Bluewoods--life on both sides of the Pacific: Economics

超人是怎样炼成的

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:27:41 GMT

两周前因为一个与哈佛医学院的合作研究项目去Boston开会。临行前，同行的同事告诉我会后当晚安排去这个项目上跟我们合作的哈佛大学L教授家里吃饭，末了加了一句：这位女教授嫁给的是C教授。

C教授是何许人呢？是我们这个领域的年轻大牛之一。毕竟是同行，所以就不提名字了。有兴趣的不难猜出或查出此人是谁。

我们这个领域里的人读博的时候必定读过他的论文。他从博士毕业在哈佛当助理教授开始，到拿到终身教职并从副教授升为正教授，总共用了七年时间。正常情况下绝大多数人需要至少十二年才能升至正教授。不仅如此，他三十六岁当上哈佛大学社会科学学院的院长。且不说在哈佛大学当上一个学院院长有多难，就算是任何一个大学里，也绝少有人在五十岁之前当上学院院长。因为基本上被聘任为院长的人选大都是在研究上已经功成身退，专职转作行政管理，积累了相当行政管理经验的人。而这位C教授当上院长时却正是处在研究的高峰期，在他当上院长的第二年还在一流期刊上发表了8篇论文。在我们这个领域里，发表8篇论文是什么概念呢？在许多大学里，我们这个领域的助理教授在六年间发表8篇论文，大抵拿到终身教职就不成问题了，而他是在当院长的同时，一年内发了8篇。

我现在都还想得起几年前读博的时候与同学谈论起他时的样子。

对于这样一个超人，自然心里好奇，想要弄清楚除了天份之外，他还有什么样的过人之处，可以取得这样的成就。

可惜见到他本人并未解开这个迷。见到他时，他也刚下班回到家，一脸倦容，话也不多。吃饭的时候话稍微多了一些，谈到领域里另一位跟他一个时期的牛人M教授。跑个题：这位M教授也是成就惊人，八年时间从哈佛和麻省理工拿下肯尼迪政府学院一个硕士，一个医学博士，一个经济学博士。当实习医生两年加工作七年，38岁当上小布什的白宫经济顾问，39岁当上FDA(美国食品药物管理局)局长，成为历史上第一位担任此职的经济学家。当然话说回来，除了的确智慧能力过人之外，其家庭背景也不一般，与布什家族关系密切。M教授与C教授其实在麻省理工读经济学博士时还同窗了几年，不过也许是政治立场不同，也许是互不服气，C教授对M教授的演讲的评价只有一句 not impressive. 我的同事凑巧与M教授合作过，两人关系还不错，我偷偷看看他，果然平日健谈的他这会儿也就忍着一言不发了。

回到C教授身上。第二天早上早餐会的时候，问到在座两位哈佛教授波士顿塞车是否严重，L教授提起老公C教授，说他开车时一遇到塞车和红灯，便拿出论文开始读，让她很受不了。

听到这里，我心想：与C教授过人的智力相比，他这种过人的专注与投入，才是更使人难以望其项背的吧。

The best day

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 04:22:54 GMT

昨天大概是数月以来最忙的一天。

只睡了5个小时，起床洗完澡匆匆忙忙赶到系里开会和参加seminar，早餐来不及吃，只来得及往嘴里扔了一粒善存一粒B群维他命。本来中午有30分钟午餐时间，结果因为出了点意外要处理，连午餐也没时间吃。

意外处理完毕，12点开始的课已经过了10分钟。饿着肚子冲进教室讲课，60多页的powerpoint 讲下来，已是将近3点。紧接下来是当天第二个seminar，还好有serve点心，就着红茶吃了火柴盒大的一块巧克力蛋糕。4点过 seminar 结束，回到办公室坐下来处理email，20分钟还刚好看完、回复完email。

4点半开始了和来访学者的面谈，结果一谈又是一个多小时。可怜我杯子里的红茶早喝完了，看着桌子对面客人手里的矿泉水，我舔舔嘴唇，后悔刚才没给自己也拿一瓶。更糟糕的是饿了一天的肚子终于撑不住开始抗议，叫的声音还不小，尴尬之下也只能故作镇定，当作什么都没发生。

