Tyler's conversation with Dani Rodrik

This is the video of Tyler's conversation with Dani Rodrik:

A few points:

1. Tyler's conversations are excellent.
2. I was not convinced by the "fundamental" difference between agriculture and manufacturing as Rodrik put it.
3. Even though Tyler pushed the issue of culture, Rodrik does not see it as an important explanation for economic development generally, and for adoption of manufacturing in particular. (Sachs is not persuaded about culture either, but Zingales is).
4. About Vietnam: Rodrik: "I think you see the same about why is it that Vietnam has developed in the way that it has after it opened up its economy. I think if Vietnam was located in Latin America or Central America, I don’t think it would have been half the miracle that it was." Hard to make something with this statement. If Vietnam were in Central America it would not be Vietnam any more. In any case, does it imply that if Guatemala were in South East Asia, it would be an economic miracle given an opening of its economy? 
5. What should change in graduate school education in economics? Both, Rodrik and Sachs shared deep concerns about the use of math for its own sake in the profession. Sachs recommended a new approach in the method of development economics, as I understood it, something akin to what anthropologists do. Rodrik indicated that spending a year in a developing country would help a lot to think abut a relevant research agenda. I agree with both . . . I would add more years to the economic development experience. The basic message is to get closer to real world problems. 

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Hay tres puntos fundamentales, me parece, en esta entrevista que Tyler Cowen le hace a Dani Rodrik:

1. La economia de países como Turquia no se han modernizado porque enfrentan dos limitantes principales, una de estructura y otra de agencia. Esto significa que existen condiciones iniciales (las interpreto como históricas, geográficas, etc). La otra es agencia, es decir el liderazgo que puede promover reformas exitosas y otras fallidas. 
2. La educación económica, principalmente a nivel de postgrado debe redefinirse en el sentido que es deseable una aproximación del estudiante a problemas reales. La matematización de la economía per-se puede distraer el cometido principal del economista, que es resolver, o contribuir a resolver problemas sociales urgentes. 
3. Rodrik parece poner mas peso a restricciones políticas y estructurales de la economía, y no tanto al factor cultura. 

La transcripción de la entrevista, en ingles, esta aquí.

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Live versus Internet media of instruction

From a paper by David Figlio, Mark Rush, & Lu Yin

This article presents the first experimental evidence on the effects of live versus Internet media of instruction. Students in a large introductory microeconomics course at a major research university were randomly assigned to live lectures versus watching these same lectures in an Internet setting where all other factors (e.g., instruction, supplemental materials) were the same. We find modest evidence that live-only instruction dominates Internet instruction. These results are particularly strong for Hispanic students, male students, and lower-achieving students. We also provide suggestions for future experimentation in other settings.

A draft of the paper is here (2010). The paper was published three years after the draft. From the conclusions

. . . our strongest findings in favor of live instruction are for the relatively low-achieving students, male students, and Hispanic students. These are precisely the students who are more likely to populate the less selective universities and community colleges. These students may well be disadvantaged by the movement to online education and, to the extent that it is the less selective institutions and community colleges that are most fully embracing online education, inadvertently they may be harming a significant portion of their student body.

At the least, our findings indicate that much more experimentation is necessary before one can credibly declare that online education is peer to traditional live classroom instruction, let alone superior to live instruction. 

I am optimistic about online education, and it will improve with time. 

Face to face education is here to stay, at least for some good years. The best way to look at online education is as a complement to face to face interactions. Probably only the conscientious are the ones who will take advantage of online classes, as Tyler Cowen says.  

Marketing and Economic Anthropology

From an interview with Tyler Cowen 

As more of our economy becomes about marketing this will mean economic theory explains less and less of what’s going on. I think what I call “the economic anthropologists” will rise in importance. It will be hard for them to show that what they’re doing is as equally scientific as the traditional number crunchers, but nonetheless that will be the way to understand what’s actually going on. 

So I’m a big fan of someone like Grant McCracken, who is, in fact, an anthropologist. He spends a lot of his time working with companies, helping them figure out how they can understand what it is their consumers care about and how to grab the attention of those people.

Here Tyler tells his perspective on the difference between economics and anthropology. Tyler himself has done remarkable work on (or with) economic anthropology. His books An economist gets lunch and Markets and Cultural Voices combined, among other things, ethnographic field work, anthropological concepts, with behavioral economics, history, and economic theory (a great interview about the first book is here). 

Here there is a piece on economic anthropology I wrote, its definition and its future. But I missed one of Tyler's main points, which is economic anthropology as a way to analyze consumer behavior, as a complement, and may be as a substitute, of big data analysis (data mining/multivariate statistics). 

“Learn, Teach and Share”

Instead, Cowen said, among other uses, they want to reach students in countries who can’t pay, and also help professors at other institutions flip their classrooms by using the recorded lectures from Marginal Revolution like a textbook. To do that, Cowen said, professors can ask students to view videos before class from MRUniversity. Then, during class, the professors can use class time for things other than broad lectures. If this happens, the Marginal Revolution courses become video textbooks for students.

There is more here. 

Tyler Cowen on "stories"

This is Tyler Cowen. He is suspicious of stories. Stories make him nervous. I am not convinced by the argument, yet. But still, very thought provoking talk.