Posts filed under ‘– Klein –’
Greif Under Fire Again
| Peter Klein |
We noted previously Jeremy Edwards and Sheilagh Ogilvie’s challenge to Avner Greif, contenting that he misread his primary source material, and Greif’s response. Now Charles Rowley has published a paper in Public Choice accusing Greif of academic dishonesty, namely by failing to cite Janet Landa’s prior work on the economics of identity and trust:
This commentary demonstrates that Avner Greif, through his citation practices, has denied Janet Landa her full intellectual property rights with respect to her contributions to the economic analysis of trust and identity. He has done so by systematically failing to cite her published papers in this field, incidentally promoting his own publications as meriting priority. In consequence, he has effectively blocked out Janet Landa’s work from the mainstream economics literature, albeit not from the literature of law and economics, where his own writings have not been directed.
It’s an odd piece. I’m not sufficiently familiar with Landa’s work to evaluate its place in the history of thought in this area, or to judge whether Greif has appropriated her ideas without attribution. Rowley doesn’t accuse Greif of plagiarism, only of failing to cite an important predecessor and overstating the novelty of his own work. This is a difficult claim to substantiate; obviously the evaluation of prior contributions in one’s own area is highly subjective. And the implication (later in the piece) that Greif’s citation practices contributed to his Genius Award seems like a cheap shot. It is true, however, that contemporary economists tend to be woefully ignorant of the history of economic thought (and, as Rowley implies, that game theorists have what might be called a “healthy sense of self”).
Update: I missed earlier discussions of the Rowley piece at Monkey Cage and Crooked Timber. The Monkey Cage commentary is disappointing, mostly ad hominem snarks at Rowley, the field of public choice, and (most bizarre, but it’s Brad Delong), the Mont Pelerin Society. Henry’s analysis at Crooked Timber is more serious, and I think he gets it right.
Coasean Bargaining Around Wrigley Field
| Peter Klein |
While enjoying the Phillies’ 12-inning victory over the Cubs Tuesday night Joe Mahoney, Jongwook Kim, and I talked about the implications of the Coase Theorem for the Wrigley Rooftops. The rooftop seats are still there — and some are quite fancy — despite many attempts by the Cubs over the years to have them removed, as beneficiaries of an unwarranted positive externality. Apparently a few years back the Cubs sought an injunction against the rooftop owners on grounds of copyright infringement, and most of the owners agreed in an out-of-court settlement to pay royalties to the team in exchange for official endorsement.
One can imagine other ways to internalize the externality — the team could build a wall to obscure the view, buy out the rooftop buildings’ owners, or pay them to take down the seats. There are only a dozen or so buildings, so I don’t imagine that the bargaining costs are very high, suggesting that the current arrangement is the one that maximizes joint surplus, but some of you readers must be much more familiar with the details. What’s going on, from a Coasean perspective? Certainly this is an interesting example for a classroom discussion of property rights and the Coase Theorem. I thought I’d find several online discussions but a quick Google search came up with just one law-review article. It seems that more recently, the club has been going after the rooftop owners not for selling seats, but for using the Cubs logo without permission.
Heterogeneity and Health Care
| Peter Klein |
Further to Russ’s post: One of the most frustrating aspects of the discussion surrounding health-care reform is the tendency of politicians, activists, and even a few economists to talk about “health care” as if it’s a homogeneous blob, or an intangible thing like “love” or “happiness.” Of course, what we produce and consume, what we exchange on markets, is not “health care” but specific, discrete health-care goods and services (procedures, medications, insurance policies, etc.). If you never go to the doctor and consume only one aspirin per year, do you have “health care”? If not, what specific bundle of goods and services constitutes a unit of “health care”?
