2x4 versus Herzog and de Meuron

This is how Graphic artist group 2x4 transformed Herzog & de Meuron's Prada Omotesando in Tokyo:

(Photo source: Nikkei Woman)

A thought on democracy

Why does the international community these days criticize a coup while they are quiet about the democratically-elected government's attempt to restrict free media (as happened in Madagascar before the coup) or to extend the term limit for presidency (as happened in Honduras before the coup)?

Without free media, democratic elections cannot replace an bad-behaving government. Without the term limit, the minority who does not support the incumbent may keep suffering forever. (Imagine the US did not have a term limit for presidency, and George W. Bush won the third term.)

The reason is, I believe, the lack of scientific evidence on what aspects of democracy bring about good outcomes. If there's evidence, politicians and people in the media industry are unaware of it. The international community appears to believe that multiparty elections are sufficient. Alternatively, the media does not loudly report such issues as banning radio stations in less developed countries, and so the international community realize something is going wrong in these countries only after a coup takes place.

We should stop this. And I will devote my life as a development economist to tackle this.

Isola Linear

A kitchen suggested by Toyo Kitchen from Japan.
(The image taken from Excite Ism Concierge, October 30, 2009)

No more nukes. Pray to music.

I'm usually apolitical. And I don't want music to be politically charged.

But in this case, a political message makes music more powerful:

Best sushi in Stockholm

Stockholm has many, many sushi restaurants. I would say the number of sushi places per person in Stockholm is a lot more than in Tokyo.

And everyone in Stockholm asks me which sushi restaurant is the best in Stockholm because I'm Japanese. I didn't know the answer until today.

Sushi Bar Kirin at Brommaplan is the one. For the first time in ages, I feel comfortable eating foods in Stockholm. I mean, this sushi place offers the kind of taste I'm used to.

Although Brommaplan is a bit far from the city center, Sushi Bar Kirin is located quite close to the metro station. So it's not such a hassle to go there from time to time.

I'm grateful to Sandra for letting me know this place via her blog.

Developing Rural Areas

I listened to a podcast of Esther Duflo's lecture on rural development at LSE on 24 September, 2009. It is an excellent lecture in the sense that she synthesizes the latest findings in development economics research from the viewpoint of rural development. This kind of effort has long been missing. The past decade saw an emergence of high-quality research on economic development. But there are so many pieces of such research that it is difficult to grasp a big picture of what's known and what's not in a systematic way.

Anyone interested in economic development should listen to this lecture, available as a video streaming (scroll down within the video player window to 24 September 2009) and as an MP3 file (search for Duflo and click "mp3").

Gareth Pugh from Paris Collection Spring 2010

FT Fashion Editor Vanessa Friedman at FT praises Gareth Pugh's collection. (The image is taken from Style.com.)

Winter has come.

From today I need to wear a coat, a scarf, and winter trousers to go out in Stockholm.

It's still autumn by Swedish standards which define winter as temperature below zero degree Celsius, though.

Gordon Ramsay Plane Food

Flying with British Airways from London Heathrow airport means that you depart from the new Terminal 5 building. After passing the security checkpoint surprisingly smoothly, I have dinner at Gordon Ramsay Plane Food. It could be the best restaurant in London. A poached hake, a rocket parmesan salad, and non-alcohol cocktail called Lemon Tree are all good. Usually, airport restaurants inside the security checkpoint are lousy. But it's worth visiting Heathrow Terminal 5 early and having the last meal in London at this restaurant. (A friend of mine, a frequent flier from Terminal 5, told me that the service could be slow for passengers whose boarding time is fast-approaching.)

Bolitas de espinacas at Navarro's

Have dinner with a friend of mine at Navarro's, probably one of the best Spanish restaurants in London.

Not every dish is great. (I said "the best in London".) Calamares rebozados are horrible. Brocheta de cordero isn't as good as the one I had in Madagascar.

BUT I have to write this down to remember. Bolitas de espinacas are fantastic. They are deep-fried, breaded balls of spinach and ricotta.

Long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets in Madagascar

There are always things to learn which you would not imagine unless you visit the field.

