Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion

Start revising the paper. Noll (2005, p.17)---last year's job market guide for PhD candidates at Stanford University---convincingly argues for the importance of the abstract, the introduction, and the conclusion of the job market paper. These are the parts of your job market paper that recruiting commitee members at universities actually read.

I think it's better to revise these three parts of the paper first. After revising the main text I will need to modify these parts anyway. So I will spend twice as long time as I would do if I revised these three parts only in the end.

The abstract must be short. The upper limit is 150 words. It must include the research question, the research method, and a brief statement of most important results. (Noll 2005, p.17)

I think that the introduction of a paper is more or less the same as the introduction of a seminar as described in Cox (2000): the question to be addressed, why this question is important, why the existing literature fails to address it properly, what your new and better research method is to address the question, and the summary of results.

More trickly is the conclusion. Cochrane (2005, pp.3-4) even argues that there needs no conclusion. But he suggests some idea for what should be written in the conclusion: a short paragraph or two acknowledging limitations. I think implications for future research and policies can also be included. In addition, David Levine (see under the heading "Stylistic issues") says the conclusion should be "accessible to the nonspecialist reader".

I forego the opportunity to go to Heyward Gallery with Cheyok and to a classical music concert with Katsumata-san tonight. Now I'm on the job market.

Hotel Room Booking for ASSA Meeting Interviews

Back at LSE, I immediately try to book a hotel room in Chicago online (the AEA website offers such an online booking system). Job market guides such as Cawley (2004, p.17) recommend booking a room in the headquarters hotel, in an all-suite interview hotel (where most interviews take place), or in hotels near these two. I don't really know why, but just follow the advice.

The updated version of Cawley (2004) (Cawley 2006, p.17) changes its advice. Now the author recommends NOT reserving a room in an all-suite interview hotel for the sake of social welfare.

Unfortunately, I'm already too late to book such hotels. I make a reservation at a hotel which is far away from the headquarters hotel and the all-suite interview hotel. But I learn that I can cancel a hotel reservation until early December without any charge. So I put myself waitlisted at a hotel near both the two hotels.

My strategy is this: those candidates who are sure to go on the job market should have booked either of the two main hotels because they are the first to book. They won't cancel their booking. Those candidates who are not that sure if they go on the market are likely to have booked one near the two main hotels because they are slightly late to book a room and learn that the two main hotels are already fully booked. So the chances that you get a room after waitlisted is higher for these "nearby" hotels.

Tim's advice

Meeting with Tim at his BOE office.

He starts telling me about the procedural stuff on the job market process: where to apply, how to post references, booking a hotel room in Chicago (where preliminary interviews are going to be held) NOW, etc.

I ask him why he thinks my paper is good enough to be on the job market. I don't think so because findings in my paper are not convincing enough. I cannot rule out the possibility that infant mortality drops before democratization.

But Tim says, "What the market looks for is a person who investigates an issue intelligently. You don't need a news-headline result." Then he cites two examples. One is his own work on property rights in Ghana. This paper is celebrated not because of his result (he couldn't find a positive effect of property rights on investment in the end), but due to the fact that he thinks hard about how property rights affect investment and provides a framework to analyze it (so that other researchers can use it). Another example is Angus Deaton's work on estimating demand functions. It ends up finding that the linear demand function does not work with data. But his work is well-respected because of his invention of how to estimate demand functions.

This is something all the PhD students should know.

He advises me to get the job market paper ready by 15th-20th November. The formal package of application isn't very important. For example, some top school does not open it. They contact job placement officers at each school and ask for sending the job application packet of the candidates they are interested in. This will happen after Thanksgiving (Last Thursday of November).

In terms of where to apply, he says, "A good place to be an assistant professor is those with lots of other junior faculty members with similar interest. So you can collaborate with them. Senior professors are important in terms of giving good advice. But nothing more than that."

The final piece of advice: try to book a seminar presentation with different audience (ie. outside LSE).

Mock Job Talk Booking

Find that my result does not hold if I use alternative measures of democracy. Which is not necessarily bad because it suggests that these alternative measures are inappropriate.

Receive email from Tim, suggesting to book a Monday lunchtime PhD student seminar slot on one of the days he can attend. The message sounds like he's already assumed that I'm going on the job market...

Then receive email from my supervisor as well, telling me that he can come except for one of the dates Tim suggested.

Email Oriana to ask for her view on my paper. Initially I thought she wouldn't be interested in my paper, but I realized that what's the most important is to maximize the number of feedbacks.

She emails back immediately with a note on whether or not I can present at the Development & Growth Seminar (see 14 September). Unfortunately there is no seminar slot left.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, scheduling a seminar presentation is one of the important things to do when you are on the job market. In the final stage of the job market process, what gets you a job is your performance at the seminar presentation in the prospective employers' campus (what we call ''job talk''). Which means you need to practice it beforehand, ideally in front of lots of faculty members from your own school so you can get critical comments.

Last Friday Night Out

A day of data processing, in order to check the robustness of my findings to the use of alternative measures of democracy.

Hang out with Cheyok and her friends in the Brick Lane area in the evening. Perhaps the last Friday night out before the whole job market madness.

Replication done

Finish replication. Find a minor error (I mistakenly excluded from the sample a few babies), but fortunately it doesn't affect my findings.

Email Sylvia, a public health specialist, to ask many questions related to my paper. I need to learn a lot more on what determines child mortality and related issues in the public health literature.

Replication

Start making STATA do files for replication to spot any error in my estimation for the paper before the job market madness may start.

New (and Last?) Student Card

Back from St Ives yesterday, get a new LSE student ID card as a new academic year is about to begin. I still don't believe that this new card may become the last student card in my life...

St Ives

Off to St Ives, the best hidden gem of England in my view, to forget everything for three days. Finding a single room to stay there takes a lot of time as most guesthouses wait for a couple to arrive at their double rooms...

Two more references

I couldn't believe my ears yesterday. I want to hear more views on my paper. In any case, you need to submit at least THREE references when you apply for an academic job. Which means you need to have at least three faculty members who like your research.

Email Tim and Robin to make an appointment.

The Beginning

Meet my supervisor. I emailed him beforehand to let him know that last month I wrote up the first paper in the four years of my PhD life, and to ask him if he thinks the paper is good enough for me to go on the job market. My expectation was, however, that I needed to take one more year before going on the job market.

During the meeting, my supervisor takes me by surprise, saying, "You can go on the job market with this paper."

He also suggests booking a presentation slot at LSE/UCL Development & Growth Seminar. This is something. Speakers at the Seminar are usually faculty members inside and outside LSE and UCL. Oh my...

Email the Seminar organizers if there is any vacant slot.

LSE RLAB Lift back in operation

So LSE RLAB Lift is finally back in operation after a two-week strike. Fingers are crossed.

Metrosexual in Japan

It seems that the term "metrosexual" has now become a buzz word among fashion-conscious young men in Japan.

Yuri-san, who has just arrived in London from Japan, bought me a men's hair catalogue from Japan. I've already said this quite a few times in this blog, but there is such a thing as men's hair catalogue books in Japan, targeted at fashion-conscious young men. (I still haven't seen this in London. Do you?)

The term metrosexual appears on this catalogue. This is the first time I saw this word in Japanese media. It reads, "Metrosexual is an urban celeb pursuing cool-ness not just personality-wise but also appearance-wise."

Okay, now I need to explain another buzz word "celeb" in the Japanese language. It doesn't mean someone famous. Nobody seems to know its real meaning, but it seems to refer to people whose life style is like the one of pop stars, super-rich, and upper-class people. It's been a couple of years since this term was imported into the Japanese language.

I google "metrosexual" in Japanese, and the number of hits is about 122,000.

As far as I understand, the phrase "metrosexual" here in UK refers to a man who uses moisturiser. :-) David Beckam represents all the metrosexuals in UK.

Anyway, what's interesting to me is that the idea that a man takes care of his appearance is nothing new in Japan. It's already been a decade since young Japanese men became appearance-conscious. I believe it was much earlier than here in UK. Then the term metrosexual is now imported to symbolize such men. Maybe those fashion-conscious teenage boys a decade ago are now in the position of creating trend words. They wanted to give a name to themselves to be distinct from the rest of Japanese men. Then they found the term metrosexual in English. Maybe. Maybe not.

An update to LSE RLAB Lift

Here's an excerpt from an email message sent to all members of LSE Research Lab today:

... the faulty component was replaced yesterday but this has highlighted further faults on the electronics in the main lift controller.

Number of days LSE RLAB Lift is out of service since 1st September 2006: 5.

Saga continues...

LSE Rlab lift seems to be trying to undermine my effort. Last Friday, I decided to recode the number of times he - yes, I would say he's he because this kind of behaviour is not typical for women (am I sexist?) - breaks down. But what he cares about is the number of hours he doesn't need to work. So he seems to make each break-down take longer to fix.

