Category: Education

Every now and then people come out to have lunch with us.  I feel there is no free lunch so to speak, so they should be put on the spot.  I have started asking some combination of the following:

1. What do you maximize?

2. Can you offer a simple model of yourself, using one a few equations or a paragraph or less?

3. What is it you hate?  (NB: My colleague Bryan C. suggests there are fine but important distinctions between hating, despising, mocking, and scorning.  I might add that I am not much of a hater.  More generally, many people’s hates are only "pretend hates," and what they hate is perhaps the fact that they don’t really hate their stated hates at all.  But I will settle for a "pretend hate" answer to this question.)

4. What is your most absurd view?

Many people find these questions difficult or disconcerting.  Especially the third one.  I’ll even say "Can’t you just make something up?"  Or "I’ll settle for a lie!"

"Eroticism is not only a desire for the body, but to an equal extent a desire for honor.  The partner you’ve won, who cares about you and loves you, becomes your mirror, the measure of your importance and your merits.  For my little tart, this was a difficult task.  When you go to bed with everyone you stop believing that such a commonplace thing as making love can still have any kind of importance.  And so you seek the true erotic honor in the opposite.  The only man who could provide that girl with a clear gauge of her worth was one who wanted her but whom she herself had rejected.  And because she understandably longed to verify to herself that she was the most beautiful and best of women, she went about choosing this one man, whom she would honor with her refusal, very strictly and captiously.  When in the end she chose me, I understood that this was an exceptional honor, and to this day I consider this my greatest erotic success."

That is from Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves, which was a fun read.

Here, via Kottke.  Seriously.

My former student, research assistant, and book mule Eric Crampton — who currently teaches at the University of Canterbury on the South Island — is guest-blogging for Bryan Caplan over at EconLog.  Here is his post on whether libertarians should consider moving to New Zealand.  The biggest loss of liberty, in my view, comes from geographic isolation and the presence of fixed costs, not from Kiwi government.  It is a scary thought that the quickest route to London, from Auckland, can run through Los Angeles.

Here is his view, he may study law, feel free to tell him more in MR comments…

Here is her reasoning for what she has done, see here too.

My take: The goal is to induce many high-quality men into responding.  That means finding the relevant "bottleneck" for those men and getting them over it.

For instance if you don’t mind lying (or writing lots), promise
that you will respond to all messages, one way or the other.  More
people will write in.  Otherwise men fear they are wasting their time by responding.

What else?  Photos, or at least links to photos,
are key.  (Even better: a link to one’s vlogging.)  The man will judge the woman — as "wife material" — by the
photo.  Of course the woman has to pass "the
looks hurdle" in any case, so this won’t rule out many true eligibles.  If a man doesn’t see a photo, the odds are he thinks the woman doesn’t pass his test.  This is not just adverse selection; the default is that any given woman doesn’t pass the test.

Note: not every man is
looking for a supermodel.  But every man wants a wife who doesn’t look a certain way or set of ways. 
(When I was single I didn’t want women who wore Prada.)  Posting the photo signals to some men that "you look
right" to them, and again increases the chance they will write.

After that, the rest of the ad should be accurate, signal high intelligence in fairly straightforward fashion, but otherwise be bland.
You can say one or two idiosyncratic things, perhaps to attract a few
ardent admirers, but they should not be too edgy or scare anyone off. 

Don’t let men
rule themselves out because of fears which may or may not be valid.  If a smart searching man likes
how you look, and sees you are smart, he will write to you.

Note that the
male audience is error-prone and self-deceiving, so the self-description
should involve some ambiguity rather than a perfect description of
self.  The woman cannot trust the men to do the proper ex ante sorting.  Had I known I wanted a
Russian Jewish-Armenian lawyer and former linguist with not exactly my political views?

BUT: What if the advertising woman self-deceives about a good partner more than the eligible men do?  In that case the woman might want to be very specific about what she is like.  The number of respondees goes down and the woman hopes that the right man will see through her character and choose her. 

Does that sound like Megan Non-McArdle?  Are highly specific ads an attempt to abdicate responsibility for choice?  A pre-emptive move to avoid rejection?  Or are they a demand for the near-impossible, to seek the most romantic story imaginable, and to request only a man who is infinitely perceptive and full of love from the get go? 

