1. Had my hair cut. I have never felt comfortable with my own hairs in my life...

2. Had lunch with Jan. He talked fast as usual with a slight German accent. I often failed to understand him when he was our TA. Later I found I could perfectly follow him. But I failed again today. This made me feel a bit nervous and hence talk even worse. Jörgen has kindly suggested me three times investing in speaking. I should seriously consider his suggestions now. I listened to a bit from the audiobook of the Brothers Karamazov. Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov...

3. Read a bit JW as I plan to visit her shop if possible when I am in London. It is always a pleasure reading her words. ‘Life has to be about love and life has to be about finding happiness where we can and not letting the shadows in our lives block out the happiness. I am having quite a tough time in some ways right now, but this has been a week of simple, contented life.’, JW, my week.

Sometimes I wish I could be very old. Then I might be not so anxious about my own life. But sense and sensibility may not be proportional to ages. I need to learn to be confident.

4. Read Chap 26 in Lars’ textbook.

Watched Persona again. Cannot remember how many times I have watched it. It’s a recurrent dream or a poem in my heart, which would occur to me in many moments.

Somewhat gossipy today...Don't blame me. Blame wiki instead:)

I was reading something about Ingrid Thulin during the lunch break. She married the founder of Swedish Film Institute, Harry Schein. He was a close friend of Olof Palme, the Prime Minister of Sweden until he was murdered when walking home from a cinema on Sveavägen. One of his sons is actually our course instructor this quarter, a very gentle, low-key professor. Torsten once told me they were talking in this professor's summer house at Fårö when they heard the announcement of Ingmar Bergman's death from the radio. Now I see why this is quite possible.

But this is unthinkable in China, where children of high ranking government officials have been eroding a high share of GDP throughout the CCP's sovereignty. According to this article, “As of the end of March 2008, 27,310 people in mainland China have personal properties worth over 50 million yuan ($7.31 million) (not including overseas assets); 3,220 people own over 100 million yuan ($14.6 million). Of these 3,220 people, 2,932 of them are children of CCP high-ranking officials. The total assets they own is over 2,045 billion yuan ($299 billion). It was verified that the source of these assets was illegal benefit via power and influence of their families. ''

I like an interesting paper on corruption, Fisman, Estimating the value of political connections. It would be interesting to apply to China too. However, where can I find the data? Sigh.

Those in literature, biology and other areas are often surprised that we econ students spend two years on courses and exams like elementary school students. To some students like me, the first two years are actually easier. People even created a terminology to describe our anxiety after the two years, that is, ‘the third-year syndrome’. After the courses and exams, everyone stops and looks around to find some topics to work on. The start is usually difficult. Sometimes I admire those who work in labs as they always have some tasks to do. It might be physically tiring, but may not be so annoying as busy doing nothing.

My third-year syndrome comes a bit earlier as I have cleared the course requirement now. I am a bit confused whether I should sit down and focus on a specific question.

Talked to Torsten about my confusion today. He insightfully (as always) pointed out that taking courses is a therapy to avoid the hard part: research. I have started two term papers and basically have been stuck in the middle. So I should seriously think of a topic while taking a few courses as therapy. He also comforts me that every good researcher wrote bad papers when they just started their career.

Got the Development Economics II exam result and it is not bad. But besides the third-year syndrome, I might also suffer from 'Chinese-student curse' (defined by Ruixue, i.e. me...), which refers to the fact that Chinese students often perform better in exams than in research. I often know what will come in the exams unconsciously. I knew the answers of the questions without listening to the dialogues when I did TOEFL despite my bad oral English.

As one of a large population who benefited and suffered from the Chinese educational system, I am grateful yet worried. On one hand, exams provide incentives to study some materials. What's more important, they provide opportunities to people like me without any strong background to get college education. On the other hand, we are trained from the beginning to replicate others and tend to get lost once we are free to create anything. This might not be a threat in traditional China when talents were equal to talents in literature. Memorizing classical works will be helpful for writing poems. I have no intention to depreciate the creativity of poetry-writing. Even Mr Alfred Nobel hoped to be a poet rather than a scientist. (You can buy his poetry book in the Nobel Museum. Sorry for the quality of the poems). The online poem machine may help to illustrate my point.