So he didn't work last Sunday (I didn't come to the School last Saturday. Maybe he didn't work on that day, either, but to be fair, I won't base my count on guesswork.), and he is still out of service today.

I've changed my strategy. I will count the number of days he is lazy.

Number of days LSE RLAB Lift is out of service since 1st September 2006: 3.

LSE RLAB Lift

I've decided to record the dates when the lift of LSE RLAB is out of order. It has been playing up so many times in the past four years, but today it's egregious because the lift was out of service last Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday due to maintenance. I had to walk up stairs to the fifth floor several times. Four days on, it again breaks down.

I bet it will break down in the next 12 months more than 50 times.

Number of times LSE RLAB lift breaks down since 1 September 2006: 1.

Democratization and Infant Mortality in sub-Saharan Africa

Five months on after its conception last March, I finally finished writing up a paper on the empirical investigation of democratization and infant mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. A quick summary is:

Infant mortality has declined since democratization in countries where a new chief executive assumes office by winning the first multiparty election. This is especially true for babies born to uneducated mothers.

Note that I do not claim that democratization has caused the decline in infant mortality, because I cannot rule out the possibility that something else drives both democratization and the survival of babies. (It could be, for example, just NGOs, as a reader of this blog commented on this post. But I wonder if NGOs can make a country-wide difference. Maybe. Maybe not.) But, for babies born to uneducated mothers, a trend in infant mortality definitely changes right after the year of democratization. Plus, the usage of piped water and flush toilet and the take-up rate of immunization and delivery assistance by health professionals seems to have expanded for uneducated mothers since democratization. So it can be democratization that drives infant mortality down.

Now I'm in the process of letting people read this paper and expecting to receive reactions and comments. If you want to join this process :-), here you can download the paper.

If you are not an economist but a political scientist or an Africanist, please have a look at sections 2, 3.2, 6, 8, and perhaps A.1 and A.2. If you are a public health researcher, a demographer, or a medical expert, please have a look at the second half of section 2, and section 7. This is because I rely on not only the previous works done by economists but also on those by political scientists, Africanists, and public health researchers. I want to know if I correctly interpret their research outputs.

Make secure your wireless LAN network

As a new housemate moves in today, I re-think about the security of our wireless home network for broadband acccess.

About.com provides a nice summary of tips.

Its fourth tip talks about something called "MAC address". How to get your MAC address is illustrated succinctly here. The link for Windows XP takes you to the same page as for Windows 2000. But what's written there actually works for Windows XP as well. I also found a couple of similar websites, but they are more complicated than this.

Finally, my additional tip: Don't confuse the MAC address for the wireless network equipment with the MAC address for the ethernet adapter. What you need is the former, not the latter.

BBC Prom: The Rite of Spring in 2006

This will become an annual event in London for me: listen live to The Rite of Spring at the Prom (see 7 September 2005).

This year Stravinsky's masterpiece (in my opinion) is performed by Budapest Festival Orchestra with Ivan Fischer as conductor. Honestly I wondered if they could live up to my expectation from this piece of music. But I worried too much. I only need to repeat what I wrote last year:

Stravinsky is a genious composer. The contrast of quietness and loudness, one instrument after another claiming its presence in waves, and very progressive patterns of rhythms continuously coming in an unexpected way.

I've come to think that I probably shouldn't listen to The Rite of Spring (see notes at the Prom website) unless I'm in front of the orchestra, which allows me to enjoy the music in a three-dimensional way. That is probably the best way of appreciating "Stravinsky's immortal hymn to spring". (Still, you can listen to the performance online. Skip the first 5 minutes. The BBC Radio online production teams are so lazy that different programmes are often attached in the first few minutes.)

The composition is often introduced as a piece of classical music that teenagers who like pop music can appreciate. I doubt it. It's totally different from pop music. There's no clear-cut melody, and it's the rhythm that is at the centre stage throughout the tune - very different from pop songs. And the rhythm is extremely irregular - very different from house music. And a lot of contrast in the sound volume - very different from maintream rock music. Unless you like progressive rock or perhaps drum & bass, or unless you simply like "sound", you probably won't find it interesting.

Incidentally, I liked the second movement of Bartok's piano concerto no.3, performed by pianist Garrick Ohlsson with the orchestra before The Rite of Spring on the night. It's probably unusual to like the second movement - which is often the most boring part of the whole composition. But this one, a very subtle "alternation of the piano's hymn and the strings' answering phrases", sneaked deep into my mind. Again, it wouldn't have been like that if I had listened to it on the radio etc.

Tips for enjoying BBC Proms right in front of the orchestra by paying 5 pounds on the day:
1. Make sure you have 5 quid in cash - they don't accept cards for day Arena tickets.
2. The entrance is Door 11. There may be a queue from the Door. Do not confuse it with Door 10, which is the entrance for the Gallery (high up in the Royal Albert Hall), or the Box Office which only sells seat tickets.
3. Once you enter, find Arena A or Arena F entrance. That takes you to right in front of the stage. Even if you come rather late, there is some space to stand within 10 meters from the stage. If you enter through Arena B to E entrances, you will find it difficult to get to the front as people are sitting down on the floor all over the Arena.

POSTSCRIPT on 20th August 2006: I found a review article by Tom Service appearing in The Guardian, 18th August 2006. It seems I was very lucky: Tom Service found that Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra "revealed new dimensions" of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.

This year's BBC Prom

How stupid am I? I missed Steve Reich at the BBC Prom... As my phone line is dead (again) and will be fixed next Tuesday, I can't even listen to it online...

Vacuum Cleaners Buying Guide

This kind of thing takes time to learn, but it is very easy to forget. So I'll take note of it here.

There are eight types of vacuum cleaners in the market: upright, canister (or cylinder), stick (or broom), handheld, robotic, wet/dry, carpet steam, hard surface steam (for the last three types, see Lowe's how-to-buy guide for details). In addition, you can have a central vacuum system (see Cana-Vac Central Vacuum System Buyers Guide).

Among these, the most basic types are upright and canister. The upright type is for carpets while the canister type is for hard surface such as kitchen floors, though some canister cleaners these days can also be used for carpets. Here is the check list for deciding which to buy.

1. Beater
The upright type usually has a beater to loosen and bringing dirt out of the carpet. Some canister types also have it.

2. Bagless (or cyclonic) versus bagged
With bagged cleaners, you need to purchase a new bag from time to time. Check if the cleaner has a "Bag Full" indicator. Bagless cleaners allow you to empty the dust bin without the hassle of changing a bag.

3. Filter
Bagged cleaners do not have filters. Bagless ones come with filters. HEPA filters are ideal for people with allergies. Of course, a better filter raises the price up.

4. Cord length and its retractability (or automatic cable rewind)
Make sure that the cord length is long enough. The canister type usually has automatic cable rewind while the upright type often requires you to wind the cord on your own.

5. Suction power
The number of amps has nothing to do with the suction power. Some companies use the unit called "airwatt" to measure the cleaning efficiency. (Do not confuse it with "watt" for amps.) The higher the airwatt is, the more powerful the cleaner is. A reviewer at Shopping.com says, "suction alone does not make a vacuum clean efficiently, it also requires airflow [(the volume of air a motor is capable of moving)] to pick up dirt."

However, most cleaner-makers only report the number of watts...

References:
Electricshopping.com
eHow.com
eBay Guides

Syria 2005 - Night View of Damascus

On the evening of 29th May 2005, I was stunned at the top of Jebel Qassioun, a 1200m-high mountain towering northwest of Damascus - the capital of Syria - surrounded by exhuberant locals (and almost no tourists), in front of the spectacular night view of Damascus (above).

(If you don't think the above photo is beautiful, then it is my fault - as it was very cold at the top of the mountain, all the photos I took were blurred. Check out this photo by Abenaa instead.)

The manager of the guesthouse where I was staying told me that the night view of Damascus from the summit of Mount Qassioun was the only place he liked in Damascus.

Locals came here with their family members or friends. They brought a pot of tea with a portable stove or narghile (the Middle Eastern water pipe for smoking), spending a relaxed evening with a fantastic view. Even girls became adventurous - this was the only place I was approached by a young Syrian girl. Remember Syria is a rather conservative Islamic country. The sense of euphoria abounded.

Lonely Planet Syria & Lebanon (2nd edition, p.76) quotes a legend of the Prophet Mohammed - when he, on a journey from Mecca, looked down from the Mount Qassioun on Damascus, he refused to visit the city because he wanted to enter paradise only once.

What's different from night views of Western or East Asian cities is the myriads of green lights. Mosques in Syria are lit up with the color of green at night. And Damascus is vast without high-rise buildings. As a result, it was as if I had seen an ocean of jewellery.

