Jacob Christensen

Justin Wolfers visits the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University and lives to tell the tale:

There is also a fairly typical life cycle followed by many of the best Swedish economists: one’s early years are devoted entirely to scientific writing, establishing an international reputation. With this reputation comes some responsibility for leadership within the economics profession.

The truly Swedish part of the life cycle comes next, with substantial involvement in government policymaking the norm here, rather than the exception. And this is a norm that seems to me to be well worth copying.

The rhythm of one’s workday here is also quite unique. Anytime after 11:30 a.m., someone will ring a large bell that sits at the entrance of the Institute. And when the bell tolls, the economists all head for lunch together; if the bell hasn’t been rung by early afternoon, one of the staff — concerned for the health of the economists — will ring it to make sure we actually eat. And of course, lunchtime conversations are all about economics.

Around 3 p.m. the bell once again flushes everyone from their offices, we fuel up with espresso, and faculty and graduate students drape themselves on a series of lounges, ready for the afternoon seminar.

As a Dane, I’d say that the 11:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. rituals are very Swedish. But I can get back to that in September.

Via Andreas Bergh.

Prompted by a recent debate over boys’ and girls’ performance in maths, Aleks Jakulin points out that things are a bit more complicated: We not only have to consider mean and variance but also the skew of distributions.

Unfortunately (as Jakulin notes) the data are from 1960, so the distributions could reflect the effects of different social norms as well as genetic and other factors. But the correct reading of this seems to be that most people suck at maths.

This must be one of the most bizarre spelling errors, I have ever seen. I guess it should say Kældre (Cellars) but what do I know.