很强大，有很多东西

An example.

http://www.dwnews.com/gb/MainNews/Forums/BackStage/2009_3_26_11_33_57_799.html 亚洲周刊

 

Relationship among: Demand for expenditure, acceptance of tax rates, economic growth rate, fiscal equalization, fiscal federalism.

 

Both theory and empirical. This is one of the central points to really understand and properly propose policy for intergovernmental fiscal relationship.

 

Lindert 2003; Lieberman 2003;

 

See Bahl and Bird (2008), Tax Policy in Developing Countries: Looking Back and Forward.

 

related fields: public economics, political economy, development economics, comparative politics, china studies

 

theory and empirical (mainly quantitative now, econometrics, multilevel...)

香港文汇报/美国医学界爆出类似「马多夫骗案」的造假丑闻。一名曾改革外科手术止痛技术的着名麻醉科医生，被指在过去12 年来发表21篇假论文，提供「证据」支持辉瑞、默沙东等药厂多隻止痛药的功效。据报该医生曾担任药厂说客。学界估计，由假论文带来的药品销售收益，可能高达数十亿美元。(chinesenewsnet.com)

key words: political economy/governance, public economics, development economics, econometrics/quantitative, China, courses, seminars, readings, models, empiricals, problem sets, exams, various research (writing?) and research ideas developing, research assistance, talk with different professors.

A quick way to learn the idea (not formal derivation) and appplication: use stata books.

Multilevel and Longitudinal Modeling Using Stata, 2nd edition.

Microeconometrics Using Stata

A New Economtrics book which is adopted in MIT and Harvard Econ:

Mostly Harmless Econometrics

A (almost complete) list of quantitative courses at Harvard (some contents are overlapping with different levels, but a comprehensive review will be based on all these courses.) Of course, the list doesn't include numerical/computational economics/social science.  http://gseacademic.harvard.edu/~willetjo/courses.htm

It doesn't mean that we should learn all these (we will only use part of them,) or should take many courses (we can teach ourselves as long as there are good materials,) but without knowing that quantitative method has many dimensions, we will LARGELY LIMIT our empirical paradigm, and maybe even worse, we may have a wrong conclusion that the narrow one or several quantitative methods we are using are the most powerful and important, thus unwilling to communicate with other fields of social scicences, just as we should at least know some basic ideas of different theoretical paradigms to broaden our horizons. This warning largely applies to standard economics training, especially when economics is trying to extend its power to the whole social science. You have large advantages, but LEARN FROM OTHERS before you expend to others' areas.

俺们这个public policy program不要求上宏观课，一半因为懒，一半因为还有很多其它课要上，其它事要做，一直没有系统复习学过的博士生一年级水平必学的高级宏观理论，也没有系统学习以前在北京和香港老师没有覆盖的高级宏观理论，对理论模型的推导已经生疏了很久，这学期上宏观发展经济学和发展的政治经济学两门课，有不少要推导的作业。我对Hamiltonian, Bellman等这些基本方法已经忘得差不多(btw,以前上过的宏观似乎只交Hamiltonian方法，没教Bellmam?anyway,真是忘得一干二净，还好just a cookbook recipe。) 于是重新学习/复习动态模型等等。老了，但还不太老，抓紧加强。哈佛/MIT除了经济系外，政治系的一些人理论模型也很厉害啊。深入和定量的理解consumption, saving, growth, political economy (voting, collective choice, collective action, inequality and growth, fiscal federalism/decentralization) and public economics (tax, social insurance, public good provision, fiscal federalism/decentralization)，还是需要熟悉模型，对提升empirical studies的层次大有帮助。。其它相关方法的theoretical/empirical quantitative的模型也要再熟悉和学习。有趣的是，不少经济学的博士生假如不做宏观方面的研究，在毕业的时候（或者更早，考完general的时候）就把高级宏观乃至中级宏观都忘得一干二净。学而时习之，还是很重要的。

 

还要老老实实加强方法论学习/复习：政治经济学理论，宏观经济学理论（特别是宏观的微观基础，动态模型）， 公共经济学理论，定量模型（计量经济学，及其它社会科学常用但经济学中少用的定量模型）。风物长宜放眼量；即使不做纯理论研究，即使强调policy relevance，也大有好处。

 

Note: For empirical quantitative methods, empirical economists should abandon the misleading idea that they are definitely better than other social scientists (it's true that economists have POTENTIALS to be better, but should learn more to be really better), and learn more than tranditional econometrics to communicate with/learn from other social sciences (and even engineering), or produce more policy-relevant empirical research. Econometrics is not a good word, and I like to replace it with "quantitative method", which is more consolidated. For policy relevance, empirical economics training should not limit itself to the popularly accepted conception "econometrics", and especailly not limit the paradigm to "reduced-form causality identification". 

the 2009 admission results of Our PhD program in public policy come out. This year there are many more offers (about 16), and many more are applicants from Kennedy School (MPP/MPA). One of my friends (student at my TA course), a Korean guy, is in. He is deligent and well-organized, although not among the smartest. This is his second time for application, and he has the right application strategy. He discussed with me on both applications. He plans to finish PhD as soon as possbile and go back to Korea to serve as a professor and join his wife.

