Thinking on the Margin

100 Days in Glacier National Park

2009-12-03T12:20:00.001-05:00

My dad and I took a 30-day, 11,000 mile driving trip across the United States in 2005. We saw 28 states in total and numerous National Parks. Our favorite among them was Glacier National Park in Montana. The Big Picture has a set of spectacular photos by Chris Peterson, who spent 100 consecutive days in the park to commemorate Glacier’s 100th anniversary. Peterson used a variety of cameras that would have been used over the Park’s history.

Follow the link to view the photos and you’ll see why dad and I liked Glacier so much. (Once the page loads, you can use the “j” and '”k” keys to advance through the pictures.) See all 100 of Peterson’s photos here.

Gran Torino

2009-12-03T12:00:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was my last day of classes for the semester and so I decided to take the night off and watch a movie, Gran Torino, before exams start. I’m not quite sure how I stumbled on it, but am glad I did. It is a 2008 film starring and directed by Clint Eastwood, recognized by the American Film Institute as one of the best films of 2008. (I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t heard of it before.) Here is the description from Netflix (subscription required):

Curmudgeonly Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood, who also directs) must confront his Hmong immigrant neighbors -- and his own long-held prejudices -- when the family's teenage son, Thao (Bee Vang), tries to steal Walt's beloved 1972 Gran Torino. Walt soon assumes the unlikely role of guardian angel to young Thao and his sister Sue (Ahney Her), both of whom are vulnerable to local gang influences.

I had trouble finding a trailer on YouTube that didn’t give away too much of the movie. (I hate learning too much about a film before I watch it.) You can watch a good, short trailer here.

All I will say is that it is in large part a story about the rite of passage into manhood and is highly recommended. It has some language, but the story is well done and Eastwood proves himself (yet again) to be a brilliant actor and director.

Ali would be particularly pleased with the special features on the DVD and what they have to say about men and their cars. Two thumbs up!

The Daily Dozen

2009-12-03T11:26:00.001-05:00

Secret CIA Manual Shows Magic Tricks Used by Spies: “During the Cold War, the CIA hired a master magician to teach them deceptive maneuvers. Here are a handful of tricks, recovered from a super secret manual the government thought it had destroyed over 30 years ago.”
In Hospice, Care and Comfort as Life Wanes: “[S]tudies have shown that, all other things being equal, patients receiving the comfort care provided by hospice tend to live longer and die more peacefully than those who continue to get intensive care for their disease when treatment has ceased to help.”
John Brown – Freedom’s Martyr or the 9/11 of 1859?
With an eye to the future, try RAW photos today. “[A]lthough taking up about three times the storage space as a JPEG and requiring manual processing, offer higher quality and more flexibility. But what I've come to understand since then is a second advantage of raw: because processing software improves over time, raw photos in effect can get better with age.”
Cool! iPhone app turns business cards into contacts.
Underappreciated economist: Jack Hirshleifer.
Dubai fact of the day: “Dubai now has the tallest building in the world, and 11 skyscrapers that are taller than any European building.”
New York has 250 times the rate of abortions per thousand births than Wyoming? Maybe, but this gap seems huge to me. (I think Wyoming’s reported data is too low.) NY City has the highest rate with 756 abortions per 1,000 births – and a higher absolute number of abortions than any state other than New York (which includes NYC) and Florida.
Is your Facebook personality genuine? “When researchers began studying Facebook friends, they expected that users would exaggerate accomplishments. To their surprise, they discovered that Facebook profiles typically give an accurate and realistic impression of the user's real-life personality.”
Writing to impress rather than inform. “Here’s an interesting essay about the incomprehensibility of some academic writing.” Sad, but true.
How law schools adapt to U.S. News rankings. “One general effect of the USN rankings on law schools is that it has created pressure on law school administrators to redistribute resources in ways that maximize their scores on the criteria used by USN to create the rankings, even if they are skeptical that this is a productive use of these resources. “ Also sad, but true. More on this here.
Sometimes it’s just not worth keeping up with the Joneses:

Eating the Evidence

2009-12-02T11:16:00.001-05:00

Orin Kerr:

Note to Law Enforcement Personnel: If you arrest a suspect for bank robbery, and you find the stick-up note in his pocket, don’t put the note on the car near the suspect. The note might not be there when you’re done the search incident to arrest:

Background here, via Josh Blackman. Oh, and don’t miss the suspect’s facial expression at the :33 mark.

