Robert's Stochastic thoughts

I think we should all take a deep breath and remind ourselves that Ebola isn't coming to take our children. Oh Nina Pham (first person ...

Read it Quote of the day "we’ve entrusted our national medical system to the managerial competence and goodwill of the Rick Scotts ...

There are some close races for Governor in the USA. They are especially close according the the Huffington Post Pollster aggregation In f...

Amazing but true, Massachusetts allows voting by e-mail. You don't get much more 21st century than that. Well now that I think of it, ...

I am going to critique something Krugman didn't quite say about Tirole. What he really said is here . can't resist jumping in the d...

Simon Wren-Lewis has a very thoughtful post on what went wrong in Macroeconomics . I wrote the same thing I always do (see below). I als...

Ezra Klein has an excellent post on the closed feedback loop conservabubble where the obamacare is failing. One aside illustrates a few thi...

"Might" makes right. You can take almost any indefensible claim P and make it the defensible claim "P might be true". ...

"Might" makes right. You can take almost any indefensible claim P and make it the defensible claim "P might be true". ...

A real smack down in the Monkey Cage via Jonathan Bernstein (who summarized better than I can) A catch to Andrew Gelman for correcting an...

There is alleged to be a problem with students taking exams and knowledge spillovers. Another question is whether grownups do this too. Ye...

Paul Krugman wrote The answer all the deficit-panic types offer is basically that we must cut future benefits. But why, exactly, is that s...

How hard is it to get state employment data ? I want past 5 years (told goes through May). I go to www.bls.gov. What a pain. 10 minutes an...

Noah Smith wrote an easy to read version of his thoughts on why DSGE models aren't used by the private sector. It is, of course, an ex...

I am going to do Brad Fair use and cut and past this post . (do click the link anyway to be fairer to him) THURSDAY HISTORY: INTELLECTUAL ...

Comment on a Drum Foser Twitterdebate Drum wrote For better or worse , politicians spend a lot of time thinking about how various audienc...

My daughter needs a Tuberculosis test for a job. This is therefore an experiment in comparative health care system functioning Italy vs USA...

J. Edgar Mihelic read the very incredibly boring post below to the end. Having never met the man, I assume he smells like Noah. Also ...

update: J. Edgar Mihelic read the very incredibly boring post below to the end. Also "Anonymous" read the post to the end. To ...