Right in the Short Run

Earlier this year Andrew Gelman and co. came up with a new argument solving the voting paradox, based on social preferences (the paradox of voting: if you are rational, you will realize that the probability of affecting the outcome of a vote is negligible, while the costs are often considerable. Yet still people vote regularly).

Social preference is basically the idea that individuals incorporate other people’s utility into their considerations.

Gelman argues that if individuals take into consideration the impact of a vote’s outcome on other individual’s in society, as well as themselves, voting may indeed be rational.

A recent experimental paper by Fisman, Kariv and Markovits shows that some people do indeed have social preferences.

Voters, congratulations.

Tyler Cowen once more clarifying our goals in life, if you want tenure, just cite yourself.

Of course not, I just wanted to get your attention. In a recent N.Y. Times article, Krugman argues that

Outsourcing of the government’s responsibilities - not to panels of supposed wise men, but to private companies with the right connections - has been one of the hallmarks of his administration. And privatization through outsourcing is one reason the administration has failed on so many fronts.

Krugman then proceeds to give a list of failed government outsourcing programs, most of which are related to defense.

Krugman suggests a reason for the failures of these privatization efforts

In fact, the private company will almost surely do a worse job if its political connections insulate it from accountability - which has, of course, consistently been the case under Mr. Bush.

Mr. Krugman, you are clearly at least partially correct. Yet clearly there are situations where government outsourcing is in fact effective. For instance, the Trump Ice Skating Rink in Central Park - New York City wasted millions of dollars attempting to construct the rink, over a total of six years. Donald Trump then took over the job, finishing it ahead of time, and for less than a million dollars.

So when outsource?

Although there are probably many relevant factors to consider, an important one is clearly specialization. In areas such as defense, where the government has long specialized, outsourcing may indeed be an unwise move. Yet in areas such as entertainment, clearly the government is outmatched by private industry.

Another important factor is (as the ever perceptive Krugman mentioned) accountability.

So I have a question: What about airline security? As things stand, it’s true that the government has more experience in many security related matters. But what about securing an airport filled with constant civilian activity?

Steven Levitt and friends answer some interesting questions for students planning on entering PhD programs in the next few years: 

Do graduate students who do well in core microeconomics (Micro) courses also do well in core macroeconomics (Macro) and econometrics (Metrics) courses? Are students who achieve higher grades in their first-year core classes or general exams more likely to complete their Ph.D. and to obtain higher ranked positions in the job market?

Apparently answering these not very difficult, though somewhat interesting quesitons takes the efforts of not one, not two, but five of the world’s top labor economists.

Lest you think they were engaged in heated debate on intricate points of methodology, let me reassure you. They were not. They produced a single sixteen page paper on the topic.

It is probably not a coincidence that the authors are each from a different school, and each represent one of the five schools whose data is analyzed within the paper.

The content of the paper itself is interesting, but for those who truly want to succeed in the world of economics its implications are clear: if you want good data, first become a good politician.

Submitting an article to a law journal is a simple process: an individual interested in submitting an article goes to the ExpressO website, registers on the website, and selects, out of the 550 journals available, which journals he would like to submit his article to. There is no incentive to restrict submissions to preferred journals, or journals that are more likely to show interest in the paper, since simultaneous submissions are both common and expected. Furthermore, for most students and faculty in large law schools submissions are effectively free, since their law school’s pay a flat fee for use of ExpressO’s system. Luckily, if you are a student the process is made far simpler, since approximately half the journals don’t accept student submissions. Now for the interesting part: The three most important things journal editors want to see are:

The author’s C.V. (81%) A cover letter (68%) And finally, if you have the time, an abstract (a pathetic 48%).

Some editors emphasize the importance of including a list of prior publications as well.

Bottom line, as long as you’re a professor in a top law school with a heavy list of publications behind you, the content of your paper doesn’t really matter (as long as you can manage the cover letter).

In his annual review of law school rankings, Professor Brian Leiter decided to publish an exceptionally puzzling metric as a supposed measure of law school faculty quality: Number of SSRN downloads of work done by a school’s faculty.

The use of this metric is puzzling for a large number of reasons, though two of them stand out:

1. The ranking method is clearly manipulable to a ludicrous extent (insert image of law professor downloading his own work frantically).
2. The measure does not include a ratio, but rather a straight up number, thus a small law school with high quality faculty would be penalized with respect to a large law school with a large number of faculty.

The second critique seems to be born out in the rankings themselves, with Stanford Yale and Chicago all placing below Harvard Texas and Columbia. To be fair, Professor Leiter himself acknowledges the questionable value of this metric, though given the already low quality of information available in the law school rankings market, a topic Professor Leiter has often commented on, some more detailed criticisms seem appropriate.