When you have an opportunity to visit Damascus, never ever miss this view.

Travel Tips:
1. There is no public transport from the city centre to Mount Qassioun. Hail a taxi. As most taxi drivers in Damascus don't speak English or even read alphabets, ask a member of staff at your hotel to write down the name of Mount Qassioun in Arabic letters on a piece of paper and show it to the taxi driver.
2. It's colder at the top of the mountain. Grab a jacket or something to wear.
3. There are several retaurants with a panoramic view of Damascus. Some are incredibly tacky, though.
4. Catching a taxi on the way back is quite difficult. (It took me half an hour to catch one.) You can ask the taxi driver to wait for, say, half an hour at the top of the mountain. But I'm sure that you don't want to leave only after half an hour or so. So it's a dilemma.

Fairtrade and Cotton Farmers in Mali

An FT Magazine article last weekend investigated whether Fairtrade has improved the life of cotton farmers in Mali, a West African country.

Fairtrade works like this:

In coffee, for example, the grower of any arabica (higher-quality) coffee beans is guaranteed whichever is the higher of $1.26 per pound or five cents above the world market price, which is currently around $1 per pound. [Farmers'] cooperatives are also paid a variable "social premium" to be spent collectively on projects of communal benefit.

Does this work for Malian cotton farmers? In early June, Alan Beattie, the article author, visited Batimakana, a village in Kita - "a region that will supply cotton for M&S jeans."

Every third or fourth dwelling [which is a typical Malian hut of mud, thatch and straw] has a motorbike outside - a lifeline more than a luxury, given that the nearest medical clinic is 10 kilometers away.

The male elders of the village are swathed in robes and turbans and dignified with venerable age, several with eyes rheumy or sightless from river blindness disease.

For a kilo of raw cotton, the Fairtrade minimum price is 36 eurocents; this year conventional cotton will fetch 24 eurocents.

It lets families send children to school. It means they can buy seeds fro vegetables and ox-drawn ploughs for their fields. It also ... bought the plastic chairs that the translators and [the FT correspondent] are sitting on.

How about the effect of paying "social premium"?

[T]wo years' worth of social premium has built a concrete grain store. ... The village uses the store to prevent big swings in food prices, buying grain cheaply after harvest and releasing it gradually through the year.

In Dougourakoroni, another Fairtrade certified community in the region, the rremium has built a brick school in the village. Previously, children had to walk 7km to school, and fewer attended.

Critics argue that Fairtrade, by paying above the market price, "encourages farmers to stay in unprofitable sectors, inducing oversupply and pushing down prices for everyone else." Does it?

Since cotton is a greedy plant that strips the soil of nutrients, it has traditionally been rotated with other crops, and that has not changed.

In Batimakana, just as before, only 20 percent of the land is used for cotton.

Any co-operative growing any product anywhere in the world can sell only as much at Fairtrade prices as has been ordered from that co-operative by buyers. Cotton is an annual crop, so farmers know their demand before planting. ... If farmers produce more than contracted under a Fairtrade agreement, they can sell the rest at conventional prices, but are not guaranteed to make money from it [because all of Mali's cotton is bought by the state marketing board, which sells it on to the big cotton brokers of Europe and America and is criticised for passing less than half the export earnings on to the farmers].

It seems to be the state marketing board that hinders diversification:

[I]t does deliver seeds, pesticide and fertiliser to farmers on credit ... and collects the cotton after harvest. Malian farmers growing other crops will often also contract to grow cotton because it is their only source of fertiliser.

So everything with Fairtrade is rosy? Turn to the long-term future:

Mali is struggling to rebuild the fully integrated cotton-to-clothing industry it once had before it was blown away by Bangladesh and China. [B]ecause the batch needs to be kept separate, spinning Fairtrade lint requires a faintly bizarre and time-consuming ritual. Every machine has first to be shut down and cleared of conventional cotton from the previous run before the Fairtrade bundles are fed in. It can take several days to do the switchover, and ... some Fairtrade batches are too small to make it worthwhile.

Cited by Ping Pong

I'm shocked to find that Ping Pong - a contemorary Chinese restaurant in London - cites MY blog entry on the restaurant on their website ALONG WITH reviews by The Times and Evening Standard. See the official website's review section and scroll down a bit.

Measuring and Realizing Good Governance in Poor Countries

Sean, a Jamaican friend of mine working in social policy evaluation in his home country (and a staunch reader of this blog), sent me an email in which he asked the following:

> Tell me, what new and interesting work has been done in economics with
> reference to good governance? I am specifically interested in what
> indicators economists have used and what findings they have obtained on the
> factors that influence the quality of governance.

Some readers of this blog might be interested in this as well. So I copy and paste my email message below:

The latest trend in development economics research on good governance is to look at micro-level objective data rather than country-level subjective data such as International Country Risk Guide, Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, or the World Bank's Governance Indicators. (See

La Porta, Rafael, Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio, Shleifer, Andrei and Vishny, Robert W., 1999. The Quality of Government. Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, 15(1), 222-279.

for the comprehensive investigation in this line of research.)

Let me cite three papers.

Olken, Benjamin A., 2005, "Monitoring Corruption: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia." NBER Working Paper no.11753 (download the PDF file)

This paper was recently featured in The Economist magazine, by the way.

The paper is about road construction in Indonesian villages. Here,
good governance means road construction without the budget siphoned
off by public officials, doesn't it? To measure the degree of
corruption by village leaders in charge of road construction projects,
Ben Olken asks engineers to dig holes in newly-built roads to measure
the quantity of materials used (sand, rocks, gravel). By obtaining the
prices of these materials, he estimated the actual expense for road
construction. Then he compared this to the reported expense by village
leaders. The difference is the degree of corruption. The author also
collects data on the actual and reported wages paid to construction
workers.

This is one major contribution of this paper - measuring corruption.
But more importantly, the author evaluated two different types of
anti-corruption measures by randomly assing these interventions across
villages. One anti-corruption measure is to send an auditor from the
independent government audit agency with probability one. The other is
to hold villagers' meeting in which village leaders must explain road
construction projects. A recent trend in the development assistance
community on anti-corruption programmes favors the second type,
doesn't it? But the result is the first type - government audit -
works better than the second.

With this piece of research, Ben Olken has become a junior fellow of
the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, which tells how ground-breaking this study is.

Another set of papers is on absenteeism:

Chaudhury, Nazmul; Hammer, Jeffrey; Kremer, Michael; Muralidharan, Karthik; and Rogers, F. Halsey, 2006. "Missing in Action: Teacher and Health Worker Absence in Developing Countries." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20(1), 91-116. (Download the PDF file)

Banerjee, Abhijit V. and Duflo, Esther, 2006. "Addressing Absence." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20(1), 117-132. (Download the PDF file)

I'm not sure if this is an issue in Jamaica, but, as you know, in many
developing countries teachers don't come to school to teach children
and doctors and nurses don't come to clinics to see patients. As
schools and clinics are mostly public in these countries, this is an
issue of good governance as well, isn't it?

The first paper conducted the survey for 6 developing countries in
which enumerators visit ten randomly selected schools (or health
clinics) in ten randomly selected admnistrative districts. This visit
is unannounced beforehand, and takes place twice with several month
intervals. Then whether teachers (or doctors, nurses) are present or
not is directly checked instead of interviewing the headmaster or
checking the attendance logbooks. This creates an indicator of "good
governance."

The second paper tackles how to reduce absenteeism based on, again,
randomized evaluation - a fashion in empirical development economics
these days. Effective ways to make teachers come to school turn out to
be these two:

1. Give them a camera with tamper-proof date and time function and ask
them to take a photo of himself/herself and students everyday at
opening and closing times. Based on these pictures, the number of days
each teacher actually taught is calculated and the higher their salary
is the larger the number of days they teach. What's good about this
incentive scheme is its cost-effectiveness - 6 US dollars per child
per year for an increase of over 30 percent in the number of days the
child is taught. The cost is mainly to develop films.

2. Annouce that, at the beginning of the school year, the highest
scoring female students will be awarded scholarships that cover next
two-year tuitions and expenses. This not only boosted the attendance
of female students but also that of male students AND teachers as
well. The authors speculated the reason for this as scholarships
boosted demand for good teaching from students' parents, who then
exerted pressure on teachers to come to school.

The paper also discusses failed attempts. These include
1. A similar incentive scheme as above but the headmaster, instead of
cameras, checks the attendance. The headmaster allows every teacher to
win a prize though these teachers actually didn't show up at school.
2. Giving teachers incentive payments based on test scores of
students. Although test scores actually went up, teacher's attendance
didn't change.
3. Letting local residents monitor the presence of health
professionals at clinics once a weak, on unannounced days, without any
formal reward to doctors for showing up. This didn't affect attendance
rates - a similar result to Olken's in the sense that "social capital"
doesn't seem to work.
4. Providing school meals to students coming to school. This might
increase demand for teaching from parents. But it didn't. Teachers'
absenteeism didn't change.

