A quick report on the Economists’ conference.
The first plenary was by Paul Ormerod on “What can economic agents learn?”. The central idea is that we need more realistic models in which people’s capacity to learn and make inferences is bounded. I’m fully in agreement with this and am actively working on a way of modelling such ideas. Ormerod didn’t give much detail about his own approach to the problem.
Deirdre McCloskey presented her ideas on statistical significance, which have already been discussed on this blog. In question time, Adrian Pagan gave a characteristically vigorous defence of the standard approach, making some good points I thought (disclosure: McCloskey’s paper includes a ranking of all the papers published in the American Economic Review according to the adequacy of their treatment of significance in published regressions. My paper with Steve Dowrick ranks a bit below average on this scale. I don’t really think it should have been included, since the main focus of the paper is on nonparametric measures of relative international income. We only threw in a regression to show the difference between our measure and the standard PPP measure).
Richard Freeman gave a talk on “Not your Father’s Union”, talking up the prospect of a resurgence of unionism based on Internet organisation. Coincidentally or otherwise, the same day I got an email from the AFL-CIO (US equivalent of the ACTU), which I’ve appended as an instance of this phenomenon. It was part of a campaign to resist Administration attacks on overtime pay, which was successful in its immediate objective of getting a favorable vote in the House of Representatives.
The higher education session was, as Derrida Derider mentioned, disgustingly civilised, with no fisticuffs between me and fellow-blogger Andrew Norton. I plan to post a full paper before long. There was at least a good crowd, filling the small room. By contrast, my paper on water reform was presented to an audience of about twenty in a theatre with a capacity of 500. Again, I’ll try to post a paper. My idea is to spend money now buying irrigators’ rights to license renewal in ten years’ time.
(AFL-CIO email follows)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 14:55:07 -0400
From: Thomas Matzzie
Subject: Bloggers Can Help Save Overtime Pay!
To: Thomas Matzzie
X-Sorbs: not_in_sorbs
X-Spam-Score: 0 (), 5 = high
X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.35 on UQ Mailhub
Original-recipient: rfc822;j.quiggin@uq.edu.au
Dear Blogger:
I am writing because the AFL-CIO values your role as an online
activist. You help bring important news, information and alerts to your
readers.
On Wednesday, October 1, the U.S. House is set to vote to block or
permit President Bush’s overtime pay takeaway. The AFL-CIO is inviting
anybody, union member or not, to send a fax to your representative
opposing this outrageous attack on the 40-hour workweek–the basis of
the weekend. Your readers can visit the link below to fax their rep.
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/houseotvote
Please help us protect overtime pay, the 40-hour workweek and the
weekend before it is too late. Let’s join together, spread the word and
beat back this attack.
In Unity,
Tom Matzzie
Online Mobilization Manager, AFL-CIO
P.S. – Also, check out overtime pay news.
http://www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/overtimepay/ns09122003.cfm
Summary of proposals attacking overtime pay
http://www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/overtimepay/underattack.cfm
What to do if you are denied paid overtime
http://www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/rights/rightsatwork/overtime.cfm
John Quiggin 
40 hour week? what’s that? weekend? what’s that? which century are the unions living in?
Not the late 20th, which is where debate in Australia seems to be stalled much of the time.
Today while shopping at Frys supermarket, I mentioned that in Maricopa county you can call voter registration and they will send you both the primary and general election ballots so you can vote at home. As a solid union guy he said he would do it because he never knew what he would have to do on election day. He will spread the word, and I think we should all spread the word where absentee ballots are available. Maybe the Stewards could pass the word.