Category: Education
The Hayek Twitter game
The game: Take a sentence or two on Hayek’s clause and qualification ridden Germanic prose, and turn it into a 144 character twitter feed.
Example. Here’s a brief passage from Hayek 1976 essay “Socialism and Science” posted a few days ago in the comments by Richard Ebeling:
“A society in which everyone is organized as a member of some group to force government to help him get what he wants is self-destructive. There is no way from preventing some from feeling that they have been treated unjustly — that feeling is bound to be wide spread in any social order — but arrangements which enable groups of disgruntled people to extort satisfaction of their claims — or in the recognition of an ‘entitlement’, to use the new-fangled phrase — make any society unmanageable.”
And here it is as a 144 character twitter feed:
When everyone is organized to force government to get them what they want, many will be left feeling that they have been treated unjustly.
Ho hum! I would have done “Rent-seeking groups lead to perceptions of unfairness.”
Tips for book recommendations
Nicoli asks:
Any tips, other than reading this blog, on how to find a good book recommendation? I want something like a netflix for books, but feel that system wouldn’t work given the significantly greater time and attention requirement for reading versus let’s say, watching Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.
1. Go to the public library and browse both the new books section and the “Books Returned” carts.
2. Read the archives of this blog, filed under “Books.”
3. Weight Amazon reviews by the intelligence of the writer, and the length of the review, not by whether it is positive or negative.
4. Every year read some of the classics on Harold Bloom’s list in The Western Canon.
5. The very best books in categories you think you cannot stand (“gardening,” “basketball,” whatever) will be superb. It is not hard to find out what they are.
Why so little gas station arbitrage?
RSaunders requests:
How does the Exxon at Virginia Ave [in DC] sustain gas prices that are $1 higher than anywhere else in DC (even Adams Morgan). Realize it’s only gas within 3mi and people probably don’t buy a full tank, but can there really be that many people about to run out of gas to buy 1 gal of gas at a time to sustain this differential?
This Exxon comes up right before the entrance ramps to the major highways, right before leaving the NW quadrant of the District for northern Virginia. Some people simply need to fill up and they are intimidated by the notion of getting off the highway in the suburbs, finding a gas station on the right side of the road, making a subsequent U turn, and finding the entrance ramp back on to the highway they wanted. They also may have memories of getting back on the Capital Beltway in the wrong direction, being confused by those ramps where going south is called “Baltimore” and going north is called “Richmond.”
If that ain’t worth $5 for America’s elite, I don’t know what is.
A fellow with almost the same name — rsanders — requested a book on Romanian political history.
When does money help you remember?
In a new article, Kou Murayama and Christof Kuhbandner write:
Money’s ability to enhance memory has received increased attention in recent research. However, previous studies have not directly addressed the time-dependent nature of monetary effects on memory, which are suggested to exist by research in cognitive neuroscience, and the possible detrimental effects of monetary rewards on learning interesting material, as indicated by studies in motivational psychology. By utilizing a trivia question paradigm, the current study incorporated these perspectives and examined the effect of monetary rewards on immediate and delayed memory performance for answers to uninteresting and interesting questions. Results showed that monetary rewards promote memory performance only after a delay. In addition, the memory enhancement effect of monetary rewards was only observed for uninteresting questions. These results are consistent with both the hippocampus-dependent memory consolidation model of reward learning and previous findings documenting the ineffectiveness of monetary rewards on tasks that have intrinsic value.
The pointer is from Michael Rosenwald, who recently published The Silent Season of a Hero: The Sports Writing of Gay Talese.
A 1910 French prediction for education in the year 2000
You can click to enlarge the image. Here are more French images from 1910 postcards, here are the German postcards, and for the pointer to the excellent links I thank Jules Sigall.
Professionalism vs. amateurism
Here was one MR reader request, from Philip W:
Professionalism vs. Amateurism, the merits and demerits of each. And the relationship of these to science, or “science.” How large is the role of “common sense” in your way of thinking about the world? Should we wish that policymakers would have more professionalism, or more common sense?