I’m guessing this guy isn’t familiar with Rochin v. California, but would be grateful for it if he knew…

The Stronger Sex -- Spiritually Speaking

2009-12-02T10:12:00.001-05:00

The gender gap in religion:

A new analysis of data from the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, finds that women are more religious than men on a variety of measures.

Data: Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted in 2007, released in 2008.

Economists’ Cribs

2009-12-01T11:41:00.001-05:00

Here are photos of Greg Mankiw’s domicile (6,500 square feet -- 6 bedrooms, 5.5 baths, complete with a tropical oasis in the gardens in Wellesley, MA):

And here are photos of mine (400 square feet – one room, one bath, complete with air fern and 52-inch HDTV in Arlington, VA):

Keep in mind Mankiw is a tenured prof at Harvard and I’m still working on my PhD…

The Economic Condition of Poor Americans (and the rest of us) Continues to Improve

2009-11-30T12:24:00.001-05:00

Some fascinating data compiled by economist, Steve Horwitz, on how poor people compare to the average person in 1971 and to the average person in 2005:

I think these data largely speak for themselves. The only categories where the poor have become "worse off" are in freezers (likely due to more being built into fridges) and now telephones, which is, of course, explained by the gains in cell phones. Stoves are down slightly, but that too could be due to swapping regular stoves for microwaves or even toaster ovens. In any case, it's a pretty small decline.

The overall lesson is clear: lives for Americans below the poverty line continue to get better in terms of what they are able to put in their households and have to make use of everyday. And do note that the average American household in 2005 was doing much better than its 1971 counterpart. MUCH better - and this doesn't even count medical advances and the like. So whatever one hears about stagnating wages and the like, the bottom line is ultimately what we can afford to buy and have in our households to improve our lives. By those measures, life for the average American is better today than 35 years ago, life for poor Americans is much better than it was 35 years ago, and poor Americans today largely live better than the average American did 35 years ago. Hard to square with a narrative of economic stagnation or decline.

I'd challenge any naysayer to look at this data and try to claim the poor are getting poorer, that incomes haven't risen over the last 35 years, or that we are becoming worse off (materially) than our parents'/grandparents' generation.

Exciting stuff!

The Age of the Development Expert

2009-11-30T12:16:00.002-05:00

William Easterly:

Foreign Policy magazine just released its top 100 Global Thinkers for 2009. Twelve out of the top 100 were what is loosely called “development experts:”

Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart (20), Paul Collier (36), Jeffrey Sachs (39), William Easterly (39), Esther Duflo (41), Muhammad Yunus (46), Amartya Sen (58), George Ayittey (76), Paul Farmer (83), Jacqueline Novogratz (85), Andrew Mwenda (98).

With the obligatory caveats about the more well-deserving who were omitted and questionable rankings, it is nice to see the diversity of the list: female and male, Central Asian, South Asian, African, European, and American, pro-aid and anti-aid, self-c onfident experts and those who don’t believe in experts (e.g. me), and even good experts and bad experts (kidding)?!

I took a development seminar with Professor Easterly a few years back and it's great to see him make the list. It’s also nice seeing how many other economists were chosen.

Tough Market for Law School Grads

2009-11-27T15:22:00.001-05:00

Law Students Across the Country Try to Adapt in a Struggling Economy:

For the first time in decades, the promise of a profitable law career for top students is uncertain, as law schools report significantly reduced hiring rates. ...

Law schools across the country are seeing a reduction in the number of firms participating in the recruitment process. Harvard reported a 20% reduction in the number of employers participating in recruitment, according to assistant dean for career services Mark Weber, while NYU, Georgetown and Northwestern reported on their Web sites that on-campus interviews are down by a third to a half when compared with recent years. Texas experienced a 45% decrease in on-campus interviews....