Long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets (LLINs) are the main tool for combating against malaria promoted by the international aid community. These nets have insecticide ingrained into the fabric so that mosquitoes with malaria parasites will die as soon as they touch the net. People talk about its durability in terms of how long the effect of insecticide lasts.

Today the head of the malaria control department at the Ministry of Health in Madagascar told us the following:

In 2006, pregnant women and mothers with children under the age of five in the east coast area received LLINs for free at health centers. Since then, the malaria infection rate had been stable around 10 to 20 percent. Last year, it suddenly went up to nearly 50 percent. We investigated what happened. It turns out that those LLINs distributed in 2006 have holes so that mosquitoes can come inside the bed net. Why? People in the east coast tend to have the kitchen inside the house. They burn charcoal to cook. The cooking smoke makes bed nets dirty. So people wash LLINs quite often. After two years, LLINs are worn out.

It's not about the durability of insecticide but that of nets themselves that matter to Malagasy people.

Ambodisaina village in Atsinanana region of Madagascar

Hi from the capital city of Madagascar

On the day of our arrival in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar also known as Tana (pictured above), the current and former presidents of the country, visiting Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, agreed to set up a transition government which will supervise presidential and legislative elections during the next 15 months. (See BBC News for more detail.) On the way from the airport to the hotel by taxi, we saw many, many residents of Tana lining up alongside the road, waiting for the current president, whom the international community does not recognize the head of state of Madagascar, to come back to the country.

With my colleagues from Tokyo, I'm visiting Madagascar to launch a research project on the impact of long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets (famous for its preventive effect against malaria infection) on poverty reduction. If I have time and connection to the Internet, I'll keep updating this blog LIVE FROM MADAGASCAR.

Good design helps newspapers

A TED talk (February 2009) by the designer who revolutionalized newspapers in Central and Eastern Europe.



I would add that this guy's design of his presentation slides is also excellent.

The least hard-working nation in Europe

So this is why, ever since I moved to Sweden, I always feel discouraged from working hard.

By the way, the above linked article shows why Sweden's only English news media, The Local, is a crappy news outlet. It doesn't explain what "collectively agreed" annual leave or "collectively agreed" working week really means. This is the most crucial piece of information because the whole article bases its information on the statistics for these two things. If you don't speak Swedish in Sweden, The Local is the ONLY source of local news. This country doesn't have any printed media in English.

How to "Save As ..." in Excel 2007.

For the first time ever, I use Excel 2007. And I don't know how to "save as", that is, to save a file in a different format than the default Excel format.

So I google it, and find this page from Digg.

I'm amazed that many people think it's a stupid question. Many people don't answer the question, just saying the guy who asked this question is retarded. They say, "To publicize how stupid this question is, let's keep posting!" How mean they are. As a result, I have to scroll down quite a bit to find the solution:

RIGHT CLICK on quick access toolbar
SELECT Customize quick access toolbar
SELECT Show All Commands from "Choose commands from:" drop down
SELECT Save As
CLICK add

The guy who asked this question (and I myself) is not retarded. It's Microsoft Excel developers who are retarded. How can you design the updated version of software so un-intuitively to the users of the previous version? (They completely reshuffle which command belongs to which menu bar.)

And the most annoying feature of Excel, namely, a pop-up window always shows up when I want to close a file that is already saved in the non-Excel format, still remains in this new version of Excel. It is Microsoft Excel developers who are retarded.

And when I enter "mar2003" (as the survey identifier for the one conducted in Morocco in 2003; "MAR" is the ISO code for Morocco), Excel 2007 recognizes it as 3/1/2003 (as the previous version of Excel does). Who would enter "mar2003" for 1st March 2003? It is Microsoft Excel developers who are retarded.

I'll Be Your Love

Composed by Yoshiki
Performed by Nicole Scherzinger (vocal), Yoshiki (piano), Ikuro Fujiwara (conductor), and Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra in Tokyo on December 2002.



For most of you, this video is a rare footage of Nicole Scherzinger before she broke through as the lead singer of Pussycat Dolls. For me, Yoshiki's killer melody is the most important although I do think Nicole's beautiful voice really fits this song.

