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• Thread: 66435 Goods vs 49954 No Goods

1. Economist
   3bed
   

   Are all of you crazy?!? His wife Ying Fan is a tenured professor at Michigan who just co-organized NBER SI in industrial organization. Any German university would kill to have them.

   We will not go over his story again. You can read it here, just go back by a few hundred pages. It has been told multiple times.
   The point that dual career offers at senior level are difficult for German universities has also been made.

   Okay, so then somebody please explain to me what RR did that makes him a pariah in Germany. Please!

   In brief, accepted offers at several German unis in the past and never showed up.

   Thank you! Presumably he accepted the offers and then offers for his wife never materialized?

   6 months ago # QUOTE 1 Jab 0 No Jab !

2. Economist
   3f45
   

   Presumably. But you‘re in the best position to know.

   6 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

3. Economist
   3bed
   

   Presumably. But you‘re in the best position to know.

   Why would I know?

   6 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

4. Economist
   607c
   

   Are all of you crazy?!? His wife Ying Fan is a tenured professor at Michigan who just co-organized NBER SI in industrial organization. Any German university would kill to have them.

   The question was why he would want to leave, not whether German universities would want to hire him. The fact is that there is not much interest in him in Germany.

   6 months ago # QUOTE 1 Jab 1 No Jab !

5. Economist
   ba1d
   

   Ruudiii! De Prenz kütt!

   6 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

6. Economist
   9649
   

   Nur eine Kleinigkeit ist hier verkehrt
   Und zwar das Bachmann nicht in Mannheim lehrt
   (Mannheim lehrt)

   Das alles ist Deutschland (oh oh oh)
   Das alles sind wir (oh oh oh)
   Das gibt es nirgendwo anders
   Nur hier, nur hier
   Das alles ist Deutschland (oh oh oh)
   Das sind alles wir
   Wir leben und wir sterben hier

   6 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

7. Economist
   cbd2
   

   SUΒΗUΜAΝ ΚRΑUΤS

   6 months ago # QUOTE 5 Jab 0 No Jab !

8. Economist
   727a
   

   Nur eine Kleinigkeit ist hier verkehrt
   Und zwar das Bachmann nicht in Mannheim lehrt
   (Mannheim lehrt)
   Das alles ist Deutschland (oh oh oh)
   Das alles sind wir (oh oh oh)
   Das gibt es nirgendwo anders
   Nur hier, nur hier
   Das alles ist Deutschland (oh oh oh)
   Das sind alles wir
   Wir leben und wir sterben hier

   Dachschaden? Ich versteh diese ganze Rudi-Scheiße hier nicht. Es gibt doch andere Sachen.

   6 months ago # QUOTE 2 Jab 0 No Jab !

9. Economist
   9ce0
   

   Das ist mittlerweile kindische Hassliebe aus beiden Richtungen...ejmr hasst ihn, weil er W3 hatte und sie nicht...und er braucht nen scapegoat, weil er es in D selbst verbockt hat und das nicht wahrhaben will.

   Nur eine Kleinigkeit ist hier verkehrt
   Und zwar das Bachmann nicht in Mannheim lehrt
   (Mannheim lehrt)
   Das alles ist Deutschland (oh oh oh)
   Das alles sind wir (oh oh oh)
   Das gibt es nirgendwo anders
   Nur hier, nur hier
   Das alles ist Deutschland (oh oh oh)
   Das sind alles wir
   Wir leben und wir sterben hier

   Dachschaden? Ich versteh diese ganze Rudi-Scheiße hier nicht. Es gibt doch andere Sachen.

   6 months ago # QUOTE 2 Jab 0 No Jab !

10. Economist
    0b5e
    

    Maybe you don’t know what discussions are supposed to do. Provide contextualization and give constructive comments. That’s exactly what he did. He suggested them to explore the bias time series and spareseness some more. He helped other German authors whose work is relevant and has gotten unnoticed by the US big shots. Gabaix and Angeletos both referred to his discussion in their comments. At no point did he ask to be cited. Disgusting this negativity here.

