Posts filed under ‘Ephemera’
Mormons in Business
| Peter Klein |
HBS Dean Emeritus Kim Clark is among a group of Mormon executives profiled in Jeff Benedict’s The Mormon Way of Doing Business (Warner Books, 2007). Mitt Romney’s Presidential bid has generated a surge of interest in the Mormon faith (which, despite its 170-year history, is little known to most Americans), so expect this book to do well.
Most impressive passage so far: “During the same ten-year period [1974-84] that Clark graduated from Harvard University, earned a PhD in economics, and obtained tenure status as a faculty member at HBS, he and his wife had seven children.” Wow.
How to Annoy People Using Instant Messaging
| Peter Klein |
I’m a big fan of instant messaging. (Email is soooo twentieth century!) I often use IM to communicate with a co-worker whose office happens to be two doors down from mine. I’ve even been known to text-message my spouse from one room in the house to another. (Why get up from your chair if you don’t have to?)
So I enjoyed WebWorkerDaily’s suggestions on How to Annoy People Using Instant Messaging. Valuable tips!
The Procastinator’s Clock
| Peter Klein |
Thomas Schelling, in his 1984 paper on voluntary self-restraint, popularized the example of the man who tends to oversleep and, knowing he tends to hit the snooze button several times on his alarm clock, places the clock across the room where he can’t reach it. My grad-school buddy Ted O’Donoghue has written several papers (with Matt Rabin) applying behavioral economics to procrastination, addiction, and other cases of what Ted calls “time-inconsistent preferences,” showing how rational agents deal with problems of self-control.
A simple solution for the procrastinator is setting the clock 15 minutes fast, but that only works if you forget you did it. David Seah has come up with a better solution: the Procrastinator’s Clock. It’s “guaranteed to be up to 15 minutes fast. However, it also speeds up and slows down in an unpredictable manner so you can’t be sure how fast it really is.” Brilliant. (HT: WebWorkerDaily)
Bloggers versus Journal Editors
| Peter Klein |
Arnold Kling on the folksonomic nature of blogs:
I think that we’re at a point where blogs can legitimately crowd out other reading. That is, if you spend a few hours a week reading blogs and cut back on something else, you probably are better off. The “something else” that I think can be cut back is periodicals and journals. I can find bloggers who do a better job than journal editors of selecting what I should read.
Best Blog Post Opening Lines I Read Today
| Peter Klein |
My associate Roderick Long gets the prize:
Wish you’d been a fly on the wall at last month’s Molinari Society symposium on “Anarchist Perspectives”?
Well, of course you don’t. A fly’s brain is too small to process the event properly. Plus you might have gotten squished against the wall by a stampeding bewilderment of philosophers.
Kids Have Good Intuition
| Peter Klein |
My older son figured out, this Christmas, that Santa isn’t real. As with many kids, it was the physics of the thing that troubled him. However, the alternative explanation posed problems as well. “Dad, remember the desk I got last year? There’s no way YOU could have assembled that.” Even at a tender age he knows the difference between a tough, manly Dad who can build stuff and a nerdy, bookish Dad who can’t (Kevin Murphy notwithstanding).
But it could be worse: He could have a chemistry professor for a Dad. (Thanks to Craig Newmark for the link.)
Personal Data Assistant for Luddites
| Peter Klein |
Nicolai and Mario, this is for you: the Hipster PDA. (HT: Web Worker Daily)
Expedited Reviews: Act Now, Offer Expires Soon!
| Peter Klein |
The Atlantic Economic Journal is trying a new tactic to attract high-quality submissions: expedited reviews for all papers received within a designated window. Received this by email (emphasis in original):
Just a reminder that the deadline to submit papers to the Atlantic Economic Journal’s “ER” program is January 31, 2007. The “ER” program grants your manuscript special attention and guarantees a quick response. You will no longer spend months waiting around to hear a decision on your submission. Notice of the first level of review is made within 30 days of submission. The paper is then rushed to the second level of review, with a final decision made within the next 60 days.
This program is only being offered for a limited time and will expire on January 31, 2007.
For further information or to submit online, please go to: http://www.iaes.org/publications/aej/er_program.htm
Not the usual sales pitch from a scholarly publication, but in an increasingly competitive academic labor market, the promise of a quick turnaround may be attractive, especially to junior faculty. (The typical turnaround for an economics journal is around six months.)
