the 100th post spectacular

Welcome to the j-curve's 100th blog entry. So much blathering on about India and economics and boys and the random minutiae of my life, and I couldn't have done it without you, my loyal readers. To quote Homer Simpson (in the episode where he becomes obese so that he can be legally disabled and work at home, upon the dedication of his remote work station): "Thank you for your pity." Really, though, blogging is fun, and I'm happy that y'all are still reading from time to time.

I probably shouldn't have chosen 1:30 a.m. as the time to start this post. It probably won't be very spectacular, since I'm getting sleepy already. But I'll give you a quick rundown of my weekend, and then a few more Belize pics.

I got quite a bit of work done on our data (entering the last couple surveys, compiling the data that each of us enetered into a single spreadsheet with consistent formatting, making some of the changes recommended by my advisor, etc). I wish I could say that it's finished, but I have to go back and add some dummy variables for type of business, and I have to correct some inconsistencies in how I entered what year certain things happened, because I realized that somewhere along the line I changed the way I was doing it. I'm hoping all that can be completed in another day or two. I finally did laundry and some other random chores, and I worked on my macro reading, so all in all it was a reasonably productive couple of days.

I dragged the still-jetlagged and majorly stressed DWE out on Friday and Saturday night to hang with my school peeps. Friday was just drinks at the Pig and Whistle, but Saturday we went to a salsa club. DWE is very unenthusiastic about participating in dance that involves specific steps (as opposed to, say, just gettin' down with one's bad self, which he doesn't seem to love but is at least willing to do in the right context and with some mild coaxing). The husband of one of my dear classmates taught me to salsa. It's not terribly hard, and he was a very good teacher, but it takes some getting used to. I also danced with JSOC for a little bit; he loves to salsa and was out on the dance floor all night. I ran into a friend that graduated from IDEC last year; I didn't even know she was still in town, and it turns out that she works two blocks from where I live, which is neat. It was really good to catch up with her a bit.

I hung out with DWE for a while tonight, but due in large part to his work-induced stress (there are major changes/expansions/challenges/etc happening in his company right now, and much of the responsibility for making things happen falls on his shoulders), he's increasingly needing time to himself. Sometimes it is disappointing, because he's out of town so often that when he's here I want to see him as much as I can. On the other hand, his need for alone time is completely understandable (especially since his job, particularly while he's out of town, very often has a social component that takes up many of his evenings). And tonight, for example, I didn't even really mind that he didn't come over. I've become increasingly greedy about my own alone time, and I'm feeling a lot of urgency about working on my data, especially since I found out yesterday that I will indeed be presenting my research at the Pacific Development Conference (as will three of my fellow IDECers and two of the department's professors, including my advisor).

Enough about school and stress and all that. Let's pretend I'm back in Belize instead:



"Go Slow": The island's ubiquitous motto.

This is the guest house where we stayed. Our room was on the top floor, left hand side. From the patio, you looked out onto the ocean to the east, but if you walked to the right side and leaned over the railing just a touch, you could also look at the ocean to the west. Very weird being on such a skinny strip of land.

This is just sort of a typical island view: palm trees, a pier, really blue water, and a bit of a charming, worn, windswept feel to everything.

This is Leo, a little kitten that DWE befriended on the beach while I was scattering the little bit of my dad's ashes that I brought (as is my new travel custom). The kitten followed DWE over to me and he (DWE, not the cat) said, "This is Leo." I asked DWE how he knew the cat's name, since he wasn't wearing a collar. DWE had just made the name up. Anyway, Leo was adorable, and he climbed right in my lap and loved all over me, and was not creepy and flea-infested like the cats in India. I wanted desperately to smuggle him back to the US in my suitcase.

Leo loved DWE too (although not as much as me), but he (Leo, that is) was sort of done posing for pictures by the time I took this one. DWE wore that stupid hat all weekend, because he needed a haircut and thought his hair looked "poofy".

venting a little anxiety

I spent an hour and a half on the phone with my advisor yesterday (you'll recall that he's on sabbatical in Santa Barbara, so I can't just go to his office) talking about my thesis. The conversation was in general positive, helpful, and even a bit comforting, but I'm feeling totally overwhelmed by how much work I need to do before the development conference on March 17th. I submitted my paper title and abstract to the conference chairs today; there is some chance that they won't accept my paper for the conference, but based on what I know, that's fairly unlikely (not because I'm fabulous, but rather because they are generally not overwhelmed by potential presenters, and I think they like to have students present). So between now and then I need to pry some additional information out of IMED, which means that I have to give them some kind of summary of our findings, which they've been bugging us for. The problem is that there's so much data and we don't have much in the way of coherent results at the moment, so I'm not entirely sure what to give them. I guess just some descriptive statistics (this percentage of people that we surveyed bought a TV since they got credit, etc), but coming up with that stuff will actually probably be a lot of work, and I'm not entirely sure how to do it either in Excel or Stata (partly because I don't know those programs as well as I should, and partly because it's tricky to do stuff like that with panel data). Anyway, I also have to go back through every survey and add some more variables and make some changes to existing variables. And then I have to run a bunch of econometric estimations and tests that I only sort of understand. And then after that I have to run my regression model in a bunch of different ways, and make neat little graphs to go with everything.

I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining. I'm actually feeling very enthusiastic about my thesis at the moment. I don't mind doing the work, I just wish I felt like I knew what I was doing a little more. But I suppose the point of school is that you don't know what you're doing and then you learn. I keep forgetting about that.

The good news is that I'm staying on top of my regular schoolwork pretty well (which is not, you know, super-difficult when one is only taking two classes, but still), so I can spend some serious time focused on my thesis without too much other stuff hanging over my head. The fact that I am attending five classes total (the two I'm enrolled in, the two I'm auditing, and Undergrad Econometrics, which I'm TAing) is actually in some ways helpful, because I can multitask during the three I'm not being graded on, and I'm on campus a lot, which encourages me to work in the time between classes.

Okay, I need to get to bed. Probably by Thursday or Friday I'll have a chance to post some more Belize pictures and tell ya'll more about the trip.

"gay" bands

DWE saw a link to this website on a political blog, and it's bizarre enough that we're not entirely convinced that it isn't a spoof. If it isn't, it's equal parts disturbing and funny. Disturbing 'cause, you know, God hates queers, pop culture makes you gay, etc. Funny because of the lists of "safe music" and "gay music" (aka "music to watch out for"). I'll leave you to discover and enjoy the amusing and eclectic collection of "gay" music for yourself, and comment on just two things:

One, why is Cyndi Lauper filed among the more or less "Christian" bands as "safe"? Because let me tell you, sister, when I saw Cher in concert (yes, I saw Cher in concert...laugh all you want, but it was, as promised, the Cherest Show on Earth), Cyndi opened for her (she was excellent, by the way) and when she sang "True Colors" she brought a big ol' rainbow flag on stage and waved it around, much to the delight of the audience, which was probably 75% gay guys.

The second thing is the one that got me riled up enough to write this blog entry. One of the people on the "gay music" list is Clay Aiken. I am aware that Clay has many stereotypically "gay" mannerisms and that it is widely speculated that he is gay. However, unless I've missed something, he continues to deny that he is gay, and as you know, I don't believe that someone is gay unless they say they are, no matter how much of a homo they act like. Furthermore, Clay professes beliefs and opinions consistent with fairly conservative Christianity, including a belief that homosexuality is wrong (although he seems to take a generally tolerant, loving stance toward all people, unlike this website).

Even if Clay is gay, he's chosen either to hide it, or to live as a straight/abstinent person. If the latter is true, that's his choice, based on his beliefs, and no one has the right to call him gay or tell him to behave otherwise. He has every right to act in accordance with his beliefs, and for this supposedly "Christian" website to label his music as somehow "dangerous" because of the Hollywood gossip mill or the fact that he flat-irons his hair is totally dispicable. Clay's music and public statements generally promote values that many people identifying as "Christian" would support, and the fact that this stupid, mindless website would implicitly attack the sincerity of Clay's faith in such a careless and utterly baseless way is totally disgusting to me. (Yes, the whole website is disgusting to me, and much of the rest of the list seems largely careless and illogical, but for some reason the Clay thing really sticks in my craw.)

unbelizeable

First, a confession: like the tacky, unrepentant American tourist that I am, I bought a t-shirt at the airport that says "unbelizeable" on it. Usually puns bug the crap out of me, but that one cracks me up. At least I didn't get the one that says "You better Belize it" on it.

As I may have mentioned, we stayed on a tiny island named Caye (pronounced like "key") Caulker (apparently the name derives from the caulking they used to use to seal boats...man, do the British suck at naming stuff). It is very touristy insofar as tourism is essentially the only industry (other than a little fishing, what else can you do on an island a couple miles long, less than a mile wide, and in the middle of a gorgeous ocean?). It is very untouristy, however, insofar as virtually all of the places to stay, eat, etc. are all unpretentious, rough-around-the-edges, casual little mom-and-pop places. No chains, no huge hotels, no golf courses or swimming pools or other resort-y trappings. Very mellow and cool.