    1) The fact that there might be worse discussions (haven't seen Ma's) does not make his a good one.
    2) Contextualizing the paper and saying "cite these 5 papers, 3 of which are mine" are very different things. Throwing in a paraphrased Pigou (1927) quote does not really provide context whatsoever.

    ^ I also saw it and don't get what you complain about. If you want to complain about a nonsensical discussion, complain about Ma discussing the Farhi Werning paper without ANY comment but praising them and her daddy Shleifer. RR gave a good discussion and contextualized the paper pretty well.
    

    No negativity, but discussion about a presentation. A discussion will mostly also feature criticism. Get over it.
    A discussion is supposed to give constructive comments, just as you say. These might be ideas on improving the methodology, sharpening the interpretation of the results, suggesting further relevant data, hinting towards related - but so far ignored - literature.
    You say that he did the last thing. I, however, think that this is only partially true, because he mostly skewed the list towards his own and his (German) friends' papers. I.e., a non-representative list in my view.
    While this is debatable, of course, it is more important to note that there was no further constructive point. "Think more about A" is a message a high schooler could give in a discussion, because it has no actual content.
    And it was obvious that he did not understand what they were doing from him asking about "whether you could not just do an intercept". Moreover, his comment on "you cannot throw the bias in a VAR as if it were GDP" was also odd. Why not? GDP is an imperfect, not measurement error-free, proxy of economic activity. Their measure is an imperfect, not measurement error-free, proxy of "sentiment" or "bias" in the economy. Equally justified to put them in a VAR.
    Lastly, I know the history of this forum and this thread in particular. But I am no hater. I don't know the guy well and would never claim he is a bad person or researcher. He gave a discussion yesterday, I thought it was bad and that's all.

    6 months ago # QUOTE 1 Jab 0 No Jab !

11. Economist
    821f
    

    Are all of you crazy?!? His wife Ying Fan is a tenured professor at Michigan who just co-organized NBER SI in industrial organization. Any German university would kill to have them.
    The question was why he would want to leave, not whether German universities would want to hire him. The fact is that there is not much interest in him in Germany.

    not Goethe 5 years ago... they chose Zulehner instead. and she left for Vienna like 3 years later....

    6 months ago # QUOTE 1 Jab 0 No Jab !

12. Economist
    720b
    

    In Germany it’s also quantity not only quality?

    6 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

13. Economist
    8bc2
    

    Are all of you crazy?!? His wife Ying Fan is a tenured professor at Michigan who just co-organized NBER SI in industrial organization. Any German university would kill to have them.
    The question was why he would want to leave, not whether German universities would want to hire him. The fact is that there is not much interest in him in Germany.

    I think it was 2014. frankfurt considered her but ultimately declined to give her an offer because she "only" had an AER publication at that time. the bean counters (MH, I'm looking at you) suggested that she was not worthy.

    moral of the story: DON'T BE A BEAN COUNTER.

    6 months ago # QUOTE 1 Jab 0 No Jab !

14. Economist
    8ac0
    

    0B5E - thank you for your clarifications, you sound more reasonable about it than yesterday. Yesterday, you claimed you are not surprised that US academia wanted to get rid of him based on this discussion. First of all, there is no evidence of it, in fact Notre Dame promoted him this year (and RR made sure on Twitter that we all knew about it). Second - you admit now that you don’t know him or his research well, so such a sweeping claim was a bit of a hater comment.

    In terms of substance, I disagree also with you. He put the paper in a broader (the Pigou comment) and a more recent literature context. If he has contributed to that literature - what’s wrong with pointing that out? In the end, the paper was indeed about: here is an important psychological concept, let’s put it in a VAR. The rest is just bells and whistles.