Syria 2005 - Quneitra

Maybe time is right to update Syria 2005 - the travelogue of my trip to Syria a year ago.

On 1st June 2005, I visited Quneitra, the former administrative capital city of the Golan Heights. Following what's written on page 129 of Lonely Planet Syria & Lebanon (2nd ed.), I first went to the Ministry of the Interior early in the morning to obtain a permit to enter Quneitra. The Ministry building located in north-west Damascus was guarded by a man with a machine gun. After passing my passport to an official and waiting for around 15 minutes next to the machine-gun wielding man, I received the entry permit.

Then I went down to the Baramke bus garage in south Damascus. If I remember correctly, I walked down to the bus garage for an hour because Syrian taxi drivers were not reliable at all - they don't speak English at all and don't know how to get anywhere in Damascus.

At the bus garage, I just asked anybody there for which bus goes to Quneitra, by just repeating "Quneitra" as most Syrians don't understand English. Syrians always try to be helpful, if they're actually not helpful. I re-read Lonely Planet, learning that a bus from here only goes to Khan Arnabah, a town about 10km short of Quneitra. I showed people at the garage the Arabic letters written next to "Khan Arnabah" on Lonely Planet, and finally managed to take a microbus - a white van (perhaps Toyota or Nissan) used as a bus - which goes to Khan Arnabah.

After an hour or so, the bus arrived at Khan Arnabah. I don't really remember how I got to Quneitra after that, but somehow I managed to get on a final ride to Quneitra.

On the way, the car pulled up in front of a police(?) office at which I presented the entry permit. A "tour guide" appeared and he joined my journey to Quneitra.

I finally arrived at Quneitra. The guide took me around the town.


Literally flattened houses

Everything here has remained the same since Israelis withdrew from the town after the 1973 cease-fire. Syria alleges Israelis for destroying Quneitra upon their withdrawal while Israelis claim that the town was destroyed by battles between Israel and Syria during their occupation of the town (1967-73) - see an article by Alex Safian.


A former hospital with a billboard attached by Syria which reads "Golan Hospital - Destructed by Zionists and changed it to firing target!"

Inside the hospital


In any case, this ghost town vividly shows how deeply Syrians - or at least the government of Syria - distrust Israelis.

Taking picture of this town was no problem unless my camera headed for where Israeli soldiers were stationed.


By Googling "Quneitra", I found that the former pope visited Quneitra in 2001.

This is a life in London.

After almost four years of living in London, I'm no longer surprised by most inconveniences repeated in this city. No matter how many times London Underground causes delays and suspensions, no matter how many times supermarkets sell broken eggs on the shelf, no matter how many times I hear London's running water is wasted by leaking water pipes, no matter how many times LSE's Research Lab lift has a fault, I no longer get upset.

But this time, I'm a bit upset. I noticed my home phone has been quiet recently. I thought maybe something was wrong with my phone equipment. So I called my home number from my mobile handset. No sound from the home phone. A message of answering machine came into my ear through my mobile a few seconds later.

I then checked if my home phone was capable of making a phone call. I called my mobile number. My mobile rang. So it worked.

I picked up my mobile, seeing an unfamiliar number showing up on display.

???

I called this number back from my mobile phone.







My home phone rang!

Modernism and Economics

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever tried to associate modernism with economics. When you talk about modernism, it's usually about architecture and furniture.

Visiting V&A yesterday was not just to see the Jameel Gallery but also not to miss its Modernism exhibition (which ended today - you can download the panel text that succinctly explains the evolution and different aspects of modernism).

It was educational in many ways. I understand why buildings in socialist countries are extremely modernist (ie. made of concrete and purely geometric) - the origin of modernism is intrinsically linked with socialism. I understand what modernism did to Europe is what aid agencies try to do to developing countries today - allowing ordinary people to enjoy hygienic, healthy life. The chair invented by Dutch architect Mart Stam - the two-leg cantilever chair - must have been an inspiration for the iconic Panton Chair, designed by Verner Panton in the late 1960s.

The concept underlying deep in modernism is an extreme distrust in anything human. This is well reflected in Oskar Schlemmer's dance The Triadic Ballet. Dancers in this ballet wear geometrically-shaped costumes (like this) which deprive the wearer's body of freedom to move. Even though this is a ballet, the variety of body movement is severely restricted - one of them simply keeps jumping and that is. This kind of extremism in modernism created a reaction such as Chaplin's Modern Times.

So the exhibition helped me synthesize different bits and bits of my knowledge.

Then I came to think that perhaps the general equilibrium theory (or so-called the Invisible Hand) and macroeconomic theory before the Lucas Critique are a manifestation of modernism in economics. The fundamental idea of the general equilibrium theory is that even if everyone behaves selfishly, the market disseminates information on everyone else's behaviour through change in prices of goods, leading to the efficient allocation of resources. Macroeconomics before the Lucas Critique saw a macroeconomy as a machine - that's why William Phillips created this to demonstrate the circular flow of income in an economy. Yes, it's machine - one of the keywords representing modernism. This view on macroeconomics certainly led to the idea of central planning economy. If it's a machine, the government can run it. (See this article appearing in The Economist a couple of weeks ago for the evolution of macroeconomics during the last century.)

But, as we now all know, this is too simplistic a view on economics. The Lucas Critique along with the rise of game theory in economics has overcome the deficiency of "modernism in economics".

Some people critical of economics still think that economics is a manifestation of modernism. That's no longer the case. Such critics can be said to be part of the anti-modernism camp - which has long been out of date.

The Jameel Gallery of V&A

Impressive more than the Ardabil Carpet itself - the world's oldest dated carpet - is its display design. Carpets of archaeological value tend to be hung on the wall in museums. But that's not really how carpets are supposed to be viewed.

The V&A had the courage to lay the Carpet on the floor even though this takes up a huge space available for the gallery room. But they didn't just lay it down. The Carpet is covered by the mirror ceiling with many small lights - which are turned on only for 10 minutes in half an hour to preserve the color of the Carpet. The mirror ceiling itself hangs by wire from the gallery's celing. Plus, viewers can sit down on a sofa on the shorter edges of the Carpet (that's how I took the above picture), allowing them to appreciate the Carpet in a relaxed way - that's what the Carpet does to your mind, isn't it?

The Jameel Gallery, just opened last Thursday, now becomes another favorite place of mine in the V&A. (See also FT magazine's article on this gallery.)

Haruki Murakami's account of Japan

Just to cite a couple of Haruki Murakami's accounts of Japan in his interview that appeared in FT Magazine on 1/2 July 2006 (subscription required). (I found that the whole of this article can be read for free here.)

"I wasn't interested in working for a big company like Toyota or Sony. I just wanted to be independent. But that's not easy. In this country, if you don't belong to any group, you're almost nothing."

"You know the myth of Orpheus. He goes to the underworld to look for his deceased wife, but it's far away and he has to undergo many trials to get there. There's a big river and a wasteland. My characters go to the other world, the other side. In the Western world, there is a big wall you have to climb up. In this country, once you want to go there, it's easy. It's just beneath your feet."

(Thanks goes to Ameet, who brought this interview into my attention.)

Under-5 Mortality in sub-Saharan Africa

We often hear the number of children dying from a certain cause of death in, say, sub-Saharan Africa. I always wonder where such information comes from.

I learned that since the 1990s, there has been an effort to estimate the number of deaths by cause for different age categories across different regions of the world. It's called the Global Burdern of Disease project. Estimates for year 1990 were published in The Global Burden of Disease: A comprehensive assessment of mortality and disability from diseases, injuries, and risk factors in 1990 and projected to 2020 edited by Christopher J. L. Murray and Alan D. Lopez (Harvard University Press, 1996). Follow-up estimates for years 2000 to 2002 (for 2002 estimate, country-by-country statistics as well) are provided by the WHO website.

Regional categorization for the 2002 estimates is different from the 1990 estimates. However, this page of the WHO website offers a comparable data for the 2002 estimates.

Comparaing these two sets of estimates for sub-Saharan Africa, an interesting picture emerges. Of course, the issue of data reliability is a significant concern given that most countries in sub-Saharan Africa lacks vital event registration. Still, it's worth taking note of.

