Category: rePosts

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rePost-Advice to A Friend-Brian Jacob Takes Home the David Kershaw Prize – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog

I sent the excepted blog post to a friend. I think that we must never discount how much we could contribute to research. We must not think of ourselves us unfit to comment, unfit to dream. Hope the friend gets wat i’m tring to say.
Backstory: I’ve been telling this friend to write, she has a lot of interest in economics, and almost had a double major economics and stat.  She has this mistaken sense that she doesn’t have the pre requisite eminence to comment on the issues she has an interest in. I told her to just write. Eminence be damned.

At a time when technical prowess and fancy techniques are increasingly fancied in this profession, Brian gives hope to all the budding economists out there who have great ideas, common sense, and the patience to do careful empirical research. His papers are not very technical or complicated; they just find credible answers to questions that people care about.
Brian Jacob Takes Home the David Kershaw Prize – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog.

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rePost: -Last War Syndrome-Is 2008 our 1929?

From brad delong: I dub thee THE LAST WAR SYNDROME: ‘Everyones fighting the last war!’

Is 2008 Our 1929?
No. It is not. The most important reason it is not is that Bernanke and Paulson are both focused like laser beams on not making the same mistakes as were made in 1929.
They are also focused, but not quite as much, on not making the mistakes made by Arthur Burns in the 1970s.
And they are also focused, but not quite as much, on not making the mistakes the Bank of Japan made in the 1990s.
They want to make their own, original, mistakes…
Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong.

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rePost: -The Right Question-Greg Mankiw's Blog: The Problem with Audience Participation

What Paul Should have asked was, who would trade your health system with ours??
Saturday, September 20, 2008
The Problem with Audience Participation
James Taranto reports this recent interchange, during which economist Paul Krugman tries to make the case for a Canadian-style national health care system:
Krugman: –and I wanted to ask, actually two questions, to the audience. First, how many Canadians, would Canadians in the room please raise your hands. [One person applauds, laughter]
Donvan: We have about seven hands going up—
Krugman: OK, not as many as I thought. OK, of those of you who are not on the panel who are Canadians, how many of you think you have a terrible health care system. [pause] One, two–
Donvan: We see—almost all of the same hands going up. [laughter]
Krugman: Bad move on my part.
Greg Mankiw’s Blog: The Problem with Audience Participation.

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rePost: Hope They Taught Me Like This–Do It First, Then We’ll Talk | Addison Road

I was talking to rain last night after our videoke session with jizelle.
I was decrying my observation that most people I meet in school do not really come to love what they are studying. And it comes from the observation that most professors who could help students find love for their field of study just don’t. This creates two problems.

  1. People who were gonna love what they were learning loved it much later
  2. People who weren’t gonna love what they were studying found out much later.

I hope professors try to challenge their students, tell them if after this class you do not think you love what we are studying, shift , shift NOW.

“Joy first, theory second.”
Do It First, Then We’ll Talk | Addison Road.

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rePost: Findings – As External Barriers Disappear, Internal Gender Gaps Widen – NYTimes.com

Interesting , if most of the changes are due to men then maybe, (humor me) just maybe the feminist movement has got it all wrong, its the men who have been forced to assume a not so normal role in more traditional hierarchical societies, it means that traditional societies in a way enslaved men more than women. And if this is true then is this the reason that men suffer higher rates of mental diseases? because we are not in a more natural state of existence.

It looks as if personality differences between men and women are smaller in traditional cultures like India’s or Zimbabwe’s than in the Netherlands or the United States. A husband and a stay-at-home wife in a patriarchal Botswanan clan seem to be more alike than a working couple in Denmark or France. The more Venus and Mars have equal rights and similar jobs, the more their personalities seem to diverge.
…..
The biggest changes recorded by the researchers involve the personalities of men, not women. Men in traditional agricultural societies and poorer countries seem more cautious and anxious, less assertive and less competitive than men in the most progressive and rich countries of Europe and North America.
…..
Findings – As External Barriers Disappear, Internal Gender Gaps Widen – NYTimes.com.

