Work Progress

I cleaned up some little estimator stuff on the journals project and reran with bootstrapped standard errors and shipped off to my coauthor.

I have been following up on another project. I recalled survey data of US teens that, among other things, ask about video game usage and getting into fights. I have been teaching myself matchng models and am confirming my previous results. Cool again.

4/5

Work Progress

Not much progress today. I went back and checked on some bad matches and found a small coding error. However, since this was at an early step, rerunning all the subsequent steps is taking all day (and is not done yet at 8pm).

I did spend a good chunk of today and yesterday reading one of Marianne Saam's papers and providing her with some feedback. Not a bad paper but could use a bit more rigorous thinking about certain issues.

2/5

Work Progress

Since I got the data to match, I have been running regressions. First, I examine whether JSTOR affected economists citing patterns. I have 44,000 articles from 83 journals since 1985 where the first author is from a decent research institution (i.e., the 400+ that published 25+ articles in these journals over this time period). For each published article, I know the number of journals the author had access to through JSTOR and the number of his references that are from one of these journals.

1. With fixed effects for institution, citing journal, and year, I find that the number of JSTOR journals one cites to increases when the author obtains access to more JSTOR journals. In fact, I find that there are diminishing returns to adding access to more journals. This occurs for 'top' institutions and more mediocre institutions.
2. JSTOR access to more journals 'crowds out' references that are not available through JSTOR at about one-tenth the rate. And this also displays a diminishing rate.
3. Working paper and 'in press' citations increase over time but not with JSTOR. These are now findable over the Internet but not through JSTOR.

The really cool stuff is when I look at 'research productivity.' I aggregated all these articles by institution and year into some 10,000 observations to see if JSTOR increased the rate of publication. For the raw count of publications (controling for institution, journal and year fixed effects) publications rise and at decreasing rate when an author has access to more JSTOR journals. Cool! I need to investigate whether there is a differential effect for different quality of institutions. (Presumably, researchers at better institutions had better resources with which to find these citable articles.) I also want to investigated quality as well as quantity of articles. The usual measure is the citation weighted number of publications.

OK, so this is just economic research - who cares. But, suppose the same holds true in biology, physics, medicine, engineering, etc. Then it might be possible to claim that the Internet has increased the pace of academic research output. This university research is the precursor to the industrial innovation and invention that have increased our standards of living (See Ward & Dranove (1995)). If these results for economics hold-up and generalize, we might be in the midst of the golden age of research.

All in all, a banner day.

4/5

Travels from Munich

A delightful little incident on the train trip back from Munich led to a flood of memories and some realizations. In Stuttgart, a group of a half-dozen women of a certain age, as they say, came on board and sat across from me at a table and a row behind. They were laughing and carrying on as they found their seats. As soon as the train started, they uncorked some champagne and had to uncork more 10 minutes later. Following each cork popping there was surprised laughter and giggles. They were obviously telling stories and making jokes, laughing at and with each other, and laughing at their laughing.

I remembered my mom and her friends just like this. When I was growing up, never do any two of my mom's friends meet without a belly laugh for some reason. They still meet up but the laughter is little diminished. Such wonderful memories.

Well, I was reading a book but got this little grin on my face at every exclamation and they noticed it and thought that I was in on all the jokes. Eventually, I had to explain that "Ich bin ein touriste und ich nich sprecken sie Deutche" ("I am a tourist and I do not speak Germain" I think). At which point, they realized that I was just enjoying that they were enjoying themselves. They offered me a glass. I refused at first, but allowed myself to be persuaded. That followed some broken English and even more broken German as we did our best to communicate. It was a housewives party whatever that means. It was a short visit , about ten minutes, because my stop was next.

The incident crystallized an issue I have been groping with while I am over here. This has been a wonderful opportunity for me to travel and I have tried to make the most of it. But traveling alone sucks. The point of new discoveries is sharing them with loved ones. I want to discuss these things with Cindy and the boys, gain insights and maybe share some. Meet up at dinner and compare thoughts. That is what the blog is all about to some degree, I suppose, but the discussion is a little one-sided. I guess I have to admit I am getting lonely. I am a pretty independent guy and can be contented by myself for quite some time. My major consolation, I suspect, is that, if I did not travel on weekends, and just stayed in Mannheim and moped around, I would be even more lonely.

Travels to Munich II

On Sunday, I got batteries and went back and got a few pictures where my camera had failed me. Here is the north side of the Residenz, facing the Hof Garten.

