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