Category: Education

The changing allocation of time

by  Tyler Cowen in

…70 percent of the decline in hours worked [in the 20th century] has been offset by an increase in hours spent in school.

Here is the paper, which includes new and controversial claims about the evolution of leisure time, most notably that leisure time has not gone up since 1900 and that time spent in household production has increased slightly. 

Note two things.  First, many of the results stem from including the hours of children and the elderly in the calculations, contrary to standard practice.  (For instance, fewer children per family will raise the per capita leisure of adults, while total per capita leisure could fall, since children do not work much.)  Second, an hour is not always an hour; putting clothes into the washer is more fun than doing the entire laundry by hand. 

This is interesting work, but it should not be understood to buttress the popular claims that capitalism works people into the ground or that modernity is overrated.  Let’s start with the "quality" variable and ask whether the 20th century has put people on a higher indifference curve with respect to labor-leisure trade-offs.  The answer should be obvious.

Virginia Postrel is Mad

by  Alex Tabarrok in

No one is more familiar with the ethics of organ donation than Virginia Postrel so when she says that the National Kidney Foundation is behaving reprehensibly you can be damn sure she is right.

The National Kidney Foundation
is behaving reprehensibly, especially given its mandate. When I first
got interested in organ donations, I naively thought that the
foundation would be in the business of doing everything possible to
encourage kidney donations. I was terribly wrong. The group vehemently,
and successfully, opposed a bill that would have allowed tests of incentives for organ donors. (CEO John Davis brags
here, scroll to second item.)

So determined is the NKF that kidney donors should never, ever, in any
way be compensated for their organs–no matter how many kidney patients
current policy kills–that the organization is now trying to stamp out public discussion of the idea. When they heard that AEI is planning a conference
on the subject for June 12, they wrote a letter to AEI president Chris
DeMuth suggesting that the conference shouldn’t be held. The letter
from NKF chief Davis (PDF available here) opens:

The officers and staff of the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) were
surprised to learn that AEI has scheduled a forum entitled "Buy or Die:
Market Mechanisms to Reduce the National Organ Shortage" that will be
held on June 12, 2006. …we believe that the concept of financial
incentives has been adequately debated for 15 years, begining with the
National Kidney Foundation’s 1991 workshop on "Controversies in Organ
Donation," and culminating in the definitive Institute of Medicine
(IOM) report that was issued late in April 2006. We don’t see how an AEI forum would contribute substantively to debate on this issue. [Emphasis added.]

In other words, "We’d like to maintain our monopoly on the policy debate, so please shut up."

…For more background on the policy debate, see previous posts here, here, and here. Marginal Revolution blogger and GMU economist Alex Tabarok takes a detailed look at incentives here.

How to get your kid into a better college

by  Tyler Cowen in

The only out-of-school activity that increased the likelihood of a
student ending up enrolled at an elite college was parental [sic] visits to
art museums.

That is correlation, not causation, but I believe you can thread out the implied lessons.  Read more here.  How about this?

Two types of participation made it more likely students would end up at
elite colleges: yearbook or school newspapers and “hobby clubs.”  …Numerous activities had no apparent impact on whether or not students
will end up in college – elite or otherwise. School plays,
interscholastic individual sports, intramurals, cheerleading, academic
honor societies, public service clubs – no impact is clear from any of
them.

Here is one author’s home page, full of fascinating material.  Here is the other guy.  What do you all think of these results?

The addict speaks (Ec 10 is over)

by  Tyler Cowen in

Lately, I have been spending some of my time writing this blog, which
started as a by-product of teaching ec 10, the principles class at
Harvard. I am still trying to figure out if this is a good use of my
time or not. On the one hand, this feels like providing a public good.
(Perhaps at a low cost: some of the time I spend on it has come from
watching reruns of Law and Order.) On the other hand, at times writing
this blog feels like being hooked on crack.

The real question is whether the addict realized this before his readers realized it about him.  By the way, here are the addict’s tips on time management.  (I disagree on travel, which I consider to be the best way of learning things.)  Here is the addict linking to advice on getting through graduate school.

Has the addict figured out the biggest benefit of blogging, or is he just being coy?

