Megan #88: “And look, I’m not being cute here: my employer won’t let me confirm or deny which posts I’ve written. So baiting me by attributing Free Exchange posts to me is pointless; I’m not allowed to respond.”

It looks like you already have.

Of course she’s an economist. It says “Economist” right there on her business card.

Brad resolved the problem by doing something even more interesting than throwing out his outliers; he altered the composition of a standardised statistic for one, and only one, of the data points, using, ahem, domain specific knowlege of the Norwegian economy.

Brad:

Personally I see no need to omit Norway. I do see a need to plot the Norway point on the graph correctly. The revenues plotted on the vertical scale include oil excise taxes levied on corporations. The tax rates plotted on the horizontal scale do not—hence the Norway “tax rate” of 28% rather than the correct 52%. Move Norway out to its proper position—with the same tax concept on both axes—and everything is fine.

For “altered the composition of a standardised statistic” we might more accurately read “corrected a fundamental error in the WSJ graph.” If you can’t see the difference between this and tossing out inconvenient outliers, well … you really shouldn’t be engaging in this kind of debate, should you. If this isn’t actively dishonest, it is pathetic.

The set of countries heavily dependent on natural resources is not as regular as you make it out to be; it includes Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Sierra Leone, the economies of which are quite dissimilar in many ways.

Regardless, nothing of what you wrote really grapples with the fundamental issue discussed here (as I see it): for any country in any dataset, one can always come up with some unique properties that this country possesses and no one else does. Further, you can also give reasons why these properties should have significant economic impacts. So, if this sort of justification is sufficient to leave out Norway, then you ought to be consistent and throw out every country in your dataset.

I can’t see, in anything you wrote since Kieran made this argument in his post, any kind of answer on your part. Mostly, you seem to be giving examples when throwing out data is standard practice; appealing to the practical experience of economists; and repeatedly emphasizing the large effects of natural resources. None of this is any kind of answer to the methodological problem.

Are you paying attention to the discussion at all? The whole issue is that the specific illustration is necessarily valid when his general point is valid.

Except he made the point by invoking a particular country with particular characteristics which he would would have been aware of if he were an economist or if he had done a bit research. His general point was valid, but his specific illustration was not—and for reasons which are well understood.