In the Applied Statistics Blog this week

1. Understanding the ‘Russian Mortality Paradox’ in Central Asia: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan

Short answer: alcohol and suicide.

2. Lumberjacks as a counterexample to the idea of a “risk premium”

They take lots of risks and don’t get paid well for it.

3. Cell size and scale

This is a visualization you won’t want to miss.

4. Three guys named Matt

5. The political philosophy of the private eye

A genre that was rendered obsolete in 1961 (but nobody realizes it).

3 thoughts on “In the Applied Statistics Blog this week

  1. Maybe you're right about the risk premium, but I'm not sure comparing lumberjack pay, in general, to "safer" jobs is the way to go, since those safer jobs typically require all sorts of extra skills. People considering a lumberjack career typically don't have a lot of options, live in cheaper areas, etc.

    If you compared lumberjack salaries to other unskilled jobs in local areas that were similarly strenuous, but paid about the same, that would be more convincing.

    Or maybe people just like being lumberjacks, and are willing to bear the risks.

  2. I discussed this issue in the blog entry linked above, and Dorman talks about it much more in his publications. In short: sure, to estimate the risk premium, you have to compare jobs that are comparable in some way . . . but, it's not really clear at all how one could ever do this comparison or measure the risk premium in any reasonable way.

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