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Monthly Archives: December 2011
Penalty points and road safety: is there really a link?
According to the Irish Independent, drivers in Ireland face a raft of new penalty offences – to be introduced by the end of 2012. In the article the minister, Leo Varadkar justified the clampdown, saying: “Each measure we take to … Continue reading
Posted in Health, Policy, research, Uncategorized
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Celebrities and science
Celebrities will always be with us. And if they just confined themselves to their torrid personal lives, dazzling smiles and generally vapid comments that would be fine, I suppose. But many like to give advice on issues like health in … Continue reading
Posted in topical stuff
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The 4 year old feminist : Riley speaks
This little girl, Riley, has attitude – the right attitude.
Posted in Uncategorized
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Recent crime trends in Ireland : are there macroeconomic patterns?
The macroeconomic determinants of crime has attracted a lot of interest amongst economists. Economists tend to view crime, particularly against property, as a rational decision. When the opportunity cost is low (i.e. when people have nothing better to do) then … Continue reading
Posted in Policy, Uncategorized
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Heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors with finite samples
When I was a student, in a previous century, heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation and multicollinearity were the trio of evils that we were taught to look out for when estimating regressions. The advent of heteroscedasticity-robust standard errors associated with White (and Huber … Continue reading
Posted in research
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Hairy Baby Clothing
I don’t use this blog to give commercial endorsements but I very recently came across the Hairy Baby Clothing Company a new Irish provider of t-shirts and other gear. Lots of the patterns will bring a smile to your face … Continue reading
Posted in Humour
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Starry night
Christmas morning…feeling a bit crabby about all the bonhomie and nebulous chatter? Well have a gander at this picture of the Crab Nebula courtesy of our friends at NASA.
Posted in Uncategorized
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The Christmas we get…
Most Christmas songs are pretty frothy. Nothing wrong with that I suppose. This old gem has a bit more substance & with a nice Prokofiev riff thrown in.
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Beauty and the beast in the labour market
There has been quite a bit of work on the effect of beauty on pay since Hamermesh & Biddle’s widely cited 1998 paper. This new piece uses some interesting econometric ideas to revisit the question. Beauty and the beast in … Continue reading
Posted in research
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Brendan Walsh on Irish resilience in the face of recession
Brendan Walsh has a nice piece in the Irish Times looking at how aggregate subjective welfare in Ireland (using time series data from Eurobarometer) has proved resilient to the recession. One possibility is that welfare as such is not resilient … Continue reading
Posted in Brain/Psychology, topical stuff
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