We are working on a short Freakonomics Radio piece about “the value of bosses,” derived from a new working paper of that name (abstract; PDF) by Edward Lazear, Kathryn Shaw, and Christopher Stanton. The paper finds a good boss is indeed considerably more valuable than a mediocre or bad boss, at least in terms of productivity.
What do you think? We’d like to include in the radio piece some real bosses (i.e., not just the anonymized kind that show up in economics papers) so if you’re a boss (in retail or service or I.T. or manufacturing or whatever), let us hear from you via radio@freakonomics.com. How much do you think bosses matter? What makes a good boss good (and a bad one bad)? Who’s the best (or worse) boss you ever had? And, most important, how are good bosses made?
Last week I blogged about a grass-roots effort to get a baseball player named Adam Greenberg an at-bat in the majors. Greenberg did make the majors once, back in 2005, but was hit in the head by the very first pitch he faced, never to return.
I wrote a chapter about Greenberg (called “Once-Hit Wonder”) in the forthcoming book Jewish Jocks
Who knows, maybe Greenberg will hit a rocket in his first at-bat and win his way back into the big leagues.
A reader named Dennis Schenkel in Martin, Tenn., writes in with an interesting commentary about an article that intersects with a lot of things we’ve written about:
First, I know I’m partisan. I’m a Catholic priest. I’m a moralist. I’m biased. That having been said, I just read an article [from 2010] … describing how better contraceptives have successfully split the previous (before 1960) “mating market” into two markets consisting of the “sex market” and the “marriage market,” the author goes on to describe how this sets up a classic “prisoner’s dilemma” for women and gives men a huge advantage in both markets. The article appears in First Things, which is a religion/philosophy/culture/arts journal inhabited mostly by orthodox Catholic and Protestant Christians. But the article’s author does his best to speak exclusively in the language of the social sciences, without moralizing.
A pair of interesting-looking papers, particularly interesting when paired, about income inequality and its relationship (or not?) to revolutions. From “Russian Inequality on the Eve of Revolution,” by Steven Nafziger and Peter H. Lindert:
Just how unequal were the incomes of different classes of Russians on
the eve of Revolution, relative to other countries, to Russia’s earlier history, and to Russia’s income distribution today? Careful weighing of an eclectic data set provides provisional answers. We provide detailed income estimates for economic and social classes in each of the 50 provinces of European Russia. In 1904, on the eve of military defeat and the 1905 Revolution, Russian income inequality was middling by the standards of that era, and less severe than inequality has become today in such countries as China, the United States, and Russia itself. We also note how the interplay of some distinctive fiscal and relative-price features of Imperial Russia might have shaped the now-revealed level of inequality.
We received a pretty standard e-mail recently that included the following sentence:
“We will be using experimental economic sand psychology to explore the motivations behind …”
Wow, I thought — that sounds interesting: experimental economic sand psychology. I wonder how that works. Is each subject given a pile of sand and asked to create a sand castle that represents their view of capitalism? Or maybe do different subjects bid on different lots of sand in an auction/game theory setting?
And then I read it again. Oh. It was supposed to read “experimental economics and psychology,” not “economic sand psychology.”
Never mind. Into the trash bin.
Nate Silver first gained prominence for his rigorous analysis of baseball statistics. He became even more prominent for his rigorous analysis of elections, primarily via his FiveThirtyEight blog. (He has also turned up on this blog a few times.)
Now Silver has written his first book, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t. I have only read chunks so far but can already recommend it. (I would like to think his research included listening to our radio hour “The Folly of Prediction,” but I have no idea.)
A section of Signal about weather prediction was recently excerpted in the Times Magazine. Relatedly, his chapter called “A Climate of Healthy Skepticism” has already been attacked by the climate scientist Michael Mann. Given the stakes, emotions, and general unpredictability that surround climate change, I am guessing Silver will collect a few more such darts. (Yeah, we’ve been there.)
A reader named Ert Dredge writes in with the following set of trenchant observations and questions:
Hiya, Dubner ‘n Levitt.
I was just listening to podcast #84 “Legacy of a Jerk,” and it brought to mind a long-standing cocktail party question of mine: Is it reasonable to boycott what someone does for a living, if you think they’re good at it, because they’re privately a jerk?
Is it reasonable to never watch Braveheart again because of Mel Gibson‘s anti-Semitism or other issues?
…or never watch another Roman Polanski film?
…or to have not listened to Cat Stevens during the whole Salman Rushdie fatwa issue (misunderstanding?)And, if so, does that mean that boycotting my local shoe repair guy’s business because he doesn’t clean up after his dog is reasonable.
Trying to go rustic by baking, brewing, and knitting at home can be terribly inefficient. And that’s a wonderful thing.
From a reader named William Haisley:
I’m a weekly columnist for the Daily Collegian, the Penn State newspaper, where I currently attend law school. Today my column about why I don’t vote — an idea I was exposed to and ran with after reading your “Why Vote” article — ran and I have been dealing with the fallout ever since. I think I’ve been insulted more often today than the rest of my 24 years combined.
In some sense, my column is just an amalgamation of your article and various Overcoming Bias articles — which, again, I was introduced to on your blog and can’t thank you enough for — I’ve read over the years, though I guess I could say that about my entire belief system at this point.
