Economics 104

Economics 104

Truth in Numbers

Spring 2008

Professor Lori Kletzer

439 Engineering 2 Bldg.

lkletzer@ucsc.edu

459-3596

Warren & Andrew – Leadership data (in stata format) w/ height & weight here

A bit of documentation here

***News***

May 7: if you have experienced trouble accessing the Business Week CEO salary data, try again.

May 9: I mentioned an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “The New Paternalism.” Thanks to Eli for quickly providing the link.

May 9: Three relatively short articles on government budget deficits. Please read (or at least be familiar with) for Tuesday’s (May 13) class:

“Our Triple Deficits,” Bob McTeer, National Center for Policy Analysis, Brief Analysis, March 18, 2008

“Taming the Deficit: Forge a Grand Compromise for a Sustainable Future,” William Frenzel, Charles W. Stenholm, G. William

Hoaglund and Isabel V. Sawhill, Brookings Institution

“America’s Economy: Headed for Crisis,” Warren B. Rudman, J. Robert Kerrey, Peter G. Peterson, Robert Bixby, Brookings

Institution

May 14: Deficit data attached (see below)

May 19: Olympic medals data attached

Course syllabus

Office hours:

Mondays and Wednesdays, 10-11am, or by appointment

TA: Jinzhuo (“JZ”) Zhao – jzhao@ucsc.edu

Economics 104 is a course in empirical analysis. Our focus is on “real” data, to test hypotheses and to understand important economic relationships. The course requires significant time in the “lab,” that is, at a computer working with the data. We will be using the Stata econometric software package, and it is available in the PC labs on campus. All the data sets will be available through this website.

This course has courses 100A, 100B and 113 as prerequisites. The textbook you used in 113 is likely to come in handy; an abbreviated “refresher” reader, in statistics and econometrics, is available at the bookstore for purchase. A reader of articles is also available at the bookstore. Reading the articles is required, and the articles are only available through the (hardcopy) reader available for purchase.

Articles for basketball player salary determination:

Kahn, Lawrence M. and Peter D. Sherer. 1988. “Racial Differences in Professional Basketball Players’ Compensation,” Journal of Labor Economics, vol. 6, no. 1.

Kahn, Lawrence M. 2000. “The Sports Business as a Labor Market Laboratory,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 14, No. 3, Summer.

Here are the class notes for the basketball player salary investigation (Word file)

We talked about beauty and the labor market on Tuesday, April 8. Here are two articles:

Hamermesh, Daniel and Jeff Biddle. 1994. “Beauty and the Labor Market,” American Economic Review.

Hamermesh, Daniel. 2006. “Changing Looks and Changing Discrimination: The Beauty of Economists,” Economics Letters.

Data and documentation

Basketball data sets

Kahn and Sherer basketball data

Olympic Medals data

Professor Andrew Bernard’s Olympic medals prediction website