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rePost: Democracy and accountability: The perverse effects of term limits | vox – Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

Some thoughts:
+ This is good and bad dependig as usual on the person in power.
+ Good people would mean better or at least mroe vigorous implementation of needed but unpopular or important but hard to enforce regulations or laws.
+ Not so good people throw caution to the wind and exercise extreme corruption etc. Reminds me of how Governor Generals of the Philippines were described (see Noli Me Tangere) during thier last months in their commission.
+ This is important because this means we need a way of contra-balancing the effects. Maximizing the effects of good people and minimizing the effects of not so good people.
+ Makes me think that countries with no strong term limits but great independent institutions (independent non partisan military, proper separation/balance of power among institutions) are would be better governed but have leaders locked eternally into a public relations campaign. (If I am not mistaken Tony Blair’s and England is an example of this, Japan too I think)
+ This makes me think that among real democracies the Philippines systems is ill-designed. You have a fix term limit where you have no re-elections, and weak institutions. You get a recipe where most people who become president are corrupt, and they throw caution to the wind because they do not have to revalidate their power from the people because they are not re-elected.
thanks to Mark Thoma here:
from here:
Conclusions
Our analysis of the impact of term limits on inter-state conflicts confirms that domestic political institutions can have a crucial impact on economic and political outcomes. In democracies without term limits, periodic elections provide the means to hold opportunistic political leaders accountable for their foreign policy decisions. In autocracies and democracies with term limits, in which there is no need for “contract renewal”, politicians can adopt unpopular policies with no repercussion on whether or not they are able to stay in power. Some caution is clearly warranted in interpreting these results. Though our analysis shows that political systems in which the leaders are subject to re-election are good for peace, this should not be taken to imply that democratisation of dictatorships will necessarily lead to peace. The take-home message, as pointed out by Daron Acemoglu, Davide Ticchi and Andrea Vindigni recently on Vox, is that policymakers should carefully consider the complexity of the political environment when trying to shape or guide the transition to democracy.
Democracy and accountability: The perverse effects of term limits | vox – Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists.

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rePost: Top Teachers Ineffective

This hit home because my sister was telling me of the recent moves to abolish the BS Education as a recognized course in the Philippines, meaning that people who want to become teachers of Preschool/Elementary/Highschool must have an Education degree and pass a National Certification Exam known as (LET – Licensure Exam for Teachers).

It seems that recent research has shown that people with degrees in the subjects they will teach are more effective teachers than Education Majors studying those subjects as minor subject in college.

In the Philippines , almost all colleges/universities (Excepting UP) have different classes for Education (insert subject here ) majors and (Subject majors). I was told that Classes for Education Math Majors were for easier than Math majors (except in UP where people take the same classes ).

Getting back to the excerpted blog post below, Are the researches cited by those wanting to abolish the Education degree in the Philippines even valid?? If Top Teachers are ineffective are teachers even effective??

I think the post was a little misleading because :

  • What if the reason some teachers do not get a license is not that they are not good, rather they perform well enough to not need a license to signify capability?
  • What if the lack of a license acts as a motivator or a threat against employment status that people work or try to educate students as well if not better than licensed colleagues.

I don’t know haven’t made up my mind yet.!

from the Overcoming Bias blog here , a personal must read blog for me.

Top Teachers Ineffective

from Overcoming Bias by Robin Hanson
Yesterday I reported that top med school docs are no healthier for patients.  Today I report that even at private schools, teachers who are fully certified do not help students perform any better on math and science tests:

Data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey of 1988 (NELS:88) were used to investigate the effect of teacher licensure status on private school students’ 12th grade math and science test scores. This data includes schooling and family background information on students that can be linked to employment information on teachers. We find that, contrary to conventional wisdom, private school students of fully certified 12th grade math and science teachers do not appear to outperform students of private school teachers who are not fully certified.

My urban econ text says:

Studies have consistently shown that graduate coursework (e.g., a Master’s degree) does not affect teacher productivity.

I expect patients are willing to pay more for top med school docs, and parents are willing to pay more for educated and certified teachers.  And I expect that this would continue even if patients and parents knew the above results.  I suspect most of the demand for teachers, doctors, and many other professionals comes from folks wanting to affiliate with certified-as-impressive people.  And merely making patients healthier or making students perform better doesn’t count much toward impressiveness, relative to academia-certified impressiveness.
But folks don’t like to admit this directly; they’d rather pretend they care more than they do about other outputs.  Which is why folks don’t want to hear about the above results.  The media will oblige them, and so they will continue in their preferred delusions.  Bet on it.

Added: James Hubbard points us to a related critique of MBA training.

