Introduction to Economic Analysis, Fall 2007
I turned in my paper last night and I am so happy. Dr. Greenlaw you made this a great class. My classmates you all were awesome and I never had a dull moment. I hope you all have great winter breaks and I am sure we will have a blast with Dr. Rycroft in Forecasting!
“Your parents made you strong, Dr. Greenlaw made you Econ strong!”
So I guess it’s that time of year when everyone posts what they learned in this class and how this class taught them valuable life lessons and all that other Hallmark meets Disney silliness. I am not going to do that. Sure, this class did teach me some valuable things: the odd hallucinations that happen when you are working at three in the morning; how to celebrate thanksgiving and write a paper at the same time; and that alcohol is more dangerous when you aren’t drinking it then when you are (because all you are doing is thinking about drinking it and how it will make the paper go away). Oh, and sure there were the valuable life lessons like time management, avoiding procrastination, perseverance, and other stuff that were available for learning as well. But, as the great Captain Jack Sparrow once said:
Elizabeth Swann: There will come a time when you have a chance to show it… to do the right thing.
Jack Sparrow: I love those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass by.
And I guess one could say that’s how I went through this course and have gone through my life. And I’m pretty sure that philosophy will be present when I get my final grade that more resembles a winter temperature in Greenland than an actual grade. But I enjoyed this course, damnit.
From Carl’s laugh, to Erin’s overwhelming perfection in every single assignment, to Sims and Will making me feel like I was actually gonna pass. Oh, and who could forget Dr. Greenlaw calling me out every fifteen minutes just to remind me that I am on the Van Wilder-seven-year plan.
It was all fun though and I hope all you of have the best of breaks. Enjoy a cold one on me. (Margaret, maybe you can go for keg stand number 2 this break. Just a thought.)
And I’m out.
Govinda
Last week I stayed up all night (literally) to finish my Econometrics project. My project was a real eye-catcher: “Salaries of Major League Baseball Players.” At the time I chose my project I was knee deep in no data (in case you were wondering in philosophy class we get to talk about “nothing” and “nothingness”). I knew Dr. Stageberg didn’t really care about how interesting the project was, so I chose the most boring, most simple topic I could think of (please don’t tell him until I get my grade back). At about 5:45A.M. last week (that’s what time it is now) I was about to give up and just turn in a crappy paper. Fortunately, I was able to finish one last cup of coffee and get the project done.
Well tonight (or, this morning) I realized what I had learned this semester. I needed both Econometrics and Economic Analysis to gain this knowledge. The most important aspect of these projects was what Dr. Greenlaw taught me in the first week. Ask yourself: “Is this topic interesting?” If you are interested in your own topic all other things seem to fall in place. So what if you don’t have any data? Who cares if you don’t quite understand your theory and your professor knows ‘the answer’ and torments you and never tells you the answer until there are four weeks left in class and then you finally get it and have to work your ass off because you didn’t understand it earlier and you just want to scream? F*ck baseball salaries. That is boring. There is no getting around it. I was able to stick with my project and see it through (well, almost) because I was interested in the topic.
I am tired. I might read this tomorrow and decide it is too cheesy and delete it. I had fun this semester. Good luck guys, I’m out.
Peace,
Will
PS Dr. Greenlaw when is that absolute latest we can turn this project in? haha. I am asking for Govinda and John because they aren’t sure they can have it by Friday morning.
I never thought this day would come. I just sent in my final paper. I hope I have done enough editing to pull an A in this class. That would make me very happy. Anyway, since this is definately my last blog post for this class I thought I would leave my words of wisdom. I think the one thing I learned most in this class was that you don’t have to do everything alone. Getting advice is a good thing. There were many times during this semester when I was getting frusterated with this project because I was stuck. I either couldn’t find data, or a concept wasn’t making sense, or I wasn’t sure of the format. I think I spent more hours in Greenlaw’s office asking questions then in any other professors combined during the past two and a half years.
I would say I learned not to procrastinate, but that would be a lie. I knew that procrastination was bad, and yet, at times I still did. I guess a better thing I learned from this class than to not procrastinate, was the reprecussion of procrastination- how late you can stay up and still function. I have noticed that this time is much earlier than that of my freshman year. Massive amounts of coffee no longer work. From this, I started to learn to plan ahead. Procrastination no longer could be solved by all-nighters.
I learned what it’s like to work though a project, of your own design, from start to finish. It’s a big accomplishment even if the results were not that great. The process itself and the skills acquired were worth it.
Finally, I have to saw one of the best benefits of this class, and I’m not tryin to sound corny or cheesy, were the people in it. Many people I did not know that well, or at all, going into the class, but by the end they were lending me Disney movies ..thanks sierra ; ) , inviting me out to party with them (always a plus), or I have formed a good friendship with. So in the end, I’m glad I was part of this class, and I definately can say I will walk away from this class with skills that will go far past the classroom and into real life situations I will face. So to yall, thanks and good luck with the rest of exams. I’ll see you next semester!
