Posts filed under ‘People’
It’s Williamson, at Last!
| Peter Klein |
A hearty congratulations to Oliver Williamson, co-recipient (along with Elinor Ostrom) of this year’s Nobel Prize in economics. As Williamson’s former PhD student, I’m thrilled beyond belief. The O&M crew have all been heavily influenced by Williamson (and, to a some degree, Ostrom too) and will have much more to say about this in the coming days. But, for now, just enjoy!
Ashley Judd and Bob Lucas
| Peter Klein |
The lovely and talented Ashley Judd was the celebrity guest this morning on NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!” (Ashley and I have a close personal connection, she being a junior-high-school classmate of my wife’s younger brother. Can’t get closer than that.) She answered trivia questions about the Nobel prize, one of which centered on Bob Lucas. What unfortunate thing happened to Lucas, she was asked? (a) He died from eating bad fish at the awards dinner, (b) his ex-wife got half the Nobel money from a previous divorce settlement, or (c) [I forgot (c)]. The correct answer, I’m sure you know, is (b). Ashley and the other participants thought it hilarious that someone would include a Nobel-prize provision in a divorce agreement, but even in 1987, when Lucas was divorced, it was a foregone conclusion that he would eventually win (he got the prize in 1995). Next time I see dear Ashley I’ll point this out. Personally, I’ve already pledged half my future Nobel winnings to charity.
The Fate of Famous Economists
| Peter Klein |
Even very famous ones. The Dundee Courier (what, you don’t read it?) reports that Adam Smith’s gravestone, in the courtyard of Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh, is in bad shape: “Smith’s gravestone could be in danger of deterioration after years of exposure to the elements, vandalism and neglect” (HT: MGK). According to a spokesperson for the World Monument Fund, cemeteries in the central parts of cities like Edinburgh have become “unsafe environment[s] home to illicit activities.” Apparently David Hume’s grave, elsewhere in Edinburgh, is also threatened. How ironic that we put dead politicians in great cathedrals and mausoleums (and, while living, give them Nobel Prizes), while actual heroes are abandoned and forgotten.
Nobel Stuff
| Peter Klein |
Because O&M is an econ-themed blog, I guess we’re obligated to post something about next week’s Nobel prize announcement. I confess I don’t follow the buzz that closely; the committee’s picks often make little sense to me and there are better things to do with one’s time. But, along the lines of this 2007 post, I note that several folks on Mankiw’s list of favorites work in the general area of organizational economics: Tirole, Milgrom, Hart, Holmström, Ostrom, Williamson, and Wilson.
Update: After today’s peace prize announcement, there is an obvious frontrunner: Ben S. Bernanke. Clearly actions and accomplishments don’t matter, only image and self-promoting rhetoric. (See also Mankiw’s take.)
Update II: Nolan McCarty (via Joshua Tucker) has an even more audacious prediction:
- Whereas Tirole, Nordhaus, Milgrom, and others have made important and fundamental scholarly contributions to economic theory and policy analysis, only Obama has the audacity to hope for better economic policy in the future. Can he design a health care system that covers everyone and saves money? Yes, he can! Can he reengineer the financial system to eliminate systemic risk, protect consumers while maintaining the benefits of modern finance? Yes, he can! Can he reduce greenhouse emissions without reducing jobs and economic growth? Yes, he can! What actual economist would dare say those things? For his vision alone, he deserves the prize.
- Obama has never been associated rational expectations theory or the efficient markets hypothesis. In fact, he’s turned his administration into one big Behavioral Economics Seminar.
- I’ve heard rumors that Obama still plans to broker a peace treaty between Paul Krugman and Bob Lucas. Unfortunately, the track 2 negotiations seem to have broken down.
- The Scandinavians could really stick it to George Bush by giving Obama two Nobel Prizes.
- He taught at the University of Chicago.
