I went to a conference today on International Trade, and I thought it was very stimulating, even though I was an attendant and not a presenter. It was not the content of the presentations per se that was interesting, but it was the choice of topics by the researchers.
Did I mention that this is a conference on International Trade? The very curious thing I noticed is that, every single paper on the conference agenda, is a topic / question that I KNOW is currently being studied and researched by my immediate classmate.
A couple weeks ago, some classmates and I formed a “Shadow” trade working group for mutual support during the research writing stage. Every topic that my classmates in that group is doing — I found a close relative in today’s conference.
And then, after someone finished his presenter, a bunch of us (Chinese) gathered around to discuss China’s data sources. They were saying how certain Professor XXX used to have monopoly over the data, but now pretty much everybody has it (not everybody! I don’t!). And how now it is not about the data, but about the idea.
Here I digress into a specific detail about the international trade field: the hotness of firm level data. Everywhere trade people are talking about heterogeneity of firms and using firm-level data. At first there was US, then it was French firms, then Danish firms, then Chinese firms, then Colombian firms, then Chilean firms….etc etc. But how important are having these firm level datasets? It suddenly occurs to me that this field is racing to discover a 3rd margin of adjustment from trade liberalization (aside from intensive and extensive margin). Whoever who discover the 3rd or 4th margin wins!
Whoever said that ideas are non-rivalry (even putting aside patents)? At least in the academic world it is not. Today I suddenly discovered that THERE IS A RACE in my field. For every “hot” question, I already know several people to be doing it. It’s not about ownership of the idea, but about WHO can do it the fastest and the best.
So in our conversation, one of the speakers said, with regard to China firm level dataset, “This IS actually a competitive field.”
I never thought of myself as a participant in this race. Heck, I didn’t even know that the race started!
But today I saw. There REALLY REALLY is a race. That is why, you gotta watch how you are spending your time, now that you know your competitor is toiling away.
All is fair game in research, love, and war.
When my mind reemerges from the clouds, a string of phrases, images, and sound rapidly come to my head:
1. As my student enthusiastically said “Hi!” to me, and then a seagull flew above me. I thought: “It is the seagull that flew above my head, not a crow.”
2. I remember as I was in the sidelines of the football field, standing with the Marching Band in my high school, and cheering “GO! FIGHT! WIN!” as the football players began the game.
3. I remember that we are all here to work toward the same thing.
4. I like the Regenstein — the library fiercely hated by many of my classmates due to memories of the stressful nights from our 1st years — because in it, I am constantly reminded that I should work hard like the other University of Chicago students.
I think I am slowly finding my pace. Here is my record so far:
4/13/2009: averaged 14 min/mile (did 3 miles)
4/23/2009: averaged 11.52 min/mile (in the first 4 miles), averaged 13 min/mile in total 5 miles (walk the 5th mile). I
5/4/2009: averaged 11.42 min/mile (in the first 4 miles), averaged 12 min/miles (in the first 5 miles). In total, did 6 miles (averaging 13.2 min/mile when run the first 5 miles and walk the 6th mile).
My understanding so far in running long distance:
*** very important to clear mind of everything. Although there is a TV screen in front of me, I don’t watch it. It is of foremost importance to not see anything and just focus.
1st mile, very slow — pace 13 or 14 min/ mile
2nd, 3rd, 4th mile, gaining pace, full power — pace is 10 min/ mile
(In my mind, while doing 2-4th mile, was screaming “CRANK IT CRANK IT!!!!!!” I believe this is what they call runner’s high)
5th mile — pace is 13 mil / hour….feel like the back of my knee is bleeding. Strange pain in strange places.
Between 5th – 6th mile — Hey, I feel like I can do more!
It is during 5th – 6th mile when I felt that, yes, I can do 10, because the “CRANK IT CRANK IT” voice was reemerging during those miles.
Input cost to cheescake:
$1.50 crust
$1.30/2 milk
$2.40/2 sourcream
$6.00/6 vanilla extract
$1.79 cream cheese
$1.50/3 eggs
Total = $6.65
Not including time 1/2 hour for making the product and 1/4 hour of washing dishes. (What is the cost per hour of a cheap grad student?)
utility from a successful product: infinite.
