fp3690

I think you're confused - it's actually the other way round; you need inflation to induce negative real rates so that lending and consumption picks up. Also, inflation hawks have been refuted again and again in the past two years - even the hawkiest of the hawks, Trichet, has been undermined lately by Draghi, whose issue now seems to be not to overstep the mandate.

Although I know Matlab and Stata equally well, I prefer copying my data from Matlab to Stata rather that doing analysis in Matlab. Unless you're doing something super cool with cubic splines or something, or really heavy simulation stuff, there's no reason to use Matlab for statistics. There's even a way to call stata from matlab, though it seems like an overkill.

Thank you all for your suggestions. I actually ended up doing it using Chickenfoot, but it took a while as there's no support and plenty of bugs. Too bad they stopped developing it, could have been really great. Out of curiosity, as I want to learn a language for that stuff, do you guys suggest Python or Perl?

I have to get around 300 excel files from a specific url, but I need everytime to select a different locality (like a state) from a dropdown menu. I've heard that I can use data spiders/web crawlers to do that. Does anyone know what to do, where to go to find out etc. Thanks!

I'd like to stress that eventually being called Doctor is really not worth it. If you want to learn, read books.

I would just go for a simple naked version, like MacTex (if you have a Mac), which is very easy to learn, and well worth the investment. Stay away for Scientific Workplace - it's like learning to count with a calculator... you never really learn to count.

It's not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of trolls with no life. They're spreading faster than cockroaches. BTW, do you have a link with a bigger resolution of your avatar? It's awesome.

Don't know much about IO, but I imagine UCL is better than anywhere for anything empirical.

I assume kipfilet is referring to Ricardo Reis. I think people should put the bar lower... With a reasonably good First, or even high 2.1 with good references and firsts in the important courses (like 202 and 221, also 210 if you take it, and real analysis) your chances are pretty good for MPhil Econ at Oxford. The 80% thing is a ridiculous standard, I had two friends that went from Econ and Maths & Econ to Ox MPhil and though both were very good they didn't have 80s! If you are very good you might consider MRes track 1 at LSE and then apply to the US during your first year. If you stay in the UK, LSE is arguably better (at least broader) than Oxford for a PhD.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Free time is a very dangerous thing.

You mean a guy from Wyoming?

I'm definitely not (just going for the prestige). But the camp is short (only 3 days of academic activities) so I guess the point is not so much to learn stuff, but to be exposed to the "Chicago type" seminars and meet PhD students from other programs.

Another reason why I take this with a grain of salt is the position of ASU and, especially, Wyoming! I know List is great and all but aren't we stretching this a little bit?

Sure, but I will have to alter plans to go there, because I didn't expect to be accepted, it's not like I would be sitting around the house playing Playstation otherwise. That's where the prestige thing comes up.

Although I'm at UMD, I have to say that the old ranking was pretty good, the new one might be a bit too good.