Posts filed under ‘Ephemera’
Do Economists Make Good Leaders?
| Peter Klein |
Hugo Sonnenschein is a rare breed, an accomplished mathematical economist who went on to become a Dean (Penn), Provost (Princeton), and University President (Chicago). I bet he’s the only university president emeritus with a forthcoming Econometrica. And what a cool title: Adam Smith Distinguished Service Professor!
However, like Harvard’s Larry Summers, Sonnenschein ran into problems as Chicago’s president. His attempt to reform the university’s rigid, and increasingly idiosyncratic, undergraduate core curriculum met with strong resistance. The conflict led to Sonnenschein’s resignation in 2000, though without the fireworks accompanying Summers’s departure.
Do economists make good leaders? Many commentators on the Summers brouhaha suggested that Summers’s training as an economist contributed to his poor communication and people-management skills. (One critic complained that “Summers’s thinking is grounded in a discipline that has little sense of fairness and moral obligation, where discriminatory situations are often accepted as the result of Darwinian mechanisms that should be left untouched.” Hmmmmm . . . wanna bet this critic prefers polar bears to Pakistanis?)
NB: I’ve spent much of my own academic career serving under economists, first Charles B. Knapp at the University of Georgia and now Brady J. Deaton at the University of Missouri. What does that say about me . . . ?
Vacation Reading
| Nicolai Foss |
The more narcissistic bloggers often inform their readership on the subject of What I am Reading This Summer (substitute Spring, Fall, Winter). Of course, no reason to not adopt this well-established practice.
As of tomorrow, I will be on vacation for two weeks in Antibes in the sourthern part of the perhaps most commie country in the World. This is what I will bring with me: (more…)
PowerPoint Peeves
| Peter Klein |
The increasingly ubiquitous PowerPoint has its uses, to be sure, but is no substitute for clear thinking and clear writing, the keys to any decent presentation. Rants and raves: Guy Kawasaki suggests the 10/20/30 rule — no more than ten slides, no more than twenty minutes, and at least a 30pt. font. Gordon Smith hates slides full of text. My own pet peeves include distracting backgrounds and typefaces, inconsistent punctuation and tense, and the obligatory “roadmap” slide (“This presentation, like every other one you’ll see at the conference, goes like this: introduction, literature review, hypotheses, data, results, conclusions. How many minutes do I have left?”). And, of course, not every idea is best communicated through slides (you’ve all probably seen the PowerPoint version of the Gettysburg Address).
Fred Tung objects to people using PowerPoint as a teleprompter, populating their slides with complete sentences then reading them word-for-word. I couldn’t agree more. Then again, in some disciplines, particularly in the humanities, “presenting a paper” has always meant simply reading a prepared text. My father was an academic historian, and I was shocked the first time I accompanied him to a professional meeting at which each panelist merely read his paper aloud. (I understand this is common in philosophy as well; I don’t know about other fields.)
Reading a paper aloud has never made sense to me. Wouldn’t it make more sense simply to hand out the paper and let participants read it on their own?
Leijonhufvud — Cont’d
| Nicolai Foss |
Apropos my earlier post on the work of Axel Leijonhufvud and what it meant for me personally, I just came across this amusing keynote speech, “My Keynesian Education,” by Robert Lucas to the 2003 History of Political Economy Conference: “I remember when Leijonhufvud’s book came out and I asked my colleague Gary Becker if he thought Hicks had got the General Theory right with his IS-LM diagram. Gary said, ‘Well, I don’t know, but I hope he did, because if it wasn’t for Hicks I never would have made any sense out of that damn book.’ That’s kind of the way I feel too, so I’m hoping Hicks got it right” (pp. 12-13).
Why Economics is Better Than Sociology
| Peter Klein |
We have the American Association of Wine Economists. Tell me, where is the American Association of Wine Sociologists?
Clearly economists, like blondes, have more fun. (Please keep other blonde analogies to yourself.)
A Fan Letter
| Peter Klein |
Received this in an email yesterday:
Yours is about the only blog I read these days (got bored with Volokh Conspiracy and Instapundit). I’m amazed at the range and depth of knowledge you guys have on tap — how in the world do you stay current?
It’s nice that people are beginning to recognize our greatness, especially compared to high-profile, but stuffy and pedestrian, blogs like the two named above.
Did I mention the sender was my Mom?