Done with the revision of the last chapter in my PhD thesis

My PhD thesis, completed two years ago, has four chapters. One chapter was already published in a non-peer reviewed journal. Another chapter was published as a book chapter. The third chapter was submitted to and then rejected by a journal and then re-submitted to another journal last April.

Today I finished revising the last chapter (finally) and submitted it to a journal.

Now I can fully move on to new research projects (until journal editors either ask me to revise the submitted papers or tell me that they decide to reject them).

Tokyo Subway Map for your iPod

I just discovered Gizmobies. It's a stylish protector skin for iPod, iPhone, Blackberry, and Nintendo DS. This is what I wanted for my iPod Classic. And my hesitation to buy an iPhone due to its rather ugly design will go away with Gizmobies.

It originates from America, and its Japanese store has the "Japan-only" patterns. I hope Scandinavian designers will soon join the bandwagon. They should do a better job.

And what's surprising to me is that one of the patterns available in US is the Tokyo Subway Map (see above). This is a cultural shock to me.

London's tube map is a design icon.


On the other hand, I always thought Tokyo's counterpart was ugly.


But for Americans, Tokyo is cool, and so its subway map is also cool, as it seems.

分島花音 (Kanon Wakeshima)

Ayumi Hamasaki + visual-kei + breakbeat + classical music? Kanon Wakeshima is at least different.

still doll


砂のお城 (Sand Castle)

"Open Page" by Lenzman featuring Riya

A beautiful DnB tune:

The Daily Telegraph on drum and bass

An Economics Editor of the Daily Telegraph, UK's conservative broadsheet newspaper, has a blog post on drum and bass (or DnB for short). Since DnB is my favorite music, I can say something about the post. The article is so not up-to-date to the current scene of DnB, but the following paragraph is right on about this genre of dance music:

There are few other genres of dance music - or sub-genres rather - that can cover such an expanse as DnB - from the bone shaking dance hits that ravish clubs to the slow, meditative intensely jazzy DnB that flourished in the late 1990s. DnB is about plenty of things - about playing with form, about confronting expectations, but the more you drill into it the less it is really about either the drums or the bass.

The article is outdated because it recommends Goldie, Roni Size, and LTJ Bukem to the uninitiated. They are great legends of DnB, but this music has evolved a lot since those mid-1990s stars. I would recommend Pendulum (if you like rock music), Chase & Status (if you like electro music in general), and High Contrast (if you like movie soundtracks or classical music). And to keep up with the latest scene, check out BBC Radio 1 programme Fabio & Grooverider (you can listen to the latest show online on demand).

Skinnarviksberget

Views from Stockholm's highest point. To get this view, aim for Gamla Lundagatan in Södermalm and walk until the end of the street even if you feel the street is a dead end private road.

Skogskyrkogården (and Pizzeria Pergola)

The Woodland Cemetery in the south of Stockholm. These photos do not do justice to this UNESCO World Heritage site. It seems like I forgot taking photo when I was really struck by the beauty of the cemetery. The cemetery was designed by Swedish architects in the early 20th century. Here grave stones are all small and modest (see the third picture above), placing the surroundings at the center stage. A stark contrast to Milan's Cimitero Monumentale.



Across the street from the exit of the nearest T-bana station (Skogskyrkogården) is a pizzeria called Pergola (Address: Gamla Dalarövägen 56). It looks like a place targeting tourists who don't know where to go so it will survive with mediocre foods. Don't let its appearance put you off, however. Their pizza is excellent. It's a great way of learning how pizza is served in Stockholm: it always comes with what Swedes call pizza salad (shredded white cabbages marinated in dressing overnight) and the choice of pizza ranges from standard Italian ones to Mexican salsa pizza, from "pizza del mal" topped with Swedes' favorite crayfish to Turkish kebab pizza. Usually, the taste of pizza in Stockholm is rather straightforward (I mean it's good but not impressive). But Pergola's pizza tastes impressive.

I still cannot believe that I found it the best pizzeria in Stockholm...

