Saudi Women and the Olympics

Saudi Arabia plans to send zero women to the Olympics this summer. What will (should) the IOC do? 

Good news for me

From the Wall Street Journal

And Selgin's review of Bernanke's history of the Fed

Here.

The History of the Fed

Here is a video of George Selgin lecturing on the history of the Federal Reserve.

Here is a video of Ben Bernanke lecturing on the history of the Federal Reserve.

They do not entirely agree about the benefits of the Federal Reserve System.

Double Blind Studies

The Economist reports on the pseudo placebo effect in randomised control trials.

"In a new paper, Erwin Bulte of Wageningen University and his colleagues conduct a double-blind test of an agricultural intervention—that is, the treated don’t know whether they are receiving the treatment or the placebo. The treatment is a modern seed of cowpeas, the placebo is the traditional seed. As a second experiment in a different set of villages, they do a normal RCT where the treated know that they are receiving the modern seed. Comparing the results of both experiments reveals some striking results. When the farmers don’t know which seed they are planting, there is no difference between the modern and the traditional seed in terms of yield. When they do know that they are being treated, the modern seeds yield considerably more. What the authors call the “pseudo-placebo effect” therefore accounts for the whole effect that a typical RCT would have found."

La Ceiba Microfinance Institution video

La Ceiba is a micro lending agency developed by Professor Shawn Humphrey and students at the University of Mary Washington. It emerged out of work they were doing with Students Helping Honduras. Here is a video describing what they do.

bikes for girls

Great video from the International Growth Centre about giving bikes to girls so they can go to school, explaining the research they used to determine the effectiveness of the program.

free stuff

gretl free econometric analsysis software (also very easy to use)

PANDA-glGo free computer Go (fun but addictive)