In a very short, satirical paper, James Heckman writes,
Provided conditional density (1) is assumed, we do not need to observe a variable in order to compute its conditional expectation with respect to another variable whose density can be estimated. For example, one can extend current empirical work in a variety of areas of economics to estimate the effect of income on happiness or the effect of income inequality on democracy. We conjecture that this powerful method can be extended to the more general case when X is not observed either.
Thanks to Alex Tabarrok for the pointer.
READER COMMENTS
kaiser
Aug 20 2008 at 8:12am
Is there any use to having a post which directly copy-pastes from another widely read blog, without adding any substantive content?
Les
Aug 20 2008 at 9:18am
In response to kaiser: yes, it is useful, because some of us do not read Marginal Revolution all that often.
Jim McCloskey
Aug 20 2008 at 9:41am
I agree with Les. I read Kling more than I read MR. Also the fact that both Kling and Tabarrok thought it was interesting made me click through to the PDF which was funny!
Jim
Comments are closed.