re-read a paper: economic returns to communist party membership.

I was a master student at ccer the first time I read this paper. Many things did change after two years...

1. Notes on dynamic games

Yesterday I talked with Weicheng. He is interested in macro and finance these days. 'But there is only one economics', he said. Dynamic games with recursive methods may be a good example to say that there is no clear cut between micro and macro. Of course we need to pin down our interest to some extent.

2. Application in political economy: Dixit, Grossman and Gul (2000)

Did Swedish homework.

Skim Hausman and Rodrik, 2003

Got a few thoughts from a non-technical paper, second-best institutions.

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.

a theory of misgovernance

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.

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'.