Stay tuned…

Addendum: If a woman writes a blog, and in part uses the blog as an extended (and thus detailed) personal ad, does this mean she is especially difficult to please?  Especially romantic?

Trudie responds:

It is not foolish to want to become an economist, but it is foolish to be attracted by this blog.  Yes we have serious posts about the option value of gold.  But graduate study in economics will not sample "Markets in Everything" (remember the Whizzinator?), not consider whether teenage Thomas Jefferson would have a crush on Veronica Mars, nor will it ask "Why Don’t People Have More Sex?".  Liking this blog, on average, is a sign that you have broad interests and thus are ill-suited for graduate study in economics.  There is also, dare I say it, a chance that you are simply a silly goose with time to kill.  On the other hand, Greg Mankiw is now reading Jacqueline Passey, so anything is possible.  Welcome, Bizarro Universe.

Two core groups of people are well-suited to be economists:

1. You math GRE score is over 800, you are totally focused, you love working long hours on your own, and you have good enough letters of recommendation to get into a Top Six or perhaps Top Ten graduate school.   Note that white Americans from this category have been partially preempted by competition from foreigners.

2. You could be happy as an academic without much of a research career.  Working at a teaching school is a rewarding life, albeit a poor one relative to your investment in human capital.

There is a third category, although you will fall into it (or not) ex post:

3. You do not fit either #1 or #2.  Yet you have climbed out of the cracks rather than falling into them.  You do something different, and still have managed to make your way doing research, albeit of a different kind.  You will always feel like an outsider in the profession and perhaps you will be underrewarded.  But you will have a great deal of fun and in the long run perhaps a great deal of influence.

Sadly, the chance of achieving #3 is fairly low.  You need some luck and perhaps one or two special skills other than math.

Did I mention that if you have a clearly defined "Plan B" your chance of succeeding at #3 diminishes?  It is important to be fully committed.

Greg Mankiw is a classic #1.  Brad DeLong started off as a #1, although he has been evolving into a #3.  Maybe he was a #3 in hiding all along.  I’ve been a #3, although with a dose of #1 from having gone to Harvard.  Alex is a classic #3.

Another thing: Don’t expect any classes to be interesting.  How should I put it?  "Most professors suck."  But a good professor can make almost any topic interesting.  So your reaction to the courses is just a reaction to the instructors you have sampled.  Treat that as noise, although I will ask why you are worse at picking teachers than at picking advice columnists.

Should you become a legal academic?  You will have a greater chance to work with ideas and concepts.  A greater chance to write books and also to read them.  You are more likely to strut, wear three-piece suits, and speak in stentorian tones.  If I were starting out today, perhaps I would take that route, although I would fail at the strut and the suits.  The pay is higher and upward mobility is easier to accomplish.  But overall the quality of intellectual debate is higher in the economics profession.  In economics the return to rhetoric is lower and you can’t get away with blather.  Your articles are refereed by your peers, and not by graduate students (well, it depends what journal you submit to…).  The academic world of law has weaker quality filters, which of course also makes it more open to new ideas.

Your choice, but note that many would-be legal academics end up lured by the private sector or government work.

And by the way, buy her roses, ask her to marry you, and live happily ever after.  The rest probably won’t matter so much for your happiness and life satisfaction.

Here is the recent account from Boston Magazine; it fills in more pieces than the other coverage I have read.  I cannot vouch for its accuracy, so caveat emptor.  The pointer is from Eric Rasmusen.

Here are the pointers.  After the shower, not before, is one place to start.  I usually save the hardest parts for last, though I am not sure this can be justified in a rational choice framework.  Your further suggestions are welcome.

For all those teachers who take work home at night, creating lessons they hope kids will like, the reward is a good day in class. Now there could be another payoff: cash. Teachers are selling their original lectures, course outlines and study guides to other teachers through a new Web site launched by New York entrepreneur Paul Edelman.

The site, teacherspayteachers.com, aims to be an eBay for educators. For a $29.95 yearly fee, sellers can post their work and set their prices. Buyers rate the products.

