Tyler Cowen, noting the increasing difficulty of detecting bad economic papers:
“I do not think we are ready for an academic world where our smell test does not work very well.”
The policy world already struggles mightily to distinguish bad analyses from good. We rely heavily on academics’ senses of smell to do so.
From Sarah O’Connor’s FT Magazine piece on the establishment of a large, aggressively-managed Amazon.com warehouse in Rugeley, Staffordshire:
“What did the people of Rugeley make of all this? For many, it has been a culture shock. ‘The feedback we’re getting is it’s like being in a slave camp,’ said Brian Garner, the dapper chairman of the Lea Hall Miners Welfare Centre and Social Club, still a popular drinking spot.”
O’Connor (and her interviewees) dwell on two issues in the story: the desire for economic development —including jobs — and the unpleasantness of high-efficiency, dehumanized workplaces.
Many of those interviewed see no way to have the former without the latter. They are therefore led to the conclusion that dehumanization is acceptable. This echoes the “job creator’s” perennial argument against interference: let me have my way, or no jobs for you!
What strikes me is that “jobs” are not definite objects, arriving from outside in an immutable form, to be accepted or rejected unchanged. Jobs are a social arrangement; an agreement among participants; a pattern of social interaction reflecting culture, values, power, trust, and cooperation.
In this view, the problem with the Rugeley Amazon jobs is not primarily their unpleasantness, but the fact that they have not been fit into the social agreements of Rugeley. Amazon.com is not treating its Rugeley operation as part of the community. It is not negotiating, which is “to reach an agreement or compromise by discussion with others”.
Incidentally, the root of “negotiate” is Latin: “Neg- means “not” and otium means “leisure”. Being interpreted, negotiating is not-leisure; it is part of the course of business — or should be.
IPK is hosting a datathan, looking at the trio of climate—society—cities.
Here is the event description:
“Large publicly available datasets full of social and meteorological data exist going back for more than a hundred years.
+ How can these datasets be brought together to meaningfully examine the impact of climate change on cities?
+ Should social scientists and/or climate scientists call for new types of data to be collected to meet the challenges of climate change research?
+ What advantages are offered by focusing on the city as a unit of analysis?
+ What technological, political, and social challenges will need to be addressed as climate change grows as a focal lens in research communities?”
That’s vague stuff. I expect much of the datathon will be devoted to specifying questions.
“The policy wonks thought that they could implement a mortgage refinance program just by snapping their fingers. In real organizations, planning, testing, and training are necessary.”
Cathy O’Neill, my new favorite mathematician, laments:
“I wish there were a macho way to admit you didn’t know something, so people could understand that admitting uncertainty isn’t equivalent to being wishy-washy.”
My limited answer: Those who have relatively high status in an organization can model that behavior and expect it from others.
Neil Freeman envisions the U.S. as fifty states, redrawn to have equal populations.
He notes two disadvantages:
- Some county names are duplicated in new states.
- Some local governments would experience a shift in state laws and procedures.
The second one is a bit of an understatement.
Matt Yglesias makes a Public Choice point about demand for public services under a spending cap:
“The key point is that eliminating the supply of money to finance politically popular public services doesn’t eliminate the demand for those services. Instead, it pushes policy entrepreneurs to devise inefficient and non-transparent regulatory cross-subsidy schemes.”
This phenomenon arises even when spending is not capped. Politicians look for ways to deliver public services without accounting for them in the visible budget. This is why tax breaks are so popular. They are not itemized as visibly as expenditures are.