Masters of Finance
| Peter Klein |
The American Finance Association has assembled a terrific set of video interviews and lectures with eminent financial economists including Markowitz, Sharpe, Samuelson, Merton, Scholes, Arrow, Fama, and Myers. (HT: Fama/French.)
Uncle Miltie on Economic Communication
| Peter Klein |
No, not Milton Friedman, but John Milton. See “Areopagitica: Milton’s Influence on Classical and Modern Political and Economic Thought” by Isaac M. Morehouse in the excellent new online journal Libertarian Papers. Says Morehouse:
Milton’s work has something to teach economists not only in its content but in its style and strategy. Milton did not restrict his theories on free speech to scholarly journals. Though his rhetorical style hardly seems accessible to the masses today, he intentionally wrote a short pamphlet with conscious allusions to popular sentiment in order to communicate rather complex ideas to the body politic. Economists who lament the lack of economic knowledge among the “man on the street” and the preponderance of antigrowth economic policy which result have much to learn from Milton. He wrote his work because he truly wanted change. For that reason, he made it accessible to the people whose hearts and minds he would have to win to see change come about. Modern economists would do well to more frequently attempt communication with more than a handful of scholars.
Along these lines I have to admit that I admire Paul Krugman, not because of the substance of arguments, which I find puerile and unformed, or his writing style, which is haughty and shrill, but because he tries to write for a popular audience, not just to his fellow specialists. (OK, actually, Krugman seems to have quit doing or writing about serious economic research, and doesn’t seem to have read a journal article in the last 15 years, but you get my point.)
Update: See also “Heroic Milton, Happy Birthday” from the NYRB.
Another Economist Gets a Genius Award
| Peter Klein |
This year it’s Esther Duflo, leader in the experimental approach to poverty reduction. She joins past economist-MacArthur fellows Matt Rabin, Avner Greif, Kevin Murphy, Nancy Folbre, Michael Kremer, and (way back in 1983, Alice Rivlin).
Introducing Guest Blogger Glenn MacDonald
| Peter Klein |
It’s a pleasure to welcome Glenn MacDonald as our newest guest blogger. Glenn is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and Strategy at the Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis, and Director of the Center for Research in Economics and Strategy. His recent research has focused on optimal compensation in competitive product markets, the impact of investor protection on entrepreneurship and economic growth, industry dynamics, and coalitional game theory foundations for strategy. His work has appeared in many journals including the Journal of Political Economy, Econometrica, American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Management Science. He’s also an Associate Editor of Management Science. Welcome Glenn!
Interviews with Nobel Laureates
| Peter Klein |
I just discovered that the official Nobel site has a multimedia section, with interviews, videos of the ceremonies and acceptance speeches, and so on. Most of the recent economics Laureates are included. Interesting stuff.
Bonus Nobel material: Josh Wright makes a good case for an economics prize honoring the UCLA tradition in the theory of the firm, property rights, and transaction costs. Josh himself is an excellent representative of that tradition. And here’s an old post on the prospects for a Nobel prize in organizational economics.
Williamson is still my favorite dark horse candidate, for obvious personal reasons, but I’d be delighted to see Klein, Alchian, Demsetz, or even Barzel and Cheung recognized for their contributions.
Rose Friedman and Frank Knight
| Peter Klein |
You probably heard that Rose Friedman died yesterday. I haven’t read the Friedmans’ memoir and didn’t know, until Ross Emmett and Greg Ransom pointed it out yesterday, that Rose had been Frank Knight’s research assistant at Chicago and was planning a PhD dissertation on capital theory. She never finished nor, to my knowledge, published anything on the topic. What do you think she would have written? Knight produced very few PhD students (perhaps, given his idiosyncratic views, he was not the ideal dissertation adviser) and it would be interesting to know more about Rose’s experiences and her views on capital (presumably close to Knight’s, not Hayek’s).