"It’s a way to pat teachers on the back, to value what they do," Edelman said. "They create the material night after night. The best way to value that is to put a price on it."

…Need a lesson about the history of China? How about a way to teach the Industrial Revolution through documentary photography? Or a manual for organizing a poetry slam?

They’re all for sale. Many of the items go for only a dollar or so.

Here is the link; they don’t yet seem to have economics.  For the pointer, thanks to BZ from Portugal.

Bowen: There was a study done recently by an economist at Santa Clara University,
Daniel Klein, showing disproportionate numbers of registered Democrats
versus registered Republicans in various departments at the University of California, Berkeley,
and Stanford. [The study’s findings are available at
http://www.ratio.se/pdf/wp/dk_aw_voter.pdf.] He has concluded that this
kind of ideological imbalance has a negative impact on the education of
students. He implies that
there is a temptation to hire one’s own. Conservative activist David
Horowitz has made much the same kind of statement, saying that faculty
are preaching rather than teaching. And why?  Because there’s a gross
imbalance between liberals and conservatives in the professoriate. Effectively,
they are calling for government regulation of the academy [TC: Klein is not, this is inaccurate]. Do you worry
about calls for legislation at the state level to correct this
situation? Does this worry you as an economist or as a professor?

Arrow:
You know, it certainly does worry me. It would worry me a lot if
legislation passed. There was a concern at one time that there would be
repression of the left. And now there are concerns that the left is
taking over. It’s hard for me to judge, of course, but I must say that
my department contains
a number of Republicans. And they were appointed by a democratic group,
whose members said these guys are good, and we’ve got to hire them. And
so far, I have not seen it work the other way, but I’m a little
concerned about where it could swing. In this case, the criticism seems
to be just wrong, because I think the departments hire on the basis of
merit. And I think it’s nonsense to say that we’re discriminating
against Republicans. We hire them all the time. On the other hand,
there was a department here that until the 1960s would not appoint a
Jew. And, finally, the university did interfere, you see, in that case.
The dean took over the department. He took away the power to appoint
from the department and changed its   composition in three or four
years. In fact, I was amazed how rapidly he was able to turn things around
to strengthen an already very good department. To defend the autonomy
of that department would not have been something I would have been very
happy to do.

Bowen: The  economics department at the University of Chicago
has had a reputation for many years for being quite conservative. Do
you think that’s the exception that proves the rule that you hire, as
you said earlier, on the basis of merit, not on the basis of party
identification of ideology?

Arrow:
There are people in that department who are not conservative. It’s a
very good department. Most of the conservatives are really quite
outstanding. I think they flock together. I
don’t think it’s entirely the case where you pick your own kind. I
don’t think the economics department here is reproducing itself.
They’re different politically and methodologically. I think
methodological problems have been bigger more often than political
issues. I do not believe the
university, the central administration, should be totally unconcerned
about appointments. I used to believe that the department had to be
completely autonomous. It took me a couple of years to realize that
that was not right.

I can remember an instance at Chicago
in which there was an incident involving a professor of economics who
was sort of a village atheist type. He was a very good economist, but a
little eccentric. He believed that religion was one of the big
oppressive things in this world. This fellow saw a priest in class. He
went and gave his whole lecture on the evils of the Catholic church.
The next time the priest came, he gives another lecture. The priest
finally quit the class, and the professor said that he could finally go
on with the course.

Well,
you know, the priest went to the chair of the department who had a very
good record on academic freedom at the university. And the chair said
it was a question of academic freedom. He wouldn’t interfere with this
professor.   
      

TC: Does anyone have data on Stanford?
 

Here we have a story of "arms races," rent exhaustion, and outright cheating…

1. Megan Non-McArdle explains what is a "separating equilibrium."  First sentence:

There are bad reasons why the girl doesn’t ask out the boy.

2. Tim Harford argues that stock price crashes can be rational.  Market trading reveals information by showing traders the slope of the demand curve.

3. Jason Kottke points us to the Coca-Cola index, which correlates the consumption of this beverage with freedom and prosperity.

4. Lott vs. Levitt update.