During normal times, law school is unlikely to be a good financial bet – particularly if you attend a non-elite school. Deciding to go in today’s economic climate increasingly appears to be more like committing financial suicide.

(HT Paul Caron)

Chipotle... and Other Things I'm Thankful For

2009-11-26T14:21:00.005-05:00

(NOTE: I originally wrote this post last year, but it represents much of how I feel today. Like last year and completely unintentionally, my last meal before coming home for Thanksgiving was at Chipotle. Perhaps a new tradition has begun?)

A few of the things I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving:

Faith -- I'm incredibly thankful for my Christian faith. It shapes the core of who I am, gives me purpose and meaning, and a confidence that all things will work out in the end and fills my life with joy, hope and love.
Family -- Being so close to them both relationally and physically. To have a family that loves you is one of the most precious gifts anyone could ask for.
Friends -- Those in Virginia and around DC, those in Orlando, and those all over the world. I am truly blessed by all of them.
Freedom -- I feel blessed to have not only the civil liberties, but by the breadth of opportunities we have in America. There are very few things I would want to do that I am not free to do. I never fully appreciated this until I started traveling to places where this is not true.
Technology -- I truly marvel at the many wonders of the Internet, cellular phones, computers, medicine, air transportation, electricity, indoor plumbing, incandescent lighting, automobiles, GPS, iPods, etc. It changes our lives in so many tremendous ways. Thinking about how much the world has changed in the last 100 years makes me feel blessed to live in the time we live in. Being a gadget lover makes the rapid advance of technology all the more enjoyable. I'm thankful for the enjoyment too.
Travel -- I've been able to travel to all 50 states, 28 countries, and all 7 continents. There are few things I love more than travel and have been truly blessed in how much of the world I've been able to see.
School -- I also feel incredibly blessed to have been able to have had the opportunities to pursue most of the intellectual pursuits I've wanted and the funding to make it possible.
Wealth -- This might sound strange coming from a grad student who eats a lot of Ramen noodles. But chances are if you're reading this blog, you're one of the wealthiest people to have ever walked the face of this planet. Even in the midst of the current financial crisis, we live in a time of unprecedented abundance -- much of it so ubiquitous we don't even notice it (see the list of technology above). Our lifespans are longer, our opportunities greater, and many things in life are far more convenient than at any time in human history. I may not have all the stuff I'd like to buy, but there is very little I don't have that I truly need.
Health -- I am incredibly thankful for my health and to having been doctor-free for years.
Steady Income -- Despite making the lowest level of income in my adult life, I've had a steady stream of income since I came back to school and have at least ~~1-1/2 years more~~ another semester of funding left. For this, I am truly thankful.
America -- I love my country and the ideals it represents. The more I learn about the founding of the country, the more I feel gratitude and indebtedness for the liberty and institutions that support it that has been passed to this generation of Americans. Our country is not perfect by any means, but I am thankful for our nation and my cultural heritage. There is no other place or time I'd rather live.
Humor -- I'm grateful for the ability to laugh and to see humor in life. Even in the midst of law school.
Economics -- The more I study economics, the more it helps me appreciate the things I have, the wonderfulness of markets, prosperity, and liberty. Next to my Christian faith, I don't think there anything else I have learned that has had a more profound impact on helping me understand and appreciate the things I am blessed with in this life.
Where I Live -- I'm currently living in Arlington, Virginia -- a block away from the subway, walking distance to school, and at the footsteps of our nation's capital. I can walk to just about any store or restaurant I want and ride the Metro to anyplace not walking distance from here. As far as pure location goes, this is the best place I have ever lived. (Although living 20-minutes from Disney World had it's perks too.) I am thankful to have a roof over my head, a warm shelter, and a nice place to study, sleep, and relax. Being an hour from mom and dad's and even closer to my brother and his family makes this almost perfect.
Chipotle -- This may sound funny, but to me, Chipotle represents the variety and abundance of high-quality, cheap food we have all around us. A trip to Wegman's or your local grocery store underscores this. I've never gone hungry in my life nor have most of my friends. This is incredible by historical (and world) standards and something else I am truly grateful for. In fact, I had my last pre-Thanksgiving meal there and it was good!