Here is a seen from that garden (notice that my second attempt at an artsy photo worked a little better). The photo cuts off that the structure there is domed (so the photo did not work that well). The people walking away in the photo are musicians who will set up inside the structure and play for donations.
I spent most of the day in the art museums - the Alte Pinakothek (Old Art Museum), Neue Pinakothek (New Art Museum) and Pinakothek der Moderne (Museum of Modern Art), all within a stones throw of each other. The Old had pre-Renaissance and early Renaissance, the New had later Renaissance through Impressionism and some Post-Impressionism, and the Modern had weird stuff.

OK, I can get my head around "classic modern" (say pre-war or even pre-1960s) but, what is now called contemporary art, loses its connection with art. For example, one huge display (40m x 10m) hanging 5m from the ceiling was a series of metal baskets containing clothes and such attached to ropes and chains as with theater curtains. What does it mean? Oh to find that out, you had to spend five minutes reading the artist's description of its symbolism. I read it and it made sense. I may not agree but that is not my problem with contemporary art. However, at some point, the written word conveys more information that the visual representation. Then again, I may just be a Philistine.

My favorite was the Neue Pinakothek. It contained the famous artists we all have learned about (David, de Goya, Delecroix, Gainesborough, Monet). What I enjoyed were some of the lesser known artists whose styles were variations on these themes. Of course, the museum did have a number of German and Munich School paintings. These paintings and variations were new to me (see wikipedia). I bought a museum book but I guess I did not look at it closely enough. Many of the paintings I liked so much did not make it into the book.

However, six hours (with breaks) in three museums did me in for the day. I returned in the late afternoon instead of the originally planned early evening.

Travels to Munich I

I let work early on Friday and took a train to Munich about 360 km (225 mi) in three hours. From my apartment to the hotel in four hours with no airport hassle, no driving and hot coffee serve to my seat - how cool is that?

I got in around 8:00 Friday and walked around the Marianplatz (the main pedestrian area) to get a meal and scout out the next day. On Saturday, I walked all over. First, I went to Assamkirche, a sumptuous church in which there is not a square foot without some sort of elaborate ornamentation.
Next, I went by the Viktualienmarkt, a daily victualing market like none I had ever seen before. Initially gourmet restaurants would buy their fresh foods here. Now, everyone comes to the 140 stalls of vegetables, fruits, flowers, meats, spices, cheese, fish, juices etc. Here are two stalls.

A short walk to Marianplatz, the main square, which is dedicated to the virgin Mary. The dominant structure here is the Neue Rathaus (New Town Hall).


The Frauenkirche (full name Dom zu unserer lieben Frau) is magnificent. You do not quite get how big it is until you are right on top of it. Here is the front door, five times the size of a human.

The square in front is small, so this is all the perspective I could get from there.

Here is a stained glass window.
I toured the Residenz (the palace of the rulers of Bavaria). Unfortunately, my camera's batteries lost their juice just before I entered the Residenz. This tour was extensive with many wonderful rooms. Wikipedia offers a couple of photos though. The first is the Antiquarium, a huge vault holding antique statues used later as a banquet hall.


Another photo is from the Treasury Museum attached to the Residenz tour and depicts a 16th century jewel encrusted statue of Saint George slaying the dragon.



I was able to climb the tower of the Alter Peter kirche (Saint Peters Church) just beside Marianplatz. This finally prvides some perspective on the Rathaus and Frauenkirche.


Finally, as I went back to the hotel, I saw a street artist in Marianpltaz painting a picture of Marianplatz as it might have looked 200 years ago. Pretty cool.

Off to Munich

I will leave this afternoon to spend the weekend in Munich for a site seeing jaunt. Don't know if I will be blogging, but I will return with photos and impressions.

Rough Crowd

I gave my talk on "Video Games, Violence, and Crime" at the ZEW yesterday. I got lots of comments and questions about my data and methods. Most indicate little things I should have done or I could do further. But some of them could be quite damning to the whole enterprise. By the end, even I was starting to lose doubt in my results. By far, these were the best comments I have ever got on this paper. This is what research is all about. Thank you very much.

Work Progress

Success! I finally got the data to match. I now have a dataset with the articles from 80 top economics journals from 1985 to 2007 written by folks affiliated with the top 500 or more institutions worldwide and can tell how many of their references were available through JSTOR. My rudimentary empirical work indicates that articles with more references available through JSTOR both have more references (indicating that JSTOR affects citation patterns) and are themselves cited more often (indicating that JSTOR increases the "quality" of an article). To do is to see if JSTOR increases article output or not and to do all the econometrics right (lots of fixed effects).

Before that though, I need to ship off the matched data and the data description to my coauthor. This task will wait until tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, I will present my "Video Games, Violence, and Crime" here paper at the ZEW tomorrow afternoon.

