Potpourri

I haven't done one of these in awhile, so I thought I'd put some stuff I've read recently that caught my eye.

Jayson Lusk recently blogged about my article currently in review at the Journal of Regulatory Economics on the effects of USDA and EPA regulation on ag productivity.

Don Boudreaux, spurred by a back and forth between Russ Roberts and Paul Krugman, has a couple of great posts (here and here) on economics as a science and its ability to generate falsifiable predictions. Very thought provoking.

Marc Bellemare documents the top 5 journals in ag economics based on recently-calculated impact factors. The ordering is interesting, but it's important to remember that there are many measures of journal quality. This paper, sent to me today by a colleague, puts ag and applied economics journals into groups (A+, A, B, C, D). All of this is good information which, as an assistant professor, I find very useful.

Matt Bogard has some interesting thoughts on the abilities required for working as a data scientist outside the academic world.