 

All of them have (expected) degrees from USA.

http://magazine.caijing.com.cn/2009-02-27/110075177.html 财经杂志。

 http://www.shkjxn.com/readnews.asp?newsid=31926  “最好的牛奶”遭遇调查  新闻周刊

关键字：浮躁学（商）风，科技“卫星”，虚假宣传，浮夸式营销，混乱认证，监管缺失

 

可能的视角：

1。normative: 批驳production-bias, growth-bias在政府行为特别是监管部门行为中的滥用（此种滥用是因为政府部门基本只考虑生产，增长；有一半可以说成是令人厌恶的“官商勾结”，有一半可以说成是比较让人“同情”的：促进/保护就业和地方经济，如蒙牛所在县的经济就自己依赖于蒙牛；但不管如何，都是一种非常局部的局部均衡，而且只考虑局部均衡里头的局部人利益：某个/某些厂商，某个地区，没有考虑整个行业的健康和公正（考虑其他产商利益；打击虚假宣传非法营销行为，建立公平竞争的环境），没有考虑消费者的福利损失：金钱（OMP奶的基于虚假宣传手法获得的暴利，就是对消费者福利的一大伤害，即消费者被白白欺骗了很多钱，不要argue说消费者是自愿掏钱的），健康的潜在风险等等；扯到保护民族产业也不能仍由某些厂家/地区伤害广大消费者的利益；在这方面，立场要非常坚定，也没有什么结论不确定啥的，不像贸易保护、重点产业扶持政策实质上在某些方面还有理）。伦理，法理和经济学的角度。

2。positive: 情理法在regulation中的角色。如“要考虑经济危机这个背景下，民族产业保护的问题。”质检总局一位不愿意透露姓名。这是一种“情”，法则是要按法来罚，比如可能罚个1亿。

3。研究为什么涉及到的不同部门有不同反应：比如说卫生部最积极，质检总局次之，等等。用深入调查的方式，看不同部门领导人的差异，政治和经济考虑的差异等。

4。企业/企业家在极端的incentive/objective下的行为：蒙牛奇迹般的的发迹史；对赌协议等等。

等等

 

摘录（新闻周刊）

《食品卫生法》第四十五条规定：“未经国务院卫生行政部门审查批准而生产经营表明具有特定保健功能的食品的，或者该食品的产品说明书内容虚假的，责令停止生产经营，没收违法所得，并处以违法所得一倍以上五倍以下的罚款”。如此推算，蒙牛应为此付出以亿元计的罚款。

　　当记者要求说明参与鉴定的专家描述OMP的分子式和检测方法时，任发政表示：“研究分子式是以后要做的工作。告诉你们安全就行了，其他的是专家的事情，对消费者来说，越解释越乱。”陈君石院士在接受《新京报》采访时则称：有成千上万的东西都是不能添加到食品的，政府只能做原则上的规定。

　　2月16日上午，《中国新闻周刊》记者致电内蒙古质量技术监督局，希望了解其对OMP牛奶生产现场检查的具体过程和结果，一位工作人员表示：“这事已经过去了，没有价值，还采访干啥呢？”

　　对于此事，国家质检总局同样表示不接受采访。“要考虑经济危机这个背景下，民族产业保护的问题。”质检总局一位不愿意透露姓名的官员对《中国新闻周刊》说。截至本刊发稿时，工业与信息化部、农业部、商务部尚未对采访要求作出回复。

      处在风暴中心的蒙牛集团，则就“特仑苏OMP牛奶”向卫生部申报了“新资源食品”，正在等待审批。而在乳业产业链终端的消费市场里，超市已经恢复了特仑苏OMP牛奶的销售。与此同时，多家报纸和网站上，“卫生部、国家质检总局等国家6部门，组织专家认定饮用特仑苏OMP牛奶无健康危害！”的广告多次出现。

　　“自奶粉三聚氰胺事件后，类似这样以国家机关名义发布质量澄清的广告就多次出现。”接受《中国新闻周刊》采访时，北京大学新闻与传播学院副院长、广告学系主任陈刚称。而《广告法》第七条规定：广告不得使用国家机关和国家机关工作人员的名义。