Saturday, May 18, 2013

Cookbook Econometrics - Reprise

A few days ago I was looking at my copy of Econometric Foundations, written by Ron Mittelhammer, George Judge, and Doug Miller. It's an excellent book, by the way.

I noticed, for the first time, that on p.xxviii of the Preface they have the following to say, under the heading of "A Comment":


I Know What You Did Last Summer!

O.K., I know that I stole that title! It was absolutely blatant.

The other day, some colleagues and I were discussing the issue of students (including our own offspring), and their summer jobs - or no jobs, as the case may be. I'm not passing judgement here in what follows, by the way. 

When I was a student I had to earn enough money over the summer to live off for the rest of the year. That's just the way it was. Period! My parents were great - I could live at home over the summer at no cost to me. But that was it. They lived in a very small rural town in New Zealand, a long way from where I attended university. The upside of this was that, being a rural area (in the mid/late 1960's through to the early 1970's), there were some seriously good work opportunities.

So, what did I do each summer?