Once we realize we are really talking about discrete, marginal units of particular goods and services the very notion of “universal access to health care” becomes problematic. What exactly is it that people have a universal right to? It’s analogous to debates about the environment. One can have a sort of philosophical or meta-economic commitment to “the environment,” and its protection (hoo-boy), but this means very little in terms of specific trade-offs at the margin. Is it better to have one more house or airport runway or corn field, or one more patch of meadow or forest? Being an “environmentalist” doesn’t answer that question. You know the old story: everybody values “safety,” but that doesn’t mean you never leave your house or, when you do, drive to work in a Sherman tank. You willingly sacrifice some amount of safety in exchange for units of other scarce and valuable goods (like access to the world outside your house, time spent traveling, money). Each of us evaluates this trade-off differently. Likewise, the marginal valuations of specific health-care goods and services, relative to other consumption and investment goods, cash balances, etc. varies from individual to individual. There’s no such thing as “health care.” As always, heterogeneity matters.
John Hughes
| Peter Klein |
You probably heard that John Hughes, director of the great youth comedies of the 1980s, passed away last week. Perhaps his most lasting achievement was making a star out of Ben Stein. Everyone knows “Bueller? Bueller?” and “Anyone? Anyone?” But do you remember the subject of Stein’s famous lecture?
Naturally, when Hollywood wants to portray the most boring academic subject imaginable, it turns to. . . .
Statistics Is Sexy
| Peter Klein |
So say Hal Varian, Erik Brynjolfsson, and Peter Orszag, among others quoted in this NY Times piece (via Laura M). “I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians,” says Varian, who now toils away as chief economist at Google, though he’s not far from the hearts of most economics PhD students. Here’s Brynjolfsson: “We’re rapidly entering a world where everything can be monitored and measured. But the big problem is going to be the ability of humans to use, analyze, and make sense of the data.”
The article doesn’t actually say much about the substance of the “new” statistics, but the writer has in mind inductive, very-large-N, data-mining exercises (the kind of analysis not taught to social-science and business-administration graduate students, except perhaps some marketing and finance PhDs). Of course we still make our students take multiple semesters of classical statistics and econometrics.
Solution to a Credit Bubble? More Credit
| Peter Klein |
As noted before (1, 2, 3), policymakers (and some economists) seem immune to the argument that the credit bubble may have been caused by, you know, too much credit, and that encouraging people to increase their debt levels even more might not be the optimal policy response.
Bill Shughart, a very good economist, notes some disturbing parallels between the monetary and regulatory policies that led to the housing crisis and the US government’s “cars for clunkers” program. Whatever its effect on improving air quality (marginal) or stimulating aggregate demand (barf), one consequence is that people who would not otherwise have taken out a new car loan will do so, increasing total and average leverage in the economy. Will banks be pressured to extend new-car credit to “subprime” borrowers? Well, if all you care about is total lending, this is a good thing.
Better Coauthoring Tools in Office 2010
| Peter Klein |
Despite several highly rewarding coauthoring relationships I do write some papers by myself. One problem with coauthored papers and presentations, as you probably know, is version confusion: Am I editing the latest version? Is one of my coauthors editing the same version at the same time? Did I remember to accept or reject her changes before working on mine? As the number of coauthors increases to three or even four, these coordination problems multiply.
According to WWD the new version of Office includes much better coauthoring tools:
Word 2010, OneNote 2010, and PowerPoint 2010 now include a co-authoring feature, enabling multiple authors to work on the same document at the same time. This is a welcome change from having to use SharePoint, where only one author at a time can check a document out for editing. The addition of co-authoring is really ratcheting Office 2010’s collaboration options.
In related news, the newest version of Skype allows you to share your desktop with a colleague, which might be another good way to make slides for a joint presentation.
Short Piece on Probability Theory
| Peter Klein |
“Risk, Uncertainty, and Economic Organization” is my contribution to the Hoppe Festschrift. I got the topic idea from some blogger guy. My chapter focuses, as the title suggests, on Knightian uncertainty. Hoppe places Knight, along with Ludwig von Mises, squarely in the frequentist camp (typically associated with Ludwig’s brother Richard). I tend to agree with Hoppe although, as I discuss in the paper, there are many interpretations of Knight, and some commentators argue that subjective (Bayesian) probability theory renders untenable the Knightian distinction between insurable risk and true uncertainty (see, for example, Dick’s 1982 paper).
