Random Links

Posted on April 27, 2009 by andrewleigh

Several interesting studies/papers on randomised trials have come out lately. If time permits, I may come back to comment on them, but for now, I’ll just post the links for those who are interested in the topic:

Critiques of randomised trials from Angus Deaton (also here) and James Heckman (also here)
A defence of randomised trials from Guido Imbens (also here)
On the same theme, I posted links in mid-2008 to this article in the Economist, and this conference at the Brookings Institution (older, but relevant to the debate)
An FT article on how Steven Levitt and John List are using randomised trials in business.

(HT: SO & JG. Crossposted at Core Economics)

2 Responses to Random Links

Invig says:

April 27, 2009 at 10:34 am

I designed a methodology for my thesis that inherently employed my subconscious (as per this guy on Fora TV). It was all about processing bulk information with my subconscious while checking accuracy with the conscious mind; in a cyclical process.

It seemed to work well when data was elusive, slippery etc.

We should co-author a paper about it 🙂
Invig says:

April 28, 2009 at 10:32 am

Unfortunately this mass-production university model has led to separation where there ought to be collaboration and to ever-increasing specialization. In my own religion department, for example, we have 10 faculty members, working in eight subfields, with little overlap. And as departments fragment, research and publication become more and more about less and less. Each academic becomes the trustee not of a branch of the sciences, but of limited knowledge that all too often is irrelevant for genuinely important problems. A colleague recently boasted to me that his best student was doing his dissertation on how the medieval theologian Duns Scotus used citations.

The emphasis on narrow scholarship also encourages an educational system that has become a process of cloning. Faculty members cultivate those students whose futures they envision as identical to their own pasts, even though their tenures will stand in the way of these students having futures as full professors.
New York Times

So what do you reckon? I can drop by next time I’m in Canberra…