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Welcome to Eszter's Weblog Here you will find my thoughts and comments about all sorts of things from sociology, the Internet, academia, teaching, research, books and movies to current events, fun Web stuff, art, gadgets and just about anything else that comes to mind. If the inspiration strikes you during your visit, feel free to leave a note via the comments link.

[Previous entry: "21st century 8 ball"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Cool quote"] "Some good empirical work in econ" 01/09/2003 Entry Sociologists have a lot of bones to pick with economists. I think some of our critiques about some basic assumptions are on target but it is also unfair - and simplistic and naive - to say that there is no sound empirical work in economics. Two areas that stand out are labor and development economics both of which are world-class quality at Princeton. For some reason - I have yet to figure this one out - many of my closest friends in graduate school are in that area. Today, my very good friend Erica's work was written up in the New York Times. Part of Erica's dissertation looks at a fascinating natural experiment about land titles in Peru. I won't say more as Alan Krueger does a nice job of summing up the main points in that piece. Alan, by the way, is not Erica's main advisor, that would be Hank Farber, another great economist (this place is crawling with great people in most fields). Hank has helped me with my work as well (with figuring out appopriate statistical approaches not to mention lending me server space for my gigantic files), that's how I know that his advice can be really helpful. Of course, I don't want to take the spotlight off of Erica. She does really innovative and extremely meticulous work, it's a joy to follow. (We've been "dissertation buddies" meeting up for regular updates in the past few years so I've seen the project develop over the years.) Erica has other interests as well. We are working on a piece together about online job searches where we are bringing together data from the CPS and from my Web Use Project to look at how people use the Internet to find information about job opportunities. I'll post on that some other time (likely when we're both done with the job market and can resume work as usual). January 2003 S M T W T F S       1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31   Links of Interest How to win the Nobel Prize Click for Mammogram Play "Match That Blogger" Blogathon 03 Archives Recent entries » Extending Internet access to low-income communities » Shattered » The story behind red alert » Weekend trivia » Would you cut up a book? » Pizza, cholesterol check, the works » Welcome » A different kind of road trip » Allowing comments on blogs » Paddling for bandwidth » The right to a soda.. at any price » Online communities » Silly.. but we all do it » Paris notes » New book on Social Inequality Previous entries May, 2002 - July, 2003 Blogger info Eszter Hargittai Communication Studies Department Northwestern University Evanston, Illinois 60208 blog at eszter dot com Blogs I Visit The small print A few words on what I will and will not post on this blog (taken from my E-LIST entry of January 2, 2002). I have nothing against posting commercial sites as long as they come highly recommended. In fact, I'm quite interested in improving informed consumer choice so I'm very curious to hear about good experiences with online retailers. What I will refrain from posting are sites that require plug-ins or programs that are painful to deal with. Example: I will not post anything that only works with RealOne/RealPlayer as that program is intrusive and annoying beyond belief and I am not willing to reinstall it on my machine (it was hard enough to get rid of it completely in the first place) nor do I want to encourage others to have it. If your site has audio content, please make it available in multiple formats or choose one that can be run on multiple players (e.g. .avi). Feel free to link to my Weblog with or without this graphic button. http://www.esztersblog.com

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