Under-5 mortality (here I simply divide the number of deaths for children under age of five by the population of such children) has declined from 42.87 deaths per 1,000 in 1990 to 39.54 in 2002. Given that the population of under-5 children went up from 94 million to 115.4 million, this should have been something. Major causes of death for children under five in 1990 were, in a descending order of importance, diarrhoea, lower respiratory infections (mainly pneumonia), malaria, measles, and perinatal conditions (e.g. low birth weight, birth asphyxia). These five causes account for nearly 80 percent of deaths of children in sub-Saharan Africa. By 2002, the order of importance has changed: malaria, lower respiratory infections, diarrhoea, perinatal conditions, HIV/AIDS, and measles. These six factors still account for nearly 80 percent of child deaths. Under-5 mortality by cause has increased only for malaria and HIV/AIDS. Diarrhoea and measles have seen a sizable decline. Mortality from lower respiratory infections and perinatal conditions has moved sideways.

People keep talking about corrupt governments and dismal conditions for well-being in sub-Saharan Africa. It seems, however, that some changes were under way during the 1990s.

Electoral rigging as partial enfranchisement

The Economist magazine is probably one of the best Western media in English to get to know about poor countries (which of course does not mean that it is the perfect source of information - The Economist is certainly biased towards free market and democracy in a bit naive way). The latest issue includes a survey of Pakistan. The third article in the survey describes how General Musharraf rigged the 2002 election:

Step 1: "[E]nsure that judges in the provinces are sympathetic, because they appoint the magistrates who conduct the polls in the constituencies." This is done by "[Requiring] senior judges to swear allegiance to [General Musharraf] and sack the ones who won't."

Step 2: Tell the returning officers in areas dominated by the opposition to "put polling stations in inaccessible places and select compliant people to staff them."

I've come to think that electoral rigging abundant in today's developing countries is the 21st century form of partial enfranchisement. In Western Europe during the 19th century (and Japan during the early 20th century as well), the suffrage is gradually expanded. First, only rich men are allowed to vote. Then the income threshold for acquiring the voting right is gradually reduced. Later, all adult men gain the suffrage. Finally, all adult women become entitled to vote.

Presidents and prime ministers in today's poor countries cannot do this form of gradual suffrage expansion either because Western donors dislike it or because the enforcement mechanism to ensure that the income threshold requirement is observed is lacking due to the weakness of state capacity.

But poor countries' presidents do not want all adult citizens to vote if they will otherwise be kicked out. (See Llavador and Oxoby (2005) for the formal modelling of this kind of logic.) Therefore, they manipulate the electoral process in a sophisticated way. The location of polling stations as in the above example of Pakistan is one thing. The registration of voters can also be done arbitrarily. This way, only a fraction of citizens who are presumably the supporters of the ruling party are allowed to vote.

If this is true, there is one implication. If citizens engage in retrospective voting - that is, they decide to vote based on the performance of the incumbent - the government has an incentive to target transfers to a certain group of citizens in order to "buy" their votes. During the 19th century, European governments could do this by favouring rich people or men. Today, poor countries' governments can do this by targeting citizens region-wise rather than their socioeconomic status or gender. Why? Because rigging the voter registration or the location of polling stations can only be done region-wise. By targeting government policies to a certain region and allowing citizens in this region to vote, the government can ensure re-election.

This suggests that there must be a correlation between electoral rigging and regional targeting. Which requires empirical investigation.

Public "Art" at LSE

During the past couple of months, several weird sculptures have popped up around the LSE campus.

Before moving on, click here to open the map of the LSE campus in a seprate window to understand the location of each sculpture .

It was a couple of months ago that a penguin and a baby elephant suddenly appeared on Clare Market (a street between the Old Building and St Clement's Building). Look at this:


Do you think these two sculptures have improved the landscape? I seriously don't think so. First of all, the color of these sculptures, especially the penguin, does not match the landscape at all. Second, this is NOT art at all. It's just animals that we are used to seeing at a zoo or on television. It does not evoke any new sensation. I really thought that vandalism wouldn't be a public nuisance in this case.

The LSE didn't stop there. At the centre of John Watkin's Plaza, a newly-paved square in front of the Library building, a weird sculpture was erected a couple of weeks ago. Look at this:

Can't see it clearly? Let me zoom it up:


Do you think this fox head has improved the landscape? I seriously don't think so. I liked John Watkin's Plaza. Its design is quite contemporary. With this sculpture standing at the centre, however, the Plaza has become a very dull public space that you can find anywhere else. You certainly know at least one public space where a weird, incongruent public art scuplture stands at the centre, don't you?

A few days ago I realized that the LSE has erected 12 sculptures in total around the campus. From which I learned that the disgusting sculptures outside Tower Three were also part of this public "art" project. Look at this:


Do you think this contemporary(?) sculpture has improved the landscape? I seriously don't think so. Again the colour of these three poles DOES NOT match the landscape AT ALL. Plus what's on the top of each pole is this:


Hedious. Absolutely hedious.

This passage called Clement's Inn is just next to the Royal Courts of Justice. Entering from the Strand, it's quite nice a view:


But if you keep walking, then you'll see

and


Worse, at the other end of Clement's Inn sits an eagle head


WHY ARE THEY ALL ANIMALS?

Admittedly, the location of each sculpture seems to be a solution to the contrained optimization problem - choosing the best combination of a sculpture and a place among sculptures donated by Canadian businessman Louis Odette (according to the LSE's explanation) and locations within the LSE campus. Each scuplture is erected at the best place around the campus. I would like to take my hat off for the LSE staff in charge of this decision. But this is a solution to the CONSTRAINED optimization problem. If the choice set of sculptures hadn't been limited to those donated by Louis Odette, the LSE staff wouldn't have chosen these ANIMALS. If the choice set hadn't been limited to the LSE campus, these sculptures would have been erected somewhere FAR AWAY from the LSE campus.

True, this kind of thing is a matter of personal taste. I don't like them, but somebody else might like them. I'm sure Louis Odette - "a noted patron of sculptures to public spaces" according to the LSE's plea - likes them.

Why don't you just appreciate them in your personal space, rather than forcing people to appreciate them in public spaces?

I would like to know what you would say. Am I the only person who is strongly offended by these ANIMALS? Leave your comment, please.

Japanese exceptionalism

A book review article appearing on the latest issue of The Economist (subscribers only) writes about Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney. The main claim of the book seems to be that those kamikaze pilots - suicide bombers during the Second World War - were all forced to commit suicide under the order of their superiors (who themselves never wanted to do something like that). They were not brainwashed under Japan's fanatic militarism. As evidence for this, the diaries of these pilots are full of emotional dilemma, fear for death, and other feelings and thoughts understandable to Westerners.

Which is nothing surprising for us, Japanese people. We know - or are taught in school - that those kamikaze pilots were victims of the war.

And perhaps this accounts for our lack of understanding - especially among Japanese politicians - of the feelings of victims in Korea, China, and Southeast Asia. The majority of Japanese people would say, "We were victims as well."

A Japanese friend of mine told me that those class-A war criminals enshrined at Yasukuni were also victims because these criminals actually didn't want to wage a war.

This view is somehow reflected in the exhibition of the Yushukan museum at Yasukuni: Japan was forced to wage a war by the United States (see this post on my visit at Yasukuni).

By looking closer at the war history of Japan, this sort of irresponsible perspective is actually understandable. Since the 1930s until the end of the war, Japan was de facto ruled by some factions in the military. These guys started a war on their own. The government in Tokyo couldn't do anything but follow the suit. But we are talking about elusive Japan. These military factions never claimed for executive power, which firmly remained in the hands of the Emperor, who was in turn never ever an absolute monarch. This sort of situation where no one knows who is ultimately responsible is still pervasive in today's Japan. As a result, everybody thinks that they are not responsible for anything. They did what they did because someone else started doing it.

This raises other mysteries, however. Why does no one try to be responsible in Japan? Why isn't there any social pressure on those responsible to recognize themselves as responsible?

Another book review article (on a different book on Japan) appearing in FT Magazine last weekend talks about "Japanese exceptionalism". The more you learn about Japan's involvement in the Second World War, the even more you don't understand it. I'm now in the middle of such a cycle.

Foreign exchange tips for Londoners

If you are a Londoner, how do you exchange your sterling when you travel to the Euro area?

I knew Marks and Spencer (M&S) did money exchange service. But I thought it was expensive.

It seems I was wrong.

On 8th July 2006, the interbank rate of 1 British pound is equal to 1.44007 euro according to Oanda.com. On the M&S website, its exchange rate on the same day is 1 quid equal to 1.396 euro.

I went to Italy last month to attend Alberto's wedding. I withdrew 50 euro in Venice by my Maestro card. It was on 12th June. Including cash advance fees etc., 50 euro cost 36.31 pounds. So the effective exchange rate was 1 pound equal to 1.377031. With Oanda.com, you can check the exchange rate on a specific day in the past. On 12th June, 1 British pound was 1.45579 euro at the interbank rate. Even though the interbank rate becomes more unfavourable for sterling owners during the last one month, the M&S rate yesterday is better than the effective rate last month.

