Sunday, October 31, 2004

Tax Cuts

I am a college student who lives off of student loans, so this is a haiku that expresses what I believe on this issue:

Hey! No more tax cuts.
Give me more money, instead.
I need beer (er... books.)

Thank you, thank you.

Update

Football: bad, Colts lost, defense is porous like the Afghan border.

Beer: Drinking the Franzikaner Dunkel-Weizen right now. I'm really liking it, especially after the bad experience I had with this style while in Germany. It must have just been a bad bottle. But this is excellent, really yeasty, malty but spicy, and drinking from my liter lager mug is great.

Economics: Didn't even get around to the Richardson model, did some stuff on differential operators (as exciting as it sounds, believe me). Then watched a movie and discussed politics with my father. His current theory: Kerry will win, but only because of the New York Times and CBS and the general liberal bias of the media. I wonder if he read the Paul Krugman editorial and misunderstood what Krugman was saying, or if Fox News is already using this explanation...

Football, Beer, and Economics

On the slate for today:

1. Watch the Colts try to come back after the loss that took them out of first place last Sunday.

2. Try the bottle of Franzikaner Dunkel Hefe-Weizen I bought last night. I love hefeweizens in general ever since I was in Austria this past summer, but I've only had one dunkel (dark) hefeweizen. If you've never had a hefeweizen, I suggest you try Berghoff's for a very authentic German take on the style at a non-import price.

3. Finally, need to work on my differential equation project. I'm going to try to apply dynamic programming to the Richardson Arms Race model, but I'm far from being able to do so as of today. Instead I need to just learn the techniques to solve systems of non-homogeneous differential equations and go from there.

Saturday, October 30, 2004

Game Theory Question

Here is one that my friend Paul and I were talking about:
Two Players
10 Rounds
Each round, Player 1 is given five dollars. He can elect to give Player 2 as much of the five dollars as he wants. For every dollar that 1 gives, 2 gets three bucks. Player 2 can then give back as much of the money as he wants. What is the equilibrium in this game? We used basic backwards induction and figured that Player 1 would keep the $5 every round. We aren't certain on this, however, and Paul says that he's read that our equilibrium doesn't hold in tests of this game.

Dynamic Programming

Finished my first exercise using dynamic programming from Sargen't book yesterday. Crazy, I couldn't understand a damned thing from it at the beginning of the semester. I really think differential equations are helpful for this sort of thing, and for understanding graduate macro (that I have seen so far) in general. Either way, makes me happy that I did that one. Now I need to do it under uncertainty...

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Beer

While this is supposed to be an economics blog, I thought I would praise glorious beer as well. Drank a pint of Young's Oatmeal Stout last night, which even next to the incredible microbrews of the midwest (www.bellsbeer.com www.3floyds.com www.gooseisland.com) is still one hell of a brew.

I just sampled a Dogfish Head Punkin Ale. Though I don't care for the style much, this one was tasty with lots of spiciness... allspice is what the bottle says, but comes off like cinnamon to me. Good stuff.

Also, I'll be brewing my 3rd batch of homebrew next week after I put the GRE behind me. I'm thinking a X-Mas Stout... cinnamon, orange peel, and ginger perhaps... not sure yet. Still have to study for the GRE. And diff eqs homework... beer must now take a back seat.

Friday, October 15, 2004

Question

Ok, so Romer (and others) use the following differential equation for labor growth:
dL/dt = kL

Does anybody know why we don't use the logistic equation?
dL/dt = kL(1-aL) so that we get an equilbrium population? Is this just a simplification?

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Hello

Hello World (CS joke)

I'm Andy Glover, from Ball State University, and I figured I would start a blog about economics. I may work on this enough to make it worth visiting on occasion! Anyways, I am a Math and Econ major, hoping to go to grad school for econ in 2006 and I thought I'd add myself to the ever expanding list of economics bloggers.