I led off one of my early publications with this paraphrase of a poem written by Dennis Robertson
When I had scarcely learned to toddle,
my parents handed me a model
with lots of little leads and lags
and pretty [hyperbolic] bags.
Robertson wrote the piece in frustration because he was skeptical about the mathematical and econometric modeling that was occurring in the 1940s and 1950s, but his original poem said "... and pretty parabolic bags." I changed it to "hyperbolic" to suit the content of that paper.
"A Further Analysis of Provincial Trucking Regulation," The Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 4 (Fall 1973): 655-664.
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Some years later I published a piece on the Social Costs of Adoption Agencies. The lead poem for that was something I read in one of my children's song books, "Sally Go Round the Sun":
This is the day they give babies away,
with a half a pound of tea.
You open the lid, and out pops the kid
with a ten-year guarantee.
One of the administrative assistants back then told me she remembered that rhyme from her childhood in England.
"The Social Cost of Adoption Agencies," International Review of Law and Economics 6 (1986): 189-203
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The other day, JR, my favourite drug dealer, attached this poem to one of his messages about economics and health care. I really like it!
“Econometricians are ever so pious,
are they doing real science or confirming their bias?”
He says the poem is from this econ rap battle on YouTube. It's a nice jab at the strength of our prior beliefs and how they influence our attempts at doing science.