In other disciplines to leave your
university because another offers to pay you more entails personal humiliation
and status degradation to a not inconsiderable degree: you are supposed to value
ideas and colleagues and students, not cash. In economics, however, the thrust
of the discipline makes a failure to respond to market forces a moral fault in
itself.
Brad DeLong explaining why public universities are having an especially difficult time hiring and keeping economists now that the privates are boosting salaries to a tremendous degree. Experience at GMU is consistent. See David Warsh (here and here) for the backstory.
so…ah…are you all going to be there this fall, and for the following two years? My MA won’t be as valuable without the GMU Mafia.
How much are we talking about in private US universities? I know recent PhDs won’t get as much as Robert Barro, but ball parks?
…and the value of nothing. Isn’t that the response?
I’ve seen a few profs jump ship — for more $$ and prestige — and how their ex-colleagues felt betrayed. (These were neo-classicals.) As usual, something true in theory doesn’t always work out.
Just let Brad know that I am willing to take his place, should he decide to take 7 figures at Columbia or Stanford, e.g., the Sachs treatment….
@Enda: about $100k. Look here: http://www.bluwiki.com/go/Econjobmarket_offers
Geore Mason U. keeps getting raided by upstart Chapman U. in Orange County, losing Nobel Laureate Vernon L. Smith and four of his younger colleagues, who have moved as a team to Chapman.
Now Chapman has taken away a team of five physicists from GMU to start its physics department.
The president of Chapman, by the way, is an economist, James L. Doti. He’s been among the most successful college presidents of the last two decades, taking Chapman from absolutely nowheresville. Just as GMU was built up on the strategy of providing a more conservative than normal college in a wealthy part of the country, Doti is following a similar strategy in Orange County, where there are a lot of rich conservative potential donors.
I used to be a social sciences dean at a large public university. Every year there was a meeting of the A&S deans from all the schools in our conference. And every year the conversations would go like this: “We just have to stop getting into bidding wars for one another’s star faculty.” Followed by a chorus of “Yes!” and “Hear, hear!” Followed by yet another year of getting into bidding wars for one another’s star faculty. It’s an arms race, and often a pretty mindless one at that.
Increase supply! Then demand will go down.
I’m used to seeing a lot of economic illiteracy, but this is a bit of a cake-taker.
Zbicyclist–I believe Bartman was pointing out that Supply does not *lead* to a change in demand–as the “then” suggests in the said economic-illiterate statement.
The examples you give are instances of the supply curve and demand curve shifting at the same time; they are not cases providing “exceptions to the rule” as you seem to suggest.
As an aside, note that it’s also difficult to “increase supply” in a way that would weaken these bidding wars. The relevant supply is of top economists from top programs with strong reputations and publications in the top journals. The sudden arrival in the US of one thousand econ Phds with a few pubs in Eastern Yutopian Journal of Underwater Studies would have no effect on the Star Wars. However, it would put pressure on the visitor and adjunct market which would, amusingly serve to widen the gap between the poorest paid journeymen and the Sargents and Shleifers of the world.
We can give you the best ragnarok online zeny and best service.
Everything is decided by the market instead of any single human being’s personal feeling.
But opportunity and efforts are same important on the way to yr goal.
Like the aion gold performance in the market.
Is it realistic?
Comments on this entry are closed.