Our initial intention was to take a taxi from the Belize airport to the dock where the water taxi (i.e. boat) departs for Caye Caulker and Ambergris Island, a larger, more built-up island centered around the decently-sized town of San Pedro. (Fun trivia fact: remember "La Isla Bonita" by Madonna? "Last night I dreamt of San Pedro"? That song is about Ambergris Island.) However, we discovered once we got on the ground (actually, DWE saw it from the plane, but we confirmed it once we were on the ground) that the road from the airport was washed out, so it might have taken us hours to get to the water taxi dock. So instead we decided to fly to Caye Caulker. It's a ten minute or so flight on a teeny little winged deathtrap run by a teeny little domestic airline named Mayan Air (random thing that cracked me up: there is another either domestic or Central American airline flying out of Belize called "Taca Air", but every time I looked at the sign I thought it said "Taco Air").

Anyway, there are lots of pictures to show you, and lots of stories to tell, but I'll start in this entry with the pictures I took from the plane.

Some other, undeveloped islands. The dark parts of the water are where there is seaweed growing. The water is very shallow.

More islands and stuff out my window.

DWE, being cute but not very comforting as I worry about our tiny plane crashing and killing us.

This is Caye Caulker. The island was split in half by a hurricane (or at least that's how the story goes...apparently that might not be true) and the half to the left is the one where all the stuff is (obviously). The airstrip is on the very far left end of the island (just out of the frame) and it takes maybe twenty minutes to walk from there to the Split (as they call the place where the two parts are, well, split).

Look how tiny the plane is! We were in the second-to-last row.

...and we're back

Hi kids. It's been a busy 2ish weeks since my last post. First I finished up entering the rest of my surveys, which was dull but went pretty quickly. Then there were the several days of hiding in my apartment and moping leading up to the 17th, which was the 1-year anniversary of my dad's death. The day itself wasn't too bad, and I went out with friends that night and repeatedly toasted my dad (i.e. drank a lot), which was nice. Then it was a flurry of chores and packing and stuff before DWE and I went off to Belize, which was utterly fabulous. There will be many stories and pictures to come. School started for me yesterday, so I'm rapidly getting wrapped up in that again.

I had my first Macro class last night, and it promises to be probably about as interesting as macro can be, which is to say not incredibly interesting but not mind numbingly dull, either. The professor is I think just about exactly my age, but he seems intelligent and enthusiastic about what he is teaching. Tonight I have Grad Seminar, the class where we essentially write our Master's thesis. I have no idea what to expect out of that class, except for the fact that I'm not a huge fan of the professor.

I realized recently that the deadline to register for and submit an abstract to the Pacific Development Conference is rapidly approaching (less than a week away). This is a one-day conference that I attended last year and I want to present my India research this year, but since we just finished entering our full data set (and actually I still have a handful of E's surveys to enter) I haven't run any regressions or gotten any results with the full data. I also haven't implemented the full methodology that my adviser wants me to use. It's not like I have to have my presentation ready by the registration deadline, but I do have to submit an abstract, which requires me to have a pretty good sense of my methodology and results. So I'll be spending the rest of the week and weekend working on that.

Special note to N: the quote on my myspace page "blurb" is from an episode of The Simpsons. Homer becomes the conducter of Springfield's new, faultily-constructed monorail, which was sold to them by a conman. The brakes fail and he can't stop the train, so Marge, who found the scientist in question while investigating faulty monorails sold to other cities, contacts Homer by two-way radio to offer him assistance in stopping the monorail. The reason I love the quote, in addition to the fact that I find it funny, is that despite the absurdity of the idea that Marge brought Batman to help, Homer has an unassailable point: Batman is a scientist. I'm a huge fan of that sort of bizarre but sound logic. Another excellent example is from the movie Office Space. The main character, Peter, is talking to his mullet-wearing, construction-working neighbor, Lawrence, and they have a conversation along these lines:

Peter: "What would you do if you had a million dollars?"
Lawrence: [deadly serious, and without missing a beat] "Two chicks at the same time."
P: "That's it? Two chicks at the same time?"
L: "Always wanted to try that, and I figure if I had a million bucks I could set that up. Chicks dig a dude with money."
P: "Well, not all chicks."
L: "Type of chicks that would double up on a dude like me do."

It's so true.

68 down, 78 to go

I'm entering surveys like a madwoman now. I did 25 on Tuesday, 43 yesterday, and I'm going to see if I can do the last 78 today (yeah, it probably won't happen, but it's a nice fantasy).

Embarassing and annoying anecdote: I forgot that it was Wednesday yesterday and as a result I forgot to go the therapy. Embarassing because I don't know what day of the week it is. Annoying because I have to pay for a missed session anyway (and don't get reimbursed by insurance because I didn't actually go).

I hope the Portland contingent of my readership is staying warm on those 20-degree nights. DWE is currently in St. Helen's, insulating the water pipes in his house so that the water will actually stay hot between when it leaves the water heater and when it comes out of the shower head, which I'm sure his tenant would appreciate right about now. The overnight lows have been getting down into the 30s here, but I still have been sleeping with my windown halfway open (I'm telling you, that loft bed is like a freakin' oven). Friday it's supposed to get down to 31, so we'll see how that goes.

It's data entry time...

the not-so-cute couple

JSOC took some pictures when I dragged DWE to the Pig and Whistle last semester, and he just emailed them to me. It turns out that we're not the two most photogenic people in the world, but I'm foisting our somewhat homely cuteness upon y'all anyway.

Speaking of DWE, I found out something scandalous: he can't swim! He has a moderate and self-described "irrational" fear of the water (this all goes back to a traumatic swim lesson experience in the second grade, apparently). Having all sorts of irrational fears myself, I have neither the desire nor the standing to criticize this particular trait, especially since it sounds like he's willing to work on it. On the other hand, I'll probably end up snorkling by myself, or hopefully with some friendly strangers.

Me and DWE. If he were capable of looking at the camera, he would look quite handsome. That monkey on his shirt creeps me out, though.

Me looking terribly cute with JSOC, who was apparently pretending to be full of ennui.

currency, howard dean, and amateur haircuts

The first week of 2007 has been about as unexciting as the last week of 2006 was. A little more quality time with DWE, a lot of sleeping, and a bit of productiveness. Today was the first day in at least a week that I didn't take a lengthy nap, so I'm hoping that my increasingly bizarre and inconvenient sleeping schedule will start to get back on track. I guess since I'm not in school it doesn't much matter when I sleep, but it's harder to get stuff done in the middle of the night, and when I sleep during the late afternoon and early evening it tends to isolate me from other people (which I haven't minded up until now, but am starting to mind more).

E, M, and I finalized the details for how the survey data should be entered and divied up the 350 or so remaining surveys, so I've started to work on that. At this point I'm just making the necessary changes and additions to the data that I entered last semester. I have one more chapter left in the increasingly boring financial markets book; for as many differences as there are between the markets for currency, money, bonds, equity, and derivatives, there are also quite a few similarities, so the book is starting to feel especially repetitive. (Yes, "currency" and "money" are different in this context--it's people trading one currency for another versus people engaging in short-term borrowing, which is sort of like buying and selling cash.)

I got together with school people on Thursday night, which was nice, especially since I hadn't seen several of them since before Christmas. I also managed to get a free cab ride home, since I shared a cab with this guy that insisted I didn't have to pay for my part of the ride because I'm a student. I met the guy at the bus stop, where JSOC and H were waiting with me (despite my repeated insistence that they should go home). I think maybe the guy who hailed the cab thought JSOC and H were some guys I'd picked up at a bar that were sort of harassing me, and that he was rescuing me from them, because when we got into the cab he said, "who were those guys?" I guess most of the intoxicated women he sees at bus stops late at night don't have a young Korean guy and a young Colombian guy with them (sucks to be those women...).

Okay, usually I try to be discreet about other people's business on this blog, but I just have to blab this one thing, because I'm all impressed and star-struck about it. Muffin's boyfriend-type-person took him to D.C. recently, where they had breakfast with Howard Dean! The boyfriend is total buds with Howard, and was his California campaign manager when Dean was running for President. Anyway, Muffin said Howard was really cool and nice and interesting to talk to.

While some people were meeting powerful politicians, I was at home watching The Simpsons and trimming my own hair. Yes, I know it sounds like a bad idea, but I think it worked out okay. I did the back by flipping my head upside down, and I even layered it a bit toward the front. I'm pretty broke until I get my student loan later this month, so I didn't want to pay for a haircut, but the split ends were making me crazy (it had been more than a year since my last cut, which is scandalous). I also dyed it a darker and more uniform brown. As far as I can tell it looks fine.

Okay, back to data entry.

happy new year

The last days of 2006 were mellow and sort of lazy ones for me; hence the lack of posting. I had a very nice Christmas in Bakersfield, complete with the requisite viewing of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and the consumption of huge amounts of Chex Mix. I had lunch with N while I was in Bako, which was lovely. I ended up taking the train back up to SF because United cancelled my return ticket, a fact which was not reflected on their website or their automated phone system (and I couldn't get through to a human because of the Denver airport closure). I raised my voice to two different United employees, and swore never to fly their airline again (it will be difficult to make good on this promise, because they are the only airline that flies direct from SF to Bakersfield, but I'm feeling indignant enough to be willing to put up with Amtrak).

My winter break has yet to acheive its desired level of productiveness. I'm almost done putting together a jigsaw puzzle that I got for Christmas, and I've spent a lot of time worrying about what I'm going to do after I graduate, which is time consuming if not actually productive. I'm plowing through a scintillating book on financial markets, so if anyone needs to know anything about options markets or bond yields, I'm your girl.

