Jacob Christensen

• Academic Ranking of World Universities – 2008
  (tags: university rankings academic)
• FT.com | The Economists’ Forum | Pranab Bardhan – What does this authoritarian moment mean for developing countries?
  But the relationship between authoritarianism or democracy and development is not so simple. Authoritarianism is neither necessary nor sufficient for economic development. That it is not necessary is illustrated not only by today’s industrial democracies, but by scattered cases of recent development success: Costa Rica, Botswana, and now India. That it is not sufficient is amply evident from disastrous authoritarian regimes in Africa and elsewhere.
  (tags: economics politics development democracy)
• NBER – Is the Washington Consensus Dead?
  We find evidence that a specific treatment, liberalizing tariffs on imported capital and intermediate goods, did lead to faster GDP growth, and by a margin consistent with theory (about 1 percentage point per annum). Endogeneity problems are considered and other observations are consistent with the proposed mechanism: changes to other tariffs, e.g. on consumption goods, though collinear with general tariffs reforms, are more weakly correlated with growth outcomes; and the treatment and control groups display different behavior of investment prices and quantities, and capital flows.
  (tags: trade globalisation economics research)

…I’m still alive. Well, sort of: Catching a nasty cold while I’m supposed to be busy packing and getting rid of stuff is not particularly funny. And the weather up here is truly awful – it feels more like November than August.

Meanwhile in Denmark:

1. Roskilde Bank has folded and had to be rescued by the Central Bank of Denmark. It’s the first time since Landmandsbanken folded in 1922 that the Central Bank has had to intervene directly in this way, but the banking sector could be in for an interesting couple of years.
2. The government presented its proposal for the 2009 budget. This time, negotiations could get interesting because the economy is either overheating or about the get hit by the international housing and banking jitters. And remember that Danes have a lot of exotic loans.
3. TV2 Denmark presents another bad result for the first half of 2008. The government wants to sell the thing: Would you buy it?

And in Sweden:

1. SvT screens “Ashes to Ashes”, the follow-up to the weird “Life on Mars”, but warns us not to watch the series as the BBC only sells a vandalised version overseas. And then corporations complain that things get leaked to file-share sites…
2. The FRA act (aka Lex Orwell) still haunts the government.

• Pew Research Center: A Closer Look at the Parties in 2008
  This report provides a detailed breakdown of party identification trends from 2004 to 2008, along with demographic profiles of Democrats and Republicans. These analyses are based on summary data of all registered voters interviewed by the Pew Research Center in each year.
  (tags: usa politics research surveys elections)

Whatever competences the Danish National Directorate of Labour may have, the internet is not among them…

• Routledge 2008 Election Review – Incisive, Critical, Independent Election Analysis. Keep Yourself Informed.
  The folks posting on the site include Routledge authors who bring special focus to these issues.
  (tags: usa elections politicalscience publishing)
• The subprime turmoil: What’s old, what’s new, and what’s next | vox – Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists
  This column explains why market actors made unrealistic assumptions about mortgage-backed securities and how various regulatory policies exacerbated the problem. The crisis will necessitate changes in monetary policy, regulation, and the structure of financial intermediation.
  (tags: economics economicpolicy monetarypolicy finance usa)
• Pew Research Center: More Americans Question Religion’s Role in Politics
  In short, the change of mind about the role of religious institutions in politics is most apparent among people who are most concerned about the very issues that churches and other houses of worship have focused on, and among those who fault the parties for their friendliness toward religion.
  (tags: surveys elections usa)

Gladsaxe holds its yearly “meet your local council day” on Saturday

• Marginal Revolution: Top economic misconceptions of the lay people you wish you could correct?
  (tags: economics politics)
• PhDinHistory: Spousal/Partner Hiring in History
  When history professors were asked whether they and their partner teach in the same or related departments, about 26 percent of men and about 40 percent of women said this was the case.
  (tags: academic academia university career usa)

I have no excuses: I will be teaching here on Friday mornings this fall. And I managed to find the room.

The topic of male and female roles vis-a-vis students in higher education has prompted a long (and occasionally hard-to-follow) discussion at Crooked Timber. Leave aside the observation that you should know somebody extremely well before buying the gift mentioned in the post and we are left with the questions:

1. Are female academics who have children more easily identified/stereotyped as “Mothers” than male academics (as “Fathers”) by students?

2. Do students expect female academics to be more engaged than male academics in their personal life?

To quote myself from my comment in the thread: What, if any, role do formal policies (paid parental leave) and informal norms (splitting of parental leave between parents) play for students’ behaviour and expectations?

Me? Oh, if you can share your problems with this guy, then you could probably also ask me.

• www.radikale.dk | Social 2015-plan
  (tags: denmark radikalevenstre socialpolicy)
• DN Debatt – “EU-hot mot kollektivavtal nonchaleras av regeringen”
  Akademikerförbundet SSR gör gemensam sak med LO-förbund: Regeringen måste förhindra att EG-domstolen urholkar den sociala tryggheten. Efter fyra utslag i EG-domstolen är det uppenbart att EU-medlemskapet hotar den svenska arbetsmarknadsmodellen.
  (tags: sweden labourmarket europe)
• DN Debatt – “Sjukpenningsavslag gör inte fler socialbidragsberoende”
  Ny undersökning från Försäkringskassan: De allra flesta som får nej efter en striktare tolkning av sjukförsäkringen börjar arbeta. Påståendet att Försäkringskassan kastar ut personer till socialbidragsberoende och ökar kommunernas kostnader för socialbidragen stämmer inte.
  (tags: sweden socialpolicy sicknessinsurance publicpolicy)