...I am also aware that the bar for economic humor is not always particularly high…for example, it turns out that jokes (and I use this term loosely) are tagged with [laughter] tags in transcripts published by the Federal Reserve, so a simple search function highlights all of the moments of supposed nerd hilarity....With that preramble here's alpha architect:
Top 5 Geeky, Yet Funny, Economic Paper Titles
As many are aware, economists aren’t the funniest group in the crowd. Here are some sample jokes from the funniest economists out there–Yoram Bauman.
Here is a sample economist joke:
When Yorum told his dad that he wanted to use his Ph.D. in economics as the basis for a comedy career, his dad was unsure.har har har…
He didn’t think there would be enough demand.
....But just because economists can’t tell jokes, doesn’t mean they can’t come up with some funny titles for their esoteric academic articles submitted to professional journals.
Our Top 5 Funny Titles of All-Time:
Number 5:...MORE
Star wars: The empirics strike back
Journals favor rejections of the null hypothesis. This selection upon results may distort the behavior of researchers. Using 50,000 tests published between 2005 and 2011 in the AER, JPE and QJE, we identify a residual in the distribution of tests that cannot be explained by selection. The distribution of p-values exhibits a camel shape with abundant p-values above :25, a valley between :25 and :10 and a bump slightly under :05. Missing tests are those which would have been accepted but close to being rejected (p-values between :25 and :10). We show that this pattern corresponds to a shift in the distribution of p-values: between 10% and 20% of marginally rejected tests are misallocated. Our interpretation is that researchers might be tempted to inflate the value of their tests by choosing the specification that provides the highest statistics. Note that Inflation is larger in articles where stars are used in order to highlight statistical significance and lower in articles with theoretical models.Number 4:
An Option Value Problem from Seinfeld
In an episode of the sitcom Seinfeld (season 7, episode 9, original air date December 7, 1995), Elaine Benes uses a contraceptive sponge that gets taken off the market. She scours pharmacies in the neighborhood to stock a large supply, but it is finite. So she must “reevaluate her whole screening process.” Every time she dates a new man, which happens very frequently, she has to consider a new issue: Is he “spongeworthy”? The purpose of this article is to quantify this concept of spongeworthiness.
HT: Abnormal Returns
Personally I prefer "Top 11 Funniest Papers in the History of Economics", but that's partly just because it goes to eleven.
Possibly also of interest:
Austan Goolsbee, Stand-Up Economist
2009 Fed Open Market Committee Transcripts: Big Yucks at the Big Table
Research Says Learning Economics Turns You Into A Liar