Amateurism is splendid when amateurs actually can make contributions. A lot of the Industrial Revolution was driven by the inventions of so-called amateurs. One of the most revolutionary economic sectors today — social networking — has been led by amateurs. Maybe it is stretching the concept, but you can interpret Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as amateurs too.
Amateurs are associated with free entry and a lot of experimentation. Barbecue quality is very often driven by amateurs, and in general amateurs still make contributions to food and cooking. The difficulty of maintaining productive amateurs is one of the reasons why scientific progress periodically slows down. Specialization, however necessary it may be, can make big breakthroughs harder at some margin. (There is a good recent paper on this.) This is one aspect of the division of labor which Adam Smith did not fully grasp, though he hinted at it.
Through computers, and the internet, the notion of amateurs working together is becoming more important. This includes astronomical searches and theorem-proving, plus collection and collation of data, and Wikipedia; this is Shirky’s “cognitive surplus.”
On the latter part of the question, what is “common sense”? Most common sense, if one can call it that, is a highly refined product of a lot of trial and error. The real question is how to refine one’s common sense.
Policymakers need more of a sheer willingness to do the right thing, even if it means sacrificing reelection. Selection mechanisms, however, do not much favor that bravery. For a sane, well-adjusted person, the job is neither fun nor well-paying, so the job attracts people who love being in office and thus who fail to do the right thing.
When specialization proceeds very, very far, the difference between a professional and an amateur is sometimes no longer well-defined.
Who predicts well?
…what separated those with modest but significant predictive ability from the utterly hopeless was their style of thinking. Experts who had one big idea they were certain would reveal what was to come were handily beaten by those who used diverse information and analytical models, were comfortable with complexity and uncertainty and kept their confidence in check.
That is from Tetlock and Gardner, here is more. On that general, theme, here is Dan Gardner’s new book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions are Next to Worthless, and You Can do Better.
Why is Finland so rich?
James, a loyal MR reader, has a request:
Why is Finland, with its tax distortions and subsidies, as rich as it is?
1. Finland’s taxes and subsidies do not much discourage the adoption of cutting-edge technologies and thus Finland has moved relatively close to “the frontier.” Ed Prescott and Stephen Parente have a very important paper about the difference between interventions which have this effect and those which do not. It’s one of the best papers on economic development.
2. Finland’s high taxes do discourage male labor supply and that is one reason why the country is not as wealthy, in per capita terms, as the United States.
3. There are extensive day care and child care subsidies, which in part counteracts the effects of high taxes on female labor supply.
4. Finland has one of the best educational systems in the world and high levels of human capital. You might re-ask your same question about living standards in Russia, which had far worse economic policies than Finland, yet is not too far from first world standards in the major cities.
5. Finland invested in communications and IT at exactly the right time. For a relatively small economy this had a huge payoff.
6. Some people might cite Finnish industrial policy as having driven growth; I am not sure how significant it was.
7. An open economy, with lots of trade, is usually much freer than traditional statistics will make it seem. International markets are a disciplining force and they cannot be ruled by the domestic government.
8. That all said, I am not especially optimistic about Finland. Their current investment and R&D stats are not those of an economy on the move. They will be hit hard by aging and they have not made immigration policy work in their favor. Public sector productivity is not as high as you might think (see also the McKinsey report). Do they have another big success on the way? Can they get further productivity gains in cell phones and timber? It’s not obvious. They’ll do “well enough,” however, see #1.
Here is a McKinsey study of Finland (pdf). Here is a good Charles Sabel essay (pdf) on the economic future of Finland.
*Why Marx was Right*
That’s the new Terry Eagleton book, which apparently needs no subtitle. Most of the claims in the book are correct, and they debunk superficial or incorrect readings of Marx. In that regard it is useful and it is also clearly written. Still, I have to judge it as a bad book, for instance:
But the so-called socialist system had its achievements, too. China and the Soviet Union dragged their citizens out of economic backwardness into the modern industrial world, at however horrific a human cost; and the cost was so steep partly because of the hostility of the capitalist West.