5/5

How big is football in Europe?

From Division of Labor we have:

The renowned Vienna State Opera canceled one performance and complained about dismal attendance at another, blaming the European soccer championship being played in the Austrian capital.

Performances are usually nearly sold out, but the opera house said 29 percent of its seats went unsold for its most recent event, Verdi's "La forza del destino." The opera house also said it had decided to cancel a ballet evening June 29, the day when the final is played in Vienna.

Officials said in a statement Tuesday that would-be visitors fear negotiating through masses of soccer fans in downtown Vienna.

It is something of an understatement to say that, in the US, there is not much overlap between the opera crowd and the football crowd.

The closest might be Vikings games which often feature hefty fans in horned helmets yelling at the top of their lungs.

I wonder if he is an opera buff?

Video Game Paper Publicity

I was interviewed last week by a reporter from Sweden about my video game paper. The result is my femton noterar av berömmelse ("fifteen minutes of fame" in Swedish). See here. I ran it through a babel-fish translator and it seems accurate. Being a diligent reporter, he got input from psychologists too. What surprised me is that their study seems to be consistent with my findings. See video clip here.

Sunday in Stuttgart

Stuttgart is about 40 minutes away by train and I have these Eurail days to use up, so I headed over there for the day. Because I am a guy, I went to the Porche museum (I did not have time to go to the Mercedes Museum too). Honey, here is my next car.

Here is my first car.

This is across from the New Schloss and where I had lunch. When it started to pour, I brought my meal inside.

Here is the new Schloss, which is 200-250 years old. The old Schloss dates back to 950.


This is the modern art museum, nicknamed the "cube." I liked the featured exhibit more than the regular stuff.

This is my attempt at an artsy photo from within the cube. My talents lie elsewhere.

A digression

I have discovered that almost all German cities have wonderful public places. Most of my colleagues in Mannheim complain that it is not a very pretty city and, compared to the local competition, it is not. However, they have made the best of what they have. The Rathaus, Paradeplatz, Planken, and Wassarturm areas are nicer than any comparable place in Arlington, Dallas, Fort Worth, etc. And they use their public spaces extensively. Every evening the cafe crowds flow out onto the sidewalks and squares with tables where one can get coffee, beer, or ice cream if not a full meal. The difference in cities is how much they were endowed with natural beauty, historical significance, or how well the spaces have been managed (over hundreds of years). Mannheim is not so well endowed, Heidelberg, Wien and Zürich are. Even then, Mannheim blows Arlington out of the water.

Stuttgart is somewhere in between. The public places are lovely and obviously well loved. I get the feeling, though, that it is trying to be a major city rather than the middle tier that it is. It is home to about 600,000 people about the same size as Fort Worth. Come to think of it, Fort Worthers seem to share this ambivalence with being a comfortable small city or a major metropolitan area. (Arlington also would like to be thought of as a bigger player than it is and it is half the size of Fort Worth. Arlington's unofficial motto is "We're nobody's damn suburb," which, of course, means that it is.)

Work Progress

I spent all Saturday stumped. There my data just were not merging right. So I spent all day debugging my programs (and finding a few really stupid mistakes, one after the other). Finally, after hours of staring at errors, at the end of the day, the institution names matched. Woo-hoo. Onto journal names and to JSTOR info.

4/5

Farmer's Market

Mannheim has a farmer's market in the plaza in front of the Rathaus (city hall) every Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday morning. I went this morning to get fruit and to take in all the colors and smells. Great fruits and vegetables, but also flowers, breads, cheeses, meats, and wines.



I wonder if Arlington could pull this off?

Innovation Conference

On Friday, the "real" economists came to present their research. Many of these papers are well done or interesting (and a few are both). However, I must say, I think I liked the "students' sessions" better. There may have been a slight quality difference, but they appear to be much more willing to engage in discussion about the topic and not convince themselves that their findings are the definitive "truth." Perhaps the academic economists' papers are substantially better, but my expectations were higher still. Or, perhaps, after five days of hearing papers on the economics of innovation, I am burned out on the topic. Some of these seem to be asking many of the same questions or using the same data from different countries. Or, perhaps, one bad apple spoiled the bunch (see below).

There are a few "big wigs" at all conferences. Most papers are presented in parallel sessions but the big timers will usually get the whole conference attendance as an audience. Most of the time, this is efficient because the big timers usually got that way because they are smart, hardworking and have access to data, resources and good RAs. For example, at the Milan conference, the talks by Dixit, Sutton and Anderson were all excellent and substantially increased the value added of the conference. Most of us look forward to hearing what the smart, industrious, and resourceful people in our field have to say.

