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1、How to Build an Economic Model in Your Spare TimebyHal R. VarianUC BerkeleyDecember 1994 Current version: June 11, 1997Abstract. This is an essay for Passion and Craft: Economists at Work, edited by Michael Szenberg, University of Michigan Press, 1997.Keywords.Address.Hal R. Varian, Dean, School of
2、Information Mangement and Systems, UC Berkeley. Web page http:/www.sims.berkeley.eduhal北斗成功社区 BeiDouW 教育音视频/电子书/实用资料文档/励志歌曲影视1/18How to Build an Economic Model in Your Spare TimeHal R. VarianMost of myworkin economics involves constructing theoretical models. Overthe years, Ihavedevelopedsomewaysofd
3、oingthisthatmaybeworthdescribingtothosewhoaspireto practice this art. In reality the process is much more haphazard than my descriptionwould suggest-the model of research that I describe is an idealization of reality, muchlike the economic models that I create. But there is probably enough connectio
4、n withreality to makethedescription useful-whichIhopeis also trueformyeconomic models.1. Getting ideasThe first step is to get an idea. This is not all that hard to do. The tricky part is to get agood idea. The way you do this is to come up with lots and lots of ideas and throw out allthe ones that
5、arent good.But where to get ideas, thats the question. Most graduate students are convincedthat the way you get ideas is to read journal articles. But in my experience journalsreally arent a very good source of original ideas. You can get lots of things from journalarticles-technique, insight, even
6、truth. But most of the time you will only get someoneelses ideas. True, they may leave a few loose ends lying around that you can pick upon, but the reason they are loose is probably that the author thought about them a whileand couldnt figure out what to do with them or decided they were too tediou
7、s to botherwith-which means that it is likely that you will find yourself in the same situation.My suggestion is rather different: I think that you should look for your ideas outsidethe academic journals-in newspapers, in magazines, in conversations, and in TV andradio programs. When you read the ne
8、wspaper, look for the articles about economics:and thenlook at theones thatarentabouteconomics, becauselots ofthe time they endup being about economics too. Magazines are usually better than newspapers becausethey go into issues in more depth. On the other hand, a shallower analysis may be more1北斗成功
9、社区 BeiDouW 教育音视频/电子书/实用资料文档/励志歌曲影视2/18stimulating: theres nothing like a fallacious argument to stimulate research.1Conversations, especially with people in business, are often very fruitful. Commerceis conducted in many ways, and most of them have never been subjected to a seriouseconomic analysis.
10、 Of course you have to be careful not to believe everything you hear-people in business usually know a set of rules that work well for running their ownbusiness, but they often have no idea of where these rules come from or why they work,and this is really what economists tend to find interesting.In
11、 many cases your ideas can come from your own life and experiences. One of myfavorite pieces of my own workis the paper I wroteon A Model of Sales. I had decidedto get a new TV so I followed the ads in the newspaper to get an idea of how much itwould cost. I noticed that the prices fluctuated quite
12、a bit from week to week. It occurredto me that the challenge to economics was not why the prices were sometimes low (i.e.,during sales) but why they were ever high. Who would be so foolish as to buy when theprice was high since everyone knew that the item would be on sale in a few weeks? Butthere mu
13、st be such people, otherwise the stores would never find it profitable to chargea high price. Armed with this insight, I was able to generate a model of sales. In mymodel there were two kinds of consumers: informed consumers who read the ads anduninformed consumers who didnt read the ads. The stores
14、 had sales in order to pricediscriminate between the informed and uninformed consumers.Once I developed the model I had a research assistant go through a couple of yearsworth of the Ann Arbor News searching for the prices of color TVs. Much to my delightthe general pattern of pricing was similar to
15、that predicted by the model. And, yes, I didmanage to get a pretty good deal on the TV I eventually bought.2. Is your idea worth pursuing?So lets assume (a favorite word of economists) that you have an idea. How do you knowif it is any good? The first test is to try to phrase your idea in a way that
16、 a non-economistcan understand. If you cant do this its probably not a very good idea. If you can phrase1But which sources to read? I read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Economist; these are probably good places to start.2北斗成功社区 BeiDouW 教育音视频/电子书/实用资料文档/励志歌曲影视3/18it in a way that a noneconomist can understand, it still may be a lousy idea, but at leasttheres hope.Before you start trying to decide whether your idea is corr