Ultimately, however, I don’t think the approach to the firm promoted on this blog depends on a particular interpretation of Knight. The central claim is that judgment represents a kind of decision-making that cannot be traded on the market, and that therefore requires the entrepreneur exercising such judgment to establish a firm (more specifically, to take ownership of capital resources). To put it differently, ownership of assets implies a kind of ultimate responsibility that the owner cannot delegate. I think one can be agnostic about exactly why judgment isn’t tradable — it could be a form of asymmetric information, rather than ontological differences between types of knowledge — and still buy the basic Knight-Mises-Foss-Klein approach to the firm.
HR Graphic of the Week
| Peter Klein |
From Wired’s “New Rules for Highly Evolved Humans” feature: “Use a Plausible Excuse When You Call In Sick.”
The Integration of Micro and Macroeconomics from a Historical Perspective
| Peter Klein |
That’s the title of a conference next week at the University of São Paulo featuring eminent economists and historians of economic thought such as Robert Gordon, Kevin Hoover, Wade Hands, and Phil Mirowski. According to the conference website the proceedings will be streamed live, so you can participate even if you can’t make it to São Paulo.
Introducing Guest Blogger Russ Coff
| Peter Klein |
We’re delighted to introduce Russell Coff as our newest guest blogger. Russ is Associate Professor of Organization and Management at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. He has published widely on the knowledge- and resource-based foundations of competitive advantage, with a particular focus on human capital and its role in M&A, compensation policy, and other aspects of organizational design. Russ is past Chair of the Academy of Management’s BPS Division and will be pretty busy leading up to and during the AoM meeting, but he’s promised to carve out some blogging time now and between sessions. We’re really looking forward to his insights. Welcome, Russ!
Plus ça change. . .
| Peter Klein |
Another quip from 1215:
The politician’s need to peer at least a short distance into the future, in the hope of getting the timing of difficult choices right, meant that few rulers could afford to dismiss astrology. Non-astronomical methods were tried too: Henry II’s chancellor, Thomas Becket, consulted a palm-reader before embarking on an expedition against the Welsh in 1157. But the transfer of Arabic science made astrology the most impressively academic of all methods for telling the future in the twelfth-century West and many rulers turned to astrologers much as politicians today turn to economists.
Danzinger and Gillingham go on to discuss some twelfth-century critics of astrology: “Evidently then, as now, different people held varying opinions about the science of forecasting.”
IBM Buys SPSS for $1.2 billion
| Peter Klein |
Wow. “In acquiring SPSS, IBM said it was expanding its focus on business-analytics technology and services to meet a growing client need to cut costs. According to IDC estimates, the world-wide market for business analytics software will grow by 4% to $25 billion this year.” SPSS must be the most valuable product ever created by a political science professor. (I may or may not mean just monetary value.) HT: Cliff.
Alliances and Internal Capital Markets
| Peter Klein |
An interesting contribution to the literature on internal capital markets from David Robinson, “Strategic Alliances and the Boundaries of the Firm,” appeared recently in the Review of Financial Studies (now the third-ranked journal in finance behind the JF and JFE):
Strategic alliances are long-term contracts between legally distinct organizations that provide for sharing the costs and benefits of a mutually beneficial activity. In this paper, I develop and test a model that helps explain why firms sometimes prefer alliances over internally organized projects. I introduce managerial effort into a model of internal capital markets and show how strategic alliances help overcome incentive problems that arise when headquarters cannot pre-commit to particular capital allocations. The model generates a number of implications, which I test using a large sample of alliance transactions in conjunction with Compustat data.
The model builds on Williamson’s concept of forbearance, the idea that courts will enforce contracts between distinct legal entities but will not intervene in intra-firm disputes. The idea is that moving project with particular characteristics — Robinson calls them “longshots” — from a subunit of a diversified firm to an alliance partner allows the firm’s management to make a credible commitment not to expropriate value from the project manager ex post. Empirical evidence shows that projects with longshot characteristics, measured in various ways using Compustat segment data, are indeed more likely to undertaken by alliance partners. A nice paper with a good mix of theory and evidence.
Is This In the Training Manual for Academic Deans?
| Peter Klein |
Matilda, mother of King Henry II, advising her son on the business of royal patronage (quoted in Danny Danzinger and John Gillinghman, 1215: The Year of Magna Carta, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 2003, p. 178):
He should keep posts vacant for as long as possible, saving the revenues from them for himself, and keeping aspirants to them hanging on him hope. She supported this advice by an unkind parable: an unruly hawk, if meat is often shown it and then snatched away or hid, will become keener, more attentive, and more obedient.
