Thursday, June 12, 2003

Or maybe entertainers 

Let me not leave you with the impression I hated graduate school. Some professors were very helpful, others just damned funny and a few were both. One of my favorites at Claremont was Dan Vandermeulen, who taught micro theory entirely as an exercise first of linear programming, then as game theory. And funny without meaning to be. Delightful until it was time to take quals and find out the rest of the world did calculus. "That's a limiting assumption," Prof. V. replied. Apparently Tom Sargent at Chicago is another.
Professor Sargent, I don't quite understand what you mean by "preference shocks". I thought that violates xxx's assumption that household's preference is constant over time...

Sargent: So, I woke up in the morning. I wanted to go play basketball with my buddies. Then I was told that today was the day to mow the lawn. That's preference shock.

You wake up sick, that's preference shock. It turns out to be important in some model with health.

You guys don't get emails like I did. Dear Professor Sargent I love to take you exam but my grandmother died yesterday. Grandmothers always die during basketball seasons. My friend in Minnesota, he has a student whose grandma died three years in a row. His story was that his grandpa remarried."

Those were the days, my friends. {Hat tip: Newmark's Door.}

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