was really neat that also does not clash with their theoretical viewpoint, because they’re sensitive about that.

Please don’t get offended by my jokes. See, they’re funny, only, as it turns out, not to conservative Christians, most Republicans, and ultra feminists.

If I’m late for a meeting and rushing out of my office, or if I’m trying to eat lunch in between classes, or if I’m out with friends on a Friday night, I might not be all that keen to answer questions about the upcoming midterm. I might be grouchy. Just so you know.

This here’s for the boys. If you’re flunking my class, don’t make sly little suggestions about what you might to do earn an A. You’re flunking my class. Why would I think your performance would be better in any other areas?

Incompletes are for students who, for legitimate, documented reasons, couldn't finish the class. If you don't like your grade, you can't take an incomplete.

I will do my best to give the first midterm before the drop deadline, and all other midterms before rather than after holidays.

If you take the midterm and do badly, and then don't drop the class, and then come back 3 months later and try to play it like you were never in my class and you want me to sign a petition, I won't. If you ask me to sign the petition before the drop deadline, I will happily. If the administration gives you shit about it, I'll cause a ruckus.

If I see you out on the town on a weekend night and you want to buy me a drink, you can’t currently be in my classes or ever take any of my classes again. Ever. Then maybe you can buy me a drink. Allright probably. Okay.

If you’re out on the town drunk and want to yell at me about your grade, then please don’t ever take any of my classes again.

If I set up extra office hours to tutor you, and you don’t show up, I will secretly hate you. Also, I will refuse to set up any other office hours outside of regularly scheduled ones. Oh, and any subsequent emails from me will be cryptic and I’ll wait an extra day to respond.

Just because I seem cool doesn’t mean my tests are easy. I tell you all the first day the classes are hard. Here, I am not lying. Believe me.

Reading all the material and going to class does not guarantee you an A unless you’re super-duper smart. You actually have to study too.

At the beginning of the term, when I say, “I won’t hand you a grade, but I’ll help you work to get the grade you want,” that doesn’t mean that if you flunked all the midterms and you show up the day before the final I can do anything other than feel bad and tell you to get a good night’s sleep.

When you tell me, “I’m getting kicked out of college because of the grade I got in your class,” this makes me feel bad, but it also makes me wonder if this is the first bad grade you’ve gotten in college, and what kind of slave driver is supporting you
that would cut you off for one bad grade.

When you come to office hours week after week because you’re worried about your grade, and you use all the study suggestions that I tell you to, and I really honestly believe that you’re trying hard but you’re still getting a bad grade, I will wish I had the guts to gently tell you that not everyone is meant for college, but I won’t. I will feel bad instead and continue to tutor you.

When you ask a stupid question in class I will not repeat the most horrible thing I ever did to a student the first year I was teaching, which was to laugh at a question. However, I do reserve the right to later tell my friends and to laugh then. Sorry, but
sometimes I just have to. Your name and any identifying information will not be used.

Please ask all the questions you want to in class. Really. I learn from my mistakes. If I see anyone so much as roll an eye, I will pull them aside after class and tell them that’s inappropriate.

I’m kind of a talker. I like to tell stories. Please, if you figure this out, do not use it to postpone lecture, and hence, the amount of material you will be responsible for.

Please vote. And when you do, consider what cuts in educational funding
do to your tuition. They are not unrelated.

If you work for me on a project, and you do a good job, I will write you a kick-ass letter of recommendation. If you work for me and do a lousy job, I will writer a letter that, while not direct, will let the program you are applying for know what kind
of a student you are, and I will show you this letter before I send it because I
will feel guilty. Remember that things like, “She was often on time,” or, “From
my conversations with him, it is clear that he very much wants to go to graduate
school,” are not really compliments.

And, please, if you like my class, if you feel that it changed the way you think, if you learned a lot, if you were challenged, please tell me. In this age of limited resources and time, that’s what keeps me going. I love teaching, and I’m clearly not in it for the money. All this above is just my bitch-session to get it out of my system before school starts. Almost always, I only hear from people who are angry at me. Tell me if you got something out of my class. I really really need it sometimes.

Actually, the last item goes for all your teachers.

Keywords: Teaching.

Forecasting the Election with Macro Data

This interview with Ray Fair, one of the author's of the intro book we use is hysterical. Well, funny in a nerdy sort of statistical way...

Bush Landslide (in Theory)!Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
As a professor of economics at Yale, you are known for creating an econometric equation that has predicted presidential elections with relative accuracy.

My latest prediction shows that Bush will receive 57.5 percent of the two-party votes.

The polls are suggesting a much closer race.

Polls are notoriously flaky this far ahead of the election, and there is a limit to how much you want to trust polls.

Why should we trust your equation, which seems unusually
reductive?

It has done well historically. The average mistake of the equation is about 2.5 percentage points.

In your book ''Predicting Presidential Elections and Other Things,'' you claim that economic growth and inflation are the only variables that matter in a presidential race. Are you saying that the war in Iraq will have no influence on the election?

Historically, issues like war haven't swamped the economics. If the equation
is correctly specified, then the chances that Bush loses are very small.

But the country hasn't been this polarized since the 60's, and voters seem genuinely engaged by social issues like gay marriage and the overall question of a more just society.

We throw all those into what we call the error term. In the past, all that stuff that you think should count averages about 2.5 percent, and that is pretty small.

It saddens me that you teach this to students at Yale, who could be thinking about society in complex and meaningful ways.

I will be teaching econometrics next year to undergraduates. Econometrics is a huge
deal, because it is applied to all kinds of things.

Yes, I know one of your studies used the econometric method to predict who is most likely to have an extramarital affair.

In that case, the key economic question was whether high-wage people are more or less likely to engage in an affair. They are slightly more likely to have an affair. But the economic theory is ambiguous because if your wage is really high, that tends to make you work more, and that would cut down on how much time you want to spend in an affair.

Are you a Republican?

I can't credibly answer that question. Using game theory in economics, you are not going to believe me when I tell you my political affiliation because I know that you know that I could be behaving strategically. If I tell you I am a Kerry supporter, how do you know that I am not lying or behaving strategically to try to put more weight on the predictions and help the Republicans?

I don't want to do game theory. I just want to know if you are
a Kerry supporter.

Backing away from game theory, which is kind of cute, I am a Kerry supporter.

I believe you entirely, although I'm a little surprised, because your predictions implicitly lend support to Bush.

I am not attempting to be an advocate for one party or another. I am attempting to be a social scientist trying to explain voting behavior.

But in the process you are shaping opinion. Predictions can be self-confirming, because wishy-washy voters might go with the candidate who is perceived to be more successful.

It could work the other way. If Kerry supporters see that I have made this
big prediction for Bush, more of them could turn out just to prove an economist
wrong.

Perhaps you could create an equation that would calculate how
important the forecasts of economists are.

There are so many polls and predictions, and I am not sure the net effect of any one of them is much.

Yes, everyone in America is a forecaster. We all think we know how things
will turn out.

So in that case, no one has much influence, including me.

Keywords: ECO120, ECO301, ECO305, ECO307, BUS230

I'm Back

School is back in session, and I'm back to blogging. This tidbit from Jacqueline is priceless:

Department chair Don Boudreaux (Cafe Hayek) took current grad student Kevin Brancato (Truck and Barter) and me out to lunch. We had a great chat. Don really sold me on the department, and Kevin was also enthusiastic. Don told a hillarious story about meeting President Bush (W) at a Nobel party he attended with Vernon Smith. Vernon introduced Don to W as the economics department chair at GMU, and W complimented him on building a "good conservative department". Don corrected him that no, he was building a good LIBERTARIAN department. :)