I was chuffed to see the inverted ewe in my inbox on the weekend! (I still like it, even though a friend once suggested the data would be more clear in a baa graph.) That note of mine actually had a quasi-serious point, as a reductio critique of some terrible work in growth empirics that was kicking around at the time. As I recall, Ted Sieper had prepared for Treasury an excellent gutting of the method behind this work, and I had discussed it in an Honours class at Otago. One of the students asked something to the effect of, 'couldn't that methodology be applied to anything (rather than the government expenditure to which it had been applied); say, sheep numbers?' So it started with a student's question and Nancy Devlin very graciously accepted it for AI, perhaps the perfect outlet. (The data used were all genuine, by the way, so the results are even more persuasive!) Anyway, thanks for the reminder of it, Dave.
Great idea Dave! I’d like to write about the productivity impacts of working from home in New Zealand, drawing on the small number of studies I’m familiar with. Some people had inadequate home working arrangements at the beginning of the pandemic (Making, Du, 2020) but Hazno, Kidd et al reported in 2021 that some workers can be very productive WFH. A recent survey of New Zealand firms shows they are either positive or equivocal about the longer run impacts of WFH on their bottom lines (Shelby, Wright & Dunno, 2022). Unfortunately, some people will be experiencing the effects of “long Covid” – the term coined by Weary in 2020 – but as Couch, Poot, Ayto found in an exhaustive study in 2022, many people just suffer from poor motivation when they’re at home, so I probably won’t get round to it!
Tbh, the example reads more like political satire than scientific spoof! Ardern’s 2019 article in the Financial Times was an argument against “the false promises of protectionism and isolation”. Perhaps drawing on New Zealand’s inverted ewe traditions, Ardern proposed an economic approach based on compassion and kindness as a compelling alternative that “isn’t woolly”. This will take serious science.
I was chuffed to see the inverted ewe in my inbox on the weekend! (I still like it, even though a friend once suggested the data would be more clear in a baa graph.) That note of mine actually had a quasi-serious point, as a reductio critique of some terrible work in growth empirics that was kicking around at the time. As I recall, Ted Sieper had prepared for Treasury an excellent gutting of the method behind this work, and I had discussed it in an Honours class at Otago. One of the students asked something to the effect of, 'couldn't that methodology be applied to anything (rather than the government expenditure to which it had been applied); say, sheep numbers?' So it started with a student's question and Nancy Devlin very graciously accepted it for AI, perhaps the perfect outlet. (The data used were all genuine, by the way, so the results are even more persuasive!) Anyway, thanks for the reminder of it, Dave.
Great idea Dave! I’d like to write about the productivity impacts of working from home in New Zealand, drawing on the small number of studies I’m familiar with. Some people had inadequate home working arrangements at the beginning of the pandemic (Making, Du, 2020) but Hazno, Kidd et al reported in 2021 that some workers can be very productive WFH. A recent survey of New Zealand firms shows they are either positive or equivocal about the longer run impacts of WFH on their bottom lines (Shelby, Wright & Dunno, 2022). Unfortunately, some people will be experiencing the effects of “long Covid” – the term coined by Weary in 2020 – but as Couch, Poot, Ayto found in an exhaustive study in 2022, many people just suffer from poor motivation when they’re at home, so I probably won’t get round to it!
Tbh, the example reads more like political satire than scientific spoof! Ardern’s 2019 article in the Financial Times was an argument against “the false promises of protectionism and isolation”. Perhaps drawing on New Zealand’s inverted ewe traditions, Ardern proposed an economic approach based on compassion and kindness as a compelling alternative that “isn’t woolly”. This will take serious science.