Here’s what she says in Two Lucky People (p. 51):
After considerable discussion with Professor Knight, I decided that I would concentrate on a history of capital theory as a Ph.D. thesis topic. It would fit into my assisting with his research and was a kind of research that I found interesting. Knight approved, adding, “I have been working on that for twenty years without success but perhaps you will succeed.” I never did. During Milton’s and my honeymoon, I completed drafts of the contributions to capital theory by Longfield and Senior. However, when we started life in New York, I went to work for the National Bureau [of Economic Research] on a bond study postponing, I thought temporarily, my dissertation. I have never finished it.
Mintzberg Interview
| Peter Klein |
A short interview with Henry Mintzberg, mostly about his forthcoming book Managing, in today’s WSJ (not sure if it is gated). Best line:
I talk about what I call “the inevitably flawed manager.” We’re all flawed, but basically, effective managers are people whose flaws are not fatal under the circumstances. Maybe the best managers are simply ordinary, healthy people who aren’t too screwed up.
Four Talks on Keynes
| Peter Klein |
Videos from February’s inaugural event of Duke University’s Center for the History of Political Economy, a series of lectures on Keynes:
- Maynard Keynes of Bloomsbury by Craufurd Goodwin
- Keynes as Policy Advisor by E. Roy Weintraub
- Keynes and Economics by Kevin D. Hoover
- Keynes and Hayek by Bruce Caldwell
The texts are here. Thanks to Ross Emmett for the pointer.
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.
Kline Mystery Solved
| Peter Klein |
Thanks to Maureen Kline for solving the Peter Kline mystery:
Hi, just came across this post although it’s over a year old and you have surely solved the mystery by now; the “real” Peter Kline is my father, who currently lives in the Washington DC area (Silver Spring, MD). He started out as an English and Drama teacher in Washington area private schools, and co-founded Thornton Friends School in the 1970s. The school had a very innovative approach and great success, particularly in turning around “problem students.” Eventually he and his then-wife Nancy turned the school over to others to pursue other projects, and Dad has been “free-lancing” ever since, mainly training teachers in various school systems around the country, writing the books you mentioned, and doing extensive training within companies (Kodak, IDC and others).
Update: PK himself checks in with a comment to the original post.
Peter: If you get any of my letters from the Nobel Committee, will you please pass them on?
Ken Lay as Political Capitalist
| Peter Klein |
This blog has taken a special interest in Ken Lay, not just because of his local connections but also because he typifies the modern CEO of a regulated industry, more lobbyist and PR man than manager. Lay, a long-time energy regulator before becoming Enron CEO, was skilled in the ways of Washington — making his reputation as poster-boy for “unbridled capitalism” all the more ironic.
Here is Rob Bradley, quoting from his book Political Capitalism, on Lay and Enron:
Who was Ken Lay, the architect and chairman of Enron from its formation in the mid-1980s until its bankruptcy? The once-celebrated visionary of the energy industry was not an engineer, as were most leaders in the energy sector. Lay did not possess an accounting or finance background, as did some senior executives. He never clawed his way up the corporate ladder in various operational divisions, much less built a company from scratch. No, Enron’s leader was a Ph.D. economist, interested in the big picture and the ways of political power. His résumé was top-heavy with Washington experience, acquired at three federal jobs, the last two regulating the energy industry. . . .
Government favor propelled Enron’s profit-centers in domestic power plants, natural gas and electricity marketing, wind and solar power, infrastructure in underdeveloped countries, and unconventional natural gas production. Enron was all about complex federal laws and administrative regulations, such as special provisions within the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978, Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978, Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, and Energy Policy Act of 1992 — or FERC rulings such as Regulation of Natural Gas Pipelines after Partial Wellhead Decontrol (FERC Order No. 436: 1985), Pipeline Service Obligations and Revisions to Regulations Governing Self-Implementing Transportation Under Part 284 of the Commission’s Regulations (FERC Order No. 636: 1992), and Promoting Wholesale Competition Through Open Access Non-discriminatory Transmission Services by Public Utilities; Recovery of Stranded Costs by Public Utilities and Transmitting Utilities (FERC Order 888: 1996). The arcane was pure gold to Enron.
