Dictionary of Jargon
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