An (unscientific) approach for determining the 'typical' frequency of significant cross-country correlations using World Bank data and R. What attracted me to the field of economics when introduced to it in high-school was the apparent abundance of solutions it offered for everyday problems. Does your country have low life expectancy? No problems: research has found that countries that invest more in public health perform better on this measure. Low GDP per-capita? Just improve your governance; as better governed countries tend to be richer. Suffering from internal conflict? Rough-terrain is statistically linked to conflict, perhaps you could invest in earth-moving equipment?…
Economic Policy is a Wicked Problem: It Needs Generalists
I remember being told by a mentor that the problem with my skill set was that I was a 'generalist'. Being early in my career, I didn't think too much about the feedback; as I really hadn't worked long enough to build a specialty even if I knew what I wanted that to be. But, I did find it confusing. After all, didn't the field of economics actively poke its nose into nearly every area of human existence - whether it be the links between abortion and crime or how to start a city? And weren't the intellectual giants of…
Spaghetti Code Dieting Tips
As an independent consultant the majority of my work is about solving novel problems faced by my clients. At a basic level, a client has a question they need answered or a problem they'd like solved and my job is to develop something that meets their needs (given the time and budget available to them). While the novel problems I'm often presented with is part of what makes my job fun. The ad-hoc nature of each project has sometimes meant past projects were organized in an ad-hoc fashion. For some of my past analysis projects I'd output everything to a…
Can I Learn Anything From Listening to Podcasts?
A couple of years ago I realized that I had amassed a large backlog of podcast episodes that I hadn't listened to. Clearly, past me thought listening to each of these episodes should be a priority for the intellectual development of future me, but future me was undisciplined and intransigent. At first glance, it seemed that my appetite for podcast-based learning was larger than my stomach. But, given I'm a big fan of listening to academics argue about esoteric ideas, I concluded that the backlog had accrued from an implementation problem, rather than a lack of motivation. My chosen solution…