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rePost: Bangsamoro ancestral domain accord may suffer same fate as ZTE ruling

The way that the Supreme Court has been ruling has made it less effective. It has used everything it can to not make any ruling whatsoever. This is patently wrong because illegal stuff keeps happening. Its like do something illegal and rescind it and everything is okay. This is wrong and it has been the habit of the present administration to continually skirt the consequences of their illegal actions by simply rescinding the stuff that they do confident in their belief that the executive department will not be reprimanded by the judiciary. This must stop. The Judiciary must find its balls.
from ABS-CBN news here:

August 22, 2008 Friday, August 22, 2008 8:06 PM
Nation
Bangsamoro ancestral domain accord may suffer same fate as ZTE ruling
By Aries C. Rufo
abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak
The constitutional questions plaguing the ancestral domain agreement between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front may be resolved the same way the Supreme Court ruled on the equally controversial $329 million National Broadband Network Project.
Like the NBN deal, the SC is poised to rule on the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD). The anti-MOA petitioners want the High Court to decide on its constitutionality but a number of the justices’ questions today during the nine-hour oral argument focused on the case being moot following the government’s move not to sign the document in view of the political storm it has whipped.
The SC, by a vote of 11-3, junked last month for being moot the petition of Iloilo Vice Governor Rolex Suplico to declare the NBN-ZTE contract void. This after the Arroyo government cancelled the contract after revelations it was tainted with alleged bribe offers.
In the ZTE case, dissenting justices questioned the High Court’s cop-out, warning such questionable contracts are bound to be repeated.
In the MOA-AD controversy, such scenario appears headed for a replay as justices raised the argument that it may be premature for them to take action on the case.
In Friday’s hearing, justices zeroed in on the apparent lack of “justiciable” action on the MOA-AD since it appears it is not yet a “perfected contract.”
Not yet a contract
Justice Antonio Nachura, a former Solicitor-General, first raised the supposed premature action to contest the MOA-AD, pointing out that “there is no MOA in the first place” since it was only initialed and not signed.
Justice Ruben Reyes pointed out that under the provision of contracts, the MOA-AD has no legal significance “with the absence of signature” and thus, “not yet a perfected document.”
Counsel for the provincial government of North Cotabato, Estrelito Torreon, agreed that the while the initialing of the MOA-AD may show that the provisions “are not a done deal,” it however, “formalizes consent” by government to commit to the provisions.
Torreon said initialing the MOA-AD “may have an effect in international law” which can be used by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to further advance its claim for self-determination.
This was dismissed by Reyes, saying “I don’t agree with your answer.”
The MOA-AD provides for a Bangsamoro Juridical Entity that will oversee the new Moro ancestral domain. Under it, the BJE can create its own judicial system, police forces and can enter into economic agreements and establish trade relations with other countries.
Reyes said the initialing of the MOA-AD may simply mean that the parties “have initialed a true and correct copy” and not necessarily the final contract because the one who initialed the document on behalf of government “has no authority.”
GRP peace panel chair Rodolfo Garcia initialed the MOA-AD with MILF counterpart Mohagher Iqbal and was witnessed by Datuk Othman Abdul Raza, special adviser to the Prime Minister of Malaysia.
Asked by Reyes if a signature is requisite to make the MOA-AD valid, Torreon said that the lack of signature in the document does not yet bind the government. To which Reyes replied: “So it is not a contract, not an agreement (yet).”

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rePost : ‘Mujahideens’ behind Lanao attacks – Commander Bravo

These are the kind of mentality that gives credence to the fact that a lot of thinkers believe religion to be an nuisance.  Killing, Plunder, terrorism is not excused by God!
Let’s see here is some rebel commander who denies attacking the lanao villages but calls the attack “following the will of God”.
To the MILF command please just gag this commander he is sabotaging these talks!
To the government , Who the F*ck thought of that MOA which is unconstitutional even to a non lawyer like me? Don’t you have lawyers at the negotiating panel! The lives of 36 people were lost because of your incompetence!
from here thanks to GMA news!