I am truly blessed.

Wishing everyone a very happy Thanksgiving!

1 Car = 30 Vacations

2009-11-25T13:01:00.001-05:00

How to think about purchases as opportunity costs:

Dan Ariely, a behavioral economics professor at Duke, explains how to think about your purchases in terms of opportunity costs. He also offers a few tips for ways to become a more conscientious penny-pincher:

Sweet Trade

2009-11-25T12:42:00.000-05:00

A fun economics experiment to do in the classroom:

Here is a fun, easy and effective experiment that instructors can use to illustrate the gains from trade. The instructor puts chocolate bars ("fun-size") or other candy in bags, one bag for each student. (Alternatively, you can use the type of small items that you can find at a dollar store. Filling the bags is where the most work comes in especially if you have a large class). Students open the bag and are then asked to write down how much they would be willing to pay for the bag's contents. But before snacking, students are allowed to trade. After a few minutes of trade, ask the students to write down their valuation again. Voila! Gains from trade. With a few numbers pulled at random from the students you can do a back of the envelope calculation for the total increase in value. The experiment doesn't take long and the students will appreciate the candy!

Tax Burdens Around the World

2009-11-25T12:27:00.000-05:00

“Think you pay a lot of taxes in the United States? Try moving to Denmark.”

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development today released new data on tax burdens in its 30 member countries. Across the organization, over all tax revenue totaled an estimated 35.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2008, down half a percentage point from 2007. The organization expects that tax burdens will fall further in 2009.

Denmark had the highest total tax revenue as a percentage of G.D.P., at 48.3 percent, followed by Sweden at 47.1 percent. Turkey and Mexico had the smallest tax burdens, at 23.5 percent and 21.1 percent.

In the United States, tax revenues represented 26.9 percent of total output last year.

The Daily Dozen

2009-11-25T11:40:00.000-05:00

Understanding how cameras work to improve your shots. A great primer on understanding digital photography.
FBI Releases 2008 U.S. Hate Crimes Data. “The largest percentage of those (65.7%) were anti-Jewish. 7.7% were anti-Islamic, 4.7% were anti-Catholic, 3.7% were anti-Protestant, 0.9% were anti Atheist/ Agnostic. Some 3,608 hate crime offenses were against property. 6.6% of those were directed at religious organizations.”
Conservatives Discover Criminal Defendants. “The NYT reports on increasing involvement by conservative organizations and business groups on behalf of criminal defendants. While libertarians have long complained about “overcriminalization” and excessive federalization of criminal law, such concerns have gained increasing currency in more traditional conservative circles. This is a good thing.”
44% of Congressmen are millionaires. Other fascinating demographics of our Congress here.
The really traditional Socratic method. “You ask people hard questions. Then they kill you.”
Brain scan finds man was not in a coma – 23 years later. Horrible. But also amazing that we now have technology that sees into the brain.
How races and religions match in online dating. The more serious you are about your faith the more difficult it is to find a match. Who knew? (Also of interest is that in every religious group, including atheists, women were reported to be more serious about their religion than men.)
Games for thinkers. Most of these you will have heard of before.
Rampaging elephant gadget inspired by ‘Star Wars’? Why shoot them with darts when you can trip them instead?
How World War II wasn’t won. “Had Eisenhower let Devers make his attack, we might now be celebrating the 65th anniversary of a cross-Rhine attack that quickly ended the war in Europe. Instead, we will soon mark the anniversary of the costliest battle in American history, the Battle of the Bulge.”
Mason Law Moot Court teams sweep top awards. Strong congratulations to my classmates!
The growing backlash against overparenting? “But too many parents, says Skenazy, have the math all wrong. Refusing to vaccinate your children, as millions now threaten to do in the case of the swine flu, is statistically reckless; on the other hand, there are no reports of a child ever being poisoned by a stranger handing out tainted Halloween candy, and the odds of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are about 1 in 1.5 million. When parents confront you with "How can you let him go to the store alone?," she suggests countering with "How can you let him visit your relatives?" (Some 80% of kids who are molested are victims of friends or relatives.) Or ride in the car with you? (More than 430,000 kids were injured in motor vehicles last year.)” (HT Steven Horwitz)

