Writing, (less) grudgingly

03.17.2005

I'm putting the finishing touches on my conference paper on Bolivia's democratic breakdown (not the actual topic, but pretty much). But there's a roundup of thoughts & developments by a new Bolivian blogger (who's an economics prof) at The Economist En Su Laberinto.

Here's a cool 360° panoramic view of a pro-democracy protest in Lebanon. You know, for motivational optimistic contrast.

Also, Chinese chicken fried rice mixed w/ egg flower soup is delicious.

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UPDATE 1: Sitting a café, writing, while sipping a café Borgia (espresso, orange flavor, whipped cream, so delicious). And the cutest thing? Mark's daughter, Lily, demand we listen to Modest Mouse (her favorite band).

UPDATE 2: It's 8:45pm, and I've just decided to run a second set of time-series cross-panel models. From a dataset I'll have to build, tonight. Here's hoping it (a) works and (b) supports my main hypotheses. First, go home to feed the girls, take a shower, a nap, then go 'till 6am. But it's almost done.

UPDATE 3: Speaking of Bolivia, Barrio Flores recently posted two particularly amazing pictures of Cochabamba here & here.

UPDATE 4: I should've done this earlier. But here's a link to the province-level dataset (.raw format, you can open w/ Excel) used to generate the data table here. All the provinces are number coded, the coding specs are here (.txt format).

Posted by Miguel at 04:01 PM

Comments

Is it true that the altitude of La Paz is two miles above sea level? Wow.

Bet that took a while to adjust.

Posted by: tom at March 18, 2005 12:12 AM

For some reason, not so much. Lots of other people do have to take days (or longer) to adjust. But I also just take it easy for the first several days (I wouldn't recommend kickboxing for a while after arrival). But I never had altitude sickness or anything.

Posted by: Miguel [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 18, 2005 01:39 AM

Just curious. What kind of data you said you had? I know is electoral data. You throw some categories if you want.

Posted by: MB at March 18, 2005 01:03 PM

I also think some of it is psychological. One might arrive in La Paz and not notice much of a difference. Then suddenly, you remember the altitude and think "shouldn't I be severely out of breath?"...and then it hits you.

Posted by: eduardo at March 18, 2005 01:11 PM

My data is province level election results from CNE & FUNDEMOS. It gives raw numbers of registered voters, votes cast, blank & null votes, and party votes. From that, I got vote share ratios.

Using that data, I calculate for electoral volatility, the effective number of electoral parties (ENPV, which contains similar information to a Herfindahl-Hirschman concentration index). The effective electoral threshold is calculated based on the disrict magnitude (number of seats per department).

Posted by: miguel at March 18, 2005 02:41 PM