DWE has had a highly unusual stint of being-in-town-ness, so I've been spending a lot of time with him. We saw this crazy band that one of his coworkers is in (I'll blog about it more later; for now I'll just say that the band members wear scary-looking muppetish monster heads). The other day when the weather was nice we took a scenic drive down the 1 to San Jose (which I now know the way to, or at least the back way to), where we ran errands at Target and Home Depot like a suburban married couple. Creepy.

Our New Year's Eve was low-key but highly enjoyable; we went to a pub called Edinburgh Castle and saw a band that does early punk covers. They had a kind of hard cider that I'd never had before, Strongbow, on tap, and I enjoyed several pints of that.

One of my grad school buddies is having a little get-together this afternoon, so I need to get going to that. I hope everyone had a good New Year's Eve.

nutcracker part 2, etc.

So, The Nutcracker was excellent. Great sets and costumes, wonderful dancers, and I had forgotten how beautiful some of the music is. I was particularly impressed by the Sugar Plum Fairy and her dude, and the Russian dancers. There were also some kind of cool visual effects; nothing that exciting, just stuff that would impress kids, but it impressed me too (they did this thing where they stacked a bunch of presents on top of each other, spun the stack around, and then the wind-up toy ballerina came out of a door in the stack of boxes...I still can't figure out how they did it...). The snowflakes (all caucasian, by the way) were also really good, but I spent the whole time they were on stage feeling stressed out because they had this fake snow falling while the snowflakes were dancing on point (that's where they dance on their tiptoes in those special shoes, which don't exactly have fabulous traction) and I kept imagining that one of them would slip and fall down.

In other news, I made it to Bakersfield, but not without a minor glitch. I was up late on Wednesday night finishing grading, and I didn't leave my apartment early enough to catch my flight. I just missed the BART train I was trying to take, and by the time I got to the airport, it was too late to check into my flight (normally it wouldn't have been a problem, but given that it's so close to Christmas, they probably had people flying standby, so I imagine they released my seat when I hadn't checked in by 30 minutes before the flight). In retrospect, I should have checked in online, but unfortunately it didn't occur to me to do that. At any rate, my chances of getting on a later flight were pretty much nil, so I rode BART back downtown and took the train instead. I'm still taking my flight home, though (assuming I don't miss that one too).

Speaking of flying, DWE and I are taking a trip the weekend before I start school again (a perk of dating someone with nearly a million frequent flyer miles, I suppose). He just emailed me the itinerary; we're going to Belize, specifically to Caye Caulker, a tiny island in a chain that forms the Belize Barrier Reef (largest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere). I've never been to Central America before (Belize is between Mexico and Guatemala), and it will be warm and beautiful there, but mostly I'm just excited to be spending four days with DWE, given how often he is out of town.

It is neither warm nor beautiful in Bakersfield, but I'm having a nice time anyway. Last night we (my mom, my brother, my sister-in-law, and me) drove around looking at Christmas lights and then went out to dinner. Today I've been mostly catching up on my sleep and my cable TV.

the nutcracker part 1

I'm going to see The Nutcracker on Wednesday afternoon. As you may know, when I was a young child, I took ballet lessons, and I got to be in the local production of The Nutcracker (which was put on by the place where I took lessons) for many years. I was, as you can imagine, not a very good ballerina (okay, I sucked), but I did love getting to watch the other dancers who were actually good. I haven't seen The Nutcracker since I was a kid, so I'm very excited about it.

Speaking of which, I was reading a column in the Sunday NYT yesterday called "The Ethicist" where people write in with ethical dilemmas. A woman wrote in to say that she had just seen a production of The Nutcracker and that the Snow King, as well as one of the snowflakes, were played by black people, and that this had, for aesthetic reasons, ruined the entire production for her. (She compared it to casting a "one-legged midget" as Tarzan. Seriously. I can't make this shit up, people.) She wanted to know if this meant she was racist. My answer would have been "you're not racist, just retarded," but "the ethicist" was somewhat more tactful than that (I think he told her that she was exercising a sort of racism, but it was the preconceived attitudes sort rather than the virulent hatred sort). I don't think we had a Snow King or snowflakes in the Bakersfield production, so I can't speak on that point directly, but we did have an either black or biracial (I'm honestly not sure of her racial heritage) Sugar Plum Fairy, and no one seemed to mind that she wasn't purple. (Interesting but pointless side note: she later went on to date one of the housemates on an early season of The Real World, at which point I think she was a professional ballerina.) Regarding the offensively pigmented snow people, the ethicist pointed out that given that the "snowflakes" weren't made of frozen, crystaline water, the viewer was already being asked to suspend some level of disbelief, and that the woman just needed to learn to do a little better job of it. In some ways I feel for the woman, because clearly she places a high value on the continuity and sameness that the tradition of The Nutcracker represents to her, and I don't think there's anything inherently bad about that. But there's only so much continuity and sameness that a constantly-changing society can (or should, I think) maintain. And seriously, do "white" people really look that much more like snow? Wouldn't you really need to slap some white makeup on someone of any race to make them look like snow?

post-semester blahishness

Well, I've conquered another semester. I suppose you could say I have smitten it (not that smiting two classes is the hardest thing in the world). I'm still working on grading (which doesn't count, because it's my job, not school), and even though my econometrics paper is done and turned in, I'm still very much thinking about it because it's just one of the many continuing steps in the process of writing my thesis. But given that I generally like my thesis project, I'm not annoyed by the lack of closure.

Speaking of my thesis, I got a bit of indirect good news. First of all, I'm not sure if I've explained this before, but we're using a somewhat novel technique to create our dataset. We administered surveys only once to a variety of individuals, which normally yields a cross-sectional data set: many observations (borrowers) compared to each other at a single point in time. This is in contrast to time-series data, which is a single observation (say, a country) examined over multiple periods of time. If you collect information about multiple individuals (or countries or whatever) at multiple time periods, then you have panel data--it is both cross-sectional and longitudinal. What we have created is what's called a back-cast panel: we asked borrowers about things that happened in the past and when they happened, and used this information to construct panel data (i.e. in 2004 this household acquired a TV). We will also be creating "lag" variables, which allow us to look at a particular window of time before and after a borrower first got access to microcredit to see how likely they were to have, say, purchased a business asset during that time period. I won't go into the monotony of explaining how the lag variables work, but I will say that you end up with neat line graphs that show, hopefully, something like a big spike in the number of people acquiring productive assets 2 years after they first got credit, or something like that. Not only do you see if credit is effective, but you see if its effects are immediate or if they take a while to kick in.

Back to the sort of good news. This technique was suggested to us (okay, it was basically forced on us, but I don't have any better ideas so I'm not complaining) by my advisor. He and a colleague at UCSD just wrote a paper using the same technique on data collected by a guy that graduated from the IDEC program last year. The paper tied for first place in an impact assessment contest sponsored by USAID, which has been promoting research related to microfinance in the last several years. The people who gave the award described the paper as being "notable for its innovative use of recall data of highly memorable events to create a methodologically rigorous impact assessment approach that holds significant potential for widespread applicability." The reason that this is good news for me is that it will lend the glow of legitimacy and rigor to my own paper. The technique is new enough to still be interesting and novel, but it has also gained some acceptance in the field of microfinance impact analysis.

I was supposed to go to a party tonight, but I've been rather moody and antisocial all weekend. Last night I was mired in one of those feeling-sorry-for-myself places, but at the moment I'm feeling content to be at home and feel a bit on the gloomy side; after all, I could be doing something more "fun" if I wanted to, but I'm not, so evidently I don't really want to have fun right now. I also don't feel very much like drinking, which I would probably end up doing at the party.

Maybe I'll take a bath. I bought some French chamomile soap at this little co-op in SoMa (I guess it's in SoMa...that area confuses me endlessly) called Rainbow Grocery. The soap smells really good, and it has little slivers of what I assume is chamomile in it, so it's mildly exfoliating. I walked to Rainbow from downtown on Wednesday, I think, which was fun because I got to explore the SoMa/Mission area a bit (in the rain, but that's okay). I saw an X-rated cake bakery, a revolutionary socialist bookstore, and what I assume was a bar of some sort. The bar didn't have a sign, but instead it had a life-sized leopard-spotted cow statue hanging above the entrance. Anyway, Rainbow Grocery was like an independent hippie version of Whole Foods (or I guess I should say that Whole Foods is a slick, yuppie version of places like Rainbow). Just before going there, I happened to read an article in The Economist critiquing the environmental benefits of organic foods, which made looking at all the organic shampoos and stuff even more interesting. But I did buy some organic soup and organic pita bread anyway.

i have to stop googling words

It's causing me to inadvertently stumble upon websites that eat away at my faith in humanity.

Unfortunate Discovery #1:

I was working on a NYT crossword puzzle (I am addicted to these things). If I get really stuck, I use Google or Wikipedia to help me find answers. I also use dictionary.com to double-check spellings (normally my spelling, as you know, is excellent, but something about the little boxes gets me all muddled, especially about vowels and double consonants). Anyway, I had Google open because I'd used it to find out the first name of the dude that invented the Geiger counter (Hans), and I needed to check the spelling of "alibi" (for some reason I thought it might be "alabi"). So I googled it, since the website was already up. I discovered that I was spelling it correctly, and I also discovered this website. Go look at it. (It's not porn or anything else socially inappropriate, but it may not be a great idea to look at it on your work computer.) Tell me you're not totally horrified.