Berlin's Turkey Town

Berlin hosts the largest number of Turkish residents outside Turkey. Berlin's Kreuzberg district can be called Turkey Town although, unlike China Towns everywhere in the world where only Cantonese restaurants abound, the area is not just about Turkish kebab restaurants and travel agencies for Turkish residents but also about Berlin's fourth boho area with an amazingly wide range of restaurants on Oranienstrasse and interesting independent small retail shops (and of course graffiti on the walls). Wandering around the area after getting off U-bahn at Kottbusser Tor is a must when you are in Berlin.

As the last dinner venue in Berlin, we choose Hasir at Adalbertstrasse 10, the restaurant launched by Mehmet Aygun, the Turkish immigrant who invented doner kebab. (More specifically, he's the first to put doner kebab on pita bread, something unheard of in Turkey). I always thought doner was a junk food. In this restaurant, that is not the case. Juicy meat makes doner a proper lamb cuisine. Shish kebab is also fantastic. Turkish tea is properly brewed. And the bill is around 10 euro per person. Simply great.

A bridge over the Landwehr Canal

Strolling along the Landwehr Canal in Tiergarten takes us to this pretty bridge near Grand Hotel Esplanade and Bauhaus-Archiv.

Hotel Review: Hotel Q!

I stay in room 408 for three nights from 9 to 12 July, 2009. The single room charge is 105 euro per night (booked well in advance).

The Good:

Breakfast. A wide range of foods is available, from typical continental breakfast (salami, cheese, croissant) to Italian salad, from grilled peppers, courgettes, and mushrooms to miso soup, from pickled salmon and poached trout to fried eggs (cooked to order and served on a green leaf of leek, which is a culinary revelation!), from freshly squeezed orange juice to a wide range of tea bags. There are even tasty cakes and pastries. And all is included in the room charge. What's more, on Saturday and Sunday, the breakfast is served until 1 pm. They understand what Berlin is about.

Bedroom design. Bathroom is also cool with black stone-looking tiles on the walls and the floor.

Friendly and efficient staff.

The location. From the airport, take bus 109 and get off at George-Grosz-Platz. The hotel is one block away from there. A few minute walk takes you to the nearest U-bahn station Uhlandstrasse, the terminal for Line U1. Without changing trains, you'll reach to Kreuzberg where great Turkish foods and stylish bar and nightclub on the riverside await you. Schwarzes Cafe is within a walking distance.

Booking online at its website is straightforward.

The Neutral:
The theme color of this hotel is red, red, and red. From the front desk to lighting in the corridor and even in toilets. If you love red, this is fantastic. If you don't like red, you may feel too much.

The Bad:
There is no kettle or even coffee maker in the bedroom.

There is no alarm clock in the bedroom.

The shower head is fixed to the wall of the bathroom.

Towels provided are rather worn out.

The Ugly:
The miso soup in the breakfast. The soup stock is completely wrong, at least for Japanese people's taste.

Verdict:
Unless you hate the color of red, this is your place to stay in Berlin.

Spindler & Klatt

Walking to Spindler & Klatt, a riverfront bar-restaurant in Kruezberg featured in Wallpaper* City Guide, requires a bit of courage. During the evening, the area is quite dark with very few shops, bars, and restaurants. You may wonder whether you are walking on the wrong street. Enter the abandoned warehouse premises to reach the bar, and you'll be greeted with the great view of the river Spree, Buddha statues, and Japanese futon-ish white sofa complete with pillows/cushions. People here take off their shoes to lie on these futon sofa to have a chat over dishes and drinks, which must be inspired by Japanese izakaya bars (though in Japan it's not futon but tatami mattress on which people sit down to have drinks).

Oberbaum Bridge

The picturesque bridge through which U-bahn line 1 trains run between Warschauer Strasse and Schlesisches Tor stations, the section abandoned during the Cold War because the bridge connects East and West Berlins.

Southern half of Friedrichshain

After enjoying the Stalinist architecture on Karl-Max-Alle, I head down to the south to walk on Simon-Dach-Strasse, a street famous for its endless series of restaurants, none of them, however, look very attractive.

