Category Education
University crashes
The optimal size of a university is always a little bit bigger than its actual size. More precisely, the size of a university doesn't really matter. What does matter is whether it's growing or shrinking. A growing university is easy to manage. If you need to grow one department relative to another, you hire people […]
The decline of American economists and the European cultural revolution
In 1991, two thirds of the articles in Econlit, a comprehensive index of academic economic research, were written by people based in North America. By 2006, that share had dropped by one third to 45 percent. These numbers are taken from a recent working paper by Cardoso, Guimaraes and Zimmermann. Their evidence suggests that the […]
Does the rest of the world subsidize research on the American economy?
When studios shoot movies or TV shows in Canada, they stick US licence plates on the cars and pretend Toronto is New York (the Rudy Giuliani biopic Rudy), Alberta is Wyoming (Brokeback Mountain), and BC is Kansas (Smallville). Studios do it because anything explicitly Canadian tanks in the ratings. The same rule applies to blogging. […]
Relative grade inflation, and Operation Birdhunt
Relative grade inflation is when one professor grades easier than another professor. Or when one department grades easier than another department. Operation Birdhunt was my attempt (OK, my colleague Marcel-Cristian Voia did the actual work) to do an econometric study of relative grade inflation across departments. Birdhunt was a failure, but a noble failure.
The arithmetic of household debt
The interest rate on your mortgage is three percent. If the interest rate increases one percentage point, the interest component of your monthly mortgage payments will increase by approximately: a. 1 percent b. 10 percent c. 25 percent d. 33 percent e. None of the above.
But is it research?
At the back of every academic blogger's mind is a nagging question: does this count as research? A new paper by Glen Ellison (ungated here) argues that the internet is changing the way that top academics publish: "More top economists may realize that the publication hassles they have been enduring are not necessary." Economists at […]
How the quest for ratings distorts research
Imagine yourself in the position of a senior university administrator. Your university employs hundreds of academics, all of whom claim that their research is of vital, earth-shattering import. You have neither the time nor the expertise to evaluate the quality of the work done by individual faculty members. How do you sort out the good […]
It pays to be hot (sometimes)
There are some research questions you have to answer simply because the data is there: the salaries of Ontario university professors are published on the public sector salary disclosure website, research output is listed on Econlit, university websites and calendars list a person's rank – there are even databases that list every doctoral thesis published, […]
The ethics of co-authored doctoral dissertations
Every thesis is, to some extent, a collaboration between the supervisor and the student. A student will have a research topic or an idea. The supervisor can say, "this is an excellent data set," "have you read this paper?" or "try taking this approach." A meeting between supervisor and student can turn into an hour […]
Referees: the ultimate scarce resource
Every paper published in an academic journal goes through "peer review". It is sent out to two or three external reviewers, who evaluate the manuscript for originality, sound research methods, and so on. Unfortunately the quantity of manuscripts submitted to journals outstrips the number of people willing to review them, and the system is in […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Recent Comments