News vs. Risk Analysis

To sell stuff and get attention, you have to make people afraid.  Like this:  Parents-share-bed-with-babies-despite-risks-survey-says we will all die soon!  News at 11!

The actual data.  Click for an even less frightening image.  The "risk" has fallen, dramatically.

There is actually an AMA "Child Care Providers' Guide to 'Safe Sleep'".  I'm pretty sure I would sleep better if the medical profession would stop trying to make extra money by frightening people with half-truths and made up dangers.

Nod to SdM.

On Snowden and NSA

Apparently.... 
(1) what YOU don’t know can’t hurt YOU, 
(2) what THEY don’t know can hurt YOU, 
(3) THEY need to know what YOU know, 
(4) but YOU need not know that THEY need to know, 
(5) And YOU certainly do not need to know what THEY know,
(6) moreover, if YOU know THEY need to know, then the big WE can get hurt, so THEY can hide that, out of concern for YOU. 
(7) And mostly, we should all care more about the big WE than anything else. Especially, the big WE is more important than YOU, or YOU, or... 

Or so THEY say...

Nod to WH

The 5 most popular Angus KPC posts of 2012

The following were the five most viewed posts of mine this past year.

I am impressed. Two about economics, one about academics, one about sports and only one total goofball post.

Football: Stick a fork in it?

Me and LeBron's "what would the end of football look like?" piece in Grantland lives on as the horrific evidence grows.

The edited volume blues

People, you can't get something for nothing. If you are not yet where you want to be in academia, stay away from edited volumes, special issues of journals, festschrifts, and the like.

When cannons are outlawed....

Anytime I can legitimately post a Breeder's video, it's a good day. I guess I should feel bad about someone actually dying, but being taken out by a "homemade" cannonball cannot go un-mocked in my world.

Eyes wide shut

I am a big proponent of evaluating aid projects, but a bit skeptical of the grand claims sometimes made by the Randomista contingent. This paper about pseudo placebo effects in RCTs really caught my attention.

The Economy & Presidential Elections

"BHO is going to win in November DESPITE the economy, largely because Romney is a terrible candidate who is running an undisciplined, juvenile, brain-damaged campaign.

And that matters."

Thanks for indulging me and Mungo and we will endeavor to bring you even more gonzo-econo-blogging in 2013. We'll be back with more stuff.

Get thee to a university

On average, there has pretty much never been a better time to hold a college or advanced degree.  Here's some amazing graphs from the Georgetown Public Policy Institute.

The first deals with the recent recession and current "recovery" (clic the pics for more glorious images):

College and Advanced degree holders suffered no net job loss in the recession and have gained 2 million jobs in the recovery. Those with some college suffered moderate job loss in the recession and have just about returned to square one during the recovery. Those with High school diplomas or less lost almost 6 million jobs during the recession and have not regained any of those in the course of the recovery.

The next graph shows that the recession just exacerbated what is a longer run process:

Since 1989 we've seen negative job growth for those with HS or less, and since 1995 a de-coupling of job growth between the some college and college grad or more.

The report also claims that the wage premium for a college or advance degree has held steady in the face of these trends.

So a whether it's just signaling, or whether it's gaining human capital, higher education is more important than ever for economic success in modern America!

Oh and by the way, yes I know that I'm a university professor and stuff like this is very good for me and the future of my profession.

Get your money out of PIMCO....

....because its CEO, the ubiquitous Mohamed El-Erian is a nincompoop!

Check out this gibberish in today's WSJ:

"Fat tails"—the technical term for the extremes of an outcome distribution—are risks for any global system that loses its anchors. Economies and markets function differently, companies and households feel unsettled, and policy measures become less effective.

Oh my. Where to begin.

First, "fat tails" is not a "technical term". The technical term is excess kurtosis. Fat tails is the colloquial, layman's term.

Second, fat tails is decidedly NOT a term for "the extremes of an outcome distribution"! The normal distribution is an outcome distribution. It does not have "fat tails". In fact it is the lack of fat tails in the normal distribution that lead so many models to go astray

How can this dude spew nonsense like this and get away with it? He's failing Stats 101.  It must be the 'stache.

Finally, the second sentence is even weirder than the first. I cannot make out what he is saying. Is he trying to say that recent events have changed the shape of the "outcome distribution"? Or that when we realized the outcome distribution had fatter tails than was previously thought, people changed their behaviors? The second interpretation at least makes some sense.

Smart or Stoopid

The Smart or Stoopid Test.

I got a 27.  Apropos of absolutely nothing, since the test is not deep or difficult.  But it is fun.

Nod to the LMM, who thought Elvis died in 1957.

Renewable Energy is cheaper than coal (?)

Mr. Overwater sends this link (without, I should note, making any claims it is right or wrong. Just thought KPC would be interested, and KPC is interested. KPC is clearly trying to be like Herman Cain, and refer to KPC in the third person. Or maybe Herman Cain wants to achieve the deserved obscurity that KPC achieved long ago? Either way, here is an excerpt from the Google site):

In 2007 we launched our Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE lt C) initiative through Google.org as an effort to drive down the cost of renewable energy. We’ve retired this initiative and continue to support renewable energy in a variety of other ways.

Our approach to RE cheaper than C
Through RE lt C, we made several investments in companies working on potentially breakthrough technologies. For instance, we invested in companies like Brightsource Energy and eSolar to help expand their work on concentrating solar power technology, and in Potter Drilling to advance its innovative geothermal drilling technology. We also sponsored research to develop the first Geothermal Map of the US, helping better understand the potential for geothermal energy to provide renewable power that’s always available. And we’ve had an engineering team working to improve a type of concentrating solar power technology called the solar power tower.

Being a broken record is repetitive, by definition. But the fact is that facts have shown over and over that it is a fact that RE gt C, in fact. Wishing it weren't so is just a giant waste of resources.

As proved by the fact that all of the enormous amount money wasted on wind power has gotten us nothing but a bunch of big towers, sort of an exercise machine for giants to hang dirty clothes on.

Overall, there is one simple truth: if it requires a subsidy to compete, it's NOT CHEAPER! Conversely if it IS cheaper, then it does not require a subsidy to compete.

And the wind cries.....wasteful! Here is some background, for you nuke-haters. In the US, perhaps 100 workers, and more than 30 citizen/bystanders, have been KILLED by wind turbines breaking or malfunctioning.

At Chappaquidick, one innocent person died.

At Three Mile Island, and in fact the total for all US nuclear power operations, cumulatively? That would be zero.

So, a lot more people are killed every year by wind turbines than have died, total, from nuclear power.

Lavish Links

1. The wit and wisdom of Larry Summers

2. Andrew Gelman lays a smackdown on "pop economists"

3. Are you geographically literate enough to be a 12th grader?

4. Don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out!