However, in terms of social science (perhaps apart from law. Chinese are the best candidates to study law, according to Yi Shu) and science (economics is thought to be quasi-science, at least by overconfident economists), no one should earn respects because he or she can repeat what is known. I blushed myself thinking that I was once praised for my recitation of Pi.

You know, Pi=3.14159265358979323846…

Another day of courses, behavioral economics (Laibson on psychology and economics.) in the morning and empirical micro in the afternoon. Courses’ qualities vary. So I have to read by myself for the empirical micro course. Anyhow, it is a good chance to carefully study Wooldridge’s textbook. I do not have any compliant about teaching qualities considering my own teaching experience. It is really not easy to be a good teacher.

I talked with Jörgen today. He is nice as ever. When I came to Stockholm, I was more interested in Ingmar Bergman than in my studies. His math classes changed me. I was often told that math is beautiful, sensitive, graceful, tender, harmonious etc. But I did not feel the beauty until his lectures. I was so eager to share my feelings with others that I decided to be a TA for him. The results turned out to be a disaster. I felt discouraged, guilty and ashamed of myself.

His words encourage me a lot. He also suggested me making sure with Torsten about my research. I am very grateful to him and really envy his students. On the other hand, I am envied for my own mentor, who is knowledgeable, elegant and insightful. Grass is always greener on the other side of the hill.

All in all, I became very lucky after coming to Stockholm. Today I even came across 20kr on my way to the office. But luck per se cannot save me. I have to work hard with a grateful heart. Hopefully I can get close to their personality and achievement some day. I often dare not talk to Torsten only because I am too ignorant.

Gym record today: 15 min on the treadmill+5 min on the ring+5 min on the bicycle.

Got a reply from zichuan when I returned from a whole day of coursework. She said that we WILL be friends. I did not know whether you can ask a person to become your friend by asking him or her directly. I tried and it turned out great. I am very happy.

I did go to the gym, but I forgot to update my member card for the new quarter. Leave it to Wednesday. I am supposed to be busy this week as there are quite a few practical issues to deal with.

Lars' class is great as always. It needs both talents and efforts to be a good instructor. He has both. Will read Lucas and Prescott (1974) carefully.

Thanks to the people who make today a great start to 2009.

To prove my love of life, I decided to casually take a picture from time to time. Here is today's. It was 6:20 pm and I was waiting for Bus 40.















Budapest is celebrating 20 years since communism's fall.

kind of hurt

I searched online to get what I wrote about The Lacemaker a few years ago, then I got here:

http://chrisnova.blogbus.com/

I don't know who she or he is. It is funny to see that fragments of my life are copied by others. Sometimes people may use others' essays without notice. That's not good but I do not mind so much. What's absurd this time is that I can see my life in the copies. I am quite flattered as she or he used what I wrote with different IDs in different places. Yet I am kind of hurt.

Please stop doing this with me. Please. Thanks. My life is really not worth your efforts. Forgive my rudeness. I guess you can never become Carson McCullers by copying others. You also make me feel bad about myself, which is so pale that can be covered by a few entries you copied: ridiculous application to central european university, eternal love of small towns, never changed self-pity when writing about any movie or any book.

To be honest, I did think that people in the art profession may be more reliable than us economists. Unfortunately, it turned not true when I got along with two directors. Now I even cannot depend on the 'art youth'. Sigh.

Did not attend the get-together celebrating Chinese new year. Did not call home. I wish I could call someone but I know there would be no reply. The last thing I would like to do is to disturb others. Watched a drama again as it is available on Youtube now. Addicted to Youtube these days. Will quit it from now on.