An Eli cheese cake is sold for $12.00
I should still make my own cheesecake.
I request the Merriam-Webster dictionary add the following words to the dictionary, given the phenomenal rise of the reference to the word “Obama” in many popular situations:
1. Obamaly (adverb). This word is used in a situation to describe the merit of working hard and not giving up. The origin of this word comes from the part of President Elect Obama’s life when he tried to run for office the first time and failed miserably. Then the next time he ran, luck struck and his opponent dropped out due to some sexual scandal. An example of a mundane situation where the word applied: Having failed her driver license examination again after 3 tries, Mary told her mother that she is going to quit. Mary’s mother then said, “You got to look at this obamaly – he didn’t give up when he failed his first run for office in Illinois, then the next time he tried he succeeded due to luck!”
2. Oba-Man (slang). Proper pronounciation requires a strong emphasis on the “ba”. This slang can be used as an outburst (similar to when one says, “Oh Man!”) to express camaraderie to our “brothers” and “sisters”. (by “brothers” and “sisters”, I mean black dudes and chicks.) This word should be used in similar spirit and tone as “Way to go GIRL!”. Here is an example of a fitting situation for the use of this slang: Your car was impounded by the police and you found yourself be serviced by a grumpy black lady at the car pound window, who wants to charge you an outrageous amount of fines. So you say, “Oba-Man! I should have paid for my parking tickets long ago. But President Obama didn’t pay his either so I thought I didn’t need to.” Hopefully the use of this word will lead to a special treatment of you by the black lady.
Another situation where this slang could be used is when you found yourself walking in a shady black neighborhood at night, and a couple black dudes were walking shadily toward you. As they tried to rob you, you say, “Hey, Oba-Man!” Hopefully the use of this word will lead to a shared sense of camaraderie with your to-be muggers.
3. baracke (verb). Conjugation of this words are: baracking, baracked. This word describes the action where one suddenly experience an overnight meteoric rise to fame. An example of the use of this verb is: That high school student used to be a loser in his high school, until he baracked after giving an amazing speech at the student council election.
4. obamy (adj). This word describes the feeling that you can do ANY thing in the world as long as you work hard. It originates from after the historical election of Barack Obama, when all across the United States, mothers begin to tell their children (especially mothers in South Chicago) that, “Look, if Obama can become the US president, then you can be anything you want to.” A situation where this adjective applies is: I was feeling obamy about my 2nd year research paper yesterday night, but now I am feeling Paliny. endnote: Paliny is also a new adjective introduced by the 2008 US election. It describes a situation when people have low expectations on you.
Here is another word suggested by a friend:
Palin (noun). A seemingly right and good choice but turning out poor and devastating result. Peter gave me a Palin when he suggested me to buy the Yugo at a big discount.
I gave the department of revenue a look of glossy eyes. I gave the currency exchange cashier weepy eyes. I gave the person serving at the payment center a look of eyes threatened by flowing tears.
The normally unfriendly people suddenly became soft and caring.
I have begun working since Monday–in the most bureaucratic institution I ever worked in.
It is disgustingly bureacratic.
As an example, I still haven’t received my computer, since my security clearance has not gone through yet even 3 days after I arrived. (It takes them about 7 days to process my finger prints) And I still haven’t received my ID card, and was told that since I haven’t received my ID card yet I need to escorted everywhere I go in the building. Today I asked to be escorted to the vending machine to buy an expansive chocolate bar. I cannot even been seen to be using someone’s computer. Well, they have successfully instilled fear in me. Today when I found myself accidentally in the “investigations” section of the floor, which houses long and deep rooms with filing paper cabinets, I freaked out and ran.
It stuck me that while private companies–and even non-profits — do maximize some sort of profit function, government agencies TRULY do not. They maximize the loss function. Seriously. Otherwise, with me there (I assume I am an asset), why are they not maximizing my use by matching me with working capital? All I produce now is consuming their excellent coffee (not even paying!) Currently my marginal product of capital is INFINITE.
Due to zero capital to work with, I substitute it with my labor, working on something that is not my comparative advantage in Chicago but apparent is in there– theory.
