Posts from — September 2007

A course I taught in NUI, Galway in 2004. Right click to download all the files in the .zip file below.

EC229.zip

Course Archive of a micro course at the New School for social research in Spring 2005.

Right click and download the file below.

GECO6190.zip

Course Archive of a course I taught in 2004 at NUI, Galway.

Right click the link below to download a .zip file of all the lecture notes, course outlines, exams, etc. It’s 3.2mb in size.

EC213.zip

Right click the link below to download the course archive (.zip).

binder_course_work.zip

A course I taught at NUI Galway in 2004. Archives of the course are below.

EC502_Macroeconomics_Vela.zip

Because Ireland are playing so badly…

We talked about GDP today. Here’s a definition. And here’s what the forecasters are saying will happen to GDP in the next while:

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link

• Economics Everywhere
  Good source of examples of the New Economics of Everything
  (tags: everything+paper)
• Royal Economic Society Annual Conference - Call for Special Session Proposals
  (tags: Conference)

Abstract

Background: Prematurity and extremely low birth-weight (ELBW) is a well recognised financial burden on health care in the developed world. Cost of treatment increases with decreasing gestation. While cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses have been calculated and extrapolated (Gilbert et al, 2003, Payne et al, 2004), it is frequently the average and the median that is sought. An extremely high cost however is always possible at the beginning of each case, and in some, the eventuality. This study examines one such case of an infant conceived by in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), and attempts to determine the total cost from conception to discharge from the special care baby unit.

Aims:

1. To determine the precise total health care expenditure through capital and recurrent expenditure on an infant born at the margins of viability from birth to discharge from acute hospital care.

2. To accurately calculate the unit cost of care following birth at the margins of viability and subsequently the cost of care per week of a 24/40 gestation neonate.

3. To use the total and marginal cost calculated to create a pilot model for cost following the local delivery of a 24/40-week gestation infant.

Methods: We compiled a file of tests, treatments and interventions carried out on an ELBW infant. Unit costs were assigned. Appropriate values for professional input and in-patient non-medical consumables were calculated in per-unit per-day values and incorporated. Further direct costs incurred by the family were also included as well as proportional infrastructure, equipment, and refurbishment expenditures. Marginal Cost (MC) of daily treatment was measured as change in Total Cost (TC) per extra day of life. We determine total costs of treatment per extra week of life by linear regression (R2 = 0.71, p-value < 0.05). The evolution of costs was then demonstrated in terms of cumulative percentage of weekly costs over time.

Results: The total cost was found to be €665,219.88. Our analysis shows that by increasing gestation cost could be decreased by €5,167.50 per week of increased gestation, with a fixed cost of €26,608.00. Total cost and marginal costs were found to be substantially larger from published observations in other countries, including the UK and USA (Payne et al, 2004, Phibbs et al, 2006, Petru et al, 2006). This is possibly due to the detailed nature of the data set.

Conclusion & Further Work: With the total and unit cost of our index case determined, a model of health care expenditure of an infant born locally is known. In further work we apply this model as a benchmark to a large dataset of infants born in the mid-western region of Ireland.

Paper presented at the Irish Paediatric Association Annual conference, October 2006, Kemmy Business School Research Conference, Wednesday, 16th May 2007.

Irish Journal of Medical Science, 2006;175(4), October/November/December issue. pgs. 63–69

Kinsella_KBS_Margins_Submission[1].doc.1106073.pdf

[Download a poster presentation]

(To be presented at the 12th Association of Italian Health Economists, October 18/19, 2007)

GWdata2_feb13_2007%281%29(1).xls

[Download the data set (.xls, 1.7mb)]

Dr Berhanu Nega was imprisoned 2 years ago for being the leader of the main opposition party in Ethiopia. He is a New School alumnus, so we formed a protest group (site here) to help spread awareness of Berhanu’s situation. He was recently released, and came to the New School to express his thanks. Here’s a video of Dr. Nega recounting his experiences in prison. It’s also a heartening story of collective action at work in the world. Other videos are here.

Experimental Economics is a hot topic in economics at the moment. Here are the top labs in the world.

Laboratory for Experimental Economics (LEE)

Bonn Laboratory for Experimental Economics

CEEL - Department of Economics - University of Trento

Economic Science Lab

Experimental Economics Laboratory

Abstract

Teaching heterodox economics to postgraduate students trained in the more traditional aspects of economics using Problem-Based Learning (PBL) methods requires a significant rewriting of the module curriculum, as well as flexibility on the part of both students and the lecturer in the delivery of content. This short article describes the approach taken to the module, the implementation of the PBL method, and reports student and lecturer feedback of their experiences of the module as an alternative both to the traditional content and delivery of a monetary economics module at postgraduate level. I conclude that careful thought is required for the delivery of such a module, and student’s expectations of such a module need to be managed throughout to obtain the highest level of student and lecturer satisfaction with the module as a whole.

Submitted to Journal of Economic Education, Sept 11, 2007.

[Download the Paper]

[Download Supporting Files]

Should the ECB go for growth? | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from Europe’s leading economists:

Jean-Claude Trichet and his colleagues at the European Central Bank have clearly learned the wisdom of Paul Volcker: without first establishing anti-inflationary credibility, all is lost. The question now is whether they should learn the wisdom of Alan Greenspan – that the economy’s speed limit can change and that policy may have to be adapted accordingly.

Developing this insight and acting upon it were arguably Greenspan’s greatest achievements. In a series of speeches starting in 1995 that many observers initially dismissed as an effort to evade questions of policy, the Maestro raised the possibility that the sustainable rate of economic growth had increased due to the productivity-enhancing effects of new information and communications technologies. From January 1996 through June 1999, the Fed did not raise interest rates despite strong economic growth that, under other circumstances, would have fanned fears of inflation. Monetary policy did not choke off the expansion. Continued strong investment supported the deployment of the new productivity-enhancing infrastructure.

• JSTOR: The American Economic Review: Vol. 68, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Ninetieth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (May, 1978),
  Rationality as Process and as Product of Thought
  Herbert A. Simon
  (tags: Readings)

The Economist’s Charlemagne on The EU:

A QUARTER of the way into a devastating new book about the European Union, one of the authors, Simon Everett, offers a comforting prediction about the EU’s long-term global heft. With an economy that he says produces an annual $12 trillion (€8.8 trillion) in added value and more than 450m rich consumers, Europe will remain at the top table of world trade negotiations “for decades to come”, he writes. But then comes a sharp prod. “The question, then, is to what purpose?”

link

The book discussed is here.

Right click the link below and choose ’save target as’ to download the handout.

EC4333_Lecture1_handout_numbers.pdf

• Geek notes for living inside of one text file. This is what happens when computers get too complicated.
  Geek notes for living inside of one text file. This is what happens when computers get too complicated.
  (tags: Blogs Hacks People productivity programming software web geek)

Brilliant Essay, required reading for EC4333′ers.

Best Paragraph:

I am sure you will agree: An inquiry into the world must think and it must look. It must theorize and must observe. Formalize and record. Both. That’s obvious and elementary. Not everyone involved in a collective intelligent inquiry into the world need do both: the detective can assign his dim-witted assistant to just observe. But the inquiry as a whole must reflect and must listen. Both. Of course.

http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/pubs/drafts/stats.php

Zimbabwe currency devalued:

Zimbabwe devalues its currency as part of its battle to tackle its deepening economic crisis.