A few resolutions on this occasion:
1. Go to bed before 12. Get up before 7. (I did badly recently as I spent too much time on Youtube...)
2. Go to gym regularly. (Monday, Wednesday and Friday.)
3. Stop eating meat. (I did well in the past days.)
4. Study hard. (Not very motivated recently. Let's start over. Besides, it is a good alternative to avoid loneliness etc.)
5. Talk more. (Talk with any one about anything.)
6. Walk around and take some pictures. (Landscape is what stockholmers can brag about. No one will laugh at my photography anyhow.)

Thanks to those who are reading this blog. Happy new year!

a theory of misgovernance

1. Watched The Samourai (1967) by Melville. It's cool, well-paced and everything seems under control. I guess Hongkong movies about killers are influenced by this style but they also try to touch the audience by showing that the hero is actually very gentle: he must be a devoted lover or an obedient son.

I love Alain Delon in Rocco and His Brothers (1960). There he was pliant and loyal. See, you can be both pliant and cool.

2. A Pascal quote from overcoming bias.

"When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant and which know me not, I am frightened and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then... The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me."

3. 'Read' the photos by zichuan. Life is beautiful, after all.

1. Listened to a job market talk by a MIT candidate. Really not easy to give a good presentation. He made the audience laugh once, at least.

2. Had a coffee break with Martin. He is a nice friend and always encourages me as I am often not self-confident. He has a very lovely daughter, Greta, following Greta Garbo. btw, he is very good-looking. The Swedes are generally tall, healthy and good-looking. They are also aware of their heritage.

3. Listened to YN's research idea. It's hard for me to give feedback without reading the model. So I asked him to send me the model and hopefully can give him some suggestions next week.

4. Talked a little with WY online. He is one of my few online friends. We have never met in real life. Actually he lives very close to my campus in Beijing. I know little about his life except his essays and poems. He also encouraged me a lot, especially when I was at CCER. I wrote a few short stories because of his encouragements, but now I feel awkward in retrospection. Of course I am still grateful to him.

5. Read Rogerson (1988).

6. Found an old picture when I cleaned my bookshelf. It was taken when I just got the bachelor degree. My roommates and I decided to go to Zizhuyuan Park to take some pictures. None of us had digital cameras at that time, so we rented one camera from a store. The camera and the film were of the lowest quality. The color of the picture is even faded now. We had different thoughts at that moment and I did not know that one day I would miss that time so much.

1. Went to a seminar on Development Economics. One student talked about her idea on aid and educational spending. The other talked about propaganda and civil conflict. Curious about his data set.

2. Attended a class of Empirical Microeconomics. Read chapter 15 in Wooldridge's textbook.

3. Thought about Recursive Macro homework. No idea yet.

4. Got two opposite suggestions about my course work. David said that I should not take so many courses and Holly suggested that I should. I can see somewhat Chinese bias...

5. Talked a bit with Heng on MSN and he told me FZ heard some good comments about me. I never met FZ here. Should work hard for this good news anyhow.

6. Read a Chinese interview of Prof Zhouqiren. I have to admit that I am very interested in the so-called 'blackboard economics'.

If you meet this problem when installing ado file in stata 9: (could not rename c:\ado\plus\stata.trk to c:\ado\plus\backup.trk), type this line in the command window before installing:

sysdir set PLUS youradopath

prvalue is one useful command I installed today, which reports the predicted probabilities when an independent varible is set to specific values.

huppert andersson

I was watching some clips of Harriet Andersson randomly. I could not believe my eyes when I saw this video. These are THE two cinema moments in my life and someone connected them! I really cannot believe it. I began to love Huppert because of the Lacemaker and it is still my favorite after these years. I keep it in my heart like a secret love. Many thanks to the video maker, who reminds me again that I am neither that lonely nor that special as an individual of measure 0 among such a large population.

monika on the wall 2-3

Suddenly thought of this picture tonight.




