Unfortunate Discovery #2:

DWE and I got into a little debate on the phone this evening regarding whether "smitten" was a form of the word "smite" (for some reason I didn't think it was, but it is). So I tried to go to dictionary.com to check, but for some reason my browser wouldn't open the page, so I resorted to Google again. That's when I discovered the product being advertised on this website. Again, not porn, and not socially inappropriate in the "widely-understood definition of the term" (sorry...X-Files quote), but it may deeply disgust you. It deeply disgusted me. It made me never want to hold hands with anyone again.

I think I'm going to go to bed now, and hope that the world seems less disturbing tomorrow.

Oh, and do any of you have an opinion about that whole smite/smitten thing? I'm not debating that "smitten" is an adjective form of the verb "smite", of course, but I'm very curious about how a verb that means (and I'm paraphrasing heavily here) "to hit someone really hard with something big like a hammer" begat an adjective that came over the years to mean "adoring in an intense and probably obnoxiously cute way." It's not that I can't see the logical progression, it's just that it seems totally bizarre. Any thoughts? (I'm looking at you, N.)

el numero incorrecto

I'm sort of distressed that its Tuesday already. On Sunday, I returned from a very enjoyable weekend in Portland. I'm not really sure what I did yesterday. I unpacked, I slept a lot, I cleaned my apartment a little, I caught up on a few emails, I did some reading, I did a few crossword puzzles, I talked to one or two people on the phone...It's hard to believe that stuff takes a whole day. I guess I also watched about a half dozen episodes of the Simpsons on DVD. My gastrointestinal issues persist, although in a milder form, so I've been trying to avoid caffeine, alcohol, and dairy since I got back. Caffeine and alcohol, no problem. Dairy has been more problematic. I made it until about 5 p.m. today, and then I broke down and had a bowl of cereal. I still feel okay, though, so I'm hoping if I keep eating mostly bananas and rice for the next few days, I'll be fine, regardless of my inability to resist milk.

Today I've been grading, working on the econ picture board (no, I still don't have that damn thing done), and even doing a little research on the internet about jobs/interships for when I graduate (ugh...someone shoot me). It's supposed to rain all week, and today it was both rainy and foggy, a phenomenon that continues to baffle me. A good week to be inside with my laptop or a stack of micro finals, I suppose.

So, DWE and I had the craziest coincidence of schedules at the Oakland Airport. On Thursday, his flight to Vegas left at almost exactly the same time as my flight to Portland, so we took BART to Oakland together. He came back to SF on Saturday, and then left again on Sunday for San Diego. My flight arrived in Oakland at 4:30 p.m., and his left at 5:30 p.m. So he was actually able to check in, clear security, and meet me at my gate when I arrived, which was surreal (remember when anyone could meet you at your gate?). Then we hung out by his gate until his flight left. Maybe I'm just looking for a good way to spin it, but it makes me feel like such an exciting jetsetter to be catching 45 minutes of quality time with my man in an airport before we have to rush back off to our important lives (except all I did was go home and take a bath, which was important to me, and probably to anyone who had to smell me, but not really all that exciting).

I just got a call on my cell from a number that I didn't recognize with a 661 (Bakersfield) area code. I didn't answer, because I assumed, correctly, that it was a wrong number. The interesting part is that the person left a voicemail in Spanish. He spoke too quickly for me to understand much, but he said he had some questions and left his number. I wonder if I should call back and tell him that he got the wrong number. Do I even know how to say "wrong number" in Spanish? "numero incorrecto", I guess (it sounds like Spanglish, but I swear that's what it would be).

almost done

Gee, for a while there, my life was almost as busy as a normal person's. Whew, glad that's over.

Well, okay, I'm engaging in a bit of hyperbole here (shocker!). My international seminar paper, which is completed and turned in, probably took me longer to write than any previous 20-ish page paper I've written. The section detailing the debate over what will happen to the Chinese economy if they significantly revalue the yuan was fairly technical, so I had to spend a lot of time rereading sections of journal articles and carefully wording my arguments (Prof. A has excellent attention to detail and he is one of those professors who appears to know EVERYTHING). It was and interesting topic, though, and it was (mostly) fun to work really hard on something fairly challenging.

Meanwhile, I did both some student tutoring and some grading in my capacity as TA, which was a nice diversion from the paper insofar as the tutoring confirmed that I really do remember how to do 2-firm strategic interdependence oligopoly game theory, and the grading gave me something to do when circumstances forced DWE to cancel on me for Sunday night at the last minute (it's a long story, but the salient point is that he left his car and apartment keys in Pennsylvania--I'd be more annoyed, but people in glass houses, etc--although, I haven't left my keys in another city since college, and I don't believe I've ever left them in another state).

So now all I have left is my econometrics paper and some grading. I played around with my regression model some more today, I checked for endogeneity problems (there aren't any, according to the data, but given that theoretically there probably should be, I find the lack of them equally distressing). I had hopes of writing my paper before I left for Portland on Thursday, but that's seeming less likely, given that I'm not highly motivated to work on it tonight, and tomorrow I have class and then a grad school function afterwards. I have more or less all the parts I need in terms of doing the econometrics, I just have to pick a final model, pull everything together, make it look pretty, and write up explanations and interpretations. It's not due until the 15th, so I'll have plenty of time when I get back, but it would be nice to have it out of the way.

news flash: the republicans suck too

After the election, I (and a bunch of people in the media) spent some time dissing the Democrats for their attitudes toward and misperceptions regarding international trade. It seems only fair to acknowledge that the Republicans haven't been doing much better, a point which is well articulated in this Slate article. As the article points* out, the Democrats, at least, seem to approach the trade issue as one of economic inequality and insecurity--which in many ways it certainly is--and they seem more willing to promote policies that will address those aspects of the issue (although I don't think it's fair to say that the Republicans are totally unwilling...they just seem to have stupider ideas in that department).

Which is not to say that the Democrats' ideas are great, or that there are a plethora of simple, effective ideas out there that will keep globalization and other forms of economic change from destroying the livelihoods of some people. Most of the ideas that are out there are hard to implement or don't work very well. For example, in one of his comments, N described the way in which the economy in Buffalo, NY, was decimated by deindustrialization. A not-insignificant portion of the problem there is that Buffalo's economy was dependent on a relatively small number of industries. But while it's easy to argue that economic diversification would benefit cities and regions by partially insulating them from market changes, the reality is that I can name ten reasons (well, maybe not ten, but a lot) why the market, as it tends to function in most sectors, promotes specialization of the sort that leads to, say, all the jobs in Detroit being in the auto industry. This is actually just an example of a very basic economic idea: there is very, very often an inherent trade-off between efficiency and equality, and it's usually pretty difficult to pinpoint the optimal mix of the two, let alone make decisions and promote policies that will effectively produce that mix.

Gee, I feel great about my chosen profession right now.

But Jenn, shouldn't you be working on your paper instead of bemoaning the basic nature of capitalism? Why yes, I should be.


*Style note: yes, I noticed the clunky repetition of the word "point". The paper I'm writing is one of those that lends itself to repetition of words and phrases, and I've been driving myself nuts trying to deal with it, so I'm letting it go here.

finals

Sorry for my absence. I know you're all devastated when I don't post. =) The combination of having a lot of school work to do and not feeling particularly communicative were the causes of my little eight-day hiatus.

I'm in full end-of-semester mode, which isn't so bad when one is only taking two classes. I'm also experiencing an unusual level of motivation, coming primarily, I think, from my intense urge to just be done with everything. It's kind of odd. For example, we have one more problem set due in Applied Econometrics. We already took the quiz on the problem set material (endogeneity and instrumental variables...woo hoo...), and we're all totally focused on tweaking and testing our models for our thesis data, so the problem set seems very annoying. Normally when I'm dreading doing something, I put it off, but for some reason this morning I thought to myself, "I can't stand having this dumb problem set hanging over my head for another day." So I worked on it for a few hours and got about three-fourths of it done. Then I emailed it to H, M, and E (we do the problem sets in groups, and they are my group) and told them that they could finish it and that I never wanted to see it again. I've also been pretty good about staying on my paper-writing schedule. I have a 20-30 page paper due on Monday evening (the one on China's foreign currency reserves and current account surplus), and I'm aiming for it to be 20 pages of pure text, plus graphs and bibliography. I'm also aiming to finish it by Sunday afternoon, since in theory DWE gets back to town on Sunday night. My plan was to have written ten pages by today, and I've got eight, which is much closer than I normally come to goals of that sort. I've dedicated a lot of time to the paper, but a lot of it has been spent making graphs, combing the internet for random little bits of data that I need, and trying to decide on how to organize the sections. I've been worried that it's going to be too short, but I found another article tonight that directly counters one of the other articles that I'm using, which should significantly lengthen (and hopefully improve) the section in which I discuss whether it would be wise for China to revalue the yuan. Ideally I'd like to get up to 15 pages by tomorrow, but we'll see how it goes.