5点45分结束了谈话，把客人安排到会议室休息，自己跑回办公室看文献，准备6点的meeting。18页，20多篇文献的摘要只来得及大概扫了一眼便抱着笔记本去同事办公室开会谈新的研究项目。到6点40，终于把当天最后一个会开完了，开车带着客人到 downtown 吃饭。这一顿饭一吃又是两个多小时，虽然点的红酒烩牛肉有点咸，但点的一瓶红酒着实不错，3个人一下就喝完了，聊得也是十分尽兴。将近10点，终于回到了家里。

当然这其实是很不典型的一天，当天身体里的咖啡因也比平日少，但不知为何却一点倦意或困意都没有，就连3个小时的lecture下来，虽然嗓子有点哑，但头脑却一直高度兴奋。备课的时候我还有点担心最后十几个 slides 的成本曲线分析我自己会忘记要讲些什么，可最后连想都不用想就都出来了。也不知道哪里来的精力，也许是维他命B-12，也许就是赶上了，身体与大脑的状态奇佳，看来忙一点也有好处。

我无论如何算不上是工作狂。以前在MTV工作的时候，我的上司就是每天只睡5小时，第二天早上见到她，她却永远是精力充沛，容装精致整齐。而那时的我每天睡8小时，加上咖啡和茶，一天还能打20多个哈欠。对上司的过人精力只能深表敬仰。读博的时候也有过七十小时不沾枕头，和连着两周每两天睡4小时的经历，但昨天却实实在在是第一次自己感觉得到状态有多好。

要是每天都能这样精力充沛该多好。

经济学家看诺奖

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:37:06 GMT

Steven Levitt (史蒂文·列维) 14号于诺贝尔经济学奖公布前为纽约时报写了一篇关于诺奖的短文，非常搞笑。Levitt 现任芝加哥大学经济学教授，绝对是经济学界的金童。除了研究做得好，他05年出版的 Freakonomics 一书（中文译本《魔鬼经济学》）也是当年的纽约时报最畅销书之一，最佳的经济学普及读物之一。强烈推荐。

在为纽约时报写的这篇短文里，他谈了几点随想：

1. 诺贝尔经济学奖难猜的主要原因是评审委员会面临着一个困难的动态优化问题：一方面，因为只能奖给活人，所以委员会总是倾向于颁给年老的经济学家，以免哪天一不小心就死掉了。但同时，这些老经济学家这么老了还没得奖又似乎意味着他们可能不如一些年轻点的经济学家。所以委员会总是要艰难在很棒 (very good) 的老经济学家与伟大 (great) 的年轻一些的经济学家之间抉择。

2. 每年诺奖公布前都有上百名经济学家把自己接下来几周的时间都空出来：准备自己得奖后被邀请去各地演讲。当然他们中的大多数永远没有任何机会真正获奖。

3. 那些开出诺贝尔经济学奖得主博彩的博彩网站和公司是神经病，因为除了经济学家没人真的愿意/能够猜测谁会获奖，而经济学家们是最不可能参与博彩的一群人。

下面是原文的节选，原文在 http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/the-nobel-prize-in-economics/

1) I guarantee you that the economist(s) who win it will be much better sports than Doris Lessing, who seemed put off that the award had disturbed her daily routine. Every economist is dying to win the Nobel.

2) There is always great uncertainty about who will win it. Partly, that is because it’s hard to say which economic contributions have been most influential. Mostly, though, it is because the committee faces a difficult dynamic optimization problem: economists are only eligible if they are alive. That pushes the committee towards awarding it to older economists who might die soon. On the other hand, the fact that they are old and haven’t won yet means that they may not be as strong a candidate as some of the younger economists. As such, there is never an obvious winner — there are always many marginal candidates — among the good very old economists and the great but not quite as old economists. Note how different this process is from the John Bates Clark Medal, where it is always pretty obvious that there are a small set of serious contenders because of the fixed age cutoff.