Academic Insults II: Nasty Reviews
| Nicolai Foss |
My earlier post on Academic Insults attracted quite a lot of views, and some comments, including some comments detailing insults that I allegedly distributed (of which I, of course, have no recollection whatsoever). I also received mails from people who didn’t want to share the insults they had suffered with the blogosphere. Anyway, here is what almost amounts to a sequel, namely one on formalized academic insults, better known as nasty reviews. (more…)
Evidence for “Selfish Genes”?
| Nicolai Foss |
I am reading Deepak Lal’s In Praise of Empires: Globalization and Order at the moment. In a discussion of the Mongolian empire, initiated by Genghis Khan, Lal tells the well-known and terrifying anecdote about Genghis Khan’s reaction when told by his generals that life’s sweetest pleasure lies in falconry:
“You are mistaken. Man’s greatest good fortune is to chase and defeat his enemy, seize his total possession, leave his married women weeping and wailing, ride his gelding, and use the bodies of his women as a nightshirt and support.”
Lal goes on to observe that
“This pursuit of booty along with glory also succeeded in a massive spread of Genghis’s genes, as has been recently confirmed in a study examining the chromosomes of 2,123 men from across Asia. It found that an estimated 16 million males in a vast swath from Manchuria to Uzbekistan and Afghanistan are the direct descendants of Genghis as they carry his unique bits of DNA in their chromosomes. Genghis’s fighting thus allowed him to propagate his selfish genes to an unparalleled extent” (p.16).
(The study that Lal cites is this paper, which notes that in the examined sample, 8 percent of the men had virtually identical Y chromosomes, which indicates a common forefather. The 23 authors argue that this forefather is very likely to have lived in Mongolia and to have been Ghengis Khan).
In contrast to the Khan, Hitler, Stalin, and Kim-the-Older were no great gene disseminators, while Mao apparently was and Kim-the-younger apparently is (cf. this blog).
College Sports: Show Me the Money
| Peter Klein |
My European colleagues are generally mystified by US intercollegiate athletics, multi-million-dollar programs closer to semi-professional or European club sports than “amateur” athletics. Why, they ask, do US universities go through this charade, pretending these are regular college students engaging in extracurricular activities?
The answer is obvious: money. At least, that’s what university administrators believe (or say they believe). This week’s Sports Illustrated magazine profiles George Mason University, whose men’s basketball team made an improbable run to the NCAA Final Four this spring. (Copy of article here.)
George Mason’s string of upsets over such name-brand programs as Michigan State, North Carolina and Connecticut was certainly a boon to the basketball program, but officials at the 34-year-old university in Fairfax, Va., believe the wins could give an even greater boost to the school. . . .
George Mason would have had to spend at least $50 million for a public-relations campaign that gave it the exposure it received during the tournament. That’s the conservative estimate of C. Scott Bozman, an associate professor of business marketing at Gonzaga, who studied the benefits of hoops success at his own school. . . . Student inquiries and tour sizes have tripled, and merchandise sales have skyrocketed. . . .
JSTOR For Non-Academics
| Peter Klein |
Here at O&M we typically cite published papers by their JSTOR links, where available. This is a problem for readers not employed at universities (and occasionally for academics accessing the net from off-campus and without a VPN connection). Now I learn from Alex Tabarrok that almost anyone in the US can get JSTOR access from the local public library, through something called a digital library card. That is great news. (So much for that entry barrier, professors!)
Does anyone know if readers outside the US have a similar option?
What’s In a Name?
| Peter Klein |
Speaking of Levitt, another of his characteristically quirky studies is this one on baby names (nontechnical summary here), showing that “distinctively black” names are indicators, not determinants, of socioeconomic status. Baron and Kreps summarize the literature on job titles and conclude, similarly, that titles are primarily signals, not drivers of job characteristics or performance (though titles can be important motivators).
I was thinking about names when watching a little Wimbledon this morning. (I grew up in the era of Connors, Borg, McEnroe, Lendl, Wilander, Edberg, etc., and remain a huge Wimbledon fan.) Former champion Maria Sharapova won her first-round match easily, dispatching clay-court specialist Anna Smashnova in straight sets. Smashnova — what a great name for a tennis player! (I’m considering changing my legal name to Publishnova.)
Tying Your Own Hands, BlackBerry Edition
| Peter Klein |
Joe writes below about time inconsistency, or the Ulysses problem: sometimes you can make yourself better off by deliberately limiting your own options ("tying your own hands"). This phenomenon has been widely studied in monetary policy (earning Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott a Nobel Prize), bargaining theory, and even internal organization.
From the New York Times we learn that a Chicago hotel has found a way to solve the time-inconsistency problem for heavy BlackBerry users: upon check-in, guests wishing to enjoy some downtime can give their device to the general manager, who agrees to keep it under lock and key for the duration of the stay. (I hope my wife isn't reading this.) (HT: Steven Dubner)
Danish Economists
| Peter Klein |
This post definitely merits the ephemera tag, but here it is anyway, largely for the benefit of my Danish co-blogger.
