rasmus

I think both of Gintis' books on game theory are nice. I am also quite fond of Fun and Games by Binmore.

I find Stata and R equally easy, although I strictly prefer the latter, if nothing else then because it adheres to 'standard' open source behavior. For R, there is a rather good introduction called 'Applied Econometrics with R' (probably available via SpringerLink). It covers the basic design (i.e. (mostly) everything is a vector), macro building etc. There are a ton of free introductions, though. For example Farnsworth's pdf for an Econ-minded introduction. I use SciPy rather than Matlab. It is nice and free; no nagging license-issues. On learning languages. Read a basic introduction. Personally, I prefer narrative, non-programmers introductions. Modern scripting-languages such as R and Python usually have easy access to 'docstrings' (to use Py-lingo for usage descriptions). In (I)Python: commmand?; in R: ?command. This is really handy compared to e.g. SAS where you have to look up variables externally (I didn't spent much time with SAS). Also, for me it really helps to have an actual problem that needs tackling. Cheers, Rasmus

As a place to live, Boulder is really nice (I enjoyed living there)! That part of Colorado is really nice, and the mountains are literally just a stone's throw away. I'd imagine WA would be quite nice also, though.

Hi, I should introduce myself briefly. I have been lurking on these forums for some time. I have a great BSc Econ from my local university, which is not famous for econ, other than in some sub-fields. I am enrolled to the MSc Econ program at the same university, but mostly because the structure is quite lax, allowing me to follow courses at other universities for free. My academic interests are agent behavior, interaction and the implications of imperfections, especially information problems regarding credit markets. While I do not dismiss the framework of rational agents, it many cases it is probably misleading. Recently, I have been studying evolutionary game theory, reciprocity and similar stuff. I will attend one of the following MSc programs next semester. Only the first is confirmed, but I believe I have a good shot at the other ones as well: MSc in Economics and Psychological Sciences at Warwick MSc in Economics/Economics Policy at UCL (they have some nice elective courses and Binmore is teh Awesome!) MSc in Competition and Market Regulation at BGSE. The program counts toward my vanilla MSc Econ from my local university. It should also be noted that being Scandinavian, I am quite a bit more fond of small classes with the possibility of concurrent discussion than ``traditional'' lectures. My medium run goal is to get a Ph.D. from a European university or American university, dealing specifically with microeconomics as briefly described above. My Unreachable Dream™ is probably the CalTech Social Science Ph.D. program. One ought to aim high, eh? Given my interests, my background and my goal(s), I would greatly appreciate specific advice on which program to follow or just general advice. Thanks in advance, Rasmus