Comments on: Elephants and camels

By: Backword Dave

Backword Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 00:37:03 +0000

>Oddly enough, the research also showed that at a certain point, increases in church, mosque and synagogue attendance tended to depress economic growth. Surely this is totally post hoc ergo propter hoc? Surely a the most parsimonious explanation is that people in church, etc, aren’t working or spending. Sunday in IKEA = growth. Sunday in church = no growth. (Adjust day to suit religion.) Both experiences are, of course, miserable.

By: Abiola Lapite

Abiola Lapite — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 20:15:20 +0000

“And, while I know very little about String Theory, I will say that “11 dimensions” has never sounded very promising to me.” It doesn’t work quite the same way, I assure you. Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it; just larn yesself some quantum field theory and a dash of algebraic geometry and you’ll find out all on yer ownsome.

By: humeidayer

humeidayer — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 17:16:46 +0000

I’ve noticed that every single person I’ve known who has contracted cancer has also worn shoes. And, while I know very little about String Theory, I will say that “11 dimensions” has never sounded very promising to me. I wonder what von Neuman could do with 11 parameters.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 16:14:35 +0000

and I’m sure he’s aware that thousands of these regressions have been run An understatement, of course; Barro’s co-author on the above mentioned textbook has alone been responsible for the papers “I Just Ran A Million Regressions” and the sequel “I Just Ran Ten Million Regressions”.

By: Gavin

Gavin — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 11:43:26 +0000

For all Barro’s good points, his applied work is his weakest work. Just have a look at his growth textbook with Sala-i-Martin: it’s a tour de force, until you hit the empirical chapters and then it’s just a joke.

By: Dan Simon

Dan Simon — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 09:00:32 +0000

No way—I say a healthy Bactrian camel requires at least four parameters.

By: Andrew Boucher

Andrew Boucher — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 08:50:58 +0000

Church attendance and growth: I presume there is a time-lag between the two parameters – increase in church attendance followed by decrease in growth. If it’s just correlation that’s being announced, the causal effect could of course be in the other direction – decrease in growth causes increase in church attendance, for the obvious reasons.