Today I made a major strategic mistake. I talked to two of my graduate students at the same time to Luigi Giamboni and Andrea Ricci. I was suggesting to Andrea that he write a simpler model with 2 classes of agents, 2 sectors and 2 time periods. Luigi said (in Italian) hey that's exactly the same advice you give me. Now they know that, as an advisor, all I do is deliver one of about 10 standard lines.


1) Why don't you write a simple model with 2 etc etc etc

2) Why don't you make a separate paper (chapter) out of your response to that criticism.

3) How about doing some simple empirical work.

4) start with summary statistics then cross tabs the OLS then maybe do something fancy.

5) There is nothing magical about 5%

6) search Econlit for papers that cite the guy you just mentioned.

7) search Econlit for papers that cite the last thing I read about 10 years ago on that subject.

8) you do know how to search Econlit don't you ?

9) Stata is a very nice program. I has great graphics and the context relevant help is actually helpful.

10) OK I must have given someone advice at least once that isn't in 1-9 so help me out.