3) There are hundreds of economists who have their calendar cleared for the next few weeks, just in case they win. Many of these economists have no chance whatsoever of winning. 4) Both Ladbrokes and InTrade allow betting on who will win the Economics Nobel Prize. This is crazy. Nobody cares about this except economists, and hardly any economists gamble!

About the Nobel Prize in Economics

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:54:53 GMT

对于大多数人来说，每一年的诺贝尔奖得主以及他们获奖的贡献，都是从没听说过的。以前看诺贝尔奖得主的新闻唯一能关心的大概就是他们是哪国人，在哪个大学。

今年的经济学诺奖得主揭晓前，好些博彩公司都开了有可能得奖的名单与赔率，不过最后获奖的三位：Leonid Hurwicz, Eric S. Maskin and Roger B. Myerson，没有一个在博彩公司的名单上。

不说mechanism design了，估计也没人有兴趣读。不过今天的华尔街日报网站上搜集了一些blogger对获奖的评论，相当有趣，可以当笑话一读。(注：该笑话无需经济学背景知识。) ^_^

This Nobel prize is exactly the sort of thing that journalists have nightmares about. They wake up early, and read a citation from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences giving the Economics prize to three economists they’ve never heard of, for helping to develop an entire discipline – mechanism design theory – that they’ve also never heard of…...–Felix Salmon, Market Movers

NONE of these 3 economists appeared in the list of “favorites” in the Intrade marketplace… Next time you hear a complaint about the failure of economists to forecast major economic shifts, just remember this: we even have trouble forecasting who amongst us is being seriously considered for a Nobel. –George Borjas, The Borjas Blog

求Blessing～:P

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 09:35:41 GMT

我也学学人家mitbbs jobhunting版的来求个blessing吧，呵呵。

周二答辩，各位祝我好运吧，明天吃饭睡觉前帮忙给pray一下，一下就好~:D

别人我不担心，就拜托Warren老爷爷开开心心给我sign了......o^_^o

最牛B的博士论文 zz

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 06:13:07 GMT

我好像从来没转载过别人的东西，不过这篇太好笑了，哈哈。

最牛逼博士论文就是在还没答辩之前已经发表在最好的期刊上，而且鉴于论文很长，该期刊必须像小说一样连载。

实例：张五常博士论文《佃农理论》，当年在JLE上连载四期。

2、最牛逼博士论文答辩就是答辩人一直在挑战答辩委员会成员，直到问的这些教授们紧张到恍惚以为自己才是答辩人。

实例：萨缪尔森的博士论文答辩结束后，答辩委员会成员之一的熊彼特（上世纪最伟大的经济学家之一）转过头去问另一位成员里昂剔夫（诺奖得主）：“瓦西里，我们通过了么？”

3、最牛逼投稿论文就是让编辑满世界都找不到一个能看懂这篇论文的匿名审稿人，最后只能发表，根本不需要修改的。

实例：SIMS1971年发表在《数理统计年鉴》上的论文《无穷维参数空间中的分布滞后估计》。SIMS写完这篇论文后没投经济学杂志，因为他显然知道没人看的懂。于是投给了最牛逼的数理统计杂志，结果编辑死活找不到审稿人，最后好不容易凑合拉来一个，审稿报告是这么写的：“我真的不明白这篇论文在说什么，但是我检验了其中的几个定理，好像是对的。所以我猜应该发表。”

Ignorant arrogance

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 09:39:21 GMT

You would have thought that people with higher education would be generally more respectful to other intellectuals, but I have been surprised again and again to see how many ignorant yet arrogant people there are in academia.

Once in a while, you would find people from one discipline jump out and say things like “Mathematical research is totally useless and I don’t know why governments and universities even pay the mathematicians.” The target varies, but mathematics, humanities and social sciences are the usual suspects. Even within one discipline there are still people calling other research areas stupid and useless.

I have no problem with criticism, criticism on the research methodologies and research philosophy, if one truly understands what other people are doing and knows what he/she is criticizing. It's also understandable that when people choose one discipline it’s usually because he/she is more interested in it or thinks it’s more important than other disciplines, just like I tell my students how interesting and useful Economics is all the time. But that is very different from discrediting or bilittling other researches without really knowing what he/she is talking about.