Speaking of deans, I happened to catch Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Cyrstal Skull the other day. The film, you probably know, takes place in the 1950s and centers on Indy’s confrontation with a group of Soviet treasure-hunters. Early in the film Indy loses his academic post because of suspected Communist sympathies. At the end, after defeating the bad guys (hope that’s not a spoiler), Indy not only gets his job back, but is made Associate Dean. That this is considered a reward shows how little anyone in Hollywood knows about university life!
Thanks to Guest Blogger Benito Arruñada
| Peter Klein |
Thanks to Benito Arruñada for a provocative and insightful series of posts over the last few weeks. We look forward to Benito’s continuing participation in the comment threads here at O&M. You can also follow the action (in English and Spanish) at Benito’s own blog.
Watch for more guest bloggers to be announced soon!
More on Wall Street
| Peter Klein |
Further to my recent Wall Street post, see Jeff Tucker’s take, “Capitalism as Drama”:
In the same way that the Godfather movies shaped the culture of organized crime, Wall Street continues to influence the way traders and high-flying capitalists understand themselves.
And it’s no wonder. The impression one is left with is all about the courage, the thrill of the fight, the riskiness of entrepreneurship, that struggle to obtain vast wealth, and the striving for the status of “master of the universe.” It pictures commerce as a gladiator fight, a magnificent and relentless struggle for progress, an epoch and massively important terrain in which the fate of civilization is determined. (more…)
Scandals and Financial Panics in Historical Perspective
| Peter Klein |
The Spring 2009 issue of Business History Review focuses on scandals and panics. Here’s the TOC. Follow the link for abstracts and ordering information.
A SPECIAL ISSUE ON SCANDALS AND PANICS
With an introduction by guest-editor Per H. HansenNaomi R. Lamoreaux: “Scylla or Charybdis? Historical Reflections on Two Basic Problems of Corporate Governance”
Thomas Max Safley: “Business Failure and Civil Scandal in Early Modern Europe”
Richard Sylla, Robert E. Wright, and David J. Cowen: “Alexander Hamilton, Central Banker: Crisis Management during the U.S. Financial Panic of 1792”
Eric Hilt: “Rogue Finance: The Life and Fire Insurance Company and the Panic of 1826”
Edward J. Balleisen: “Private Cops on the Fraud Beat: The Limits of American Business Self-Regulation, 1895-1932”
Federal Reserve “Independence”
| Peter Klein |
I was invited to sign the Open Letter in support of Fed independence but, like Jerry O’Driscoll, Bob Higgs, and Larry White, I don’t support the cause. Follow the links above for detailed arguments. For my part:
1. The Open Letter focuses exclusively on monetary policy, as if the Fed’s Congressional critics like Ron Paul just want to know how the Federal Funds Rate is set. But the Fed conducts not only monetary policy, but fiscal policy as well, especially during the last 18 months. If the Fed can buy and hold any assets it likes, if it works hand-in-hand with the White House and the Treasury to coordinate trillion-dollar bailouts, isn’t it reasonable to have some oversight? (And don’t forget bank supervision. Even the Fed’s defenders recognize a need to separate its monetary-policy and bank-supervision roles. But as long as the Fed continues as a bank regulator, shouldn’t someone should be watching the watchmen?)
2. The Open Letter itself is poorly crafted, full of unsubstantiated assertions and misleading statements. There’s no argument there, as Higgs emphasizes. Actually, neither the time-series or cross-sectional evidence suggests any correlation between central-bank independence (whatever that means) and economic performance.
3. More generally, the Fed is a central planning agency, and it performs about as well as every central planning agency in history. Have we learned nothing from the huge literature on comparative economic systems? “Independence,” in this context, simply means the absence of external constraint. There are no performance incentives and no monitoring or governance. There is no feedback or selection mechanism. There is no outside evaluation (outside the blogosphere). Why on earth would we expect an organization operating in that environment to improve social welfare? Is this institution run by men, or gods?
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