Following Wallpaper* City Guide's recommendation, I turn the corner into Simplonstrasse and have dinner at Schneeweiss (Simplonstrasse 16). White is the theme color of this restaurant, serving reasonably priced dishes. As the menu is all in German, I follow the recommendation of a skillful, working-hard bartende. His mojito royal is marvelous, by the way. Wiener Schnitzel is pleasantly tasty, and my bill is 21 euro.

At the south end of Simon-Dach-Strasse runs Revaler Strasse, which turns out to be Berlin's third boho area. The brick-walled premises on the south side of the street host an open-air bar surrounded by thriving weed and the abandoned brick warehouses decorated with graffiti.

Stalinist apartment blocks on Karl-Marx-Allee

Along Karl-Marx-Alle, formerly known as Stalin-Allee, stand a series of socialist apartment blocks built in the early 1950s by the East Germany government as an after-war reconstruction effort. Modernist straight lines decorated with classical details, the style known as Stalinist architecture, appear luxurious to me. Get off at Strausberger Platz U-bahn station (on Line U5) and walk to the east, to enjoy the idealism of early-day communist Germany.

The Berlin Wall Memorial

On Bernauer Strasse in the north of Berlin remains a stretch of the Berlin Wall.


This is where the Wall brutally cut the community into half, by running just in front of the local church so residents on the western side of the Wall could not walk into it.



Residential buildings in the eastern side of the Wall were demolished so that East Germany's officials on a watchtower could keep watch on the wall to shoot anyone who tried to escape from the communist part of the city.



The East Germany government destroyed the defunct church in 1985.



When the Wall was brought down, people here decided to erect a modest-looking chapel in the same place as where the church used to stand.



Initially I didn't know what this oval-shaped building is meant for. After I learned about the history of the church, I noticed the cross in front of the chapel, which almost made me cry.

The stretch of the land along Bernauer Strasse where the demolished residential buildings on the Eastern side of the Wall used to stand is mostly empty, suggesting the land title for the area hasn't been solved yet. You need to come down here to feel what the Berlin Wall was like. (The official website of the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse is here.)


A billboard standing at the site of the Berlin Wall Memorial

Fernsehturm, Berlin's icon

Berlin's answer to the Effel Tower in Paris is Fernsehturm (TV Tower). When I saw it in a photo before arriving in Berlin, I didn't really understand why it has become Berlin's icon.



Once I'm walking around the city, I understand why. Its view is simply ubiquitous. Almost anywhere in Berlin you will notice its presence.



Even Berlin's other landmarks such as Brandenburger Tor and Berliner Dom are haunted by the TV Tower.


The more I see the tower's futuristic design, the more I feel affinity to it.

Although it was erected by the atheist communist government in 1969, the cross appears on the ball when it's sunny (known as Pope's Revenge).


West Berlin failed to produce such a landmark. Although the West won the Cold War, the East scored in this respect.

Watergate nightclub

Ranked 8th in this year's world nightclub ranking by DJmag, Watergate is actually more like a great bar than a nightclub though the gate is open at midnight, the DJ listing is serious, and the best DJ starts playing after 4:30 am. Facing on the river Spree, both of its two dancefloors feature floor-to-ceiling glass windows through which you enjoy the view of Oberbaum Bridge, the neon sign of Universal Music Group, the river water surface glittering. What's more, there is an open-air terrace on the river that can be accessed from the club where you can chill out after an intense dance session with minimal techno rhythm. The only problem is people smoke inside, making your clothes stink, something that I thought was a thing of the past after even UK bans smoking inside the buildings.

Schwarzes Cafe

A dinner place for the first night in Berlin was a tourist trap on Ku'damm, the boulevard in West Berlin (though my friend was happy about the dish). The one for the second night is a place we just hopped in on Kantstrasse, a street running in parallel one block north of Ku'damn, which turns out to be a famous place called Schwarzes Cafe. The ground floor looks like just a tiny cafe that you can find anywhere in the West, but walk upstairs and there's a classical/underground atmosphere with the red carpet floor, the red-painted walls, and the golden ceiling with rusty classical European decorations. The food menu is stateless: Salad with creamy balsamic sauce, baked sweet potatoes in Asian style, a hint of coriander, and shredded Argentine beef steak is one of the best salad I've ever had. My roast pork with ginger apricot sauce is good as well, so is my friend's "fried noodle in German style" (which tastes somewhere between Korean pancake (jeon) and Japanese udon noodle). Even the restroom is fancy with its futuristic/industrial design (see the photo below). I would become a regular customer if I lived in Berlin.

