Reading notes on papers
I’m using this page to share reading notes on various papers I have co-written with the help of ChatGPT. My typical workflow is that, as I read a paper, I ask questions to ChatGPT about specific passages to clarify the arguments, provide necessary context, fill out missing steps in mathematical derivations, etc. to make sure I fully understand what the author is saying. This also forces me to read the paper very closely to identify and to think carefully about what it’s saying and what are the implications.
After I’m done reading the paper or several papers that deal with the same topic, I ask ChatGPT to write notes that summarize the main arguments of the paper, but also clarify the arguments, walk me through the derivations so they are easy to follow and explain the results both mathematically and intuitively. The initial draft is never very good, so I ask Codex to revise the parts that are still unclear by explaining what exactly I still find unclear, change the logical organization of the paper when I think it will help make the arguments easier to follow, etc. and I iterate until I have something that satisfies me.
This process takes a lot of time and I think it’s fair to say that the end-result is a co-production between ChatGPT and me. I created this page because I think it’s a great way to use LLMs and I want to encourage people to do the same thing, but also because I think other people may find the notes I produced in that way interesting. I deliberately ask ChatGPT to include mathematical refreshers and to do a lot of hand-holding to make the derivations easy to follow, so they should be very accessible even to people with a limited mathematical background. The notes are organized by topics and I will update this page over time to add more reading notes I produced in that way.
Aggregation problems in economics
Jesus Felipe and Franklin Fisher, “Aggregation in Production Functions: What Applied Economists should Know”, Metroeconomica, Vol. 54, No. 2-3 (2003), pp. 208-262 and Franklin Fisher, “Aggregate Production Functions - A Pervasive, but Unpersuasive, Fairytale”, Eastern Economic Journal, Vol. 31, No. 3 (2005), pp. 489-491
Jesus Felipe and John McCombie, “The Aggregate Production Function: ‘Not Even Wrong’”, Review of Political Economy, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2014), pp. 60-84
Alan Kirman, “Whom or What Does the Representative Individual Represent?”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1992), pp. 117–136
The Soviet economic system
Steven Rosefielde and Ralph Pfouts, “Neoclassical Norms and the Valuation of National Product in the Soviet Union and Its Postcommunist Successor States”, Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1995), pp. 375-389 and Abraham Bergson, “Neoclassical Norms and the Valuation of National Product in the Soviet Union and Its Postcommunist Successor States: Comment”, Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1995), pp. 390-393