We welcome the addict to a more lasting presence in the blogosphere.

Addendum: He also points our attention to economics videos.

Why I love the suburbs

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. We live 30 minutes from Washington but we also have a fox in the backyard.  Deer are a frequent sight as well.

2. Chinese restaurants are usually better in the suburbs these days.

3. Driving is fun and a good way to experience music.  MR readers know I favor a (revenue-neutral) gas tax.  My worry is that car culture makes people more individualistic and thus I have some reluctance to tax this trend.  Try Chuck Berry’s "No Particular Place To Go."

4. A few weeks ago, the first Fairfax County police officer died in the line of duty.  That’s the first ever.  In New Jersey, where I grew up, you might speak of the first local cop to die today.

5. Many of my friends who live in Manhattan lose interest in global travel or never acquire it.  Sadly they feel they already have everything they need from the world right at home. 

Natasha and I talk of retiring in New York City.  But are we up for it?  I’ve started subscribing to New York magazine.  Sometimes it is interesting; more to the point I can pretend I might someday live there.

I’ll cover Jane Jacobs soon.

Med Mal Talk

by  Alex Tabarrok in

On Thursday morning I will be speaking in New York at the Harvard Club on my new Manhattan Institute study (with Amanda Agan), Medical Malpractice Awards, Insurance, and Negligence: Which are Related?  No link yet, the study will be released Thursday.

There is a reception, 8-8:30 am, followed by the seminar and questions, 8:30-9:30 am.  If you would like to attend RSPV to (212) 599-7000 and be sure and give me the secret MR signal at the club so I know who you are.

Outsourcing Tutors

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Tutoring companies figure: If low-paid workers in China and India can
sew your clothes, process your medical bills and answer your computer
questions, why can’t they teach your children, too?…

When Studyloft.com, a Chicago-based tutoring company with more than
6,000 clients, advertised in Bangalore for tutors with master’s
degrees, more than 500 people applied for 38 spots, according to Bikram
Roy, the firm’s founder and chief executive. "There is just a huge
hotbed of talent there in math and science," he said. "India has the
best tutors — the best teachers — in the world."

From the Washington Post.  It’s a shame immigration restrictions prevent more insourcing of the tutors.  Here is the most unintentionally funny comment:

Teachers unions are vigorously lobbying for legislation that would make
it more difficult for overseas tutors to receive No Child Left Behind
funds. Weil, of the American Federation of Teachers, said after-school
tutors should be required to pass the same rigorous certification
process as public school teachers.

Thanks to Ramin Seddiq for the pointer.

French Universities

by  Alex Tabarrok in

The United State’s has one of the most admired university systems in the world and one of the most deplored k-12 systems.  Could the difference have something to do with the fact that universities operate in a competitive market with lots of private suppliers while k-12 is dominated by monopolistic, government provided schools?

What would our university system look like if it operated like the k-12 system?

Look to France for the answer.  The riots of 1968 forced the government to offer a virtually free university education to any student who passes an
exam but as a result the universities are woefully underfunded especially for the masses.  Amazingly, with just a few exceptions
for the elites, students are required to attend the universities closest to their
high schools.  Sound familiar?

The NYTimes sums up with a look at a typical university:

Only 30 of the library’s 100 computers have Internet access.

The
campus cafeterias close after lunch. Professors often do not have
office hours; many have no office. Some classrooms are so overcrowded
that at exam time many students have to find seats elsewhere. By late
afternoon every day the campus is largely empty.

Sandwiched
between a prison and an unemployment office just outside Paris, the
university here is neither the best nor the worst place to study in
this fairly wealthy country. Rather, it reflects the crisis of France’s
archaic state-owned university system: overcrowded, underfinanced,
disorganized and resistant to the changes demanded by the outside
world.

Thanks to Daniel Akst for the pointer.

China sentence of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

"Everybody wants a good job after university life, but God knows what a guy with a brain of strange thoughts can do after graduation," said Yuan Chunfen, mother of a local high school boy.

This is referring to the growing number of Chinese who study philosophy.  Read more here, and thanks to Yan Li for the pointer.

By the way, if you were wondering my Shanghai trip was postponed for work reasons.  But I’ll have some more travel coming up soon.