I'm kind of dull when I'm in end-of-semester mode, huh? I feel dull, anyway. I think I'm just tired. Which probably means I should go to bed, since it's nearly one a.m. My sleep schedule has been a bit more "normal" lately (except for last night, when S and I stayed up until 3 a.m. with each other on speakerphone, both working on our respective tasks while carrying on some vague, sporadic semblance of a conversation). I generally prefer getting up around 8 or 9 (yes I know that's very late for many of you), especially in the winter (if I wake up at noon I only get five hours of daylight).

I arrived in Bakersfield last night. My so-called six hour train trip took nine hours, but I used the time reasonably well (fixing some problems with my data, reading a few chapters of the book I just started, taking a nap, etc). So far things here are typical. Emma is bigger and about as obnoxious as before. My mom and my sister-in-law and I went shopping today and had lunch with my brother, who had to work. I got a Christmas present for DWE, but I'm indecisive about whether or not he'll like it (or, on a more fundamental level, whether or not I even want to get him a Christmas gift...I feel like it might be a more "relationshipy" gesture than I want to make).

At the moment I'm sitting around in a t-shirt and my underwear, waiting for my laundry to finish drying (all my pants are in the laundry). I made the Chex mix and the caesar salad dressing (all while not wearing pants, which I think mildly disturbed my mother). My bro and sis are bringing dessert and the veggie dish, and apparently my brother is also making the stuffing and bringing it over to us in the morning so we can stuff the turkey, because for some reason he doesn't trust us to make it how he wants it (Thanksgiving analogy: Jenn is to mashed potatoes as her brother is to stuffing). So all my mom and I really have to do tomorrow is cook the turkey and make the mashed potatoes (and put the caesar salad together, which will be easy since I will probably also make the croutons tonight).

I really need to work on my International Econ Seminar paper. It's not due until the 4th, but I have to give another presentation on it on Monday, at which point I'm supposed to have it pretty much done (yeah, I can fake being done with it, but since I also have to give my Econometrics paper presentation on Wednesday, I should probably actually have it close to being done). I don't mind the thought of doing schoolwork right now, I just mind the thought of working on that paper. I guess it just still feels big and overwhelming, and if I came up with one small part to work on it wouldn't be so bad.

um, oops...I'm sorry...

First of all, an apology to you, my loyal readers and commenters. Somehow I turned on the "moderate comments" thing without realizing what it did (that is, prevent your comments from showing up until I approved them). So here I am, feeling neglected and wondering why no one has posted any comments for the last week...thank you to Rebel, who finally clued me in. The comments have now been posted. I think I will leave the moderate comments tool on, because I've gotten more spam comments (one of which I accidentally approved), but now I know to check it obsessively (the same way I check my email obsessively), so all of your insightful and interesting contributions will show up promptly. Oh, and N, thank you for your comments about Buffalo; it's a perfect example of how devastating economic change can be to a particular region, and how complex and unexpected the good and bad outcomes can be. (And I'll take up that discussion further in a later post.)

Gotta run, but just wanted to apologize for not granting you all my "approval" sooner and let you know that it was unintentional. I love your comments and I in no way want to discourage you from making them.

my planty friends return

I'm happy to report that today was more productive than yesterday (a low hurdle to clear given how unproductive yesterday was, but still). I got a few things I needed at Target, and on the way there (it's a 30 minute BART ride) I did some reading for my looming 30 page paper. I pretty much know the gist of what the paper is going to say, so I'm not super-worried about it; on the other hand, I have to turn that "gist" into 30 pages of well-researched detail, which will take some time. I have a 6-hour train ride on Tuesday (too expensive to fly home around Thanksgiving), so presumably I can get some writing (or at the very least outlining) done then.

I also finally got my plants back from S, who was graciously taking care of them at his office while I was in India (and up until now, obviously). They thrived under S's care (although the one that I bought at Target seems basically immortal: I left it here without water for a month last Christmas break and it looked the same when I got home as it did when I left). The peace lily, which was a gift from B on the occassion of my dad's death (and therefore has quite a bit of sentimental value), is much more fickle, and it's looking big and green and happy. S probably watered it more than I used to (he also only gave it filtered water, and instructed me to do the same, but sentimental value or not, I can't live with a plant that's more high maintenance than I am). The lily needs to be repotted, but the logistics of buying potting soil and a big pot will have to wait for another day.

fat-free half and half

Well, it's been a fairly blah couple of days. I'm off one of my two medications at the moment, so I've been sleeping a lot and feeling a bit sluggish and unmotivated. You would think this would make me eager to go refill my prescription, but for reasons that I don't entirely understand it tends to have the opposite effect. On the other hand, I'm entering the final stretch of the semester, and I have quite a bit of work to do, so I need to be a bit more on the ball than I am right now, so I'll probably be on my merry way to the pharmacy on Monday.

On Thursday night USF had a graduate program open house, which I attended at the request of Prof. K, who has been my professor for two different courses, and is also the IDEC program's co-director. It was actually kind of cool, because there were a not-insignificant number of people there that were really interested in the IDEC program and what I had to say about it. Talking about my research boosted my enthusiasm a bit, which is good, because I've really been neglecting my data lately. My enthusiasm was further rekindled when E and I (M is out of town) met with our advisor on Friday afternoon. He is, as I may have mentioned, on sabbatical in Santa Barbara right now, but he was in town for various reasons, including to talk to his advisees (I'm not even entirely sure how he's getting away with having advisees while he's on sabbatical, but it's to my benefit, so I certainly don't mind). I may have also mentioned that a few weeks ago, he sent us a copy of a paper that he and one of his colleagues from UCSD wrote using the data of an IDEC student from last year. He instructed us to read the paper, and told us that he wants us to use the methodology used in the paper on our own data. I was a little cranky (okay, very cranky) about the wording of the email and the implication that I have to do whatever my advisor says.

I was, of course, totally overreacting (hard to believe, I know). The methodology makes a great deal of sense, especially given the unusual nature of our data (that it's a backcast panel, i.e. data that was collected at one point in time but nonetheless spans a period of time). Also, nothing else I've done econometrically with our data so far has gotten me anywhere. Obviously my advisor, whose idea it was for us to do a backcast panel in the first place (and as far as I can tell practically invented the technique), is the person to listen to when figuring out what the best way is to deal with the data. I was just not very receptive to the manner in which he made his recommendation (Dr. J's rather astute observation: "You don't like to be told what to do, do you?").

Speaking of Dr. J, I'm mildly worried, because he had to cancel class on Wednesday night because his one-year-old daughter had a 104 degree fever. I am aware that it is not uncommon for young children to get surprisingly high fevers for reasons that are not serious, but he also cancelled his Thursday morning classes, and he hasn't gotten back to us about when we can turn in our homework and take the quiz that would have been on Wednesday night (this coming Wednesday night would be logical if it weren't the day before Thanksgiving, when no one is likely to be around). On the anxiety front, there are also two different friends that I'm worried about, but in both cases I'm increasingly doubting my ability to do anything helpful. And especially in my current state of mind, it's hard to separate out the part of worrying that is motivated by concern for others' well-being and the part that is more about my own generalized feelings of anxiety and guilt.

This post is a bit drearier than I meant it to be. Things are, as usual, generally good, and the things that aren't so good can be fixed or coped with well enough. I get to see my family next week, I get to be dragged out of bed at 8 a.m. to go shopping with my mother, and I get to enjoy my yearly ritual of mashing five pounds of potatoes. (Mashed potato anecdote: I asked my mother to buy half and half for the potatoes. She actually called me from the grocery store last night to find out if it was okay for her to get fat-free "half and half". Putting aside the fact that I don't even want to know what the other "half" is made out of if it's not made out of fat, the whole point of putting half and half in mashed potatoes is to add fat. Luckily my mother caved easily to my "it's just once a year" arguement.)

more pictures

Me with the hopelessly adorable and loveable baby m at the twin's birthday party in Portland. I never noticed this before, but she's so tiny that her binky looks huge. (Note to A: another reason DWE is a keeper--I showed him this picture, and he said, "wow, that is a really cute baby.")

The hopelessly adorable and loveable B family. In addition to illustrating how baby m ended up so cute, I wanted to show a picture where she looks happy, because she looks vaguely freaked out in the one where I'm holding her (of course, I'm sure it's Daddy, who was the photographer, that was freaking her out, since it certainly wasn't Auntie Jenn).

portland trip, final installment (finally!)

Okay, okay. Let's get to that last installment of the Portland trip, before I totally forget what I did while I was there. After spending the night at Rebel's, I hung out with My Wife for several hours, helping her pick out ingredients for jumbalaya at the Hillsdale farmer's market and at the grocery store. Then we stopped by the library and I made fun of her for having overdue book fines, because I am a kind and sensitive spouse.

Late that afternoon, we drove to North Portland to meet MJ and Mr. MJ (her fiance) at the brewery where he works (as a brewer). MJ wasn't there yet, so the three of us chatted and lovingly made fun of MJ's tendency to be unaware of the passage of time. I got to try a couple of different kinds of beer, learned some stuff about beer from Mr. MJ, and I discovered that a lager can actually be really, really yummy (keep in mind that the last lager I'd had at this point was that delicious lukewarm Indian Kingfisher). I think my exact quote was "wow, it tastes like a lager...only good." MJ arrived, we chatted more and drank more beer, and then my wife had to get going so that she could make her jumbalaya for the potluck she was attending. After yet more beer, we headed back to Mr. and Mrs. MJ's place so that MJ could start making dinner and I could keep drinking beer and start sending obnoxious text messages to DWE.

