Results for “average is over”
1567 found

Broadband Norwegian average is over

Here is the new paper by Akerman, Gaarder, and Mogstad on how Norwegian broadband access has helped the higher earners and largely hurt unskilled labor:

Does adoption of broadband internet in firms enhance labor productivity and increase wages? And is this technological change skill biased or factor neutral? We exploit rich Norwegian data to answer these questions. A public program with limited funding rolled out broadband access points, and provides plausibly exogenous variation in the availability and adoption of broadband internet in firms. Our results suggest that broadband internet improves (worsens) the labor outcomes and productivity of skilled (unskilled) workers. We explore several possible explanations for the skill complementarity of broadband internet. We find suggestive evidence that broadband adoption in firms complements skilled workers in executing nonroutine abstract tasks, and substitutes for unskilled workers in performing routine tasks. Taken together, our findings have important implications for the ongoing policy debate over government investment in broadband infrastructure to encourage productivity and wage growth.

The emphasis is added by this blogger, not from the authors.

Rick Searle reviews *Average is Over*

The review is excellent and interesting throughout, here is one good bit:

Come to think of it, lack of intelligibility runs like a red thread throughout Average is Over, from “ugly” machine chess moves that human players scratch their heads at, to the fact that Cowen thinks those who will succeed in the next century will be those who place their “faith” in the decisions of machines, choices of action they themselves do not fully understand. Let’s hope he’s wrong on that score as well, for lack of intelligibility in human beings in politics, economics, and science, drives conspiracy theories, paranoia, and superstition, and political immobility.

Cowen believes the time when secular persons are able to cull from science a general, intelligible picture of the world is coming to a close. This would be a disaster in the sense that science gives us the only picture of the world that is capable of being universally shared which is also able to accurately guide our response to both nature and the technological world.

Read the whole thing, the pointer is from Arthur Charpentier.

Basketball average is over?

So in May, the team [Milwaukee Bucks] hired Dan Hill, a facial coding expert who reads the faces of college prospects and N.B.A. players to determine if they have the right emotional attributes to help the Bucks.

The approach may sound to some like palm reading, but the Bucks were so impressed with Hill’s work before the 2014 draft that they have retained him to analyze their players and team chemistry throughout the current season.

There is more here.  How well does this model retrodict various successes and failures, relative to underlying levels of talent?  How about if we apply the model to economists?  Potential graduate students?  Mates?  Where else?  File under speculative.

Comedy club average is over

 One Barcelona comedy club is experimenting with using facial recognition technology to charge patrons by the laugh.

The comedy club, Teatreneu, partnered with the advertising firm The Cyranos McCann to implement the new technology after the government hiked taxes on theater tickets, according to a BBC report. In 2012, the Spanish government raised taxes on theatrical shows from 8 to 21 percent.

Cyranos McCann installed tablets on the back of each seat that used facial recognition tech to measure how much a person enjoyed the show by tracking when each patron laughed or smiled.

Each giggle costs approximately 30 Euro cents ($0.38). However, if a patron hits the 24 Euros mark, which is about 80 laughs, the rest of their laughs are free of charge.

The full story is here, via Mark Steckbeck.

Average is Over: Physicians

Important new research from Fletcher, Horwitz and Bradley:

Like teacher value added measures that calculate student test score gains, we estimate physician value added based on changes in health status during the course of a hospitalization. We then tie our measures of physician value added to patient outcomes, including length of hospital stay, total charges, health status at discharge, and readmission. The estimated value added varied substantially across physicians and was highly stable for individual physicians. Patients of physicians in the 75th versus 25th percentile of value added had, on average, shorter length of stay (4.76 vs 5.08 days), lower total costs ($17,811 vs $19,822) and higher discharge health status (8% of a standard deviation). Our findings provide evidence to support a new method of determining physician value added in the context of inpatient care that could have wide applicability across health care setting and in estimating value added of other health care providers (nurses, staff, etc).

As with teacher value-added measures, which I strongly support, the gain here is not simply that we discover who the best teachers and physicians are it’s that by discovering who the best teachers and physicians are we can discover why they are the best–what techniques are they using that others are not? And from there we can begin to scale and apply those techniques more widely.

