Our emblematic photo. We drove to the top of the fantastic Mona Kea, the inactive northern volcano of Hawaii island, for the view, for the fun of driving a 4x4 on a good slope, and to visit the W. M. Keck Observatories. The clouds were below us, the temperature closer to freezing, and the sky … Continue reading On top of Mona Kea
In summary In two earlier posts, I proposed a metric to measure the "academic gap" – the distance between students performing the lowest and the recognized international benchmark for "average or standard performance". I measured the evolution of the academic gap between 2006 and 2012. In this post, I'm updating the profiles of the countries … Continue reading Academic gap: Any progress since 2012?
The introduction of minimum wages in the United States The early 1930s were the years of the Great Depression, an economic recession that affected the United States as well as most of the European metropolises. This crisis led many countries to enact social policies or reevaluate those in place to protect workers and stimulate the industry. … Continue reading Minimum Wage Policy in the United States
Below, I'm presenting tips and codes to transfer a library from EndNote to Excel using an (EndNote) Output Style File. Before using the code, you should note that only the following reference types* will be correctly exported: journal articles, book, book section, edited book, conference proceedings, report, thesis, blog post, electronic article, web page, generic. … Continue reading From EndNote to Excel
Both of us, Patrice and Gatien, have started to read the recent book (May 2016) of Jean Tirole, a French economist, Nobel Prize in Economics in 2014, entitled Economics of the Common Good (published in French: "Économie du bien commun"). In the first pages, we come across a parallel between economics and medicine, that calls … Continue reading The economist and the doctor: Jean Tirole’s parallel and contrast
Below, I'm presenting tips and codes to start a Stata program (a.k.a. a DO file) based on data from an Excel spreadsheet, with procedures that you cannot find in the contextual menu of Stata. Before using the code, you should note: In Stata, columns are variables, while rows are observations; I am using Stata 13: … Continue reading From Excel to Stata
In summary Using the metric proposed in my last post, this post presents changes of the "academic gap" across countries with PISA three-subject average between 2006 and 2012. Countries' experience vary widely, while there cannot be well-defined patterns to call from past performance - there were gainers (Japan, Poland, Italy) and losers (Finland, New Zealand, … Continue reading Academic gap: How much did it change between 2006 and 2012?
In summary Inequality in education leads to great potential handicaps for the kids who suffer an academic gap throughout their time in class. Reliable evaluations are a must to measure students' progress (or lack thereof) and drive in-class teacher practice and system-wide education policies. Teachers have their curriculum-related tools for individual students' follow-up. National authorities … Continue reading Academic gap: How deep societies let their kids sink academically?
In Summary A popular approach that economists take to study the use of illegal drugs is the concept of rational addiction. The idea is that individuals willingly choose to consume heroin and other drugs, as they would do with food, goods or services. While this idea is controversial, it allows both researchers and policymakers to … Continue reading Rational Addiction to Heroin and Other Drugs
See note below for original citation On February 10th, 2015, Google announced the development of a new feature in their research engine to guide users towards sound evidence-based health information. It will take the form of a “knowledge graph” , an encyclopedia providing users with information about an illness: from common symptoms to general treatment … Continue reading eHealth governance: Google, dot-health and privatizing the Internet