This pic was taken when I was at Fårö. I did not buy this shirt because I can never wear a shirt with this line: come with me and dance tonight...

presentation day

Not a good mood to do presentation today. It was not a disaster. I talked very slowly, trying to expose my weakness. The questions raised were expected. The problem is that I don’t know how to solve them. I am not sure whether I should pursue this idea anymore. A bit disappointed.

After the presentation, Karl invited us for dinner. It is quite common in China but very rare here that a professor invites students for dinner. I talked little but drank a lot. Karl told some jokes, one of which was about Slavoj Zizek. The last book I read when I was in China is ‘everything you always wanted to know about Lacan: (but were afraid to ask Hitchcock)’. But I don’t remember anything. A related joke from Karl is about a comment by some philosopher who claimed that economists only write incomprehensible papers with complex mathematics whereas they philosophers can write incomprehensible papers only with words.

What I learned today is that I should try to be constructive as a discussant. It's easy to point out problems. What's difficult is to be helpful in solving them.

monday and a snowing day

I had two classes in Behavioral Economics from 10.15 to 12 and from 13.15 to 15, then Recursive Macro from 15.15 to 18. I would have been very tired if the macro lecturer were not Lars Ljungqvist. Currently I am not so interested in macro labor. I take this course only because he is such a good teacher and I would like to do some recursive exercises. Today’s exercise is a research question: try to think of a divisible labor model with heterogeneous agents in complete markets which might be isomorphic to the indivisible labor model.

Behavioral Economics is interesting, I would say. However, I find it hard to be convinced by those experiments. Take the most simple ultimatum game for example: I think the scale matters a lot. For 100 SEK, I would reject any less than 20 as a receiver. But for 1000000 SEK, I would accept 1000 SEK. btw, I got 30 SEK from the experiment because the other student offered a 70'30 split. As a person who has never won any lottery, I am quite lucky today.

I should email Jorgen tonight no matter he replies or not, which will not affect my admiration of him.

writing a letter

'Dear you, I am writing to you because I am low.'
This is a bad beginning. Why do I think of turning to you when I am depressed? Perhaps I should write:
'I am writing to you to let you know I miss you.'
This sounds too sentimental. Perhaps I can start with weather:
'This winter is much colder than last one. It snows a lot.'
This is silly.
Or
'I dreamed of you again last night. Not a bad dream.'
This sounds like a lie. I dreamed of you, but I cannot remember what happened.

So in the end, I wrote nothing.

monika on the wall

This pic was taken in Lisbon by Goncalo Lopes.

The Harriet Andersson I met in real life has changed so much that I even could not connect her with Monika and Agnes, the two angels.

Today I reflected a bit about my life in Stockholm. I made an irrational choice rationally. I am grateful to the city which gave me a chance to start over. I had never thought that I would be so interested in economics as now I am. But I did not make any progress in watching movies. (Not bad actually.) Swedish cinema to me, is still composed of two types: Bergman films and non-Bergman films. Swedish actresses are also of two types: those with a flavor of Harriet Andersson and those without a flavor of Harriet Andersson.

a survey

Information acquisition and decision making in committees: A survey

Gerling et al, 2005, EJPE

test

The paper I will discuss in the conference is a simple model about strategic voting in the context of collective decision making. For instance, when there is a policy to vote for or against, some agents prefer to wait for more information while some agents will vote directly. The prior beliefs, the quality and signals as well as agents' preference might influence the decision. I enjoyed reading it. He dealt with calculating voting share in a simple and good way, although he might have made a few mistakes.

The author is a student of Antoni Calvó-Armengol, a rising star that unfortunately and unexpectedly disappeared at the age of 37. Two of his papers were published on RES after his death. So what? Sigh. Don't work too much, my friends. Besides studying hard, I should walk around Stockholm a bit this year, say, visiting some gardens. The motto of the owner is 'Det är gott att leva....trots allt!' = 'It is good to live...after all'.