Babysitting again

Friday night I babysat again, wanted to post up a photo of my other little cousin, Uri, who is one. Adorable kid, just started walking...

This was the best photo I could get... he wasn't being very cooperative for photo poses.

Anglos

So tomorrow is the Israel/England European Cup qualifying game here in Israel, and Tel Aviv is overrun with brits. What's funny is that there have been all of these news items about how to deal with British soccer hooligans, and they have been interviewing the chief of Tel Aviv police on the news... its been humorous.
In addition, there have been all these Anglos (specifically Americans) all over my campus because Tel Aviv U. has opened it's doors for Spring Semester Study Abroad programs for American colleges.

Here is the thing with Anglos in Israel... they fall in to two groups. First, by Anglos I mean english speakers, Brits, Americans, Aussies, South African's, and the occasional New Zealander. One group is those Anglos who understand that the situation in Israel, and in the greater Middle East, is very confusing and convoluted, and they make the effort to open their eyes and try to absorb as much as possible.
The second group are those Anglos who support Bush.

Update

So it's almost 3am here on a Monday night. Why am I up at this hour, you ask? I have been diligently working on my final project from last semesters Econometrics class, which is due Sunday. Luckily tomorrow I don't have class and I can sleep in.
My class partner, Sharon, and I are looking at US FDI and seeing how various variables, like Corruption, Political Stability, and Regulatory Quality affect the amount the US invests in other countries.
There have been many reports written about how corruption affects FDI, but the results have been ambiguous, so we took it a step further and are adding the parameter for "Regulatory Quality". The reason previous reports have been ambiguous on the topic is because there has been this underlying assumption that countries have some "moral" premium on where they invest. Meaning the previous theory is that the US wont give money to countries that corrupt.

Clearly this is logically wrong, the US doesn't give a damn about morals. And now we are basically running the necessary regressions to prove it. Basically, the US as an investor only cares about being able to secure their investment and secure potential profit, regardless of how corrupt the receiving country is. Sad, ain't it.

Clearly the project is more detailed, with things dealing with Ommitted Variable Bias, Multicollinearity, and Heteroskedasticity. I also ran some tests, Chow-Fisher and White specifically. Below you see the regression output for the control variables and the explanatory variables, as divided into two population groups based on GDP per Capita. In other news, Passover break is coming up soon, and I'm looking forward to having some visitors. Sari, Noam, and my sister, as well...

PS, anybody who wants the full 25 page final project email me and I'll send you the pdf. I know you are all dying of curiosity.

exam results

Just got the results from my Macro final, the one that I knew I did not do well on, and the grade reflects that fact. The problem was that I was under the impression that one specific model would be theoretical, but he asked a completely mathematical question about the model instead, which I did not review. So basically it is my own damn fault. My friend also suffered the same fate.
But all is not lost! My friend and I will both take the exam for the class again next year and improve our grades. Now that I have learned my lesson that you have to cover all topics from all angles, and you can't play Russian Roulette with what is going to be on the final.

McKinsey

Tonight I was invited to a McKinsey Israel recruitment event. It was an open invite to the Biz School and Econ School students, and then special invites from other faculties. My friend Inbar, who studies linguistics, was invited from her department. Interestingly, she didn't even know the company, but her curiosity was piqued. I agreed to go because of my curiosity (I already have a job for the summer!). It was an interesting affair to say the least...

First, the strategy/management consulting industry as a whole is very nascent in Israel. In the early 90's a number of the major American players opened offices in Israel, but ultimately they all closed their doors. McKinsey always had a presence in Israel throughout the 90's, but they only opened an office in 2000, after the others left. In addition, over the past 10 years a number of much smaller Israeli firms have emerged as well, but they cater to much smaller companies, so don't really even compete in the same ballpark as McKinsey.

The overwhelming amount of people in the crowd were Biz school people. Of the 200 people in the crowd, 10 were Econ (only 2 from graduate school. Me and my German pal Jorn), and 3 others (Inbar and her two friends).

Here is my beef with McKinsey... They are generalists. I'm actually a big fan of consulting as a career. You get to work in a project settings with a team, you get to work with really interesting companies on fantastically tangible issues. I actually have a lot of respect for specialists when it comes to consulting. Econ consulting, Finance Consulting, Energy, whatever. These firms, like NERA, LECG, FTI, EMC, whatever.
When it comes to generalists, there are those firms that I do like, like Monitor, Navigant, and Huron. These are firms that either have a great boutique-like reputation for work/life balance, or they have a distinct appreciation for academia.
McKinsey, on the other hand, is neither of any of these things. First, they are generalists (the guy even said: we look for generalists), and second, they are so institutionalized that they don't have the quality of life like others.
On the plus side, I had like 6 of their roast beef finger sandwiches. On the minus side, I felt a little sick after that on the bus home.

In other news, I am busy converting Bellman equations to general Euler equations. What fun!