econometrics.it

The following image describes more or less as my ambitions have evolved over the past 3 years!

Yet, I persist in living in Italy. I’m in the “Get a job” stage … At what stage are you??

Federico

Welcome to my blog!

The first question one might ask is: “Why a blog should be called econometrics?”

I think this question is closely related to the question that I had to ask myself when I decided to start blogging: “What am I going to blog about?”

Ever since I began studying at Tor Vergata University, I was immediately attracted to the idea that even though individual humans were not statistically predictable, large groups of humans were. My initiation to econometrics has been through the book of Carl F. Christ, and to this date I remain a fan of his intellect and insight. In his 1966’s book, he introduced the concept of econometrics by referring to the illuminating definition by three now dead leading economists (Samuelson, Koopmans and Stone, 1954):

… econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related with appropriate methods of inference.

Basically, it is a branch of economics that provides statistical tools to study economic phenomena. These tools are fascinating to me because they allow to draw useful inferences about people, firms, countries … in short, about the many facets of modern world. Moreover, as Angrist pointed out in his 2009’s book, anyone interested in shaping public policy or to promote something important for the human society, must digest and use statistical results. Given that, what I’ll going to blog here will lie somewhere in the intersection of my passions for technology, economics and econometrics and my fascination with a sustainable human society.

I know since it’s a personal blog that with high probability there will be a fair share of “books and papers I’ve read” and “my wife/friends/colleagues” posts. But in the end, I decided to start blogging just to collect and share opinions, to demonstrate my interest/skills around a topic, to share my work and to popularize as more as possible initiatives like 350.org or AIRC. This means common topics will likely include:

• Econometrics
• Economics
• Politics
• Eco-habits
• Tips and scripts

As a result, I decided that econometrics was probably the best title to capture the essence of my personal blog!

Thanks for reading.

Federico