This is an actual email that I received this week:
Dear Author,
I’m Simona Vinerean (editor at Expert Journals) and it's a great pleasure to invite you to contribute your best knowledge to Expert Journals! I thought you might be interested in a new publishing opportunity, with extra benefits for you!
As authors, we are all too familiar with the traditional (and expensive) way of publishing our articles. But, what if you could get more benefits out of this process?
Luckily, at Expert Journals, you can benefit of a fast peer-review process of your theoretical or empirical article and you will get published in an open-access system (because everyone should enjoy your work), at a low fee of only 150 Euro.
......
Thank you so much for reading this email!
We look forward to receiving and publishing your paper!
Have a fantastic week!
Warm regards,
Simona Vinerean
I am pretty confused about exactly what the "extra benefits" are for me here. I am also confused about how the "traditional" way of publishing (i.e. peer review) is expensive.
Maybe someone can straighten me out in the comments? In the meantime, I just add the "Expert Journal of Economics" to my list of crap that doesn't count when you see it on someone's vita. Sadly that list gets longer almost every month.
Showing posts with label something for nothing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label something for nothing. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Put a bird on it
LeBron links to Stephen Williamson's post about the statistical problems inherent in calculating the vague and unobservable path of "potential output", especially when using the HP filter. I recently criticized the CBO's approach.
This is a sad but general problem in modern macro. Theories are built around unobservable variables. To calculate the output gap, we need potential output, but it's not observable. In growth & development, many issues hinge on the behavior of total factor productivity (TFP), but it is also unobservable.
Modern business cycle theory has made an art form of this. In seeking to better replicate real world data, more and more driving shocks are needed. So we discover that "shocks to the mark-up" for example (or shocks to "preferences") are now an important force in business cycles. These shocks too, are unobservable and receive even less scrutiny than do potential output or TFP (they are typically not ever displayed or forced to pass an "eyeball" test of reasonableness).
Modern business cycle theory also frequently uses the HP filter to produce the business cycle data that it calibrates to or uses for estimation. This use of the HP filter is no less problematic that the use criticized by Williamson in the original linked post.
People, when you read or hear people talking about unobservables like they were data, it's good to remember that the series in question were created by someone using a model with assumptions and limitations. Ask them to show you their series, to defend its derivation and its time series properties.
The bottom line is that no one knows what potential output is or what TFP is. I certainly don't agree with Williamson and Lacker that we are currently at or near maximum output/employment, but I do agree that we have no idea exactly how far away from that point we are currently operating.
This is a sad but general problem in modern macro. Theories are built around unobservable variables. To calculate the output gap, we need potential output, but it's not observable. In growth & development, many issues hinge on the behavior of total factor productivity (TFP), but it is also unobservable.
Modern business cycle theory has made an art form of this. In seeking to better replicate real world data, more and more driving shocks are needed. So we discover that "shocks to the mark-up" for example (or shocks to "preferences") are now an important force in business cycles. These shocks too, are unobservable and receive even less scrutiny than do potential output or TFP (they are typically not ever displayed or forced to pass an "eyeball" test of reasonableness).
Modern business cycle theory also frequently uses the HP filter to produce the business cycle data that it calibrates to or uses for estimation. This use of the HP filter is no less problematic that the use criticized by Williamson in the original linked post.
People, when you read or hear people talking about unobservables like they were data, it's good to remember that the series in question were created by someone using a model with assumptions and limitations. Ask them to show you their series, to defend its derivation and its time series properties.
The bottom line is that no one knows what potential output is or what TFP is. I certainly don't agree with Williamson and Lacker that we are currently at or near maximum output/employment, but I do agree that we have no idea exactly how far away from that point we are currently operating.
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