Garden of Exile in Jewish Museum Berlin

Jewish Museum Berlin has another corridor called the Axis of Exile. A brief description that German Jews had to emigrate outside Europe (from the Americas to Shanghai) as European countries were reluctant to accept them is followed by a square garden outside the museum building where a grid of tall rectangular concrete pillars stand upright against the ground. On top of these pillars thrive olive leaves which are beyond your reach. The pebbled ground is difficult to walk on, but you'll soon realize that it is difficult to keep your balance as you walk around (although what you see is all orderly).


It turns out that the ground surface of the garden is actually a slope. The right angle formed by the pillars and the ground deceives you into a wrong sense of gravity. And it is not that difficult for someone like me who needs to live abroad (though the reason for it is much, much less tragic in my case) to understand what this garden all means.

A view of the Garden of Exile from above.

Holocaust Tower in Jewish Museum Berlin

On a corridor called the Axis of Holocaust in Jewish Museum Berlin, visitors encounter a series of items left by those Jew victims of Holocaust. There is a door at the end of the corridor. Open it to enter the next room, and you'll be surrounded by darkness with a slit of sunlight high above. You barely hear the sound outside. Concrete walls shape the long triangle space. Sit down on the cold floor and look up at the bright slit, and you'll feel the same as those Jews without the means of fleeing Nazi Germany who hid themselves only to wait for Nazi to take them away to extermination camps.

Auguststrasse

The second alternative area of Berlin is the Scheunenviertel, the northern half of Mitte district. Auguststrasse, the street where the whole contemporary art scene in Berlin initiated, is full of galleries though few are really impressive. Time Out, who says "many of the cutting-edge galleries have moved on", seems correct. Still, wandering on this street is fun.

Kastanienalle

Berlin has at least four different areas of boho, alternative, street youth culture. Prenzlauer Berg, northeastern Berlin, is one of such areas. The Time Out Berlin guidebook says that those really cutting-edge already left this area, but Kastanienalle, a street running to the southwest from Eberswalder Strasse U-bahn station, is full of independent boutiques, cafes, and graffiti on houses built at the turn of the 20th century.

Berliner Dom

When my friend and I were walking along the Spree river, the Berlin Cathedral suddenly appeared on our left, interrupting our conversation with its solemn appearance.

Bundeskanzleramt (Chanceller's Office)

Just beautiful.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Berlin's Holocaust Memorial turns out to be a maze. Once you walk into the grid of concrete blocks, you are lost because these slabs are much higher than your height in the central area of the memorial premise.

It seems none of the top surfaces and the side walls of these slabs is exactly in parallel. Each concrete slab has no frill on it. They are simply immaculate concrete blocks. Such simplicity and abstractness paradoxically tells visitors the graveness of what this memorial commemorates.

Kaffekoppen

Facing Stortorget, the main square of Gamla Stan, is Kaffekoppen, a tiny cafe (there is downstairs, though) dating back to the 13th century serving an excellent cup of hot chocolate.

Tyska Kyrkan viewed from Tyska Brinken in Gamla Stan

Gamla Stan, a tiny island where Stockholm originated back in the 13th century, can be a tourist trap. But if you know where to walk, the picturesque landscape awaits you. One of such is the view of Tyska Kyrkan (German Church, where German merchants used to hang around in medieval times) on Tyska Brinken. When you get off at Gamla Stan T-bana station, turn right, walk one block, and then turn left. That's Tyska Brinken.

Urban Outfitters in Stockholm

Although it's an American export, the Stockholm branch of Urban Outfitters is a must-see. A former cinema theatre is converted into a spacious boutique with customers trying clothes on in fitting rooms seen in silhouette on the windows of a manshion set up on the stage.