    6 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

15. Economist
    8ac0
    

    His comment about putting it in a VAR was clearly meant as tongue in cheek (he called it cheap shot) but it’s obvious you don’t understand how it was meant. The VAR itself is a forecast device and thus has a bias but then you stick an external bias series into it. What does that mean? The point becomes clearer with uncertainty. We have seen it many times: sticking a time-varying uncertainty measure into a homoskedastic VAR. Anyway, this broader point was picked up on by Angeletos in the discussion. And Veldkamp as well.

    6 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

16. Economist
    8ac0
    

    I agree with you that the intercept comment was a bit odd. But it was also clear that he understood what the main point of the paper was with the machine algorithm. I think he called it a sparring partner for human forecasters. I think it was just a somewhat fumbled attempt to get the authors to clarify what the machine does.

    Lastly: do more of A is not a high schoolers comment. I’d have to go to the paper and check whether it’s true but if the discussant thinks A is important and missing from the paper, he should say it. Nothing cheap about it. That’s exactly why I want my papers discussed: to get me comments a referee would also give me (and pointing out missing stuff is what referees do).

    It really sounds you are new to the game and don’t quite know how these things work.

    6 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

17. Economist
    0b5e
    

    0B5E - thank you for your clarifications, you sound more reasonable about it than yesterday. Yesterday, you claimed you are not surprised that US academia wanted to get rid of him based on this discussion. First of all, there is no evidence of it, in fact Notre Dame promoted him this year (and RR made sure on Twitter that we all knew about it). Second - you admit now that you don’t know him or his research well, so such a sweeping claim was a bit of a hater comment.
    In terms of substance, I disagree also with you. He put the paper in a broader (the Pigou comment) and a more recent literature context. If he has contributed to that literature - what’s wrong with pointing that out? In the end, the paper was indeed about: here is an important psychological concept, let’s put it in a VAR. The rest is just bells and whistles.

    Not really what I said. I said I wouldn't be surprised IF they wanted to get rid of him. Moreover, the wording choice and the use of emoticons, should have made it obvious that this was an (admittedly) bad joke.

    I agree with you that the intercept comment was a bit odd. But it was also clear that he understood what the main point of the paper was with the machine algorithm. I think he called it a sparring partner for human forecasters. I think it was just a somewhat fumbled attempt to get the authors to clarify what the machine does.
    Lastly: do more of A is not a high schoolers comment. I’d have to go to the paper and check whether it’s true but if the discussant thinks A is important and missing from the paper, he should say it. Nothing cheap about it. That’s exactly why I want my papers discussed: to get me comments a referee would also give me (and pointing out missing stuff is what referees do).
    It really sounds you are new to the game and don’t quite know how these things work.

    The sparring partner terminology since it is rather hand-wavy makes it hard to infer whether he understood it or not. Given what he said about the approach, the most likely interpretation to me is that he thought that they horse race the forecaster and the machine in terms of goodness of forecast. Hence, he did not understand the concept of using the machine as an "unbiased forecast benchmark". But since you seem to be sympathetic to him (read: not objective), you might interpret it differently.

    Lastly, pointing towards missing depth in an argument is of course exactly what you want from a discussant, we are in agreement here. But just as with the contextualization that you claim he provided so nicely which I don't agree with, I feel like he did not provide a constructive comment of the sort: "you claim that B follows from A, but I only see how A' follows from A, so could you elaborate more on how A' then leads to B?" Instead his comment(s) were more in the line of: "not sure whether B follows from A, think about it a bit more. It's a complicated topic anyway, so it will take some time to get it right."

    6 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

18. Economist
    7de7
    

    ok we got it, you didn't like his discussion while the other guy did. can we get rid of that now?

    6 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 1 No Jab !

19. Economist
    8ac0
    

    0B5E - I guess we have to agree to disagree. Just one last thing. If you think sympathetic means not objective I again do not think you know how things work. In fact, sympathy is the first principle of hermeneutics.

    6 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

20. Economist
    3c61
    

    https://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/new-research-funding-for-economists-mainly-located-in-germany

    6 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

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