Indian average is over

The richer states have, on average, experienced relatively faster per capita GDP growth than the poorer states, despite the strong performance of low income states such as Bihar, Orissa and Uttarakhand. The reality is that the pace at which richer states are pulling away appears to be increasing.

That is from David Keohane at the FT, two excellent maps at the link as well.

“Average is Over” will come last to New Zealand

I sometimes say it is coming first to Israel and Singapore (and England?), but the Kiwis are a different case.  Eric Crampton quotes from an NZ Ministry report:

Overall, there is no evidence of any sustained rise or fall in inequality in the last two decades. The level of household disposable income inequality in New Zealand is a little above the OECD median. The share of total income received by the top 1% of individuals is at the low end of the OECD rankings.

You also will note that New Zealand has been a steady under-performer in terms of economic growth, despite a lot of good policy decisions.  This has helped keep income inequality down.

On this note, the paperback of Average is Over is coming out August 26th, you can order your copy here.

Average is Over update

Here is the latest, very consistent with what I argued in the book:

Automation and technology are replacing or reducing the menial tasks once associated with typical entry-level roles – those jobs that act as the first rung on a career ladder – so employers are raising the skills bar for their newest hires. Companies want those employees to arrive with sophisticated interpersonal skills, able to collaborate skillfully with colleagues and immediately interact with clients.

Weinberger examined later-life earnings of two groups of white men who completed high school and entered the workforce 20 years apart, one group in 1972 and the other in 1992. As a measurement of social skills, she looked at the men’s participation in high school sports, especially leadership roles on schools teams.

By examining wages seven years after high school graduation – in 1979 and 1999, respectively – and then looking at more recent Census and Department of Labor data to understand current labor-market outcomes, Weinberger found that later grads with impressive social skills as well as cognitive prowess experienced a seven percentage-point wage premium over those from the earlier group.

The paperback edition of Average is Over is out soon on August 26, you can order it here.

Measuring worker value: the new Average is Over

This trend is accelerating:

When Jim Sullivan began working as a waiter at a Dallas restaurant a few years ago, he was being watched — not by the prying eyes of a human boss, but by intelligent software.

The digital sentinel, he was told, tracked every waiter, every ticket, and every dish and drink, looking for patterns that might suggest employee theft. But that torrent of detailed information, parsed another way, cast a computer-generated spotlight on the most productive workers.

Mr. Sullivan’s data shone brightly. And when his employer opened a fourth restaurant in the Dallas area in 2012, Mr. Sullivan was named the manager — a winner in the increasingly quantified world of work.

Here is some of what goes on behind the scenes:

Ben Waber is chief executive of Sociometric Solutions, a start-up that grew out of his doctoral research at M.I.T.’s Human Dynamics Laboratory, which conducts research in the new technologies. Sociometric Solutions advises companies using sensor-rich ID badges worn by employees. These sociometric badges, equipped with two microphones, a location sensor and an accelerometer, monitor the communications behavior of individuals — tone of voice, posture and body language, as well as who spoke to whom for how long.

Sociometric Solutions is already working with 20 companies in the banking, technology, pharmaceutical and health care industries, involving thousands of employees. The workers must opt in to have their data collected. Mr. Waber’s company signs a contract with each one guaranteeing that no individual data is given to the employer (only aggregate statistics) and that no conversations are recorded.

The article by Steve Lohr is here.

The “average is over” economic recovery proceeds

Average hourly earnings for private-sector American workers rose about 49 cents an hour over the last year, to $24.38 in May. But that wasn’t enough to cover inflation over the year, so in “real” or inflation adjusted terms, hourly worker pay fell 0.1 percent over the last 12 months. Weekly pay shows the same story, also falling 0.1 percent in the year ended in May.

Neil Irwin offers more here.  Many people I know thought my earlier prediction of “falling or stagnant wages during the U.S. recovery” was an absurd prognostication, but so far it seems to be on the mark.  Just wait for The Great Reset.

The growth of on-line tests in assessment (average is over)

This continues to be a growing trend:

T-Mobile asks job applicants to take this [problem-solving, for a customer] test before inviting them for an interview because the company has found powerful correlations between the online assessments and success on the job. High scorers tend to resolve customer calls about 25 seconds faster than those who receive low scores. That means they can handle one more call a day and about 250 more a year.