Kindle 2 Gets Native PDF Support and 85% Longer Battery Life

2009-11-24T16:42:00.002-05:00

Amazon just announced a software update for the Kindle 2 to give it native PDF support and increased battery life with the wireless on by 85% (at least for the new Global Kindle). I just checked and unfortunately, the update has downloaded onto my Kindle yet, so I can't report on how well the PDF viewer works. Details coming soon. In the meantime, here is Amazon's description of the new features:

Built-in PDF reader: Your Kindle can now display PDF documents without losing the formatting of the original file. Send PDF documents directly to your Kindle (via your @Kindle address) or drag and drop PDF files from your computer to your Kindle (when connected via USB). Learn more.
Longer battery life for Kindle (Global Wireless): You can now read for up to 1 week on a single charge with wireless on. Turn wireless off and read for up to 2 weeks.
Manual screen rotation: The Kindle screen can now manually rotate between portrait and landscape views so you can see the entire width of a web page or magnify the page of a PDF file. The page-turn buttons work the same in either orientation, and the 5-way controller movements are switched to match the orientation. Learn more.
Option to convert PDF files to Kindle format. If you prefer to have your personal PDF documents converted to the Kindle format (so that they can reflow), type "Convert" in the subject of the e-mail when you submit your personal document to your @kindle.com address.
Kindle (U.S. Wireless) and Kindle (Global Wireless) users can go to Archived Items on their Kindle and download the Kindle User's Guide, 4th Ed., which now documents all the features of Kindle Software 2.3.

Read Amazon's press release here.

Having an older version of the Kindle 2, I'm not sure if I'll get the battery boost, but the PDF reader should still work. More on this once Amazon updates my Kindle.

If you have a Kindle and don't want to wait for the automatic update, here are directions for how to update it manually.

UPDATE: I just did a manual update to my Kindle. Here are a few initial impressions after playing with it a few minutes:

PDF files are now natively supported. They look small, but academic articles are almost readable in landscape mode, but I wouldn't recommend this as a good platform for extended reading of these types of documents. (Larger screen eBooks such as the Que should be ideal for this. Until then, I'll stick with reading PDFs on my laptop/netbook -- or better yet, print them out.)
The screen rotation works great. It took me a minute to figure out how to rotate the screen. I finally realized you activate this feature by pressing the "Text" key (the one that adjusts font size). Then simply select the orientation you want and you're good to go. It works very well and not only for PDFs, but for any reading you do on the Kindle.
The navigation buttons are not ideally placed for reading in landscape mode.
Viewing the Kindle in landscape mode really emphasizes how much wasted, empty space there is around the screen. The Kindle could be and should be a much smaller device. Or better yet, keep the same form factor and put in a larger screen.
Text-to-Speech now has a female and male voice option and you can choose the reading speed (slow, medium, or fast). This was a surprise in the update that I didn't see mentioned anywhere.

Overall, this is a nice update and expands on the usefulness of the Kindle. Like the recent Kindle for PC software, these features are obviously intended as a counter against Barnes and Noble's Nook. As such, they are a nice example of the effects of introducing a little competition into a marketplace can do. Consumers benefit and technology advances.

Why Remodel Your Kitchen If You Might Not Keep Your House?

2009-11-24T10:38:00.000-05:00

The connection between law and development:

Daron Acemoglu describes what makes a nation rich in a new article for Esquire. According to Acemoglu, experts who believe geography or the weather or technology are to blame for persistent poverty are missing a much simpler economic explanation: people respond to incentives. “People need incentives to invest and prosper; they need to know that if they work hard, they can make money and actually keep that money,” he writes. “And the key to ensuring those incentives is sound institutions — the rule of law and security and a governing system that offers opportunities to achieve and innovate.” In other words, if you want to fix poverty, you’ll have to fix governments first.

Wanting to better understand this connection between institutions and economic development is the primary reason I ended up in law school after starting my PhD.