As the academic journal space becomes increasingly crowded, with online publications like the BE Press journals competing with the established (and new) print journals, such aggressive tactics may become increasingly common. (A more effective tactic might be differential submission fees — one fee for regular turnarounds, a higher fee for expedited reviews, and so on. After all, shouldn’t an economics journal be using the price mechanism to allocate a scarce resource?)
We Got Street Cred
| Peter Klein |
O&M gets this nice endorsement from the tech-oriented Doctor Recommended blog:
If you have spent much time working for The Man or consider yourself an entrepreneur of any stripe, then you have at some point thought about how firms should be organized: flat, horizontal, vertical, Terry Tate-ish, ad nauseam. I find the academic debate surrounding these issues interesting, though at times, completely Ivory Towerish. However, Peter Klein and his Denmarkian friend make the discourse interesting and germane. Plus I have a soft-spot for their Austrian-esque approach to Bureaucracy.
If there’s one thing we Ivory-Tower types hate, it’s being called Ivery Towerish!
P.J. O’Rourke Reads The Wealth of Nations
| Peter Klein |
. . . so you don’t have to.
O’Rourke is a funny guy — his chapter on farm policy in Parliament of Whores should be required reading in all courses in agricultural economics and public policy — so this should be an entertaining book. Not sure if I’ll agree with his interpretation of Smith, of course. (Also highly recommended: “Among the Euro-Weenies” from 1988’s Holidays in Hell.)
Cover Letters From Hell
| Peter Klein |
As a service to our student readers, we suggest you avoid these cover letter mistakes when circulating your CV to potential employers (academic or commercial).
All of us — not only students, but mature professionals as well, particularly in academia — should work hard to avoid jargon-speak.
A writer uses pseudo-legalese because he lacks confidence in his authentic voice. From undergraduates trying to ace our Creativity Test, to MBAs immersed in BizSpeak, applicants feel they must inflate their prose by imitating Dickens, or combing the thesaurus to select — sigh — precisely the wrong word.
Imagine, if you will, two roommates at Thesaurus U.:
“I aspire to obtain a beverage. The vending machine is where my path leads.”
“I wish to accompany you, since I have assembled a myriad of coins.”
“I possess coins, as well. Let’s embark.”
Via Craig Newmark.
The Other O&M
| Peter Klein |
Sometimes people mistake me for this Peter Klein, or this one, or this one. (Memo to other Peter Kleins: If you have any of my journal acceptance letters, could you please forward them? I seem to be missing a few.) As it turns out, “Organizations and Markets” is also the title of an Economic Research Network (ERN) subject matter journal. (ERN, part of SSRN, uses the word “journal” for its lists of abstracts and papers; there’s no peer review involved.) George Baker manages the series; his illustrious advisory board includes names like Gibbons, Hart, Holmstrom, Jensen, Shleifer, and Williamson. Not bad.
Here are the most downloaded papers in the series. You’ll see some familiar items. A sample issue looks like this.
Wonder how much they’d pay for our URL?
Marx and the Marxists
| Peter Klein |
The founders of social movements and schools of thought often try to distance themselves from their followers. (Or their later interpreters do this for them). Thus one can ask if Freud was a Freudian, Ricardo a Ricardian, Walras a Walrasian, Keynes a Keynesian (chapter 5 Keynesian? chapter 12 Keynesian?), and so on. Future scholars will no doubt debate whether Foss was really a Fossian (you have to wonder about some of his disciples).
Andrew Kliman is a True Marxist and argues, in his new book, that fellow Marxists have gone off track by accepting what Kliman calls “the myth of inconsistency.” In other words, contrary to both Marx’s critics and his disciples, there are no internal inconsistencies in Das Capital. “It had to be done,” states one dust-jacket endorsement: “someone has finally rescued Marx from the Marxists.” Bertell Ollman, perhaps today’s most famous living Marxist, says Kliman’s arguments “operate like a buzz saw clearing away the underbrush of misplaced criticisms that have kept the real Capital hidden from most of its potential readers.” Given how many college students have been forced to slog through at least one volume of Marx’s lengthy tome — with little or no exposure to Marx’s critics — it’s hard to believe that Marx’s true message has remained hidden for so long. Nonetheless, devotees of the secondary literature on Marx will surely wish to add this volume to their collections.
Update: Orthodox Freudians have long denied Carl Jung’s claim that Freud had an affair with his wife’s younger sister, but apparently he did after all. (Love the Herald-Tribune headline: “Hotel Log Hints at Desire That Freud Didn’t Repress.”
