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

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[–]bdubs91Maestro Today and Maestro Forever 10ポイント11ポイント  (6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.

[–]fmn13Canadian Labor Reserves 4ポイント5ポイント  (2子コメント)

Thinking Fast and Solow.

Hope Solow

I'll update if I think of more.

[–]say_wot_againConfirmed for Google bigwig 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

Han Solow and Krugbacca

Red Solow Cup

[–]fmn13Canadian Labor Reserves 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yoo, Pete Townshend has some pretty great guitar Solows.

[–]commentsrusur mom's ass wasn't an ordinal property of her age 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

Your 1st year class makes you write papers?

[–]bdubs91Maestro Today and Maestro Forever 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

I'm in a masters program that emulates ph.d 1st years.This is for my elective. I would be interested in how much exactly this program mirrors PH.d. We still use MWG for instance.

[–]commentsrusur mom's ass wasn't an ordinal property of her age 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

>ph.d 1st years.

>This is for my elective.

I haven't heard of 1st years having electives. MWG is great though. Mine is just micro, macro, metrics for two semesters. 2nd and 3rd years are for electives.

[–]Kelsig 8ポイント9ポイント  (4子コメント)

🍆

[–]ethyn408 4ポイント5ポイント  (1子コメント)

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

[–]Kelsig 14ポイント15ポイント  (0子コメント)

1) Human action is purposeful behavior

2) 🍆

[–]Shiloh86I didn't choose the Krug life, the Krug life chose me 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

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

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

Yes, it is disgusting

[–]wumbotarianmodeled as if Noah Smith was a can opener 6ポイント7ポイント  (8子コメント)

Bernie Sanders on the REAL Issues.

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

[–]IntegraldsI am the rep agent AMA 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

Hey how'd you get a cam in my apartment cut that shit out

[–]NewmanTheScofflaw 4ポイント5ポイント  (5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 3ポイント4ポイント  (4子コメント)

Wow.

Though Keynes and Fisher were also supporters of eugenics.

[–]___OccamsChainsaw___Nietzsche Understands You 3ポイント4ポイント  (2子コメント)

Canada has a history with eugenics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Eugenics_Board

In 1972, the Act was repealed and the Board dismantled. During its 43 years in operation, the Board approved nearly 5,000 cases and 2,832 sterilizations were performed...

[–]wumbotarianmodeled as if Noah Smith was a can opener 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

Jesus fucking Christ, it existed until 1972???

That's horrendous.

[–]___OccamsChainsaw___Nietzsche Understands You 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Mhrmm. Change happens slowly in Alberta.

I remember in the early 2000s my social studies class was given a presentation by a woman who had been sterilized by the province in the '60s for being "mentally deficient" who had then gone on to complete a Bachelors in something-or-other.

[–]aquaknoxfilthy libertarian stemlord 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

The first half of the 20th century was a weird time - eugenics was in, people thought certain races were literally inferior to others, fascism was not always a bad word, whole countries thought that centrally planned economies were a good idea, Lord Kelvin said "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."...

[–]CatFortuneにゃんぱす! 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

That Bernie Sanders thing was hilarious. Shared in on FB, but I don't think any my friends are unbiased enough to appreciate such a partisan candidate doing something so exploitable.

Oh well. I'll always have Weeabill Clinton.

[–]say_wot_againConfirmed for Google bigwig 3ポイント4ポイント  (4子コメント)

Everybody's working for the weekend

-Loverboy

Goodeconomics or badeconomics?

[–]urnbabyurnNeoPanglossian 5ポイント6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.

[–]CutlasssI am the Lord your Gold 4ポイント5ポイント  (2子コメント)

Good economics, bad statistics.

[–]JakiusIt's probably the Feds's fault. 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

the median worker is working for the weekend then?

[–]CutlasssI am the Lord your Gold 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Better.

[–]wshanahana slightly less shitty libertarian 3ポイント4ポイント  (18子コメント)

Post your badeconomics books in this thread.

[–]urnbabyurnNeoPanglossian 4ポイント5ポイント  (4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.

[–]wshanahana slightly less shitty libertarian 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

I like a lot of his work on law and economics but his pop writing on anarcho-capitalism is not great.

[–]commentsrusur mom's ass wasn't an ordinal property of her age 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

Why?

[–]wshanahana slightly less shitty libertarian 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

MoF is certainly less bad than For a New Liberty, as far as ancap manifestos go. But largely his insistence that anarcho-capitalist institutions would be stable from internal threats and that DROs would stay competitive and not scale up. He doesn't offer any proof for that other than pointing to the different number of police forces in the U.S. as to why he believes that "the number [of DROs] will be nearer 10,000 than 3." His pop books have a lot of guesstimates that are presented in a way that will lead the non-skeptical reader to take as fact. At least Friedman admits external threats would be very hard for ancapistan to overcome. Also, I'm pretty certain I saw a post here about his use of Schelling points in the third edition but I don't know much about game theory so I can't really comment on that.

[–]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)

He doesn't offer any proof for that other than pointing to the different number of police forces in the U.S. as to why he believes that "the number [of DROs] will be nearer 10,000 than 3."

Yep, this is the biggest issue. He has no evidence of a competitive private police force existing.

And go figure there are 10,000 police forces versus 3. The government enforces it that way. I could easily imagine a situation where we have more like 51 (all state cops + one federal cop, like the FBI). If the US was smaller, I could easily imagine 1 police force, albeit large.

[–]___OccamsChainsaw___Nietzsche Understands You 5ポイント6ポイント  (12子コメント)

Top kek

[–]wshanahana slightly less shitty libertarian 2ポイント3ポイント  (6子コメント)

Do you have a Mises tab open?

[–]___OccamsChainsaw___Nietzsche Understands You 1ポイント2ポイント  (5子コメント)

Among... other things.