The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good

2009-11-24T10:07:00.000-05:00

Perfection comes with a price. This link primarily focuses on this concept as applied to finances, but the graph below illustrates how diminishing marginal returns applies to most things in life.

To sum up the two main reasons I tend to shy away from perfectionism:

1) In my experience, the benefits typically do not outweigh the costs; and (perhaps more importantly)

2) I have never met a happy perfectionist.

Living the Nomadic Life

2009-11-24T09:53:00.000-05:00

This guy packs lighter than I do. Watch the videos below for some great ideas for traveling light. Follow the link for some great travel ideas, including a detailed list with links of where you can buy the gear.

These videos have given me some great ideas for my next journey (including thinking about what he brings that I would leave at home). For one thing, I could benefit by cutting down on the amount of clothing I pack. I also like the flashlight with the diffuser wand, although I'd probably stick with a headlamp for my adventures. (Headlamps are great for hiking, reading, setting-up camp, and packing/unpacking in the dark.)

Here are my own packing tips for how to travel the world with only carry-on luggage. (I've made trips to all seven continents without checking a bag.)

Part I

Part II

(HT One Bag, One World)

The Changing Face of the World Economy

2009-11-24T09:26:00.004-05:00

Understanding this chart:

World GDP (real) doubled between 1969 and 1990, and has increased by another 60% since then, so that world output in 2009 is more than three times greater than in 1969. We might mistakenly assume that the significant economic growth over the last 40 years in China, India and Brazil has somehow come "at the expense of economic growth in the U.S." (based on the "fixed pie fallacy") but the data suggest otherwise. Because of advances in technology, innovation, and significant improvements in U.S. productivity, America's share of total world output has remained remarkably constant at a little more than 25%, despite the significant increases in output around the world, especially in Asia.

(HT Greg Mankiw)

National Geographic International Photography Contest 2009

2009-11-24T09:15:00.001-05:00

During a rainy, cloudy morning at the Wild Goose scenic overlook on St. Mary Lake in Glacier National Park, Montana, the sun peeped from under the cloud cover long enough to paint a golden-yellow swath across the face of the mountain for maybe 15 minutes before disappearing again. (Photo and caption by Rebecca Latson) #

The Big Picture:

National Geographic's International Photography Contest attracts thousands of entries from photographers of all skill levels around the world every year. While this year's entry deadline has passed, there is still time to view and vote for your favorites in the Viewer's Choice competition. National Geographic was kind enough to let me choose a few of their entries from 2009 for display here on The Big Picture. Collected below are 25 images from the three categories of People, Places and Nature. Captions were written by the individual photographers. (25 photos total)

'Stare Decisis' - Great for Law, Bad For Teaching Methods

2009-11-23T11:05:00.002-05:00

Stare Decisis - "Maintain what has been decided and do not alter that which has been established"

Why do so many law professors continue to use the Socratic method?

[T]he tradition-based argument for the Socratic method fails even on its own terms. It ignores the fact that virtually every academic discipline other than law has a long tradition of not using the Socratic method. That includes professors who teach courses on legal issues in political science, economics, history, and philosophy departments. Similarly, the Socratic method isn’t generally used by law professors in other countries, including other Anglophone common law jurisdictions such as Britain, Canada, and Australia. There is no reason to believe that either non-law classes in the US or legal education abroad suffers because they don’t inflict SM on their students. Nor is there any significant movement to adopt the Socratic method in any of these other academic departments and foreign law faculties. Relative to the traditions of most of the academic world, the widespread use of the Socratic method in American legal academia is an outlier.

Orin Kerr thinks this overestimates the use of the Socratic Method by law school profs. Ilya Somin responds.

As a current law student and a past and future educator, I completely agree with Somin. I have had a class or two in law school that was not so different from Professor Kingsfield's class in the video above. And most several others that were more than shadows of this. Now that I'm in my third year, I've finally gotten used to it (maybe that's part of the point?), but it has not been an enjoyable road getting here.