Update II: Andrew emails to say I didn’t get it quite right: “Actually, I’d be foolish to say that there aren’t inconsistencies in Capital, so I don’t. My argument is restricted to the allegations of inconsistency that are extant. Also, in regard to ‘True Marxist,’ which sounds a bit like Hoffer’s ‘True Believer,’ I point out several times in the book that “logically consistent” doesn’t mean correct or true.”
Going to Nam
| Nicolai Foss |
Since my home country Denmark has now almost completed the transition from capitalism to socialism, other countries must serve as places to do field studies of the functioning of a real market economy. Thus, I will be leaving for Vietnam on Wednesday (here is an Austrian paper on Vietnam’s recent economic experience). Apart from a visit to Kampuchea, I will be staying in that country for all of January. I may have occasion to report for the O&M readership, but I am not sure I will. This trip is considerably more pleasure than business.
VERY Nerdy!
| Nicolai Foss |
If you think that O&M occassionally lapses into nerd territory (admittedly we do!), then please check this out! It is the brainchild of orgtheory.(intra)net’s Kieran Healy. I am sure it can inspire Peter to a post along the lines of “Why are Sociologists Nerdy — Really Nerdy?”
We Happy Danes
| Nicolai Foss |
As indicated by the World Map of Happiness Denmark is #1 in the World in terms of happiness — and appears to have held that position for about three decades. Here is a great tongue-in-cheek paper that explains this fact in terms of such factors as hair color and prowess in sport. The paper concludes:
Our analysis points to two explanatory factors. The Danish football triumph of 1992 has had a lasting impact. This victory arguably provided the biggest boost to the Danish psyche since the protracted history of Danish setbacks began with defeat in England in 1066, followed by the loss of Sweden, Norway, Northern Germany, the Danish West Indies, and Iceland. The satisfaction of the Danes, however, began well before 1992, albeit at a more moderate level. The key factor that explains this and that differentiates Danes from Swedes and Finns seems to be that Danes have consistently low (and indubitably realistic) expectations for the year to come. Year after year they are pleasantly surprised to find that not everything is getting more rotten in the state of Denmark.
We Luddites
| Nicolai Foss |
In permanent shock since he learned that I own but never use a cellular phone (a middle-management tool if there ever was one!), my co-blogger often argues that I am a Luddite, and claims that this, rather than my significantly higher teaching and administration load, accounts for my relatively low blogging frequency (guess who is also maintaining the more technical aspects of O&M?). I plead partly guilty to the charge, but wish to point out that there are much great sinners than me. Enter NYU Professor and prominent Austrian Mario Rizzo. (more…)
Underappreciated, But Proud
| Peter Klein |
Thanks to The Bayesian Heresy for including us among “Favorite Economics Blogs of Year 2006.” We’re make the “Underappreciated” category (other categories include “Heavy Weights,” “New Comers,” and “Used to be Very Good”). Many fine blogs on the list, and we’re proud to travel in such good company (Bayesian Heresy included).
Weirdest Abstract I Read Today
| Peter Klein |
From the April/June 2006 issue of Food and Foodways:
Julia C. Ehrhardt
University of Oklahoma Honors College, Norman, Oklahoma, USAAs the nascent field of food studies takes shape, insights from queer studies have the potential to enrich our understandings of the interrelationships among food, gender, and sexuality. The project of queering food studies invites us to consider how food practices and beliefs reinforce and resist heterosexual gender ideologies. In this article, I analyze foodways in recent Chicana lesbian literature, examining writings that illustrate the cultural endurance of heteronormative constructions of gender even as they demonstrate how these beliefs are disrupted, destabilized, and transformed in queer literary kitchens. Poetry and essays by Chicana lesbians challenge dominant models of Chicana culinary roles by emphasizing women’s efforts to satisfy their physical and sexual appetites.In particular, Carla Trujillo’s 2003 novel, What Night Brings, highlights the figure of the hungry lesbian as a provocative counterpoint to the literary image of the Chicana as cook. Literature by Chicana lesbians not only invites scholars to question heteronormative assumptions about food, gender, and identity, but also demonstrates the potential of queer studies to enrich a variety of topics in food scholarship.
Food and Foodways 14, no. 2 (April-June 2006): 91-109.
(Thanks to Pierre Desrochers for the pointer.)
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