[–]IntegraldsI am the rep agent AMA 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Enhance!

[–]IntegraldsI am the rep agent AMA 0ポイント1ポイント  (3子コメント)

I can't read my tag! WHAT IS MY TAG?

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

Steam is open yet we've never played RO2 together.......

[–]___OccamsChainsaw___Nietzsche Understands You 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Hey, whenever you like, I'm game. I mean not right at this very moment 'cuz I'm making dinner (roast tenderloin w/ bordelaise and fondant potatoes -- fucking delicious), but you know.

[–]wumbotarianmodeled as if Noah Smith was a can opener 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

Wait do you have /k/ open too?

[–]Kelsig 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

It's /lit/

[–]___OccamsChainsaw___Nietzsche Understands You 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

/lit/, of course.

[–]IntegraldsI am the rep agent AMA 4ポイント5ポイント  (16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 6ポイント7ポイント  (4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 2ポイント3ポイント  (1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...

[–]say_wot_againConfirmed for Google bigwig 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Hey, I spend most of my time on redditnomics even though I work in tech. So, you know...

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

What sort of example would I need to think up where differences in machine and program matter?

[–]say_wot_againConfirmed for Google bigwig 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Machine doesn't matter for anything but the compiler; the point of programming languages is to abstract away from the messy details of your particular system. Two things stand out. First, although I didn't try it, you'd likely see different results (i.e. more error) using a float in C++ rather than a double, or less error from using a long double. And second, if you found a language that doesn't use standard IEEE floating point storage (e.g., stored an int for the part left of the decimal, and int for the part right of the decimal, and an int indicating how many powers of ten the right part of the decimal needs to be scaled down) you'd see different results, although I highly doubt that any language seriously being used would differ from the IEEE standard.

[–]ivansmlhotshot with a theory 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Octave 4.0.0, same results as others. It took altogether almost 15 minutes though (unfortunately, Octave doesn't have JIT for speeding up loops).

So naturally I tried to vectorize the code:

x = sum(repmat(0.01,100000000,1)) - 1000000;
y = sum(repmat(0.03,100000000,1)) - 3000000;
z = sum(repmat(0.01,300000000,1)) - 3000000;
fprintf('\nx = %+f\ny = %+f\nz = %+f\n\n', x, y, z)

and proudly ran the script... only to bring my computer to a halt. Turns out that allocating few gigabytes of matrices on a crappy machine with 4GB RAM is not such a great idea.

[–]wumbotarianmodeled as if Noah Smith was a can opener 1ポイント2ポイント  (4子コメント)

How would I do this in Stata?

[–]IntegraldsI am the rep agent AMA 1ポイント2ポイント  (3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 3ポイント4ポイント  (1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.

[–]IntegraldsI am the rep agent AMA 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

All of the numerical routines in Stata are coded in Mata, which is a proper (compiled) language and executes in seconds. So don't worry, we are indeed doing this properly.

[–]wumbotarianmodeled as if Noah Smith was a can opener 1ポイント2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.

[–]grevemoeskrHumans are horses! 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

So, when running the 0.01-script, I get 7.792842807248235E-4, and when running the 0.03 script, I get -0.004466576501727104, running this code in Java

    double x=0.0;
    for (int i=1;i<=100000000;i++){
        x=0.03+x;
    }
    x=x-3000000;
    System.out.println(x);

[–]beaverjacketThere is no such thing as an infinite supply of threes. 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Matlab on an i5-4430:

Steps 2-3: 7.7928e-4, .401293 seconds

Step 4a: -.0045, .401466 seconds

Step 4b: -.0184, 1.206651 seconds

[–]MoneyChurchChairman of the Kennywood Park Central Bank 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Using Matlab R2014b:

0.01*100000000-1000000=

 7.792842807248235e-04

0.03*100000000-3000000=

-0.004466576501727

0.01*300000000-3000000=

-0.018379138782620

[–]complexsystemsMWG is my homeboy 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I used R 3.x whatever on a Lenovo Thinkpad running Ubuntu 14.4. My results agreed with /u/say_wot_again's. I used for loops in R because I had nothing else going on, and it took a few minutes but I didn't get an exact time. But doing this sort of for loop operation in R is notoriously slow.

[–]Babahoyo 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

java gives 7.792842807248235E-4

and

-0.01837913878262043

[–]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 5ポイント6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  (3子コメント)

Fossil Fuel divestment: pointless or negative?

[–]CutlasssI am the Lord your Gold 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

Coal is in decline. Gas is upswing. Oil comes and goes, but it'll be decades before there's any meaningful decrease in total usage.

[–]LordBufo 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Switching from coal to natural gas is a huge environmental plus though even if total usage is neutral.

[–]CutlasssI am the Lord your Gold 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yeah. But not as much of a plus as going to renewables. Coal is filthy stuff. No real way around that.

[–]Shiloh86I didn't choose the Krug life, the Krug life chose me 1ポイント2ポイント  (2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.

[–]huntermanten 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

Supply side economics better be real, it makes up a pretty large part of the econ A level spec here in the UK...

A levels are exams that you take at 18, here in the UK.

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

What? Do your exams makes you check yes for that tax cuts always pay for themselves or something?

[–]MatthieuG7 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Just discovered this, pretty great. Facts!

[–]commentsrusur mom's ass wasn't an ordinal property of her age 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Wait a second, the State has helped reduce MINORITY fertility, thus saving the Christian European world?

[–]CatFortuneにゃんぱす! 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Does the President have any power, theoretical even, to undo any part of NAFTA? If so, what would the consequences be?

[–]CutlasssI am the Lord your Gold 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Pretty much every law has sections which are open to administrative interpretation and enforcement. But most of the time it's tinkering with the details rather than changing the core.