Mr. and Mrs. Tissue came over for dinner (I'm running out of initials here, and I seem to remember some joke that involved calling them that, so those are their blog names now), which was really cool because I hadn't seen them in a while. I should mention at this point that the MJs and the Tissues both have puppies of approximately the same age (six months, I think?). The MJs have a black lab named Otis, and the Tissues have, Winston, who is a mix of a couple different breeds and is fairly similar in size and temperament to Otis. When they get together, MJ aptly describes them as a "puppy tornado". That night, they spent literally hours jumping on each other, nipping at each other, slobbering on each other, wrestling around, and occasionally trying to hump each other. After dinner (which was, by the way, heavenly--fish tacos and a really yummy vegan Mexican soup that Mr. MJ made), I sat on the floor in the living room and I got swept up in the puppy tornado, which I didn't mind because I like big dogs and I'm used to them slobbering and jumping on me. It made me wish that I could bring Emma (my mom's golden retreiver puppy, who is just a month or two older) to Portland to join the puppy party.

The next morning, I was thoroughly chastened for having teased MJ, however lovingly, for being late to everything, because were it not for her calling me from work to be like, "um, doesn't your flight leave soon?" I probably would have missed it (did I mention how much beer and wine I ended up having that night?). Anyway, she was sweet enough to drive me to the airport, where we had lunch and played with PDX's free wireless on my laptop.

And then I got back to San Francisco and had to go to class. Woo hoo.

Finally, I successfully uploaded some pictures:

Mr. and Mrs. Tissue with Otis (on the couch) and Winston (on the floor), who were finally worn out from all their playing.

Mr. and Mrs. MJ. Only one of them wanted me to take this photo.

the econ bus keeps rollin'

See the comments of the previous post for the questions that I'm answering in this post.

I'm sure you could have guessed this, but I feel obligated to say that not one thought that I'm about to express is original to me (well, okay, maybe one or two right at the end). I've taken a couple classes on international trade, and I've done a great deal of reading about it, and that's where I'm getting all this stuff. I was planning to check some sources and get some accurate numbers, but it turns out I'm really lazy, and apparently I know enough off the top of my head to give you the gist of an answer. If anyone wants specific statistics or sources, I'd be happy to dig them up.

1. All that offshoring necessitates is a shift away from the particular jobs that get offshored (I wish the plural of that word were "offshorn") and toward some other kind of job that's still done here. It certainly can have a tendency to shift employment from manufacturing to services because manufacturing jobs are the sort that tend to be subject to offshoring, while traditionally the service sector can't be outsourced (I can't send my hair to China to have it cut--but wouldn't it be awesome if I could?). There are several caveats here. One is that offshoring isn't the only factor, or indeed even the biggest factor, that has lead to the large and oft-lamented decline in manufacturing jobs in the US. Automation has in fact played a much larger role than offshoring in reducing the number of manufacturing workers. Another thing to keep in mind is that, as you know, technology has greatly increased the number of goods and services that are "tradeable"--the obvious examples of services that now get offshorn include call centers, computer programming, and "back-office" stuff.

So if jobs of any sort get moved from the US to another country, the jobs that replace them will either be in a different tradeable sector (presumably one in which the US has a comparative advantage) or in a nontradeable sector. I would argue that someone who loses their manufacturing job, for any reason, is more likely to end up in a service-sector job as a result of their now-obsolete skill set.

2. American workers do compete with workers from other nations for jobs, and the relative wages of Americans versus workers in these other nations obviously factors into that competition. There is evidence that part of the increase in wage inequality in the US since the early 70s is a result of globalization (a larger part of this inequality, however, is due to advances in technology and the higher returns to skilled labor that accompany those advances). So yeah, part of the reason that some wages are stagnant in the US is offshoring.

Given that, however, there are a few things to keep in mind. One is that labor costs depend on worker productivity. So if I'm a Bangladeshi worker making Gap jeans, and I get paid 11 cents an hour, while my American counterpart gets paid $11 dollars an hour, that doesn't mean that my labor is 100 times cheaper. That's only the case if I can make as many pairs of jeans an hour as the American can, and I almost certainly can't (probably because I'm not working with as much capital--i.e. automation--as the American, and I may also have less experience with that type of work). I'm not saying that the American is 100 times more productive than the Bangladeshi--obviously if The Gap is making jeans in Bangladesh (I have no idea if they are--I own one pair of jeans from The Gap, and they were made in Guatemala), they're doing so because it's cost effective. My point is only that wage differentials aren't as insanely huge as they seem when you factor in productivity. And as foreign workers become more productive, their wages rise. (Since you mention countries without minimum wages, I will also point out that if the US had the level of unemployment and the labor market structure that many developing nations had, I probably wouldn't support a minimum wage, because it could very well end up doing more harm than good.)

3. Despite my caveats, I did basically answer your two previous questions in the affirmative. Whether the benefits of trade outweight the costs is a complicated question, but I would tentatively argue that they do. Economists do try to calculate these sorts of things, for example by looking at the cost-per-American-job-saved of a particular tariff. Take a steel tariff as an example--it makes steel more expensive, which makes cars more expensive, buildings more expensive, improvements to the Bay Bridge more expensive, etc. So if you calculate that extra cost to the business, consumer, taxpayer, etc, and then estimate how many jobs were protected, you can come up with some approximation of the "cost" of saving those jobs. Just as an example, I've seen estimates in the neighborhood of $100,000 per job over the course of a year (I can't remember the exact figure and I'm not bothering to look it up, but it was definitely more than the saved jobs paid). So of course economists, who are all a bunch of obnoxious smart alecks (suddenly it makes sense that I became one), immediately point out that you could have just let those steel workers lose their jobs and paid them all, say, $99,000 a year, and everyone would have been better off.

Obviously that's not realistic, and therein lies the crux of the problem with free trade: generally the benefits outweigh the costs, but the benefits are diffused over a large group of people who are each made a little better off, and the costs are often concentrated on a small group of people who get totally screwed over. The Democrats that do support free trade (and probably some of the Republicans too) generally suggest that the "losers" from trade be compensated through retraining programs and other types of government support. This is a very, very imperfect solution, as I'm sure you are aware. It's also a problematic one, because as I've mentioned, people lose their jobs because of technology changes and increased automation more often than they lose them because of trade (and these technology changes generally have benefits similar to those of trade), but people generally don't get as worked up about it politically. This is why I think that things like unemployment insurance and universal healthcare (that isn't tied to employment) are good, because they ease the pain of all types of structural unemployment, not just that caused by trade. (And since you mentioned xenophobia, singling out globalization as a cause of economic hardship--when it isn't the most egregious cause--does have certain troublingly nationalistic overtones, in my opinion.)

As for the more complex question regarding the wage costs versus the consumption benefits, well, real wages (i.e. adjusted for inflation) have been stagnant for a while now. Since inflation is just the change in the average price level, this means that cheaper goods are not making up for lower wages. But again, trade is only one part of the stagnating-wages story, so it doesn't directly follow that the cost-of-living benefits of trade don't outweigh the wage-lowering effects, which at any rate are probably fairly concentrated in a couple of sectors of employment. I might actually look into that one a bit more to see if I can find anything more specific on it, but the bottom line is that it's difficult to tease out what's caused by trade and what's caused by other stuff.

I'm assuming your last question was more or less rhetorical, so all I'll say is this: if we could find a way to redistribute the spoils of capitalism without destroying the incentives that keep capitalism going (or just making a huge, corrupt, bureaucratic mess), then I think it could work out pretty well. On the other hand, I probably shouldn't presume to know what the Chinese middle class want.

Speaking of presuming to know what people want, I will say one more thing about globalization in general. Obviously it's hugely problematic, and although I'm generally in favor of it, I also feel a great deal of ambivalence. Textbook economics says that trade benefits everyone, but in practice things are clearly far more complicated.

But trade isn't the only thing that's far more complicated in practice. There's an anecdote that I read about three years ago, not long after I first got seriously interested in economics, and it's worth actually hauling out the book and quoting directly (especially since I can reach the book from where I'm sitting). The quote is from a Paul Krugman column in the NYT (April 22, 2001), as quoted in Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan (which is a pretty good layperson-type introduction to economics, despite being a bit too conservative for my taste). I would go so far as to say that my interest in economics was solidified by this anecdote:

In 1993, child workers in Bangladesh were found to be producing clothing for Wal-Mart, and Senator Tom Harkin proposed legislation banning imports from countries employing underage workers. The direct result was that Bangladeshi textile factories stopped employing children. But did the children go back to school? Did they return to happy homes? Not according to Oxfam, which found that the displaced child workers ended up in even worse jobs, or on the streets -- and that a significant number were forced into prostitution.