So it's obvious that the M&S offers a better deal than withdrawing cash in the euro zone. Of course, it makes every sense. If M&S offers a worse deal, who will bother to go to a M&S store to exchange money before their trip to Europe by sacrificing their precious time in London?

Anyway, next time I go to the euro zone from London, I will use M&S Travel Money service.

Black Buddafly ft. Fabolous - "Bad Girl"

Not again. Every time I like some tune played on BBC 1Xtra and try to legally download it at Napster or iTune, it's not available.

This time, it's a tune titled "Bad Girl" by Black Buddafly featuring Fabolous. It's been at least two months since I first heard this track on 1Xtra. So it should be about the time for it to be released. According to Black Buddafly's website, it was released last February. It doesn't seem to be the case in the UK, however. As you can't buy tracks at Napster USA or iTune USA with a credit card issued by UK banks, I can't download it legally. This is why I stopped checking the latest pop music. In the end, I cannot consume it because of stupid Napster and iTune. Do you know any way to legally download music tracks that are only released abroad?

Anyway,

I like the chorus of this track. The lyrics turns out to be cheesy - "Ay if you feel me. Move wit me and don't stop. Put your hands up. Soon as the beat drops. Cuz usually I'm not like this but tonight. I'm a bad girl. I'm a bad girl. And tonight we gonna show u how we get down" (taken from this message board) - but it doesn't matter because I, as a Japanese, can't catch it at all anyway. But it's very rhythmical until the phrase "I'm a bad girl" in which Black Butterfly (I don't know who she is at all) sings melodiously. This contrast just does the thing to me.

Refreshing my desk

Over the last weekend, I refreshed my desk at the School. Not surprisingly for a PhD student (?), my desk was completely covered with piles and piles of paper, showing how disorganized I was. I came to think that this was depressing, disorganizing my thought as well.

But how did I refresh this? It took a while to figure out. All these piles of paper must be stored in a cabinet at the back while those academic papers neatly organized in magazine file boxes inside the cabinet right now must be brought onto desk. Actually, I more often open the cabinet to pick up some academic papers than I search for something amid piles of paper on the desk.

The problem was that most of these magazine files were coloured in red - I used to love red, but not anymore because it makes me feel uncomfortable, especially with my brain exhausted.

What colour will work instead? I thought lime green with grey would be nice. Lime green is now kind of popular in my mind. It goes well with black, the colour of most of my clothes. But black and lime green is a bit too much. The contrast is too strong. Grey instead of black would be more soothing.

I went to the Bureau stationary store. They didn't have any grey magazine files. I'm not a compromising type. I went on to other stylish stationary stores such as Paperchase on Tottenham Court Road and Ordning and Reda on the ground floor of the Selfridges, while English people on streets were all glued to any television screen (at pubs or at electronics stores) to watch the devastating England's defeat against Portugal in the World Cup quarter final. But these stores didn't have grey ones either. Plus their magazine files are more expensive than Bureau's. I need to buy at least 12 magazine files.

That was last Saturday. I went home, rethinking about my desk-refreshing plan. I came to conclude that white magazine files would work. During this process, I also realized that lime green looks nice only if it is used as an accessory. This colour must play a role of spice, not of the main dish. Nine white, three lime green, and four black that I already have will be randomly mixed. Yes, this is it.

I went to Bureau again last Sunday, buying 12 magazine files for 18.90 pounds (10 percent student discount inclusive). Then I went to the School and refreshing my desk. Here's the result:

Bureau is a nice shop, just a couple of minute walk from Leicester Square tube. On the same street (Great Newport Street) stands the Photographer's Gallery (free to enter). Opposite sits a Japanese pizza place Abeno Too (a branch of the one near the British Museum).

Why blog? (continued)

In a response to last Wednesday's post, a reader named Chen kindly left the following comment:

Blogging is more than telling people stuff. It is more about bloggers themselves. For economists, writing or giving opinions should be a huge part of career. To bad, Ph.D. training does not entail many of the writing training. Blogging is definitely a good way to do that. [...]

This reminded me of two things I totally forgot. Yes, blogging makes you a better writer. Yes, economists need to write and give opinions in their career.

These days I find it a bit difficult to orally express my ideas. I guess it has something to do with the recent infrequency of updating my blog. You may say there is a logical jump here. The above comment talks about writing, not speaking. For me, it's closely connected. I'm no doubt less good than the average people at transforming ideas in my mind into words understandable for other people. Without incessant practice of this transformation, my skill at it naturally deteriorates. (And this is the biggest factor for my kind of depression.) As I'm not the kind of guy who hang out with other people every day and keep talking to them nonstop, only blogging forces me to express something.

By the way, I have a question for you, Chen. Why do you think "some people out there are actually interested in [my] life"? Unless my life is somewhat unusual, this won't be the case. What aspect of my life is not totally predictable?

A museum as a place for culinary delights

Went to V&A Friday Late. The theme of this month it Cuba. But it wasn't really Cuba at all - I can tell because I've been to Havana, the capital city, twice.

Having said that, barbequed whole chicken served at the renovated John Madejski Garden was absolutely excellent - tender and juicy. I don't think this is a Cuban dish, but it was worth visiting V&A only for this chicken. I didn't know a museum could give you a culinary sensation. (Actually, when Friday Late featured Africa last year, I had a stunning Tanzanian stew at V&A. So I should have known this.)

Why did Britain want to spare the Japanese Emperor?

I've long been wondering why the Allied Forces spared the Japanese Emperor after the Second World War was over. A usual explanation is that if the Allied Forces executed the Emperor, occupying Japan would have become difficult for the Allied Forces. Well, maybe.

A novel explanation - or novel at least to me - is given by Ian Nish and Peter Lowe (2001) "From Singapore to Tokyo Bay, 1941-1945" in Ian Nish and Yoichi Kibata eds. History of Anglo-Japanese Relations Volume II: The Political-Diplomatic Dimension, 1931-2000 (Palgrave MacMillan). From the viewpoint of Britain, which lost its colonial territories in Southeast Asia to Japan during the early phase of the war - symbolizing the loss of prestige long enjoyed by the British Empire, the Japanese Emperor needed to be saved and allowed to order all Japanese soliders stationed in Southeast Asia to surrender. Otherwise, these Japanese forces would have continued fighting against the British forces. To minimize the death toll on the British side during the process of re-colonizing Southeast Asia, the authority of the Japanese Emperor was indispensable.

Why blog?

I've started wondering what is the point of blogging when being a blogger is fast becoming like watching a blockbuster movie at a cinema or on a DVD, eating cheese or chocolate, drinking pints of beer, listening to the Beatles or Morzart, or having an i-Pod?

The reason I like reading someone else's blog is this: I can get to know what life is like for the kind of people I would never meet. Even when I meet them, they usually don't talk about their life at a deep level. I always annoy someone I first met by asking questions on what their life is like. On weblogs, however, they talk about such deep stuff when they feel like doing so. So I can enjoy knowing it as well.

I rarely understand someone else's preference as it is more often than not quite different from mine (who the hell loves drum & bass?). So I cannot understand what kind of blog will please many people. The only guideline for blogging is, therefore, what kind of blog will please me. Given what I wrote in the previous paragraph, consequently, I should blog about my life.

The life of a PhD student, however, is quite boring and depressing. It's a simple life that can easily be depicted in a cartoon like Piled Higher and Deeper.

I used to be a guy who always tries to be different from anyone else. Being a PhD student for almost four years has gradually made me forget about it. I can't find a way to make this blog different.

Gary Becker at Lunch with the FT

This weekend's FT magazine features Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker in its "Lunch with the FT" section. Tim Harford, probably one of the best non-economist columnists (or the one and only?) understanding economics well, is a host.

There are several interesting episodes in this article.

... 40 years ago, when [Gary Becker] was running late to examine a doctoral student[,] [w]ith no time to find a free space, he quickly weighed the cost of paying for parking against the risks of being fined for parking illegally. By the time he arrived at the examination, the then-unfashionable idea that criminals would respond to the risks and costs of punishment was taking shape in his mind. The unfortunate student was immediately asked to discuss.

Frank Knight, a founder of the so-called Chicago school of economics, persuaded a journal editor not to publish Becker's early paper on the incentives behind how democracies reach decisions.

Becker's PhD thesis was on discrimination - how to measure it and what effects it might have on the wealth of both the discriminators and their victims. It was thought to be no fit subject for an economist, and the Chicago faculty persuaded a sociologist with little interest in Becker to oversee his work. Becker later struggled to publish his book, The Economics of Discrimination.

Before he was 30, Becker presented to the American Economic Association his then- new idea of "human capital" (that people would invest in their own education as they might invest in shares, mindful of the rate of return). He recalls that the response was "absolutely outraged".