However, without mentioning names, I had to walk out on one big timer at this conference. First, the presentation was technically poor (too many duplicative slides, poorly prepared slides, main points made verbally and not mentioned in slides, bad speaking voice & too many digressions). I can tolerate some of this as many of us are offenders. Second, and worse, the talk was on a policy issue and the speaker was obviously sympathetic of one-side and dismissive of the other side. OK, so I know your priors, what is your evidence? Oh, you only measure costs and not benefits. It appears as though the big timer is saying, because of my stature, you can trust my claims even when they are not supported by evidence. Sorry, I got better things to do than to be patronized.

The upside is that I got some work done (see, opportunity cost was positive). I think I found a work-around for my large file size problem.

Work Progress 3/5

Football

The Summer School ended today and the conference begins tomorrow. Because Germany played in the Euro 2008 tournament, the ZEW projected the game onto the big screen in the conference room and provided beer. Lots of fun, but too bad Germany lost to Croatia.

Work progress 0/5

Back to School

I have been busy attending Summer School. The ZEW is holding a Summer Workshop on "The Economics and Econometrics of Innovation." My research is getting back to these issues and so it is useful to get up to speed with the current issues, data and methods. So, I am in "class" with all "the other" graduate students and new Ph.Ds. Morning sessions are by established researchers summarizing a line of research and afternoons are "student" presentations. I got a few good ideas on how to solve some problems with projects I am working on. I am also able to provide some comments to the other "students" on their projects. Some of them are helpful.

[Note to my kids who like their Summers free from school. Dad is weird. He likes school. Since dad has his doctorate (and, more importantly, tenure) he does not have to get any more education. But he is still choosing to go to summer school. Here is hoping that my kids will be similarly weird.]

After the Summer School, the ZEW is hosting a conference on "The Impact of Regulation on Investment and Innovation Incentives." That will be fun to attend too.

Anyway, I am only able to work on my own stuff in the evenings and am not getting much done.
Work progress:
Monday 1/5
Tuesday 0/5
Wednesday 1/5

Zürich in 24 hours

I am a little late in posting but I have been busy. The train ride through the Alps was amazing. I doubt still pictures could do them justice. (Also, the window was somewhat stained.) I just could not imagine how rugged the terrain would be. My hat is off to Hannibal. The other aspect that this California boy kept marveling at all that water. Every crease in every cliff had a waterfall.

I got to Zürich at about 1pm and did the walk about. In the afternoon, I got caught up in the football match. I did go to the usual sites and got some of the usual photos. The city (at least the old city) is on either side of the Limmat River flowing out of Lake Zürich and there are a number of canals running through the city. Water is a major theme. And clocks. And hills. I also tried to get away from the commotion and was rewarded with quieter locations that were very pleasant.




Zürich is beautiful and expensive (Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills has nothing on Bannhofstrasse).

European Football Championships

I did not realize that when I booked this stop in Zurich, that it would be the opening day of the soccer championship hosted in Zurich featuring the Swiss national team. Needless to say, it has been kind of crazy here. Lots of fun. Lots of streets blocked off for pedestrian carnival antics. When you arrive at the train station, you see this huge statue inside the entrance.
Every kiosk selling beer, and there are dozens, has a TV and a crowd watching the game.

And here I am at the fanzone.

What a View of Milano

I thought going downtown was meeting up at a bar. Turns out it was at the conference organizer's place. And what a place. Federico Etro was a delightful host and ran a good conference. He lives in the top floor apartment in a swanky part of town. The apartment is great itself, with two floors, but the best part has to be the private rooftop terrace. Here is a neighbor's garden.
Down his front street.
His view of the Duomo a half mile away.

Milan Conference

A quick note because Internet access is limited. I made it to Milan after 10 long hours from Wien. The best part was going through the Austrian and Italian Alps.

The conference is now over. So far I have not been anywhere but the hotel and conference activities. (OK, one of these activities was a really nice dinner yesterday.) Tonight, I will go with a few of the folks I met for dinner downtown for a look around.

On to Milano

I won't get there until about 9pm (21:00 for all us Europeans). But I have a one hour "layover" in Innsbruck. Just enough time to stick my head out of the train station to gaze at the Alps. But not enough time to see the city. I am not sure my next hotel(s) will have Internet access so this may the last post for a while.

Kunsthistorisches in the PM

The Kunsthistorisches Museum is known for its many paintings by the Renaissance masters. Also of interest to me were the historical artistic collections. These included ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine collections. (Alas, another museum was displaying a King Tut exhibit but I did not have time to visit it.) I always marvel at the abilities of these masters (of all these ages), but I am much more of a museum hound than anyone else in my family.

