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BadEconomics Discussion Thread, 04 October 2015 (self.badeconomics)

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[–]Kelsig 5ポイント6ポイント  (3子コメント)

🍆

[–]ethyn408 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

I'm inclined to agree, but you need to back these things up with some evidence. Papers?

[–]Shiloh86I didn't choose the Krug life, the Krug life chose me 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Hmm, I think that might be badeconomics. Here's Krugman on the subject.

[–]NewmanTheScofflaw 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yes, it is disgusting

[–]wumbotarianmodeled as if Noah Smith was a can opener 4ポイント5ポイント  (2子コメント)

Bernie Sanders on the REAL Issues.

Also, actual video footage of /u/Integralds playing his Touhou games

[–]NewmanTheScofflaw 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

A socialist would think Eugenics is not that big of a deal.

[–]wumbotarianmodeled as if Noah Smith was a can opener 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Wow.

Though Keynes and Fisher were also supporters of eugenics.

[–]bdubs91Maestro Today and Maestro Forever 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Title of a paper I'm writing (for a class) "I'm Riding Solow."

I was very proud of this.

[–]say_wot_againConfirmed for Google bigwig 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

Everybody's working for the weekend

-Loverboy

Goodeconomics or badeconomics?

[–]urnbabyurnNeoPanglossian 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

That's my Friday song. I would say the labor-leisure model supports this song's premise. After five days of work, leisure becomes more valuable on the margin.

[–]mobysniperProponent of Geckonomics[🍰] 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

So I was having a discussion with a non-econ friend of mine about how utility works, and I had a thought. How does nostalgia triggered by an object work in terms of utility? Let's say you attend an event (a concert, perhaps) and you really enjoy it. Maybe something life-changing happens to you there. So, you keep the ticket to that event as a souvenir, and it serves to remind you of that enjoyable event. Do those memories have utility, or is it the ticket itself that gives you utility?

Also, let's say you lose the ticket for some amount of time, enough to forget about it. Then, you find it again, and are happy to have done so. Did the ticket have that value to you the entire time, or is it only when you perceive that value that it actually matters?

Maybe I'm totally wrong in trying to apply econ reasoning to this situation; it's not an very important question. But hey, I figured I'd see if you guys had any insight on it.

[–]urnbabyurnNeoPanglossian 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/syllabi/Econ811JournalArticles/StiglerBeckerAER.pdf

Basically, experience enters the utility function as a state variable. If I have listened to music in the past, I may gain an appreciation for it. So my utility for music and other goods has an additional variable in it for level of appreciation or experience.

This state variable changes over time according to my consumption. If I use a lot of heroin, I tend to put more weight on getting more in my utility function. And that's anticipated by the consumer - my choice of what to consume depends on my preferences today as well as how my consumption affects the future.

This is also the basis of Rational Addiction. A rational addict includes the discounted present value of the effect of current consumption on future consumption and utility.

Or maybe it's just part of what you are buying when you purchase a ticket to a concert, etc. You get the experience and you get the ticket stub. Some people end up putting high value on the ticket stub for whatever reason. This maybe accounts for some of the demand for these goods.

[–]bdubs91Maestro Today and Maestro Forever 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

I don't see why a good couldn't give out utility in multiple time periods.

I think the "forgetting" about it would be more complex though.

Others would be more knowledgeable about this.

[–]wackyHair 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Fossil Fuel divestment: pointless or negative?

[–]wshanahana slightly less shitty libertarian 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Post your badeconomics books in this thread.

[–]urnbabyurnNeoPanglossian 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

David Friedmans Books Hidden Order and Laws Order are great. He even has some interesting publications in the law and Econ journals. I never read his other ancap stuff.

[–]IntegraldsI am the rep agent AMA 1ポイント2ポイント  (6子コメント)

If you have approximately one minute of free time, I'd like you guys to help me with a little test.

  1. Open your statistical/computational program of choice -- Stata, Mata, SAS, Matlab, R, Python, C++, Java, whatever.

  2. Add 0.01 to 0, one hundred million times. That should take about ten seconds or less on a half-decent computer.

    i.e. x = 0; for(i=1;i<=100000000;i++) {x = 0.01 + x};

  3. Subtract one million from that number.

  4. Now, add 0.03 to 0 one hundred million times; add 0.01 to 0 three hundred million times; subtract 3000000 from the resulting numbers.

  5. Report the program you used, the difference, and if you're feeling nice also report how long it took and the specs of your computer.

Stata 13.1, in Mata, I get a difference of 0.0007792843

"0.01 one hundred million times" is not quite "one million."

[–]say_wot_againConfirmed for Google bigwig 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Both C++ and Python give me errors of 0.000779284 when adding 0.01 100M times, -0.00446658 when adding 0.03 100M times, and -0.0183791 when adding 0.01 300M times (Python's have slightly more decimal points, but idgaf). Every programming language should really give you the same errors; this is an artifact of the way floating point numbers are stored in memory, much the way that adding 1/3 3 times would give you 0.999999 (however many digits you store) in base 10.

[–]IntegraldsI am the rep agent AMA 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Thanks. I'm learning about floating point arithmetic and am still thinking about the details. This is what I do on a Sunday afternoon...

[–]wumbotarianmodeled as if Noah Smith was a can opener 0ポイント1ポイント  (3子コメント)

How would I do this in Stata?

[–]IntegraldsI am the rep agent AMA 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

I'll show you two ways.

First way is in Mata, and you should do this.

clear all
set more off

mata:

x = 0
for(i=1;i<=100000000;i++) {
    x = x + 0.01
}

x
x - 1000000
1000000 - x

end

exit

That should take about ten seconds.

Stata is slow as molasses when it comes to looping, so you can try

clear all
set more off

local x = 0
forvalues i = 1/100000000 {
    local x = `x' + 0.01
}

disp "`x'"
local y = 1000000 - x
disp "`y'"
local z = x - 1000000
disp "`z'"

exit

but it'll take a few minutes.

[–]say_wot_againConfirmed for Google bigwig 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

That takes a few minutes? Jesus fucking Christ. PYTHON, which is basically the slowest acceptable language, takes 15 seconds, and C++ runs instantaneously.

You economists need to learn to use languages that don't suck ass.

[–]wumbotarianmodeled as if Noah Smith was a can opener 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Stata 14.0, Mata gets you .0007792843 as well.

I have Matlab too but I have no idea how to use it.

[–]Shiloh86I didn't choose the Krug life, the Krug life chose me 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Does anybody know if Prof. Peter Navarro is a good source to learn economics from? I'm taking an online course that he made.

He seems pretty balanced and reasonable so far, although he hates China and has spoke about supply-side economics, which I've heard isn't actually a real thing.