"There was a sea change. I began to notice it in the 1970s and 1980s. A lot of the younger people coming out of Harvard, MIT and Stanford were very interested in what I was doing, even though their faculty were mainly - not entirely - opposed to the sort of stuff I was doing."

Finally, this is probably why I like Tim Harford:

... non-economists accuse him of reducing emotional decisions to monetary ones. I suggest to him that this is a straightforward misunderstanding and most people have not realised that economics is not the study of money. "You're absolutely right[," says Becker.]

Jenna G

The deadline for submission to the NEUDC 2006 Conference is extended to 7th June. So I update this blog to let you know a wonderful piece of drum & bass. :)

Jenna G - In Love (Bingo Beats)

We drum & bass heads have long been waiting for this. Drum & bass featuring a real vocalist. Unusuall for drum & bass, it's quite catchy. So I can recommend this tune for everybody out there. You will be surprised by the fact that this tune is produced by Chase and Status, who produced dancehall drum & bass "Duppy Man", a tune introduced at this blog several months ago".

If you like this tune, why not buy Jenna G's new album For Lost Friends? It is a collection of tunes composed by leading drum & bass producers. "Don't Bury Me" is another recommendation.

Merma Neverdies

(produced by Joan Baixas, performed at Tate Modern on 27th May 2006)

It was a strange experience. I didn't understand anything but did enjoy watching it.

In the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, five "grotesque" puppets designed by Joan Miro, a surrealist painter, performed an abstract play on a raised square white platform stage (a little bit like a professional wrestling stage) surrounded by standing spectators. It was certainly a play - each actor wearing a grotesque puppet mask cries, screams, dances, runs, stumbles, talks to each other, in an exaggerated way typical for a play. The plot was quite abstract - all I understood was first four puppets were crying because someone apparently close to them was gone. Then that person (another grotesque puppet) suddenly appeared from amid spectators and marched into the stage. The puppets somehow celebrated this. That's it. But my eyes were glued to the view that those grotesque puppets were lively moving, expressing emotions in an intense way, and rubbing up against each other just like children.

The way each puppet is designed in an apparently meaningless way reminded me of a variety of monsters appearing in Spirited Away. The way these puppets were playing around on the stage also reminded me of a bunch of Japanese animation characters that I'd seen when I was a kid in Tokyo. And I found the actress playing this puppet quite good. Plus, when she put off the puppet mask at the end of the play, she turned out to be cute! :)

I don't believe that any single bit of what I wrote above tells you what this puppet show was like. But that's exactly the point. Unexplainable in words. That is art.

Special thanks go to Cheyok for taking me to this event.

Big Mac Index

For those of you who still believe that Japan is the most expensive country to stay, have a look at this year's Big Max Index published by The Economist magazine this week.

McDonald's Big Mac costs 250 yen in Japan. Based on the market exchange rate, 250 yen is 2.23 US dollars, which is MUCH cheaper than the price of Big Mac in the United States (3.10 dollars), in Britain (3.65 dollars), and in EURO countries (3.77 dollars).

It was McDoland's, in my opinion, that triggerd the deflation in the late 1990s in Japan. The term "price destruction" became a buzz word after McDonald's began selling a burger (not Big Mac but the most basic one) for 80 yen (about 0.66 dollars) and other retailers followed the suit. (I know that in terms of macroeconomics, this explanation doesn't make sense. But that's what happened in reality.) The Economist rightly points this out:

since 1995, when the yen was overvalued by 100% according to the Big Mac index, the local price of Japanese burgers has dropped by one-third.

As far as eating out is concerned, you don't need to spend that much money in Japan. If you want to visit Japan but feel deterred by your wrong assumption that staying in Japan is very costly, just go there and experience a different world in the Far East.

Notice

Just in case you're looking forward to reading the second half of Tokyo 2006 series, I apologize for not updating for ages. Ever since I came back to London, I've been doing research almost everyday. I'm already about to finish my fourth year in PhD. The current research project, which began only a month ago, can turn into a paper with which I go on the job market this fall. My supervisor told me to write up a draft by the end of June. I'm trying to do this by the end of this month as the deadline for submitting a paper to the NEUDC Conference at Cornell University this September is 31st May.

So all I can think of these days is research and what to cook for tomorrow's dinner at home (for a good meal, preparation on the previous day such as defrosting meat in the fridge overnight is important). No time for blogging. I hate this. Everytime I enjoy a great trip, I can't write everything down on the blog (see the never-finished Syria 2005)... And I forget what I did, felt, and thought bit by bit. I wish I could write a blog during my journey between my home and school.

Tokyo 2006 Interlude 1: A development economics conference in Tokyo without Japanese scholars

I'm not sure if this is all right to make public. But I guess the blame should go to Japanese bureaucrats most of whom probably don't bother reading a blog in English. So let it go.

Part of the reason I went back to Tokyo this time was to attend an academic conference held in Tokyo on 1st and 2nd April 2006 - "Institutional Development, Market Integration and Growth" organized by EBRD with CEPR and BREAD. In case you are not familiar with these three acronyms, EBRD is an international organization that lends money at an interest rate lower than the market one for economic and social development in former socialist countries in Europe and Central Asia - in other words, the East European version of the World Bank. CEPR is a London-based research network of leading European economists - an European equivalent (to my understanding) of NBER in the United States. BREAD, probably the least known among the three, is also a research network of leading development economists - anyone interested in development economics keeps an eye on what BREAD is doing.

A weird thing was that it was when the deadline for paper submission had passed that development economists based in Tokyo learned about this conference. This sounded like all those leading development economists in BREAD ignore Japanese development economists.

I got upset by this as I knew several Japanese development economists. Fortunately, I also know Tim, the President of BREAD. So I talked to him about this, and he quickly agreed to invite Tokyo-based development economists to the conference and told me to make a list of them.

So I made a list with help from those in Tokyo and sent it to the conference organizer at EBRD. Of course, I included my own name in the list. :) This prompted me to go to Tokyo.

Anyway, what I learned from this was that it wasn't that BREAD ignored Japanese researchers, as it's clear from Tim's quick response. What mattered seem to be two things - the lack of connection among Japanese development economists with leading development economists in the United States (and at the LSE) and the probable laziness of Japanese bureaucrats at the Ministry of Finance.

The first thing is an unfortunate truth - no Japanese development economist has published papers in the leading academic journals of economics in the past two decades. No one, after getting a PhD in economics, has got a tenure position at the leading universities in North America and Europe. (I'm not talking about all the Japanese economists here - there are Japanese professors of economics with tenure at leading universities in the U.S. But none of them are development economists.) This has a side-effect, by the way - any Japanese youngsters interested in development economics find it quite difficult to get accepted at the PhD program in the top 10 economics departments in the United States (except for University of Chicago). This is because what is necessary for getting into top 10 universities is at least one recommendation letter from a well-known economist.

But this disadvantage could have been overcome if information on the conference had flown from the Ministry of Finance in Japan, which funded this conference (that's why this conference was held in Tokyo), to development economists in Tokyo. Weirdly enough, this didn't happen.

The following is my speculation. I'm not sure if this is true. But basically, Japanese development economists have connection with officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). If it was the MOFA that funded the conference, I suspect this wouldn't have happened. But officials at the Ministry of Finance only have connections with macroeconomists and public or financial economists. This is understandable because the Ministry of Finance has nothing to do with development assistance and hence development economics.

Nevertheless, the Japanese counterpart for international development assistance agencies such as the EBRD is usually from the Ministry of Finance just because - I suspect - it has something to do with money. Japanese official development assistance has long been controlled by as many as four different ministries - the Ministries of Finance, Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Industry (now renamed as Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry), and the Economic Planning Agency (now absorbed into the Cabinet Office). There is no independent agency in charge like the USAID. It is well-known (at least in Japan) that Japanese bureaucrats don't cooperate across different ministries - information doesn't flow across ministries and they basically fight each other about the area of issues in charge.

So the story should have been like this: the EBRD, which wanted to have a chance to absorb the knowledge accumulated in development economics - that's what its Chief Economist Erik Berglof told us at the end of the conference - looked for the funding source and approached the Japanese government. The counterpart in the Ministry of Finance in Japan said yes on condition that the conference must be held in Tokyo. But those at the Ministry of Finance didn't know any development economist in Japan and didn't even try to ask someone in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for help.

Or maybe those bureaucrats didn't bother doing something good to economists in Japan. Economists are generally not respected at all in Japan. Unlike the United States or quite a few developing countries, economists rarely get an official position in the government. Something equivalent to the appointment of Ben Bernanke as Fed Chairman is unthinkable in Japan. If you get a PhD in economics, you won't find any job in the public sector in Japan.