‘Mujahideens’ behind Lanao attacks – Commander Bravo
08/20/2008 | 11:33 AM
(Update) MANILA, Philippines — Amid threats of disciplinary action from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) leadership, a rebel commander on Wednesday disowned last Monday’s deadly attacks in Lanao del Norte province and said “mujahideens” fighting for “Allah” (God) were responsible.
“Wala kaming alam diyan sa atake sa Lanao del Norte. Narito kami sa kampo. (We have nothing to do with those attacks in Lanao del Norte. We were inside our camp),” Abdullah Macapaar said in an interview with Radio Mindanao Network.
Commander Bravo, as Macapaar is better known, is the commander of the MILF’s 102nd Base Command, the unit blamed for simultaneous attacks in the towns of Kolambugan, Maigo and Kauswagan last Monday, resulting in the deaths of 36 people including three soldiers.
While denying that his men were responsible, Bravo justified the role the “mujahideens” played.
“Ang mga mujahideen ang may gawa niyan, ‘yun sundalo ng Allah. Ang sinusunod nila ay ang talagang kautusan ng Panginoon Allah. (It was the mujahideens, God’s warriors, who were responsible. They only follow the will of Almighty God),” he said.
At the same time, Bravo warned that his group would not stand idly by and to answer fire with fire should government forces decide to attack MILF positions.
“Kung dumating ang mga sundalo dito (sa kampo namin), handa kaming makipag-barilan hanggang maubos kami at kung hindi nila kami maubos ay uubusin namin sila. Walang ng usapan hanggat hindi ibinibigay sa amin ang Islamic justice sa Mindanao,” he said.
MILF high officials earlier denounced the attacks on civilian targets in Lanao del Norte and other parts of Mindanao last Monday and said these were not authorized by the group’s central committee.
MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu, who was interviewed by RMN after Bravo, said the attacks are now being investigated by the joint government and MILF ceasefire panels, and that appropriate punishments await whoever was responsible.
Lt. Col. Ernesto Torres Jr., Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) spokesman, expressed disbelief over Bravo’s denials.
“Just this morning, there was condemnation coming from the MILF leadership of what Kato and Bravo did. So it’s not only the AFP and PNP who are saying these two commanders were responsible for the attacks,” he said in a separate interview.
Umbra Kato is the MILF commander whose unit was blamed for attacks on civilian targets in North Cotabato province last week.
On Bravo’s statement that they are ready to fight to the last man, Torres said: “Well it’s up to them. We will pursue them to punish them for their criminal acts.” – GMANews.TV

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rePost: SC chief: Constitution allows autonomy but not secession

Good News! Now we just have to make noise against the Charter Change try and we can wait til 2010 to elect a better president.
from gmanew here:

(Update) MANILA, Philippines – Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno on Friday rejected the possibility of the creation of a separate state in Mindanao, saying the Constitution does not allow secession.
At the same time, four justices expressed the opinion that the petition to junk the agreement between government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) was “premature.”
These cropped up during the oral arguments on the government’s ancestral domain agreement with the MILF where Puno equivocally said that the Constitution only allows for autonomy.
“Most that can be done is autonomy. It should be done within the framework of the Constitution, national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of the Philippines,” Puno said.
Puno cited Article 10, Section 15 of the Constitution which states the creation of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
For his part, Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio challenged the constitutionality of the government’s draft agreement on the issue of ancestral domain with the MILF.
Carpio questioned the constitutionality of several provisions in the agreement particularly those that provide for the creation of a Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE).
He said this would need an amendment of the Organic Act which requires an act of Congress and ratification of the people.
Carpio also noted that the provisions which allows the BJE to maintain its own police and military forces is violative of the Constitution.
“The Police is national in scope, civilian in nature and controlled by the National Police Commission…The President is the commander in chief of all armed forces. The President has sole control of training, recruitment and payroll,” Carpio said.
“The BJE cannot head the AFP,” Carpio added.
The Associate Justice also said that the provision which allows for the creation of a separate justice system for the BJE is likewise a clear violation of the Constitution.
Carpio noted that under the Constitution, the country will have a unitary justice system headed by the Supreme Court.
“Under Article 8 (of the Constitution), the judicial power shall be bested on one Supreme Court, a unitary judicial system. SC has the sole disciplinary authority over its courts and its personnel,” Carpio said.
Carpio also said the provision in the agreement for the conduct of a plebiscite after 25 years to pave the way for the widening of the BJE’s coverage encroaches into the power of the legislature to schedule a plebiscite to decide on such issues.
Carpio also expressed the observation that there was a seeming lack in consultation in the drafting of the agreement, saying even indigenous peoples in Mindanao have been left out in the draft agreement.
He said under the MOA, the lumads or tribal people of Mindanao will be incorporated to the Bangsamoro, believers of Islam. There are 18 lumad groups in Mindanao.
He said with the incorporation, the ancestral domain of the lumads will become part of the Bangsamoro ancestral domain.
He said it would put the entire Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan, which were the ancestral domains of the lumads, under the Bangsamoro.