Giffen goods must be......

While the professor in the class I am TAing discussed Giffen goods, she wrote, "Normal goods must be ordinary." It meant that the goods that you purchase more when you have more income must be the goods whose quantity demanded increases when the price drops. Then she wrote, "Giffen goods must be ?" She then asked for answers from the audience.

A student was very quick to respond and said, "Extraordinary!". That made my day.

(Picture: Prof. Nolan Miller at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He and Prof. Robert Jensen at Brown are said to find the first real-world Giffen goods.)

Becoming a master

The life of a junior researcher is not easy at all. The closure of Econoclasm sadly supports that fact. The harder part for me, however, is in getting the navigation when sailing in this vast ocean. I remember when I first tried to get started with my prospectus, I set out with an ambitious title, "Dissecting XXX". Not long after that, I had toned down a bit to "Understanding XXX". Now I probably can only say, "Can we say something about XXX?"

It is not that we, graduate students and junior faculty alike, don't have the ability or the potential to do something great. We just don't know how receptive the audience will be and probably don't know what obstacles we will face when we progress along. A guiding or whipping hand is what we desperately need at this juncture. To be honest, I don't mind the struggle, as long as I know I am moving forward.

Having said that, I am still pretty upset every time I read an article by some big name only to find the stupidity behind it. How can they publish an article that is only a collection of meaningless regressions? Just because he is ZZZ?

Unless I cross over to the other side and become a master myself, I will always be rancorous toward that.

(www.art.com)

Quote of the day

My adviser said, "Why so humble? You are not that great anyway." Fortunately, he was not talking about me, or anyone specific.

What do Jay Leno and I have in common?

The Tonight Show host Jay Leno is a serious comedian (quite an oxymoron, don't you think?). In his spare time, he is said to be busy writing up jokes (quite a job, don't you think?). Every time he saw his nemesis, presumably Dave Letterman, hanging out with celebrities in Knicks games, he felt even more motivated. "Ha, I caught you having fun when I am busy working. I beat you!" That is the attitude when you want to do something serious. Remember, when Leno took over the host from retiring Johnny Carson and replaced the 2nd-in-line Letterman, almost no one believed Leno would beat Letterman, who fled to CBS later. Now, The Tonight Show is constantly having better rating than the Late Show with Dave Letterman.

So, what did you do over the break? I hope you didn't go out and have too much fun because your competitors were working really hard.

(Picture: tv.yahoo.com)

We don't hate you

During the storm-caused blackout, we turned to radio for information and entertainment. To my surprise, there is actually a right-wing talk radio in this liberal town. From then on, I have tuned in once in a while. The other day I was listening to some guy sitting in for Rush Limbaugh when I was driving to school. Suddenly I realized why the ideologically right do not hate the left, while the opposite is often the case.

It is very much like pre-2004 Yankees and Red Sox. The Red Sox nation talked about Evil Empire all the time, but Yankee fans didn't care a bit. If you are winning perennially, will you care who is behind you? So the libertarians never hate anyone simply because we are winning.

But exactly what have we won? Proudly, we have won in the contest of understanding how this world works. Time and again, we have shown people that the world is converging to what the libertarians believe in: free market and free people.

Therefore, we don't hate you. We just think you are stupid.

Disclaimer: I do not think Rush Limbaugh is more libertarian than conservative. And I never like the characters of those right-wing talk show hosts. To paraphrase Obama, unlike Hillary, neither Rush Limbaugh nor Bill O'Reilly is likable enough.

(Picture: www. rushlimbaugh.com)

The danger facing Chinese elites

I follow Guo Kai's Chinese blog closely, but his recent post worries me. There hides a real danger for the young Chinese elites in his thoughts. His post reflects his unease of seeing the turmoil in Kenya and Pakistan. Guo thinks as long as the regime is democratically elected, the country has democracy, be it in the U.S or in Kenya. He then deducts that democracy is irrelevant. The success of America makes him and many other Chinese to overrate democracy. The underlying reason for the U.S. to succeed is the people. Because Americans are rather homogeneous, disputes are easy to resolve. Therefore, if the U.S. is under some dictatorships, it will still enjoy the super power status it has now. Chinese are pretty homogeneous, too. China will be successful no matter what kind of regime it has.

Well, I don't see the homogeneity in either the U.S. or China. You can call Japan or Korea a homogeneous society, but never the U.S. Just walk around downtown in any big city in America and you won't call the U.S. a homogeneous society. I have never been to China, but heard about Tibet quite often. Homogeneous in Tibet? Yes, it will be when the Han people drive out all the native Tibetans.

As someone from a country in transition to democracy, I can assure you that the democracy in the U.S. and the one in Kenya are very different. To have a fully functioning democracy, you need to have many complementing institutions and a fairly educated and wealthy people. We don't see those ingredients in those so-called third world democracies. In fact, I don't dare to say Taiwan has a fully functioning democracy, either.

The real issue that gets on my nerves is the success of Chinese communists' propaganda. A well educated elite like Guo buying into the democracy irrelevancy theory peddled by the communists really worries me. I suspect the economic success of China has blurred the Chinese elites' vision. There is a silver lining in his post, though. He puts up a disclaimer on top of the post. Guo himself does not 100% endorse the idea he writes. It is just a brain exercise for him. I sincerely hope all the Chinese elites can also just treat it as a brain exercise because when the economy slows down and the real test for the communists comes, they will need more understanding of how a democratic society works.

(Picture: bbc.co.uk)