Every time I see or hear this kind of comments, I just can't stop thinking how silly and ignorant it is, and the person who says that doesn’t even know how little he actually knows. Often times he knows one piece of it, but he thinks he knows it all and doesn’t even want to try to learn or understand it more. This is what I call the “ignorant arrogance”. After a while I started to think maybe some people do so simply because he isn’t confident about what he is doing, and just needs to make himself feel better by belittling or discrediting other disciplines and researches.

The more you learn, the more humble you should be. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

工作

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 05:39:29 GMT

上周拿到了第一个正式工作，一所还算不错的大学的tenure track assistant professor，可是仔细考虑过之后，还是决定放弃。

其实从许多方面来说，这个工作都算很理想了，系里的其他教授和系主任对我很好，campus visit那两天跟他们相处得也非常愉快。只是实在觉得这个城市远离亲人朋友，连像样的中餐馆也没几个，一下子发现，自己其实真的是很喜欢纽约的（唉，这才发现原来吃在我生命中占了这么重要的地位～～）。

因为这个决定，可是费尽了力气向两位导师解释。在没有别的offer的情况下，拒绝一个tenure track offer，大概在很多人看来都太冒险了。一位导师甚至回信给我说：I admire your confidence...

给那位系主任回信告之我决定放弃他们的offer花了我整整30分钟，斟酌字眼与语气。毕竟他们不单花了不少钱和时间在我身上，而且还有感情投资，这才发现，原来拒绝offer也不是件容易的事。

About Ben Bernanke, the new Fed chief?

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 06:54:31 GMT

Maye asked me to comment on the nomination of Ben Bernanke as the new Federal Reserve Chairman. So I wrote a long comment on her space before noticing it. Then I thought: if I've written it, why not bring it back to my own blog? I added a little bit more information to make it complete.

President Bush nominated Ben Bernanke as the new Federal Reserve Chairman this Monday. People have been discussing who would be succeed Greenspan for quite a while, Bernanke is not a surprise at all.

Before I start to comment on him, I have to say that Macroeconomics is not my field and I don't closely follow Macroeconomic research, although ironically I've been assigned to teach Macro for the past 2 years.

Unlike the nomination of Ms. Miers as Supreme Court Justice, Bernanke, as well as the other top candidates whom have been discussed for the past year, is well qualified in terms of academic experience. He also had experience as Federal Reserve governor and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Therefore I wouldn't expect much trouble on the confirmation from Congress.

FED is a "government agency" but supposedly "independent" of the government. It is overseen by the congress and it's financially independent from government budget. The FED influences the economy through monetary policies. I'm writing this to explain why the operation of FED doesn't have much relationship with the fiscal policy or other economic policies from the White House.

Greenspan has been a very successful Fed Chairman in my opinion. Also the FED has been very consistent in adopting moderate and steady monetary policies to keep prices stable and promote employment. It's not like the fiscal policies involving government spending and tax, which have been changed dramatically from one president to another. Another thing is that many of the important policy decisions from FED are made by the Federal Open Market Committee, which consist of twelve members -- the seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and four of the remaining eleven Reserve Bank presidents, who serve one-year terms on a rotating basis. So in my opinion, among the top 3 candidates, whoever becomes the chair, wouldn't make a huge difference. Even Bernanke himself claimed that "My first priority will be to maintain continuity with the policies and policy strategies established during the Greenspan years."

The current issue with American economy ,especially the huge dual deficit in budget and trade, is not a result of bad monetary policies, but rather the consequence of other economic policies such as incautious government spending and tax cut, as well as the consumption-mania among the public. Perhaps US has the lowest saving rate in the world, and that's why it heavily depends on foreign investment. Greenspan has expressed his serious concern over some of the issues, but he cannot change any of them. All he can do is to use the monetary policy at hand to mitigate the impact.