Department of They Just Don’t Get It
| Peter Klein |
Paul Ehrlich, author (with Anne Ehrlich) of The Population Bomb (1968), one of the biggest, um, bombs of the last several decades, is unrepentant. Ehrlich’s main thesis was that the world was running out of natural resources, and population growth was expanding exponentially, leading to an inevitable decline in living standards. Needless to say, none of the three predictions came true, and Bomb became one of those books that cultural anthropologists study for its train-wreck value. Now, apparently for laughs, the Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development has invited the Ehrlichs to write “The Population Bomb Revisited” for a forthcoming symposium. After all these years, the Ehrlichs are no closer to grasping the Econ 101 concept of “resources,” namely means used by human actors to achieve desired ends — not physical stocks of raw materials, but raw materials interacted with human knowledge and purpose. (more…)
McNamara
| Peter Klein |
I haven’t read all the obituaries of Robert S. McNamara, who died early this morning, but the ones I’ve seen focus almost exclusively on his tenure as US Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War. Few mention how he got to be Secretary — an HBS professorship, WWII experience in procurement as a member of Tex Thornton’s “Whiz Kids,” a stint at Ford Motor Company after the war, and the presidency of Ford just before taking the job as Defense Secretary. The Times notes, in passing, that “Mr. McNamara had risen by his mastery of systems analysis, the business of making sense of large organizations — taking on a big problem, sorting it out, studying every facet, finding simplicity in the complexity.” Um, OK, I guess that’s one way to describe it. In any case, none of the obituaries I’ve seen so far discusses this in any detail, or seems to realize that McNamara’s approach to managing large organizations is controversial among researchers and practitioners.
Here’s a brief comment I made last year on McNamara’s management style.
Scott Shane Blogging at the NYT
| Peter Klein |
Scott joins the “You’re the Boss” blogging team (via Dane Stangler).
The Professional Strategy of the Early Austrian Economists
| Peter Klein |
O&M, like other niche academic blogs, deals occasionally with the history and sociology of this or that school of economic or management thought. We think often about professional strategy — how to promote our ideas, how to secure financial and institutional support, how to recruit students and fellow-travelers (“groupies,” according to Nicolai), what competing and complementary movements and schools of thought (not to mention rival blogs) are up to, and so on.
Given our close association with the Austrian school, you might be surprised to learn that the founding Austrians were not at all “strategic” in this sense. They held strongly to the view that truth wins out in the long run, so there is no need to build formal institutions or establish a “movement.” This comes out in a passage from Mises’s recently released Memoirs (a new translation of his earlier Notes and Recollections):
It is necessary to correct the misunderstandings that can be called forth by using the expression “Austrian School.” Neither Menger nor Böhm-Bawerk wanted to found a school in the sense customarily used in university circles. They never attempted to turn young students into blind disciples, nor did they, in turn, provide these same students with professorships. They knew that through books and an academic course of instruction they could promote an understanding suited to dealing with economic problems, thus rendering an important service to society. They understood, however, that they could not rear economists. As pioneers and creative thinkers, they recognized that one cannot arrange for scientific progress, nor breed innovation according to plan. They never attempted to propagandize their theories. Truth would prevail of its own accord when man possessed the faculties necessary to perceive it. Using impertinent means to cause people to pay lip service to a teaching was of no use if they lacked the ability to grasp its substance and significance. (more…)
Doug North Line of the Day
| Peter Klein |
From Bob Margo’s EH.Net review of North, Wallis, and Weingast’s Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History:
In my book people are iconic if I can summarize their life’s work in ten words or less. North takes two: “Institutions matter.”
He adds: “The opposite perspective — viewed in isolation most institutions don’t matter much, being Harberger triangles and small ones at that — has its fans in modern economics. But North has convinced the majority of economic historians, a goodly share of world’s development wonks, and the Nobel Prize Committee that he’s right.”
Update: Art Carden beat me to this.
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