Where are the important Danish economists? The Swedes have Wicksell, Myrdall, Hecksher, Ohlin, Lindbeck, and Holmström. Norway gave us Trygve Haavelmo and Finn Kydland. The president-elect of ISNIE is Icelander Thrainn Eggertsson. (Sorry, Finns!) So, what happened to the Danes? Did they exhaust all their collective intellectual capital on philosophy, physics, and literature?
Academic Insults
| Nicolai Foss |
I was once told by a prominent German economist over (an otherwise pleasant) dinner: “Nicolai, you have the potential to become a rigorous scientist” (a colleague dryly commented that “at least he said you had the potential”). Well, I ended up doing muzzy management stuff, and, hence, never realized any such potential.
Does anyone out there have any good stories of academic insults that you want to share with the readership of O&M? Perhaps with a little effort we may end with something akin to George Stigler’s Conference Handbook.
Update 1: Here is nice poisonous comment that I received only yesterday but forgot to mention: “Nicolai, you are the master of academic economies of scope” (i.e., excessive recycling).
Update 2: Joe Mahoney reminded me of this classic: “No one can think higher of Professor Z’s paper than I do — and I think the paper is a complete mess.”
Update 3: I just recalled that the German economist mentioned above at a later occasion, a conference dinner, told me: “You know, Nicolai, it is actually really funny, but it turns out — giggle, giggle — that you have more citations than I have, heh-heh-heh.” Oh, the absurdities of this world.
Working Papers and Paper Submissions
| Nicolai Foss |
I have noted that people who present papers at conferences here in DK or at the research center I direct increasingly refuse to have their papers uploaded. This is more prevalent among US presenters (than Euro presenters) and more prevalent among management presenters (than econ presenters).
Unlike this blogger (but certainly like my co-blogger) some people will upload only brilliant, perfectly polished papers. Depending on the job market situation, people may be more or less reluctant to upload papers that may not contribute to their reputation for producing high quality, highly polished research. However, that is arguably only part of the explanation. (more…)
Nudity, Law, and Social Norms
| Peter Klein |
From Bryan Caplan I learn that Berkeley's "Naked Guy," a campus fixture during my graduate-school years there in the early 1990s, committed suicide last week. Bryan, then a Berkeley undergraduate, adds this astute observation: "At the time, I often pointed out that the Naked Guy was proof that social norms, not the law, were the foundation of civility: Even if nudity were legalized, only one student out of tens of thousands would take it all off."
The importance of informal norms and social conventions is increasingly recognized in economics (and law). The literature in this area goes back at least to Menger's (1883) analysis of institutions, and includes contributions from Schelling (1960), Ullman-Margalit (1977), Schotter (1981), Sugden (1986), Benson (1990), and Ellickson (1991). Recent work by Baker, Gibbons, and Murphy (2002) on relational contracting, focusing on the narrower question of firm boundaries, belongs on this list as well. This literature interprets social norms as equilibrium solutions to the kinds of coordination games popularized by Schelling (1960). Credible threats of reciprocity are the key. In these models agents abide by informal rules not out of a sense of moral duty, or from a process of unconscious socialization, but because it is in their rational self-interest to do so.
My sense is that management theory, and organizational behavior in particular, has yet to grapple with the insights from this strand of literature. Am I wrong?
Non-Monetary Compensation
| Peter Klein |
Managers: Looking for effective forms of non-monetary compensation? Scott Adams has suggestions here, here, and here.
Non-Market Motivators
| Peter Klein |
Some scholars and consultants say that incentive plans are harmful, that managers should instead try to create within organizations a sense of duty, collective identity, and overall communitarian spirit. If so, why not dump that dreadful motivational art and decorate the office with these Soviet propaganda posters? (HT: Jeff Tucker)
Malthus and the “Dismal Science”
| Peter Klein |
I too imagine that Williamson's critics will be delighted by the association with Malthus.
As a footnote, David Levy and Sandra Peart have done interesting revisionist work claiming that Malthus actually wasn't the target of Carlyle's famous quip.
Everyone knows that economics is the dismal science. And almost everyone knows that it was given this description by Thomas Carlyle, who was inspired to coin the phrase by T. R. Malthus's gloomy prediction that population would always grow faster than food, dooming mankind to unending poverty and hardship.
While this story is well-known, it is also wrong, so wrong that it is hard to imagine a story that is farther from the truth. At the most trivial level, Carlyle's target was not Malthus, but economists such as John Stuart Mill, who argued that it was institutions, not race, that explained why some nations were rich and others poor. Carlyle attacked Mill, not for supporting Malthus's predictions about the dire consequences of population growth, but for supporting the emancipation of slaves. It was this fact — that economics assumed that people were basically all the same, and thus all entitled to liberty — that led Carlyle to label economics "the dismal science."
See the full thing here. And take that, economist-bashers!
Organizations and Markets 
Recent Comments