Or:
Building up an economy from very low levels is a backbreaking, dispiriting task. It is unlikely that men and women will freely submit to the hardships it involves.
Or:
…there is a paradoxical sense in which Stalinism, rather than discrediting Marx’s work, bears witness to its validity.
Try this one:
Revolution is generally thought to be the opposite of democracy, as the work of sinister underground minorities out to subvert the will of the majority. In fact, as a process by which men and women assume power over their own existence through popular councils and assemblies, it is a great deal more democratic than anything on offer at the moment. The Bolsheviks had an impressive record of open controversy within their ranks, and the idea that they should rule the country as the only political party was no part of their original programme.
Ahem. Terry Eagleton…telephone!
The culture that is Manhattan James Heckman gone wild edition
A mad-as-heck Manhattan mom says her daughter’s Ivy League dreams have been all but dashed — and she’s only 4 years old.
Nicole Imprescia is suing the $19,000-a-year York Avenue Preschool, saying her daughter, Lucia, was forced to spend too much time with lesser-minded 2- and 3-year-olds when she should have been focusing on test preparation to get into an elite elementary school.
The suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, notes that “getting a child into the Ivy League starts in nursery school” and says the Upper East Side school promised Imprescia it would “prepare her daughter for the ERB, an exam required for admission into nearly all the elite private elementary schools.”
But “it became obvious [those] promises were a complete fraud,” the suit says. “Indeed, the school proved not to be a school at all but just one big playroom.”
The miffed mom yanked her daughter after just three weeks — but the school is refusing to refund the $19,000 she had to pay up front, said her lawyer, Mathew Paulose.
The article is here. For the pointer I thank Michael Rosenwald.
Very good sentences
"I’m one of the few people who went to Washington to get out of politics."
Can you guess who said it? Hat tip goes to Felix Salmon.
It’s time to reread Robin Hanson
Isn't it always?
Marketplace for retired economists
The AEA is attempting to make another part of the job market thick: it is linked from the main JOE page at http://www.aeaweb.org/joe/
Here is the direct link.
Available Retired Faculty Listing: "As an experiment, the AEA is initiating a listing of retired economists who may be interested in teaching on either a part-time or temporary basis. Individuals can add or delete their name at any time during the year. The listing will be active from February 1 through November 30 each year. Listings will be deleted on November 30; the service will be closed during December and January, re-opening on February 1."
Right now the list is waiting to be populated by retired faculty seeking part time or temporary work.
What to do about wage polarization?
I like this Paul Krugman column, but I would have given it a different ending. Krugman writes:
So if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isn’t the answer – we’ll have to go about building that society directly. We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen.
What we can’t do is get where we need to go just by giving workers college degrees, which may be no more than tickets to jobs that don’t exist or don’t pay middle-class wages.
I would suggest three different points of emphasis:
1. Trade unions, even if they could become strong again (which is hard to see), would likely accelerate this process of substituting capital for labor, rather than counteracting it. A one-time union wage premium, even if it does not come at the expense of other workers, will put only a small dent in the long-term trend.
2. Let's reform education, so people either make effective teams with computers, or they specialize in areas where computers are not effective. The nature of "education" is not carved in stone, even if the sector is hard to reform.
3. I have never seen it suggested that this "hollowing out" process will lead to lower output, quite the contrary. Those gains go somewhere. This is a reason to encourage the ownership of capital and on a quite broad basis. Let's start by repealing Sarbanes-Oxley, but along these lines there is much more we could do. How about low-load mutual funds backed by claims to intellectual property or whatever else will prove the scarce input for the future? Identifying that scarce input is the key to making progress on this issue.
More on GaddafiGate
His resignation came as a US consultancy admitted mishandling a multimillion dollar contract with Libya to sanitise Gaddafi's reputation in the west. Monitor Group, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, organised for academics and policymakers from the US and UK to travel to Tripoli to meet the Libyan despot between 2006 and 2008, as part of a $3m (£1.8m) contract.
In a related development, the director of LSE has resigned, there is more here. Hat tip goes to Kieran Healy.