Matthias Greiff

The Disposable Academic (via The Economist)

matthiasgreiff — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 12:41:32 +0000

Reminds me of my days as a grad student: “You know you are a graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle.”

full article

There is a demand for Keynes among Mankiw’s students

matthiasgreiff — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:22:14 +0000

As the walk out of 70 students from Prof. Mankiw’s class illustrates, there is a demand for “alternative approaches” to economics. Here you can read a summary of the events as well as the open letter to Prof. Mankiw, in which the students explicitely state their demand for Keynesian economics.

Together with Larry Summer’s statement (see the previous post) the walk out shows evidence for a growing discontent with the homogenization of economic programs.

Summers on effective demand and DSGE

matthiasgreiff — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:35:57 +0000

Last night, I read this piece in which Larry Summers was asked about the crisis and the role of the economics profession (and also about his work for Clinton and Obama).

His suggestion for the U.S. is to increase effective demand, like Keynes suggested a long time ago. Summers said: “If the private sector is either unable or unwilling to borrow and spend on a sufficient scale, then there is a substantial role for government in doing that.”

Summers also defended the role of the economics profession, but clearly stated his opinion about DSGE models. “However, Summers asserted, the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models used by many economists, which often assume the economy will naturally return to a basic equilibrium with full employment, have been of little value in these complex times.”

The Nobel Laureates

matthiasgreiff — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 07:35:06 +0000

The Lectures from the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings are online.

VfS Jahrestagung 2012

matthiasgreiff — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 07:55:48 +0000

Thomas Frickes Blog Wirtschaftswunder liefert Zusammenfassungen der Geschehnisse bei der diesjährigen Jahrestagung des Vereins für Socialpolitik. Interessant ist vor allem der Artikel über Ernst Fehrs Thünen-Vorlesung, in der Fehr für eine engere interdisziplinäre Zusammenarbeit zwischen Ökonomen, Biologen und Psyschologen plädiert.

Correspondence between JEP and Frey published

matthiasgreiff — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 14:27:52 +0000

The Journal of Economic Perspectives publishes the correspondence between the David Autor, editor of the journal, and Bruno Frey and Handelsblatt correspondent Olaf Storbeck comments on the latest developments in the Bruno Frey self-plagiarism affair.

Duncan Foley on The Need for Interdisciplinary Work

matthiasgreiff — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:35:49 +0000

Frey’s response

matthiasgreiff — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 17:24:30 +0000

The storm has not died down. In a Swiss newspaper interview Bruno Frey explains his position. And Olaf Storbeck responds.

Update (14th July): A comparison of the four 2010-2011 papers published by Frey/Torgler/Savage.

Bruno Frey is in trouble

matthiasgreiff — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:28:14 +0000

Bruno Frey, David Savage and Benno Torgler published two papers about survival in life-and-death situations, like the sinking of the Titanic. One paper was published in JEBO 2010, the other one in JEP 2011. Now they are accused of self-plagiarism. Economic Logic writes the following:

The two papers are by Bruno Frey, David Savage and Benno Torgler. They both report on the sinking of the Titanic and discuss the characteristics of the passengers who survived versus those who perished. Both papers come to the same conclusions. The texts are different, though, and the published regressions are slightly different, with no explanation why, because there is no reference to the other paper. One has therefore to read in much detail to understand what the contribution of each paper is, if there is any.

All this is very fishy. It really looks like the authors are playing games here, trying to get multiple publications out of the same work. They do not mention the other work to fool editors and referees into thinking these are original contributions, as required for any submission to those journals. They tweak the results and rewrite the text so that they cannot be accused of blatant self-plagiarism. This is unethical behavior, but it is not unheard of in the profession.

Among Economic Logic, other blogs discuss this issue of self-plagiarism.Reactions from the editors as well as from Frey and Torgler can be found here.

Update (July 8th): A summary of the debate can be found here. Thanks to Olaf Storbeck and his Economics Intelligence blog!

New History of Economics Blog

matthiasgreiff — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 06:41:56 +0000

My colleague Benjamin Mitra-Kahn is blogging about the history of economics. Recently, the blog called History of Economics Playground has moved to the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET).

Read it here.