Category Econometrics
Dumb econometrics questions/bleg on forecast probabilities
I'm bad at econometrics. I've got a couple of simple questions, that ought to have a simple answer. Noah Smith's post (HT Mark Thoma) reminded me of it. There are probably other students at the back of the econometrics class who don't know the answer either, so I'm going to ask for all of us.
You can’t estimate Optimal Currency Areas that way
The better the Bank of Canada is doing its job, the more it will appear that the Bank of Canada should be broken in two. The worse the ECB does its job, the more it will appear that the Eurozone is an Optimal Currency Area. If central banks were even slightly more competent than random […]
When you need to know about the “don’t knows”
Canada's 2005 National Graduates Survey asked respondents the following question: "Compared to the rest of your graduating class in your field(s) of study, did you rank academically in the top 10? Below the top 10% but in the top 25%…" The responses are shown below:
Economic Forecasting: Is Google Trends the Future?
Google Trends is a quick and popular way to assess the importance of ideas, events and trends by looking at the results of people’s web searches. In fact, as is well known, it has been used to study flu activity based on searches for flu related terms. And, right here on WCI, it has been […]
Flowcharts as models
Give an economist a problem such as "Why do people waste their time playing video games?" and she'll typically model it like this:
Births Revisited: Births, Population and Per Capita Income
Well, after my last post I finally got around to calculating another measure of the birth rate – births per capita. Total births are a useful aggregate but the measure does not adjust for population size. There are other fertility measures out there such as births per woman aged 15 to 44 years but per […]
A preliminary estimate for Canadian 2012Q2 GDP growth
The May GDP number came out today, so it's time for my quarterly exercise in trying to come up with a preliminary estimate for quarterly GDP growth a month before Statistics Canada makes its first announcement. As regular readers will no doubt be weary of being reminded, the estimate is based on the GDP numbers […]
Why are (almost all) economists unaware of Milton Friedman’s thermostat?
I know I'm right in saying that Milton Friedman's thermostat is an important idea that all economists ought to be aware of. And I'm pretty sure I'm right in asserting that almost all economists are unaware of this important idea. Am I wrong? Are you aware of this idea? Maybe under some other name?? Google […]
Interpreting coefficients right: does it matter?
Econometricians spend their lives trying coming up with new and better estimation techniques. Some of the ideas are excellent but impractical ("Just find a suitable instrumental variable"), and some complicate matters for minimal benefit (some argue that using logit or probit rather ordinary least squares estimation falls into this category). So when I stumble across […]
A preliminary estimate for Canadian 2012Q1 GDP growth
The February GDP number came out yesterday, so it's time for my quarterly exercise in trying to come up with a preliminary estimate for quarterly GDP growth a month before Statistics Canada makes its first announcement. As regular readers will no doubt be weary of being reminded, the estimate is based on the GDP numbers […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Recent Comments