Today I submitted my ‘final’ version of my paper. Hoping to go to Boston next semester, it probably won’t be the last time I look at the damned subject of Intellectual Property Rights.
But, after taking econ 300, what have I learned?
DON’T WASTE THE FIRST FEW WEEKS. During the first couple of weeks there wasn’t much to do I thought. Just think of a few ideas, no big deal. WRONG, thinking of good, creative ideas is much more complicated and time consuming then one would think. One problem? Turns out the people that came before me were pretty creative. The idea I was thinking of all summer long, the savings rate & credit debt, had been done the year prior. AND DONE WELL. Damn. So I had to scramble for a new topic idea and never was able to truly catch up.
BE INTERESTED IN YOUR TOPIC. Having studied Intellectual Property Rights for about 3 months straight you sorta get sick of it unless you are somewhat interested in it. Fortunately, I was at least somewhat interested. Picking a topic you don’t care about can only end badly. Being involved with your subject matter can help keep you going when progress come at a snail’s pace.
FIND SIGNIFICANCE. Oh god this is important. If you can’t honestly say your topic is important for some reason or another, its probably not a good topic. My personal example? Turns out Intellectual Property Rights variable was only about a 5% composition of the US Current Account. Not a big deal. Further, it was losing its percentage! It was getting less significant as time went on!!!! Thats not good and I wished I researched more, earlier, to find out.
UNDERSTAND THE HYPOTHESIS and THEORY. If you don’t get why you’re using your theory, what it means, or honestly what your hypothesis is actually arguing something isn’t right. My hypothesis was/is vague and doesn’t actually prove anything besides IP effects exports.
LAYOUT A SCHEDULE. Greenlaw’s due dates are all nice and good. But create some personal goals on when to have things done so it doesn’t come all down to the wire. Research is probably the easiest thing to look over but will come back to bite you more then anything else. Plan on spending more time researching and just reading up on previous knowledge then time tracking down data points. And once you have data? LIFE IS SO EASY. Kind of. You run a regression, it either works out or it doesn’t. Granted if it doesn’t life becomes a little more tough then it should be, but once you get a regression done you’ve pretty much got it made if you can at least explain what happened and why or why not it didn’t work.
TALK TO PEOPLE. This includes your professor(s) and classmates. Ask around for advice or help. I didn’t remember how to run a correlation matrix. I asked Greenlaw, he told me to ask Margaret. AND I DID! and it worked! And since so many of us are doing projects, every so often we do have related topics. Thats not bad, two heads can be better then one.
Thats all I have for you. Theres likely more, but I’m done. Finished. Complete. Burnt out. If anyone from next years class is reading this, enjoy yourself and good luck.
So I probably have about an hour and a half more of work on this paper…(mainly because I keep switching tenses when I am writing and editing so i have to go back and fix that)… so this could be one of the best moods I’ve been in while writing a post. Don’t get me wrong, this class was fun pretty much everyday except the day before something was due, but I’m glad to be pretty much finished. I have one question though…. if we have massive amounts of data and therefore are excel chart does not fit nicely into our paper like that example Greenlaw should us in class…what do we include in our data appendix??
When we write the abstract, should it be on its own separate page or connected to the title page?
I’m sitting in my bedroom wondering how I am going to run regressions on the effect of Gangster Rap record sales and publishing on domestic purchase of handguns by inner-city youth already susceptible to a life of crime. Kind of a project in and of itself, but I though it might spice up my abstract. The top 5 reasons, other than subliminal influences enforced by the lyrical content of Gangster Rap, for inner-city youth not to buy handguns are…
5. The anticipation of the 25th aneversery addition of Michael Jackson’s Thriller
4. The opportunity cost of not purchasing an HDTV.
3. Glowsticks
2. All this lovely Christmas cheer.
1. Washington’s 0-4 record without Sean Taylor…of course…we’re not all Redskins fans are we? 
So all the assignments have been completed, the chapters have been read, the rough draft has been written, and my presentation is finished. Now, all I have left is to finish editing my final paper. I started editing it a week ago; a week later, it is not finished. I think after a whole semester of looking at data and this topic I’ve reached the point of being sick of this paper. I have one more day of editing but i’ve had to take a couple days off to build up the energy and attention span to finish this project…I think the final day will be tomorrow, hopefully. This is where I stand on my econ analysis project.
I was getting excited about new data I found. In addition to comparing GDP per capita data between the US and Africa, I also found average ARV drug prices, some data of production costs, and drug company profits. My idea was to use comparisons between GDP to set up a pricing structure. The problem lies in the complexities of the AIDS drugs cocktails. Some of the pills are monopolistic, some can be purchased as generics, some are available in the US but not in Africa, and some are available in Africa but not the US. So just as I was getting excited about having data to go along with my theory, it turns out my paper is going to be almost pure theory.
But all is not lost, I got a lot of work done tonight (its 5 AM), and I am liking the direction the paper is taking.
PS does anyone want to work on Econometrics tommorrow?
PSS do you guys still read this now that you are done with your papers?
Will
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