Regarding the inflation targeting, which seems to be the key different opinion between Bernanke and Greenspan that the media has been talking about, I haven't read any academic paper on this particular issue. But I know some Macro economists worry about the social cost of unexpected inflation, and also most of the economists agree that a moderate inflation rate will grease the wheel of employment. But I don't know if there is any solid empirical evidence supporting it even though they all sound quite intuitive.

Again, as i said earlier, I'm not a Macro economist, I'd be happy to hear any different opinions on the issues I talked about above.

To Robert Aumann!

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 05:37:25 GMT

今天早上起来一查信便看到一个学弟发的群信，Robert Aumann拿到了今年的Nobel经济学奖。

Aumann是石溪经济系的元老了，可以说是他把石溪经济系的博弈论研究带到了今天的水准上。从4年前刚进系里，就听师兄传说着他当年在John Nash与 Harsanyi、Selten因博弈论拿奖那届排在了第四的事，可Nobel一次只能奖给3个人。那时大家都觉得Nobel很难再给一次博弈论了。但最终还是给他拿到了。

Nash是做非合作博弈的（Non-cooperative Game）,而Aumann与Martin Shubik则在60年代开始将合作博弈（cooperative Game）应用在经济学上。Aumann从1986年起在石溪经济系任教，直到近两年，他年纪也大了，基本上把重心转回了老家的以色列希伯莱大学。但他每年夏天仍然还赶回来参加我们系主办的国际博弈论会议。这里两张照片一张是他老人家在今年的博弈论会议晚宴上的，一张是他在希伯莱大学主页上的。

16届博弈论国际会议

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 03:57:44 GMT

Stony Brook经济系的一个重点方向是博弈论，每年夏天，我们系都会组织这个应该是最top的博弈论会议。自从有了 A Beautiful Mind 这部电影之后，John Nash便成了这个会每年的明星。我们这些学经济学的，自然不能免俗，也要追追星。

这些照片是在会议最后的招待晚宴上拍的，我不是做博弈论的，所以说句实话，我是去蹭饭的。:-)

Lloyd Shapley & John Nash

Nash是1950年普林斯顿的Phd，Shapley和Martin Shubik是53年的。那时的Princeton数学系真是伟大...

这张我们系博士生的合影是跟John Nash开的一个玩笑。招待会上很多人跟Nash合影，我们却把他叫来帮我们拍照。结果老头子摆弄半天也搞不清数码相机怎么用，我们却偏不过去帮他。^_^

最贵的液体？

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 04:33:58 GMT

眼睛痒了好几天，昨天早上起来有点肿，于是决定去看医生。看完病医生觉得应该是过敏，开了一瓶治过敏的眼药水叫我去药房拿。一瓶小小的眼药水，5ml的，比平时常见的15ml的眼药水还小很多，价格却吓了我一跳。如果不是我有医疗保险，这瓶小小的眼药水就是100多美元。

在美国，处方药的价格已经成为一个热点问题，很多普通百姓和医生、研究者、甚至经济学家都在抱怨药厂的定价是造成美国人医疗开支巨大的重要原因，但也有研究表明因为药物的开发研制费用巨大，且FDA（食品药物管理局）批准药物的要求又极其严格，所以很多药物在开发研制阶段过程中不能被批准而只能放弃，而最终获得批准开始生产销售的药物也都经历了数年甚至十多年的研究试验测试。所以当计算这些药物的成本的时候，必须把那些在研究过程中失败而未能获准生产销售的药物的研究开发费用也计算进去。Tufts University的经济学家们的一份研究显示，每8000种研发的药物中才有一种最后能够成功获准生产销售，所以每一种最后获得FDA批准的药物的平均研发费用就高达8亿美元。并且，因为美国对药物的严格管制，时不时还会有获准生产的药物在使用过程中被研究人员发现有意外的副作用而被禁止生产，而这样的事件一旦发生，通常就会对制药公司产生巨大打击。所以制药行业也的确是一个高风险的行业。

可是作为学经济学的，再怎么理性，看到这样的价格，还是觉得不可思议，这大概真的是我有生用过的最昂贵的液体了。

上帝保佑所有没有医疗保险的人。