Day of an Assistant Professor (65)

Work on the climate project.

Have a chat with a PhD student on our possible joint research.

Attend a seminar.

Day of an Assistant Professor (64)

Read a paper for which I've been asked to write a referee report (not the one for which I got a request last week).

Maman

I think this photo, taken from www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo984310.htm, is exquisite. The color of the sky creates some anxiety in your mind, which tightens the impression of this photo of lit-up Maman, Louise Bourgeois's famous sculpture, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. If only the camera-shooting guy were absent from the picture...

"Summer Time"

I don't really know why the "summer time" begins today when I still see snow on the ground in Stockholm.

Day of being an assistant professor (63)

Work on the climate project.

Day of being an assistant professor (62)

Work on the climate project.

Receive a request for refereeing.

Day of an Assistant Professor (61)

Work on the climate project with my colleagues.

Clean up my messy office desktop and equally messy Windows computer screen desktop.

firefox-mac-pdf

Updates on September 11, 2009: The plug-in is now called Firefox PDF Plugin for Mac OS X. Although Firefox 3 now lets you browse PDF documents within the browser window, it doesn't seem to work properly. Scrolling down the document messes the screen. All the icons on the top work weirdly. It's still better to install this plugin in my opinion.


I've been using Mac OS at home for more than a year. One thing that keeps bugging me is the browser. Mac OS's default browser, Safari, is sometimes unable to show a website designed for Internet Explorer. In such a case, you need to use Firefox for Mac.

The problem of Firefox for Mac is, however, that you cannot view a PDF file within the browser window. Everytime you click the link to a PDF file, the PDF file is downloaded onto your computer even if you don't know if it's worth saving on your computer until you actually read it.

Finally, I learn this problem can be fixed by downloading firefox-mac-pdf.

Now I probably do not need to use Safari anymore. Let's see...

Day of an Assistant Professor (60)

Work on the climate project with my colleagues.

A faculty meeting to discuss visiting researcher position applications for half an hour.

Attend a seminar.

Day of an Assistant Professor (59)

Work on the climate project with my colleagues in the morning and in the afternoon.

Work on the climate project on my own in the evening.

Day of an Assistant Professor (58)

Work on the climate project with my colleagues.

Have a chat with this week's visitor, to give her my comments to the seminar yesterday and to learn one thing useful for the climate project from her.

Day of an Assistant Professor (57)

Work on the climate project with my colleagues.

Attend a seminar given by this week's visitor, Pascaline Dupas. Based on a randomized field experiment in Kenya, she presents the first convincing evidence that allowing the poor to save in a bank account increases their welfare.

Go for dinner with today's seminar speaker and my colleagues.

Day of an Assistant Professor (56)

1. Review applications to visiting student fellowship for PhD students with interests in empirical development microeconomics.

2. Lunch with a colleague and this week's visitor.

3. Have a chat with the visitor on bed nets for malaria prevention.

4. Call IT help staff to learn what the file management will be like if I switch to Mac OS from Windows in my office computer.

5. Discuss the climate project with my colleague.

Day of an Assistant Professor (55)

1. Discuss what to do next in our climate project with my colleagues in the morning.

2. Lunch with this week's visitors to our Institute and other colleagues.

3. Attend a work-in-progress seminar by a PhD student at our Institute.

4. Attend a seminar by one of this week's visitors.

5. Gather background knowledge of bed nets and malaria in preparation for a chat with the other of this week's visitors.

Day of an Assistant Professor (54)

1. Have a chat to a PhD student on her research.

2. Have a chat with another PhD student on her research.

3. Review some PhD applications.

4. Read Guttman (2008):

Assortative matching of borrowers under joint liability contracts may not occur due to dynamic incentives, because forming a group with safe borrowers decreases the probability of being denied credit after group defaulting MORE for a risky borrower.

Week of an assistant professor

Monday 9th to Thursday 12th:
Work on the climate change project with my colleague.

Friday 13th:
Mistra-Swecia Scientific Seminar in which my colleague presents our work.

Yoshikitty :)

How development economics research is actually done

Belatedly, I found Robert Jensen's guest posts to Steven Levitt's Freakonomics Blog. It's an unusual account of how development economics research is actually done.

Robert Jensen's research is characterized by the testing in developing countries of basic economic theory that is yet to be empirically verified in a convincing fashion. As a result, it contributes both to economics in general and to development economics in particular. He's one of my favorite economists.

Day of an Assistant Professor (53)

Come to my office to work a bit on the climate change project.

Day of an Assistant Professor (52)

Work on the climate change project with my colleagues until late in the evening.

Day of an Assistant Professor (51)

Work on the climate change project with my colleagues.

Attend a seminar talk by Peter Nilsson, who finds that those Swedes born to young women during a temporary policy-driven increase in alcohol availability back in 1967 drop out of school more likely and earn less today. His careful analysis rules out many competing hypotheses, suggesting that the exposure to alcohol in utero negatively affects the cognitive skill. Check out his paper if interested.

Continue working on the the climate change project with my colleagues until late in the evening.

Day of an Assistant Professor (50)

Work on the climate change project with my colleagues.

Day of an Assistant Professor (49)

Work on the climate change project with my colleagues until late in the evening.

Day of an Assistant Professor (48)

1. Talk to a PhD student about her research when I bumped into her in the corridor.

2. Work on the climate change project with my colleagues in the morning.

3. Work on the climate change project on my own in the afternoon with an extensive use of ArcGIS, and I learn I need to install some extra plug-ins for ArcGIS to do my job...

Day of an Assistant Professor (47)

Work on the climate change project in my office in the late morning and in the afternoon.