Oslo Opera House

I visited Oslo University to present my research. Before dinner with people there, I had some time to explore the city. I headed to the critically acclaimed Oslo Opera House.

It is an impressive piece of architecture. Since its roof is a slope from the ground level, visitors can walk up on the rooftop. As you are walking around, the view of the Opera House keeps changing continuously, because its shape is essentially a cluster of straight lines very few of which are in parallel. What's more, the surface texture of white tiles differs from part to part, creating some nuances in the color of the white roof. It's a photographer's paradise because there is a myriad of ways of framing the view of the building along with the sky and/or the sea.



Inside the building (including the rest room) is equally impressive. For the first time ever, I saw a concert hall where waiting for the show to start can be fun (or even more enjoyable than the show). No photo for the interior because I failed to do justice to its stylishly pleasant atmosphere.

Kaffebrenneriet

I was hungry while I was walking in the city centre of Oslo. I just wanted to bite a tasty, crunchy baked good. If I were in Stockholm, this would be almost impossible as people in Stockholm seem to hate crunchiness in baked confectionery. In Oslo, a cafe called Kaffebrenneriet made my desire fulfilled with its tasty, crunchy banana cake.

Reactions from a Control Group in Ghana

Randomized control trials (RCTs for short) have been the fad in development economics research during the past five years or so. One usual concern for this research methodology is that it's ethically incorrect. Usually, the trials evaluate the effect of offering poor people in poor countries with something that is supposed to be good, such as medicine, money, savings accounts, etc. And this offer is given to people randomly selected. So there are people who won't get any offer like this. Such people may be offended.

In Ghana, at least, this concern appears to be minimal. See this post from the blog of IPA, a non-profit organization founded by Dean Karlan, a leading development economist who made a fame from his RCT research in development economics. (He's actually coming to my workplace next month.)

What is an interesting paper in economics?

According to Steve Levitt, it is a paper that
A) teaches some important facts,
B) has a clever idea,
C) is believable, and
D) makes the world a better place.

Impact of insecticide-treated bed nets on infant mortality

I've done a bit of surveys on the impact of insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) on infant mortality. For the uninitiated, ITNs are known to be effective for preventing child deaths due to malaria infection. ITNs do not just protect you from mosquito bites that can transmit malaria parasite into your body. They also kill mosquitos that touch the ITNs as the bed net fabric contains insecticide. As malaria is transmitted only through mosquitos, ITNs reduce the risk of malaria infection in these two ways.

But how much do they reduce infant mortality in a village in Africa?

To identify randomized control trials of high quality on this topic, I look at the Cochrane Review (Lengeler (2004)), which identifies the list of such trials with no bias in the estimates. There are five studies looking at the impact on child mortality, and Lengeler (2004) concludes that ITNs reduce child mortality by 5.5 deaths per 1,000 children.

However, I'm interested in infant mortality (the death rate among those aged under 12 months old), not in child mortality (the death rate for children under the age of 5 years). Also, it is not clear to me whether these estimates refer to the intention-to-treat effect (the impact of distributing ITNs) or the effect of the actual use of ITNs. So I look at the original studies.

It turns out that one study looks at insecticide-treated curtains. Another looks at the impact of treating bed nets with insecticide (because the study is conducted in The Gambia, where the use of bed nets is common). The third study does not report infant mortality. So only two studies actually evaluate the impact on infant mortality. And the intervention they evaluate is actually the distribution of ITNs to a community, not the actual use of ITNs by villagers (though both studies find that the usage rate of distributed ITNs is rather high).

Binka et al. (1996) report that, in Kassena-Nankana district in Ghana, before distributing ITNs, the mortality among children 6 to 11 months old is 49.7 per 1,000 for treated villages while it is 55.1 per 1,000 for control villages. After the intervention, 73.2 for the treated and 90.3 for the control. The difference-in-difference estimate yields a reduction by 11.7 per 1,000. In addition, the authors report that the mortality for children aged 1 to 5 months is comparable between the treated and the control before the intervention (they don't report exact numbers) and that it becomes 77.4 for the treated and 100.7 for the control, implying that the impact is a reduction of 23.3 deaths per 1,000. Combining these figures, the impact on infant mortality is 35 deaths per 1,000, much higher than the effect for all the children under the age of 5 years concluded by Lengeler (2004).

