ISA 2013 deadline

The deadline for ISA paper proposals is June 1. Details here.

wbopendata module for Stata

For those using World Bank data in Stata, here is a nice module that allows you to directly access much of the data directly through the Stata interface.

http://data.worldbank.org/news/accessing-world-bank-open-data-in-stata

Online game theory course from Stanford

I just learned that this past Monday, a pair of professors at Stanford began teaching a course in game theory, online, which is freely accessible to anyone.  (!)  The link is here.

And EVEN MORE about refereeing papers

From Steve Saideman, and Phil Arena.

More on refereeing papers

Marc Bellemare of Duke responded to the refereeing discussion occurring in the econ blogosphere with his own list, which you can find here.  Very interesting reading.  I thought this point would be of interest not only to those starting to referee, but also those just beginning to write papers:

“Once you decide to get started on your review, read the title, the abstract, the introduction, and the conclusion of the paper. Do you have a good idea of what the authors are doing? Perhaps more importantly, are you convinced that it’s a worthwhile topic? If it’s an empirical paper, can you understand from the tables what relationships the authors are after? If you answer “No” to any of those questions, you should encourage the editor to reject the paper. This may sound harsh, but before submitting, authors should work hard on the “sell” of their paper, i.e., on convincing the reader that the paper is worth their time. It is true that a groundbreaking good idea that suffers from a bad sell deserves a second chance. The two, however, are rarely orthogonal to one another.”

How to referee an academic paper

Chris Blattman has some links up on how to referee an academic paper, and on how to be a discussant at a conference.  Well worth reading.

Four key assumptions in multiple regression

A useful reminder.  See the link here.