My argument isn't that we can all feel okay about sweatshops because the alternatives are worse, nor is it that it's the fault of well-meaning Americans that these children's lives were obviously so desperately bad in the first place. My point is just that economic problems are really complex, outcomes aren't easily predicted, and very little is an unqualified economic evil (or, for that matter, an unqualified economic good). In that spirit, I appreciate it when people ask questions and seek to develop more informed opinions about economic issues, regardless of what those opinions end up being.

unions and trade

In a follow-up to yesterday's entry, I wanted to post this link to an article in the NYT regarding the re-emergence of unions' political clout in the wake of the big Democratic win. It does a nice job of highlighting the dilemma faced by moderate and conservative Democrats in terms of union-backed issues. Obviously unions were important in getting Democrats elected, and I think we're all big fans of that whole 40-hour work week thing, but there are a lot of things about the contemporary union agenda that irritate me.

I'm all for an increase in the minimum wage (textbook economics disagrees with me, but 1. there's evidence that textbook economics is wrong on this issue, 2. our labor market is very flexible in other ways, so any impact on employment is likely to be small, and 3. the national minimum wage is really freakin' low). I'm also all for universal health care, because having health care that is not tied to employment makes the labor market even more flexible by eliminating one of the sources of financial strain that comes from structural unemployment (of the sort caused by technological changes, trade, etc). But I'm going to be pissed as hell when the Democratic congress refuses to extend fast-track trade negotiation status to the President after it expires in 2007. I'm also going to be totally disgusted by the "don't reward companies who send American jobs overseas" rhetoric when it comes from people who want to enjoy the advantages of the global trade system while being shielded from all the parts of it they don't like.

Democrats and deficits

Earlier today, I wrote an entire blog entry concluding my Portland trip, and then I somehow managed to delete the whole thing while attempting to upload pictures. So I got frustrated and moved on to other things. I'm back now, but I'm in an econ-y kind of mood, so it's time for a trade deficit lecture! Yay!

Let's start with the basics (and I apologize in advance if any of this is too basic--I assume many of you already know some of this, but I want to be certain that we're entirely clear on what we're discussing). The US interacts financially with the rest of the world (RoW) through two basic flows: the current account and the financial account. The current account (CA) is primarily the balance of trade (i.e. the value of what we export minus the value of what we import), but it also includes interest payments on debt that we pay to the RoW and remittances that people working in the US send to their families in the RoW. The financial account (FA) is primarily the balance of trade in assets: the value of financial assets purchased from the US by the RoW minus the value of the assets purchased from the RoW by the US. An asset is generally anything that stores value, so it includes, among other things, stocks, bonds, precious metals, treasury bills, and currency itself.

CA + FA = 0. This is a mere accounting identity, and in the long run it must hold. If the current account is in deficit (as the US's is), the financial account must be in surplus (as the US's also is, of course). The reason is fairly straightforward: if we buy more stuff (in value terms) from the RoW than they buy from us, how are we going to pay for it?

The obvious answer is that we borrow the money, and that's essentially correct. We sell assets to the RoW, and the money that we get is enough to cover all of our purchases from abroad. Again, in the long run, it has to be. But remember that "borrow" is a non-exact term for everything that goes on in the FA. If a foreigner buys a share of stock in an American company, we aren't in debt to that foreigner. Furthermore, it's not like when I borrow money from my mom. We don't have to call China and ask for the money; they lend it because they want to. And I don't mean that they want to lend us money in an evil loan-shark way; they want to because of their own economic objectives (more on that later).

There is also a straightforward algebraic relationship between the CA and net private and government savings in the US. Specifically, CA = private savings + government savings (this has to do with the fact that domestic expenditures have to equal domestic income, and the trade balance is part of the expenditure function--I can explain it if you want, but you may as well take my word for it). Private savings includes both household and business savings: the former is slightly negative, the latter positive, but small. Government savings, as you know, is significantly negative (as in they have been running a huge deficit every year for the past few years). So it's no coincidence that we're running a trade deficit and a budget deficit at the same time.

This idea is a familiar one, and it is expressed most often in the popular media through our trade and financial relationship with China. It goes like this: we buy lots of cheap crap from China, and we pay for it with the money that we borrow from China when we sell them US treasury bonds. China buys the bonds because they're trying to keep their currency, the yuan, artificially low (although by how much the yuan is really undervalued is a matter of considerble debate). By continuing to buy US treasury bonds, the Chinese central bank is enabling the US to run these huge trade deficits. By running these huge trade deficits, the US is allowing China to continue to manipulate their currency for the purposes of export-led growth.

And now, before you fall asleep, let me get to the part where I get annoyed with the Democrats. They understand the link between the budget deficit and the trade deficit, and that's a good thing. But they generally mischaracterize the nature of this relationship. I refer you to a passage from "A New Direction for America", a bit of Democratic propaganda released in June and written about recently in Slate:

Nearly half of our nation’s record debt is owned
by foreign countries including China and Japan.
Without a return to fiscal discipline, the foreign
countries that make our computers, our clothing
and our toys will soon be making our foreign
policy. Deficit spending is not just a fiscal
problem - it’s a national security issue as well.

I would love to hear a cogent explanation of how China having nearly $700 billion in dollar-denominated assets, the majority of them US treasury bonds (i.e. US government debt) is a national security issue. The Democrats make it sound like China and Japan own us. They don't. They own a bunch of treasury bonds. The worst thing they can do to us is sell those treasury bonds, or at least stop buying them. But what will happen if they do that? If the demand for dollar-denominated assets falls, then the value of the dollar falls. This is bad for the US in some ways--imports become more expensive, and inflation is likely. On the other hand, it would make US exports more competitive, it would improve the CA deficit, and it would force the government deficit to shrink, at least in the long run. Meanwhile, it sucks for China, because their $700 billion isn't worth as much as it used to be, because the dollar isn't worth as much as it used to be. Furthermore, their exports aren't as cheap for Americans to buy as they used to be, because the yuan has risen relative to the dollar.

Economists have been debating for several years now about the sustainability of the current global imbalances (US spends, RoW saves). My semi-informed opinion is that the dollar will have to depreciate at some point, growth in China will have to slow a bit, Americans will have to stop spending so much (partly because the housing-equity free-for-all is basically over), and depending on how it all shakes out, there could be a recession here, in the RoW, or in both places (or neither, if we manage to increase our savings while the RoW decreases theirs). But we're not going to have an Asian- or Latin American-style currency crisis, and China and Japan are not going to take us over. They have as much to lose as we do, if not more.

So I guess my complaint about the Democrats is that they use the government and trade deficits as an excuse for economic nationalism and protectionism, neither of which are likely to do much good. I'm not saying, of course, that globalization and free trade are universal positives. Although technically speaking, international trade doesn't cause unemployment in the long run, it does cause significant displacement and changes in the employment and wage structure of this and other countries. In the short run, it does cause unemployment, and it contributes to income inequality (as do changes in technology). Trade hurts people. But it also helps people, both in the US and in countries where way more people are way more poor. I understand that American politicians are elected to represent Americans' interests, and that unions exert a great deal of protectionist pressure on the Democratic party. But every American worker is also an American consumer, and cheap imports raise our standard of living, while simultaneously helping to bring millions of non-Americans out of poverty. It bothers me when politicians blame US corporations for abandoning American workers and developing nations for stealing our jobs, as if poor Chinese peasants don't deserve to have jobs. Furthermore, if the Democrats are concerned about national security, they should want China as a powerful, hopefully democratic ally in Asia, and the bigger China's middle class gets, the more likely they are (in my opinion, anyway) to successfully demand more democratic freedoms.

Obviously this is a very complex topic, and I could go off on a lot of other issues, but that's more or less the gist of what bugs me about the Democrats' attitudes toward trade and the budget deficit. There's also another interesting article in Slate that discusses protectionism in the Democratic party and is generally more articulate than I am. I'm interested to hear what other people think about this stuff as well.

friday blog-o-rama

You should see my apartment right now. I have big plans for today, plans that involve going to the laundromat and using the big washing machines to wash ALL my laundry. Usually I do my laundry here on the first floor of my building, and I end up washing just the things I need to wash (one load of lights, one load of darks). As a result, the bottom of my laundry basket is perpetually filled with at least one dirty set of sheets, a towel or two, and some random clothing that I don't feel an urgent need to wear. The backlog has gotten particularly bad lately, and I have no quarters, so I've decided to just haul everything to the laundromat, where there is a quarter machine and the aforementioned giant washing machines. There's also a TV; the last time I was there, shortly before I left for India, I watched most of an episode of Judge Judy.

Anyway, at the moment my laundry is just sorted into a bunch of big piles all over my apartment, and instead of actually implementing the laundromat plan, I've decided to procrastinate by doing some serious blogging. First, I'd like to bring your attention to the comments on my November 5th post, where you will see my very first "spam" comment. (It's like I have a real blog now!) I have some long-overdue pictures to post, as well as the final installment of my Portland trip series. And then, by special request, and because you know I love to do it, I will be treating you to an overview of the dynamics of international trade and finance imbalances, and how these balances are sometimes misunderstood or misinterpreted in political discourse, and why it bugs the crap out of me.

To begin with, here's a picture from when B was here (yeah, I know, that was in September) and we were being all touristy at Pier 39:

i love my program

I'm trying to finish grading exams for Dr. J, but I have some questions for him and he doesn't get to campus until 3 p.m., so instead of spending my time doing something productive (like working on my econometrics paper so that I can come up to Portland for the holiday party), I thought I'd give the neglected blog a little attention. I'm feeling cheerful, as I suspect many of you are, about the excellent showing the Democrats made yesterday, and I've been texting results to DWE (who is in London) all morning. My expectations for the Democrat-led house aren't particularly high (most Democrats drive me crazy for a variety of reasons, the foremost one being their apparent inability to understand the trade deficit and international trade in general), but I'm fairly certain this will be an improvement on the current situation. And I can't help but be at least a little proud that my congressperson is the new Speaker of the House. And thank goodness the governor of California is still a movie star. Life needs to stay at least a little surreal and disturbing.