The other study, Phillips-Howard et al. (2003), reports a reduction of infant mortality by 31 per 1,000 due to the distribution of ITNs in Asembo and Gem areas in western Kenya, which is surprisingly similar to what Binka et al. (1996) find. This similarity may be explained by the fact that malaria is endemic (ie. there is risk of infection throughout the year) in both study sites.

By the way, Hawley et al. (2003), another piece of paper by the same research team as Phillips-Howard et al. (2003), reports the reduction of child mortality by similar magnitude in villages without ITNs but near those villages with ITNs distributed. This finding suggests that the main mechanism through which ITNs reduce child mortality is not the protection of children (and pregnant mothers, as malaria infection during pregnancy can cause the malfunctioning of placenta and thus reduce the birth weight of newborns, which increases the risk of infant death) by bed nets but the eradication of mosquitos by insecticide.

Moving within Stockholm

There are three ways of finding a place to live in Stockholm (and other cities in Sweden): buy a place to live, make a queue for renting an apartment directly from the owner, and find someone who wants to sublet his or her apartment.

From what I hear from Swedes, the government encourages people to follow the first option. The supply of apartments for rent is severely discouraged due to the rent regulation. Rent is set according to the average cost of building an apartment in the area, nothing to do with demand for apartments.

The second option, making a queue, is infeasible for foreigners like myself. Those with their Swedish social security number or personnummer (everyone living in Sweden, Swedish nationals or not, must have one) can put themselves in a queue by paying 275 Swedish krona per year (about 26 euro), which by the way includes 25 percent VAT tax. Among those who are interested in a particular apartment for rent, the first 30 in the queue are allowed to have a look, and among those who do want to rent this apartment, the first in the queue is chosen as the tenant. On average, it takes five years to rent an apartment this way. Unless your Swedish parents put you in the queue long before you actually need to rent an apartment, it is impossible to find a place to live this way.

The last option, and effectively the only one for foreigners, is usually offered by Swedish tenants who need to go abroad for a certain period of time. It's unusual that such Swedes will stay abroad for more than a year. Therefore, the subletting contract usually lasts at most one year. So you need to move around Stockholm once in every year.

It seems like there is a political philosophy in Sweden which says that renting an apartment creates income inequality, which is nothing but evil. It is so anachronistic in the age of people moving around globally.

Anyway, the last option is what I took last weekend. There is an online real estate agency specializing in subletting, Bostad Direkt. (There appear to be many others of this kind, but only this one, it seems, has an English version of the list). The list of apartments for sublet can be viewed for free. But to find out the contact detail, you need to pay nearly 700 krona (67 euro) for the subscription lasting 45 days. I wanted to move in to an area called Hammarby Sjöstad. I've been browsing the list of apartments for sublet in this area since January, and couldn't find any with a reasonable amount of rent and a reasonable amount of contract duration (ie. at least 1 year) until early April. The first apartment that I saw was an excellent one. But the tenant, a Peruvian who broke up with his Swedish girlfriend a year ago and that is why he is subletting this spacious apartment, suddenly became out of reach on the day we would sign the contract. The second apartment that I saw is perfect but the fact that it lacks a bathtub. During the long, cold winter in Stockholm, taking a bath makes a lot of difference to someone from a country of bath culture. But there's no other option. I need to leave from my current apartment this August (because it's also a sublet), and there is absolutely no guarantee that I will find another apartment in this area by August. I may end up in a suburb of Stockholm where there is only one supermarket and nothing else (which is more or less true for all the suburbs in Stockholm). So I took this apartment in which I can stay until July 1st next year.

Since the contract with my previous apartment requires a 60-day advance notice of termination, I end up paying 2 months of rent for the apartment which I do not live in. And moving my stuff by truck costs about 2400 krona. Packing (and unpacking) all of my belongings and cleaning the apartment to leave costs two weeks. And all this will be repeated every year.

That's life in Stockholm.