I talked to several people there and the ones I potentially will work with. The issues are all interesting. But some of their reduced form tendencies are highly disturbing. I was surprised by my own very strong negative sentiments about the reduced form stuff. Frankly I felt a bug in my stomach when I heard what I was expected to do. It was as if someone to perform a surgery on an old 95-year-old woman with cancer at the terminal stage.
Call it the result of Chicago brainwash. But honestly I don’t see other ways of research other than structural. I mean, one can first run a couple regressions based on intuition to get some idea of where to proceed, but ULTIMATELY, the research has to come down to structural. The talk about “specification issue” when they are doing reduced form strikes me as completely pretentious.
TOTAL DISGUST WAS WHAT I FELT, THAT IS— UNTIL 3pm TODAY.
Until 3pm today, I was reading a bunch of theory papers, to reconcile some of those reduced form approaches. What struck me — like Muhammad Ali punching my stomach — is that some of these reduced form equations are, in fact, justified exactly by theory! (UNBEKNOWST to the perpetrator of the reduced form)
The question is: does the theory precede the reduced form equation, or vice versa? The order matters, because the reduced form equation could have been the motive behind the development of the theory if the reduced form equation precedes justification by theory. It is more natural to think that theory guides the reduced form approach — but often it is not the case as the situation is ad hoc and the person just decide to throw in some variables on the right hand side.
When I was studying for the trade prelim, I discovered that the theoretical justification for the GRAVITY EQUATIONS came AFTER the reduced form equation. In fact, 20 years later! The gravitiy equations (an equation that predict trade flows between two countries) work so well that people decide to build a theory behind it. And VIOLA, following the steps of people maximizing their utility they indeed found an equation that matches the equation that reduced form trade economists have been using for years. Is this not amazing? And the theoretical model isn’t even complicated. It’s straightforwrad, and completely natural.
Following this amazement, I was temporarily in awe. Can it be that mathematical laws indeed do govern the behavior of humans and the gravity equation is just one of these laws that economists were able to discover? That even though humans are highly complicated beings, their behaviors are governed by law of mathematics? That when God created human beings, he was using one of these formulas?
This FAITH in that there exists mathematical laws governing the behavior of human beings is what made me a staunch believer in structural methods.
Therefore, I was shocked during L’s dinner when all the other people (all econ phD) said that they don’t believe that math can be used to describe human behavior. Shocked. Isn’t that belief supposed to form our trust in what we learned at Chicago?
Of course, now my amazement is lessened, realizing that some theorists could have been influenced by the result of the reduced form. That the structural equation is not indeed as pure as it seems.
Still, the theoretical development of the gravity equation amazes me.
So at 3pm today, I discovered that some reduced form they are doing are indeed justified theory, unbeknowst to them. After the shock, my disgust with reduced form was somewhat abated. You see, for every trade, there are masters. Some people have indeed MASTERED the art of reduced form. And it is an art. They got it so right, that unbeknowst to them, the specification is indeed justified by theory.
The conclusion is this: I have a newfound doubt about my disgust with reduced form.
That was a huge digression from my update about my summer job so far.
Now back to the topic—
So what was I saying? Yeah, so, despite the things with reduced form, I am still having a blast at work.
Because their is yet a silver lining in this mumbo jumbo. I console myself by telling myself that if being able to work in highly interesting things mean I have to also do highly uninteresting things, then I’ll do it. Because I do get to work on highly interesting things with two highly interesting researchers. I felt my blood BOILING again.
So even though my marginal product of capital is very high right now, and my marginal product of labor is very low — the fact that my marginal product of labor is very low is very exciting.
Do I sound like I am speaking in codes? Because I am. I am afraid that these people google me and say I break my security clearance. (In reality who wastes their effort prosecuting some useless dude like me?)
In short, I both very much enjoyed my job right now, despite the inconveniences with capital.
Hudson Institute, our neighbor, has these gym classes during lunch hours. Today I went to the yoga one. You see, it’s quite fun.
Never, ever, ever give up.
I think Winston Churchhill said that.
That motto comes true again today. It is the ultimate truth whose wisdom overwhelms me everytime it helped me. It did it last year. It did it this year.
I mean, when you are really really on the very verge of giving up, but instead you hold on by that one single strand of hair, the fruit of hanging on amazes me.
This only applies to situation when really, you are on the end of the limit.
