Archive for economics

scolded!

Posted in Books, Kids, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , on October 9, 2026 by xi'an

I recently received a request for refereeing a paper for a journal I had never heard of, in a field far, far away from my own, with an abstract that indicated little innovation beyond transferring a by now standard technique to this very field. Given the volume of such requests, I immediately declined and received the scolding and peeved reply, as of below, from said journal editor! (The above picture is from Bayesian Core, not from the paper submitted.)

Invited Reviewer:

Thank you for letting us know that you are not willing to review the submission, “Bayesian Analysis of Mixtures with an Unknown Number of Components &tc,” for Journal of Some Socio-Economics Issues®.

It is most unfortunate that you did not choose to make your impression that “the contents sound very standard given the existing literature” known to the author/s on behalf of the Journal.  It would certainly have aided them in the longer run.
We also find it rather extraordinary for a potential reviewer to turn down an invitation “because there is little possibility I [will] ever publish in your journal”.  So much for fostering your discipline and academic excellence outside of a specific circle of publications … 

Best regards,

The editor

new ISBA section on Bayesian Social Sciences [reposted]

Posted in Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 26, 2024 by xi'an

We are proposing a new section on Bayesian Social Sciences at ISBA. If you agree that this section would be useful, please add your name to the petition!

Bayesian methods have become increasingly popular in many Social Sciences: there have been applications in fields as diverse as Anthropology, Archaeology, Demography, Economics, Geography, History, Linguistics, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology, among others. The appeal of the Bayesian framework may be philosophical, or may be practical, because of informative prior distributions, structured models which are well suited to Bayesian inference, or a strong need for uncertainty quantification.

Statisticians and practitioners have recently started meeting at workshops on Bayesian Methods for the Social Sciences. The 2022 edition in Paris and 2024 edition in Amsterdam gathered around 80 participants each; work has started to prepare the 2026 edition.

To help organize this community, and to strengthen links between statisticians and practitioners in the Social Sciences, we propose to start a new ISBA section on Bayesian Social Sciences. To create a new section, the ISBA bylaws require a petition signed by at least 30 ISBA members.

If you are interested, you can read the proposed bylaws and add your name to the petition. Please forward to colleagues who might find this relevant!

The proposed initial section officers are:
Monica Alexander
Nial Friel
Adrian Raftery
Robin Ryder
EJ Wagenmakers

send off the clowns!

Posted in pictures, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on October 19, 2022 by xi'an

a stretched view on Keynes’ Treatise

Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , on September 20, 2020 by xi'an

I came across a rather bemusing interpretation of Keynes’ Treatise on Probability, as a tribune in Le Monde of 6 September, as being a statement against the mathematical modelling of economy. Written by Annie Cot, professor of economics at Paris Sorbonne University. While the philosophical thread of the book is inclined towards a subjective perception of probability, albeit rejecting the Bayesian approach, and while the view on statistics is equally pessimistic, falling into the infinite regress of conditioning on the observation itself, outside a Bayesian framework, as I discussed in my 2011 paper, the book makes no mention whatsoever of economics or economic models. As far as I remember the book from reading it ten years ago. To conclude, as the author of this tribune, that Keynes rejected the viability of prevision based on economic models via this book sounds therefore stretching the facts to a fair extent.

Deirdre McCloskey dans Le Monde

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , on January 13, 2020 by xi'an