Dictionary of Jargon

cheap talk: unverifiable information

convex hull: the points that can be arrived at by interpolating between points

consistent: if I had a lot of data, this regression makes sense

counterfactual: what would have happened

ejmr: the "high school bathroom stall graffiti" of economics

identified: can be deduced with infinite data

idiosyncratic: random

iid: neither independent nor identically distributed, but let's pretend they are

institution: structure that explains the otherwise unexplained

hand-wavy: lacking rigour

high-level: from 30,000 feet, big picture, ...

human capital: knowledge

L2 distance: the distance that you learned in elementary school (x_1^2+ ... +x_n^2)^0.5

local: what to call someone's empirical research if you don't think it can be extrapolated to other settings

maximum likelihood: the most likely thing, usually not particularly interesting. See also: Occam's razor

measurable with respect to X: if I know X, then I also know this 

moment: an expected value of some sort, usually

orthogonal: unrelated

predoc: pledges in the economics fraternity

prior: what I believe, based on nothing

probability zero: something that could have happened but will not happen again

productivity shock: unexplained output

random variable: not random, not a variable, but a Borel-measurable map from the state space to the reals 

revealed preference: when you choose X instead of Y, you expose that you like X more than Y

robust: not sensitive to erroneous assumptions or unaccounted-for factors

second-order: less important

signal: demonstrating a positive quality by doing something difficult but probably unproductive

shock: random event

spatial autocorrelation: what to raise when someone uses spatial data and you don't like their talk

state: an element of a state space

stochastic process: a collection of random variables indexed by an index set

to a first order: under a linear approximation

toy model: an intentionally simple model meant to illustrate a specific idea

trivial: easy, not worth my time

vector: an element of a vector space, such as a random variable

weak convergence of a random variable: weak*-convergence