Correct me if you're one of those Japanese bureaucrats who were in charge of the conference and if my speculation is wrong.

Tokyo 2006 Part VIII: Maid Cafes and Akihabara - the otaku town

Nowhere else in Tokyo surprised me as much as Akihabara did. I don't know where to begin... Anyway let me talk about "maid cafe" first.

A very unique type of cafe made a breakthrough in Japan last year. It's called "maid cafe" - a cafe in which young waitresses dressed in French maid costume (see the right photo) serve you as if you were their master.

I wanted to experience this Tokyo (sub-)culture. I knew maid cafes originally came from Akihabara, known as the otaku town as well as the electricity town (see below for more about Akihabara). But there are many maid cafes there (because it is a booming industry). I could only visit one or two. I didn't want to end up in a wrong place. So I did a bit of research on maid cafes via Google, which revealed that the following six are long-running and popular maid cafes (special thanks to Maid Kissa Wiki and Food Drink News, August 2004):

1. Cure Maid Cafe
Opened on 30th March 2001. The oldest maid cafe among those currently in business. Seems the most orthodox in the sense that it focuses on "cafe" rather than "maid". For example, their pot of tea receives a high reputation.

2. Hiyoko-ya
Opened on 10th November 2001. The second oldest in Akihabara. Seems like a maid herself manages the cafe.

3. Cafe Mai:lish
Opened on 19th July 2002. The third oldest maid cafe. Maid costumes here are those designed by Reticule, a famous brand for French maid costume (or so they say). Its official website shows quite nice photos of maids working here, indicating that customers here come to see a particular maid they like.

4. Cos-cha
Opened on 3rd May 2003. Maids are called "angels" here. This cafe is famous for its "events". For example, in winter of 2003, all maids wore school swimsuits (see a life-size doll on the left in the right photo), causing a long queue of 600 customers. Its coffee and bread is said to taste excellent. It also boasts five lunch sets costing around 1000 yen (5 pounds or 8.33 dollars).

5. Pinafore
Opened on 1st October 2003. The closest to Akihabara Railway/Metro Station among all the maid cafes in this area. Maids here wear pink maid costumes while other maid cafes feature black or dark blue. Its official website features diaries written by its maids. It focuses on communication between customers and maids.

6. @home
Opened on 14th August 2004. The first maid cafe that allows customers to play board/card games with maids. Some maids working here release a CD in which they sing. According to Wikipedia (the Japanese version), the company managing this cafe submitted the request for registering "maid cafe" as its trademark. Maid cafe fans from day one hate this cafe because of this.

As you see, some maid cafes go beyond the simple cafe service. Behind this trend lies the fact that customers, or those visiting Akihabara where maid cafes originate, are so-called otaku guys, who are not good at socializing, let alone flirting with girls.

Well, there are so many things to explain about this phenomenon. Let me begin with what otaku is.

Otaku can be translated into geek, nerd, or anorak. But its connotation is quite different from these English terms. Although the term now refers to anyone who is a maniac/freak in some specific thing, it originally means someone who loves manga, anime, video games, and/or "idols" (well, "idols" also need a bit of explanation, but just assume that "idols" are Japanese counterparts of Britney Spears or that kind of young female good-looking celebrities). Otaku guys feel awkward when they talk to "normal" people and, in particular, girls of the same generation. Girls don't like them either because they don't care about their apperance and hygiene. I remember my all-boy highschool classmates were totally divided between "normal" and otaku people.

This forces them to indulge themselves into underground culture, including child porn. On the other hand, they are energetic consumers of manga comic books, anime videos, and video games. Which has definitely contributed to the high quality of these products that are now appreciated worldwide.

Maid cafes are certainly part of this otaku culture. For some reason, otaku guys fancy girls in French maid costume (which I still don't understand). Such girls are featured in porn video games - I learned this from Wikipedia, by the way, as I don't play porn video games because I don't fancy two-dimensional girls. :) Maid cafes are basically a realization (literally) of their fantasies.

Last year, however, Denshaotoko (Train Man), a movie (and its television version) featuring an otaku guy's love story, and a scene of the guy going to a maid cafe, became a bit hit. This somehow made otaku and maid cafes mainstream.

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So I visited Cos-cha for lunch. Two waitresses - probably college students of the sweet type, definitely not the sexy type - dressed in indigo-coloured French maid costume were serving the customers. (Photographs are not allowed inside maid cafes.) When I entered the place, they greeted, "Welcome back, master." I knew this, so it didn't surprise me. But when they took orders and poured tap water into glasses, they kneeled down! This amazed me. The lunch itself was mediocre, by the way.

For a cup of coffee afterwards, I also visited Cafe Mai:lish. Here, some customers were girls. Yes, maid cafes are no longer just for otaku people. I hear maid cafes are popping up in other Japanese cities as well. I sat down at the counter. A otaku-looking guy next to me, in a shy way, talked to one of the "maids".

While I was walking around Akihabara, I spotted a few "maid reflexology" shops. Presumably you will be massaged by girls in French maid costume there. In front of Akihabara Station were a couple of girls in French maid costume handing out fliers to pedestrians (see the left photo). I didn't see this when I walked in Akihabara a year and three months ago.

Okay, let me talk about Akihabara now. Some of you may know this, but this area of Tokyo has been known as the electricity town because a large number of shops specializing in electronics products cluster here - large department stores (foreigner-fridenly Laox, my parents' favorite Ishimaru-denki, Sato-musen, and Ono-den) have many branches within a walking distance alongside many small shops.

Things have started to change in the late 1990s, when the success of Windows 95 turned Akihabara into a place to buy PCs. The old guard Akihabara stores were overwhelmed by newly-opened shops specializing in PCs and related products. To my understanding, this was when otaku guys started visiting Akihabara. Before the advent of Windows 95, PCs were associated with the introverted type who loves to play porn video games on his PC. These people tend to like manga and anime as well. In the early 2000s, a few porn shops catering to such men appeared in backstreets.

That was what I knew before visiting Akihabara this time. What shocked me was that such porn shops are now in main streets! Next to a shop selling household electronics goods stands a six-story building in which all the floors are full of porn DVDs. Another is full of porn manga comic books. Yet another full of small plastic dolls of cute girls in bikinis or other kinds of scanty clothing presumably appearing in manga or video games (see the left photo). Some are even life-size and movable(!), costing around 200,000 yen (1000 quid or 1600 bucks) -you already saw these in the photos above.

Not surprisingly, you rarely see women in this area. You no longer take your children to go shopping in Akihabara...

To sum up, things that are supposed to be underground are not underground anymore in Akihabara. I believe nowhere else in the world is like this. It may make you sick - I don't want to go again - but don't miss Akihabara when you visit Tokyo. Otherwise you ignore the sizable part of Japanese culture.

Postscript 1: According to Maid Kissa Wiki, you can enjoy a maid cafe even in Seoul, South Korea, or in Taipei, Taiwan - Amuamu in Seoul and Fatimaid in Taipei.

Postscript 2: These days there are otaku girls as well in Japan. They love porn comic books featuring good-looking gay guys. Instead of Akihabara, their mecca is Otaku Dori or Otome Street in Ikebukuro. I learned this after coming back to London. Next time I visit Tokyo, I must go there. :)

Tokyo 2006 Part VII: Omotesando Hills

Everytime I come back, Tokyo has a newly redeveloped area. Roppongi Hills in April 2003, Shiodome Sio-site in January 2005, and Omotesando Hills this time.

Omotesando has massively changed during the last couple of years. It is now a "super brand street" where top fashion brands - Dior (see the right photo), Louis Vuitton, Prada, and so forth - all open their fancy-looking stores. Omotesando Hills is the latest addition to the area's drastic metamorphosis.

It is basically a low-rise and long shopping mall, designed by Tadao Ando, with rectangularly circulating slopes allowing visitors to see all the shops without using staircases.

Honestly, it wasn't impressive at all, perhaps because Shiseido's massive ad campaign - featuring as many as six Japanese famous and beautiful actresses (see the photo below) - brought a crimson carpet on the central staircases, destroying the whole atmosphere of Omotesando Hills (see the left photo). But the fact that Omotesando Hills allowed Shiseido to mess up the atmosphere tells me that this place is not serious about how visitors feel. All I felt was that this is a place for rich people - only jewellery shops here tend to have intriguing and fancy decors. How disgusting it is.

I prefer the Ssamjikil shopping mall on Insa-dong of Seoul, which has a similar architectural style. (And everytime I tell this to my Japanese friends, they don't believe this...)


From left, Rena Tanaka, Takako Uehara, Yuko Takeuchi, Yukie Nakama, Ryoko Hirosue, and Arisa Mizuki. To be featured in Shiseido's advertisement gives status for Japanese female celebrities (according to my mother).