More generally:

Companies are using these tests to evaluate skills and personalities for job openings at every rung of the career ladder, from bank teller to C-suite executive. They are not merely on-screen versions of decades-old paper employment tests. They are built on the power of big data: Creators have harnessed a massive trove of results to help companies pinpoint the kind of worker who might thrive in a particular job.

The legion of tests is only growing:

Some tests evaluate a specific skill, such as how quickly and accurately someone can make change from an onscreen cash register or program software in the Java coding language. Many tests incorporate simulations of scenarios one might encounter on the job. Marriott International, for example, shows housekeeping applicants a photo of a landscaped area at one of its hotels and asks candidates to determine what’s wrong with it. (Perhaps a gardening tool was not put away properly). In one of CEB’s tests for a supervisory role, applicants might have to demonstrate how they would talk to an employee who was coming in late and missing important meetings.

We are entering a new “meritocracy,” at least for people who test well, especially on-line:

Providers say the tests hold the promise of leveling the playing field for job applicants by removing the chance of bias that comes with a traditional résumé screening. The tests can’t distinguish, for example, if a candidate didn’t attend a top-tier college, is currently unemployed or is a woman or minority.

“In many cases, algorithms can trump instinct on staffing,” said John Boudreau, a professor in the business school at the University of Southern California, adding that decades of research have found that tests can serve as reliable barometers of certain personality traits, such as conscientiousness.

The full story, by Sarah Halzack, is here.

Cornwall and Wales under purchasing power parity (British average is over)

The grim truth about pay and living standards in some the regions of the UK has also been highlighted by official EU figures showing that parts of Britain are effectively poorer that countries from  former communist countries in Eastern Europe.

People in Cornwall and the Welsh Valleys are worse off than residents of Estonia and Lithuania, according to Eurostat figures comparing wealth across the EU using a measure known as “purchasing power standards” – which takes into account GDP per person and cost of living.

In addition, Durham and the Tees Valley, in the north east of England, are poorer than those in the wealthiest regions of Bulgaria and Romania, the two most deprived countries in the EU.

By contrast, the Eurostat figures show that London is the richest place in Europe.

There is more here.

Average is Over

New technologies are transforming the structure of the US economy but creating only modest numbers of jobs, according to the biggest official survey of businesses, conducted only once every five years.

The 2012 economic census shows how technology is creating a boom in output for new industries – such as shale gas and internet retail – but only a modest increase in their payrolls.

It highlights concerns that recent innovations in information technology tend to raise productivity by replacing existing workers, rather than creating new products that demand more labour to produce.

The FT link is interesting throughout and I believe these numbers vindicate what many of us have been arguing.  It also stresses the oft-neglected point that mining and drilling are relatively capital-intensive sectors:

Drilling is capital intensive, however, so even though the industry’s sales rose by $142bn, its annual payroll was up only $20bn to $61bn in total.

It also turns out that online retail is not very labor intensive at current margins.

Gangland average is over the rent is too damn high, Southland edition

From the LA Times:

So many gang members have been priced out of the neighborhood, he said, that their presence can be hard to spot during the week. But on Fridays and Saturdays, they make a pilgrimage back to their roots. They ride in from El Sereno, Eagle Rock, even the Inland Empire, to hang out. Each Monday, trash cans and stop signs wear fresh “ExP” graffiti.

“It becomes a weekend gang,” Arellano said.

The pointer is from Binyamin Applebaum.

The increasing velocity of goods is a deflationary pressure (rental markets in everything Average is Over)

Anouk Gillis often sports a pair of organic-cotton jeans she ordered online. But she doesn’t actually own them.

Rather than buying the pants, which retail for around €100 ($135), Ms. Gillis signed a 12-month lease with their designer, the small Dutch fashion label Mud Jeans. The terms: a €20 deposit and monthly installments of €5.

After a year, Ms. Gillis, who is also Dutch, can decide to buy the jeans, return them, or exchange them for a new pair.

“The idea was to make high-quality jeans available to everybody,” said Bert van Son, chief executive of Mud Jeans, which promises to recycle the used jeans into new pairs or sell them secondhand at the end of a lease.

The deal shows how companies are trying to reconnect with Europe’s cash-strapped consumers, who increasingly rely on renting, sharing or even bartering for products and services ranging from clothing to vacations to lawn mowing.

There is more here.  For the pointer I thank the man who delivered my morning Wall Street Journal.