Problems I see with the Socratic Method:

Much of class time is wasted hearing students who have been called on trying to guess what the professor wants them to say. Other students often completely zone out while this is going on. Those who do pay attention can have trouble figuring out what, out of what the student who is on call is saying, the professor actually wants them to learn. Quite often, the professor never clarifies.
It causes students to spend their scarce time over-preparing for class and under-preparing for the exam. (In law school, 100% of your grade is based on the final. Another anomaly in law school that I think is counter-productive to learning.) For students unprepared for this, it can severely impact their first-year grades which can set the course for their entire legal career.
It needlessly stresses out and sometimes humiliates students. This is particularly true for 1Ls. Law school can be bad enough without this.
It is a highly inefficient method for teaching students to be prepared to answer a judge in court. I have gone through at least one class having never been called on and several having only been called on once in a semester. That's hardly what I call rigorous training at answering spontaneous questions from an authority figure.

I will admit that there have been a few times the getting questioned about a topic by my prof has helped steer my thinking to the point of discovery. But for the few times this has happened in my legal education, it is far too high a cost for too little educational benefit.

Law is the fourth discipline I've studied. (In addition to engineering, business, and economics.) Out of all them, law is the only field that uses the Socratic method. I have yet to figure out why.

Our professors know far more than we do about the law. Why don't more of them spend more class time actually teaching us instead of ~~torturing us~~ trying to elicit thoughts from students who had never seen the material prior to ~~five minutes~~ the night before the class? This would give us much more knowledge of the law and better prepare us for the Bar. It might even make us better lawyers too.

Other quirks in law school that make absolutely no educational sense to me:

100% of your grade depends on the final exam. This is not an effective way to provide meaningful feedback to students to facilitate their learning.
A large chunk of your future career is determined by your first-year grades. (To be fair, this is probably less a feature of law schools, than of law firms and other organizations hiring law students.) This is a level of path dependency that I find disconcerting and makes law school a bad financial bet for all but the top students.
Law professors are incredibly slow (slower than professors or any other discipline I've studied) in returning law school grades. Is this an intentional feature of the legal education system to ensure that students who preform poorly in their first semester don't find out until it's too late to drop classes in their second semester and get a refund? This puts many students into such high levels of debt they feel they must finish law school so they can make enough to pay off their loans, even though by that time they've figured out they'd rather do ~~anything~~ something else. No wonder so many law students are unhappy.

As I've said before, I absolutely love the law. I just wish there was a better, more effective, more enjoyable way to learn it.

Of God and Money?

2009-11-23T10:29:00.001-05:00

Interesting...

A priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into an economics lab. Which one is most likely to increase contributions to the public good? A new study found that Protestants were more likely than Jews or Catholics to contribute money to a public pool. The Protestants also worked hardest for wages in a labor market game. Consider it evidence for the Protestant work ethic. (HT: Chris Blattman)

Flush

2009-11-23T08:41:00.002-05:00

(PhD Comics)

Incentives in Immigration Law

2009-11-23T08:23:00.002-05:00

If you make legal immigration too tough, expect more people to opt for the illegal way instead:

From Jeff Jacoby

Those immigrants didn't come here in order to be lawbreakers; they broke a law in order to come here.

If you had a store that was the only place people could go to buy bread, and people had to wait for hours to get to the checkout counter, some ordinarily honest people would end up stealing out of frustration. We need to fix the checkout counter in our immigration store. Right now, the people our system hurts the most are the people who try to get in legally.

Indeed.

The Practical Value of Economics as a Science?

2009-11-23T07:55:00.001-05:00

Tyler Cowen:

I know of three very good books on the actual (or sometimes hypothetical) application of economic ideas to real world problems:

1. Alex Tabarrok's Entrepreneurial Economics: Bright Ideas from the Dismal Science.

2. Some other book I haven't read and can no longer remember.

There is now a third:

3. Better Living Through Economics, edited by John J. Siegfried. It covers emissions trading, the EITC, trade liberalization, welfare reform, the spectrum auction, airline deregulation, antitrust, the volunteer military, and Alvin Roth algorithms for deferred acceptance. The contributions are uniformly excellent and written by top economists.

Only three? And one of them not memorable? That's almost depressing...