I figured out something cool recently: if my advisor and his buddy from UCSD use the data that E, M, and I collected in India to write their own paper (which I believe they intend to eventually), then I (and E and M) will be listed as a coauthor on that paper. So if that paper gets published, I'll be published in an econ journal! Pretty cool, eh? Even if it's not published I can still put it on my CV. I've realized that the field research component of this program is even cooler than I initially thought, because data, even sort of crappy data, is like gold in economics, and I basically own some (of course, my advisor helped pay for it, hence why he gets to use it too). Also, there's a good chance I'll be TAing undergrad econometrics for Dr. J next semester, which will apparently also look good on my CV. It would be a lot of work (because, you know, I'd have to learn econometrics well enough to teach it to others), but it would also be a great review. And if I attended the class every week, I'd probably get a lot out of having basic econometrics retaught to me by Dr. J, a professor whose style of teaching alligns perfectly with my style of learning.

Anyway, at a bigger and/or more prestigious program, I never would have these sorts of opportunities; all I would have is a "brand name" degree and a lot more debt. Of course, if I get a PhD I'd like to go to a prestigious school, but this is a good reminder to keep things in perspective. Sure, Jeff Sachs, Jagdish Bagwhati, Joe Stiglitz, Robert Mundell, and Edmund Phelps are all at Columbia, but would I actually get to take a class from any of those people? (Trust me, they're all famous international economists.)

But who knows if I'm even going to get a PhD. I'm certainly not applying for next fall. But that means I have to figure out what I am doing, which is something I've been putting off for a while.

angel island and crazy dreams

Yesterday was the econ department's trip to Angel Island (a state park/island in the North Bay, accesible only by ferry). I was more or less in charge, so I'm pleased to report that everything went smoothly. Food was good, weather was nice (and at least a few people may now actually believe that I control the weather--as I claimed to in several mass emails to the econ department--because it was rainy and miserable on Thursday and Friday, but by Saturday afternoon it was balmy and the sun was out, just as I promised), and no one missed the ferry and got stranded overnight on the island (at least not to my knowledge). I even got dragged on a hike, which featured some gorgeous views of Tiburon and Sausalito, as well as the bay in general. One bummer was that my dear colleague JSOC (yes, he has four names, and he usually tells you all of them when he introduces himself--he's Colombian), sprained his ankle while running on the trail with E. This is particularly unfortunate because JSOC was supposed to be running in a marathon today (he is an avid runner).

I'm a touch worried that I'm getting sick again, because I've had a sore throat two mornings in a row, and I went to bed at 8 p.m. last night (of course, I'd had a few beers throughout the day, I'd done all that hiking and carrying of heavy bags of food, etc, and I'd gotten up at 7:30 a.m., which is nonstandard for me). I didn't wake up until 8 this morning, so in theory I slept for 12 hours, except I actually didn't, because after I went to sleep, I took 2 phone calls from DWE (who was in Salt Lake City and should now be on a plane to London), one from S, and I returned one to McDreamy, confirming our gaming plans for today (I woke up for these calls, of course). So I probably got more like 10 hours of sleep, and I recall at least some of it being unusually fitful. Or maybe the dreams were just weird. I distinctly remember a long dream in which I was shopping for a formal dress (one of the sororities at USF is putting on a Masquerade Ball--like a prom with booze, I guess--and some of my econ buddies are trying to badger me into attending, so this might have been the dream's origin). All of the dresses were either way too big or way too small or just really ugly, and I was always with someone who was rushing me or distracting me. This morphed into a related dream in which B and I were going to join some sports team (maybe the volleyball team?) and so we stole athletic equipment from the mall and we had to get our class schedules changed around (I think we were in college). Ron Livingston, the guy from Office Space, was a professor teaching a math class we wanted to take. And then the dream morphed again and Ron Livingston became this other good-looking, older guy that I had an inappropriate crush on, and that was inviting me over for Thanksgiving dinner or something.

One thing I've managed to do very little of this weekend is grade, so that's what I'll be doing this evening after I hang out with McDreamy and his roommate. At the moment, I think I'm going to go lie down for a bit, maybe read some more (having finished A Confederacy of Dunces, which was odd and unpleasant but very well-written and ultimately satisfying, I'm now re-reading some Vonnegut that I read and enjoyed about ten years ago), and see if my sore throat will go away. I'm starting to become irrationally paranoid again about having mono, because I have certainly been quite tired lately, taking naps during the day and sleeping long hours at night. There could be several reasons for this, however, and even in the unlikely event that I do have mono, all I can do is rest and take care of myself, which I would presumably do anyway.

proctoring and swooning (literally)

I know, I owe you the final installment of the exciting Portland Trip series, and I also have a couple pictures from said trip to post. But things have been a little crazy for a few days, and I have a backlog of mildly interesting stories from my present life to tell, so we'll get to that first.

I've been particularly busy with TAing stuff this week, since my classes had a test today. It's generally the same couple students that come in to get help, and they are sweet but increasingly annoying. One of them seemed irritated with me because he showed up on Monday at the computer lab at 1 p.m. and I was not there. H was in the lab and called to ask me where I was. I said, "um, my TA hours start at 2." Apparently this kid didn't know about daylight savings. And even after he found out, he was still like, "I was waiting for you earlier and you weren't here..." as if I'd done something wrong.

Anyway, I proctored the exams this morning, which started off quite smoothly, but took a bad turn somewhere around 9:30 a.m. As the first class of students was taking the exam, I was looking at the stack of blank exams left over, and I thought to myself, "This doesn't really seem like 45 exams." And lo, I counted, and only 30 exams were there. So I was stuck with the dilemma of how to get 15 more copies of the exam during the 10 minutes that I had between the first class and the second class (not to mention traversing the 3-block distance between classrooms). This problem was exacerbated by the fact that I had no money on my copy card and no cash with me. So I frantically texted E, and enlisted him to meet me at the 3rd floor UC copier at 10:25. (If I haven't mentioned this lately, it bears repeating: E is my hero.) My copier-using skills have deteriorated significantly since I worked at the employment department, so I ended up having to do all kinds of sorting of pages, and then at one point I had to unjam the copier. So it gets to be a couple minutes after 10:30, and I send E to the classroom to tell the students about the technical difficulty and keep them occupied until I get there. E comes back momentarily (the classroom, at least, was just in the next building over) to inform me that Dr. J was in the classroom, and that he told him what was up. So now I'm thinking, "Great, what is the professor doing there? And why is he showing up the one day I'm having a major crisis?" It turns out Dr. J had stopped by to give me the answer key, and had been surprised to find me not there, but had turned the idle time into an impromptu review session, as any good professor would. (Amusing side note: the first time I met this class, I was running late because I'd tripped and fallen in a puddle and scraped my arm. So when Dr. J asked the class if they knew where I was, someone evidently said, "Maybe she fell down again.")

When I arrived with the exams, the ever-calm Dr. J said that he would just have the class do one less problem to make up for the lost time. About then I noticed that I had screwed up on the copying and copied the second-to-last page twice instead of the last page. "Um, I think it would be a good idea if they skipped the last problem," I said. So that's what they did, and it all turned out okay. Dr. J and I figured out that it was probably the copy people that screwed up, and our only error was not counting the exams before hand. It's nice when stuff isn't our fault.

Speaking of falling, I had a novel experience on Halloween night. DWE was in town, so we went out for a late dinner and then went to the Castro to see the throngs of people in costumes that flock there every year for a big "street party". I had 2 beers at my apartment, and 2 glasses of sangria with dinner. Then we spent a couple of hours walking around. We stopped at a bar on my way home and I ordered a bourbon and coke, which they served to me in a pint glass. I probably shouldn't have finished that drink just from a sheer dehydration standpoint, but I felt just fine: not sick or dizzy or even particularly drunk. So we walked the rest of the way home (did I mention that for all but the last 8 or so blocks of this walking, I was wearing heels? I know, what was I thinking?) So when we got back to my apartment, I went into the kitchen to have a glass of water, still feeling fine. DWE comes into the kitchen, and as we're standing there suddenly I'm overpowered by an intense, bizarre feeling of dizziness and lightheadedness. The next thing I knew, I heard DWE's voice saying my name, and telling me to wake up. I was lying down, and I felt as though I had been awakened out of a deep sleep. "Where am I?" I asked. "You're on your kitchen floor," DWE said, looking utterly concerned. Evidently I fainted. DWE said that he was particularly freaked out because before I slumped into him my right arm started shaking, and he was worried that I'd had a seizure.

To make a long story short, I checked with Dr. O the next morning, and he told me that I almost certainly did not have a seizure (one of the questions he asked me: "Did you experience any incontinence?" As if it wasn't bad enough to faint in front of DWE...at least I didn't pee myself) and that it sounds like I just fainted. I felt more or less fine the next day, and I'm totally back to normal now, so I think it was just one of those fluke things. And at least DWE was there to catch me. =)