No photos from inside, but outside there was a cross-advertisement for the King Tut exhibit and some sort of soccer thingy they keep going on and on about. The 10 meter high statue is wearing the Austrian colors.

Schönbrunn in the AM

Schloss Schönbrunn is fabulous.

Obviously modeled on Versailles, it sometimes surpasses and sometimes falls short. The rooms are simply sumptuous. I do not know when I have seen so much gold leaf. The tour is quite extensive and this time, the self-guided tour focuses on Empress Maria Theresa because it was given to her and she used it extensively.

However, those who know me will not be surprised that I enjoyed the gardens best of all. These are just a few of the images I saw and fewer still that I captured. A rose covered archway 50 meters long.


The formal gardens.There is a temporary band shell set up for a concert tonight. This obstructs the giant fountain of Neptune.

At the top of the hill behind the gardens is Gloriette, and the name is not an exageration.

Note to Self

Sunscreen

Wien day two

So I did day one of the tourist thing. I did all the things my family hates about me on vacations.

• I walked a lot.
• No, I mean a lot - including museum corridors, possibly 10 miles or more.
• I went to stuffy old art and history museums.
• I constantly changed my mind on what to do next.
• I got turn around (at least once), but insisted on figuring it out myself rather than asking anyone.
• I missed a metro stop and had to backtrack.

I travel this way this because I don't have to worry about what they will say and, as a consequence, I don't have them to remind me how to travel more sensibly.

In the morning, I went to the Imperial Palace. A nice thing they did to personalize the tour was to take you through the life of Empress Elizabeth (or "Sisi"). Then I walked the Ringstrasse, a loop around the old city that oozes the Viennese lifestyle. I took particular care to see the University of Vienna, where THE Austrian School of Economics started. I stopped for lunch at a cafe - I had only had a pastry for breakfast and was hungry. I ate well but decided to have a beer with it. A mistake. All I wanted afterward was a nap. Instead, I just dawdled over lunch for a while to recover.

Then, onto the Belvedere, a magnificent schloss and now an art museum. I came back downtown for my afternoon coffee and am resting before going out in the evening. I hope to stick my toe in the Danube. It won't be blue for long.

Wunderbar Wien!

My new favorite city is gorgeous. When I first saw Paris, I did not know that a city, the whole city, could be so aesthetically pleasing. I grew up acculturated with the typical American disdain for the French (Their tanks have three gears in reverse. The French salute is the Nazi salute but with two arms, yuck, yuck, yuck). But then I saw Paris and I understood why it was just not worth having any battles there. Paris is more beautiful than than my impressions of London, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, and definitely Washington, DC. Now that I have seen Vienna, I place it on a par with Paris. However, the Viennese appear to be much more comfortable with their city and their history than are the Parisians.

What makes the comparison fair is that there is a distinct Viennese style of architecture just as there is a distinct Parisian style (my father, the architect, could actually name them for me). The photos here make my point. In both cases, each successive building reflects that style, reinterprets it, builds on it, adds a new twist but does not fundamentally alter the concept. So on any street corner, you can look around and see variations on a theme. You walk down a block or two and the variations have changed but the theme is still there. Now this is difficult to maintain into the 21st century, I admit, but even there, the modern styles are designed not to clash with the old.

This reflecting the old is taken quite literally in the famous Hass-Haus



directly opposite St. Stephen cathedral.

Getting to Wien

I got here pretty uneventfully after a seven hour train ride. It was very comfortable though. I found my hotel, Hotel Stadhalle, (conveniently located three blocks from the train station). It is a nice little hotel with a beautiful courtyard (see below) and wireless Internet access (hence this post).


I got settled around 6pm and decided to head downtown to look around and eat dinner (by 3-day metro ticket museum reduction package) and when I got there it started raining. OK, I will duck under the ubiquitous huge umbrellas that cafe's put out and have dinner. Well, rain tuned to thunder, and a then a downpour, and then hail! Interesting at first but, as in increased, each patron gradually moved inside as the awnings strained under the pressure. Waiting it out my be an excuse for me to have a beer perhaps.

The upside is that, in the hustle, I got to talking with a nice young couple who have immigrated to Austria from the Philippines. Very fun discussion - they where proud of the current California governor (an Austrian you see) and asked me who I supported in the election. I steered away from politics, especially when they asked how Bush ever got elected. Finally the rain stopped an I returned to the hotel. Big day planned for tomorrow.