Anyways, you should have a warning label at the end of your articles that tells people the potential dangers of publicly stating some of your more controversial findings (though I really didn’t think this was that controversial, but I’ve been proven wrong). You really need the cultural tread to take people somewhere they didn’t know they were going.
The data show that poker is indeed a game of skill, not chance, and a Federal judge agrees. So why are players still being treated like criminals?
From the mail:
Hi there,
I am a recent graduate of an economics Ph.D. program. I had what I thought was a successful trip through the adventure that is the economics job market and chose the risky but exciting option of working for a small start-up. Unfortunately, it turns out that it was more risky than exciting and the company doesn’t have work for me after all. So, I will be going back on the job market next year, but in the meantime I have extra time on my hands and bills to pay. I don’t want a permanent position and I don’t necessarily need much work, just enough to keep the lights on and food on the table.
My brother-in-law is a graphic designer and does some freelance work on the side which made me wonder if there could be such a thing as a freelance economist. There must be many small companies or organizations who cannot afford staff economists or expensive consultants, but have data they don’t know what to do with or questions about how their business runs that they don’t know how to answer. Freakonomics readers know that economics shows up all over the place.
Freakonomics reader Alan T. recently suggested that when we run an author Q&A on the blog that we announce it beforehand so that readers have time to check out the book first.
Good idea, Alan!
We will soon be running a Q&A with Hanna Rosin about her new book The End of Men: And the Rise of Women
What “Sleep No More” and the Stanford Prison Experiment tell us about who we really are.
A reader named David Stokes writes to say:
Last night’s Raiders – Chargers game gave one team a unique opportunity to implement the no-punt strategy.
With the Raiders’ long-snapper hurt, the Raiders coach had a much less risk-averse reason to try always going for it on fourth down. Especially after the first punt was blown and the punter tackled with the ball, who could blame the coach for going for it on fourth every time?
Alas, he proceeded to attempt more punts, and three in a row were blocked or otherwise blown.
FWIW, I think someone should make a documentary about long snappers. I am not kidding.
A reader named Matt Hasten writes in to say:
While in Las Vegas last week for a convention, I took a taxi between casinos (might as well see a few while making my contribution). When it came time to pay and I pulled out a credit card, the cab driver informed me that using a credit card would mean paying a $3 fee in addition to the fare ($11.50). This struck me as a ridiculously high surcharge and when it came time to tip the cab driver (all of this using the back seat electronic card reader), I did not add anything extra. My logic was that while I usually tip 20% on cab fare, that would have only been $2.30 and I already was paying $3 above the fare.
I explained to the cab driver that the money I would usually spend tipping him was instead paying for the $3 fee the cab company imposed on me. The cab driver, understandably, saw things differently and had some colorful wishes for the remainder of my evening. At the time, I felt justified not tipping because I felt the only way to make my displeasure known about the fee was to stiff the cab driver and hope his (and other cab drivers’) anger of missing out on tips might put pressure on the cab company to change the policy. In hindsight, I do feel bad about stiffing the driver! I’m the kind of guy where you have to really mess up to earn less than a 20% tip at a restaurant.
I know the driver didn’t set the $3 credit card fee, but taking it out on him by not tipping was the only way I saw to make my displeasure known or, better yet, impact a greedy policy.
Was I right to not tip?
We’ve blogged before about the very common roommate/rent dilemma — that is, how to fairly split rent among roommates given that different rooms have different features. A reader named Michael Jancsy writes in with an auction solution and a request for feedback:
I recently designed an auction website [called “The Rent Is Too Damn Fair”] to help friends split apartments … The auction works by allowing each roommate to bid on each room in an apartment, and then identifies the permutation of roommates to rooms with the largest consumer surplus (sum of all bids minus rent paid to landlord) to decide who should live in what room. Each person’s rent is then calculated by dividing the surplus evenly over the occupants, so that the difference between a person’s bid and the rent paid is the same for each person.
A reader named Marc Krawitz writes in with a question. Does anyone have an answer for him?
I’m a recent architecture school graduate, and just wondering:
Given laws in America that don’t specifically require an architect to stamp drawings (as opposed to Europe), are architects economically valuable to a housing and building market/culture that strives for bottom dollar and cheap/fast returns? Assuming that hiring an architect has a positive impact on a project, is the time and financial investment on the part of the client worth it in the long run?
Related: Michael Graves writes about the death of drawing in architecture.
Fascinating article in today’s Times by Richard Sandomir about how the owners of the old American Basketball Association team the St. Louis Spirit are still being compensated for an agreement forged in 1976, when the Spirit were excluded from joining the NBA. Those owners, Ozzie and Daniel Silna, were given a share — in perpetuity — of future TV revenues:
In 1980-81, the first year the Silnas were eligible to get their share of TV money, they received $521,749, according to court documents filed by the N.B.A. For the 2010-11 season, they received $17,450,000. The N.B.A.’s latest TV deal, with ESPN and TNT, is worth $7.4 billion over eight years. Soon, the Silnas’ total take will hit $300 million. …
A lot of people write to us looking for work — which, sadly, we are nearly always unable to provide. But once in a while we do hear of a good opportunity for the Freakonomically inclined. To wit:
The U.K. Cabinet Office’s Behavioural Insight Team — better known as the Nudge Unit because of its allegiance to the excellent Richard Thaler/Cass Sunstein book Nudge
Successful candidates will need to show that they:
1. have a good understanding of the behavioural science literature
2. have an understanding and ideally ability to conduct randomised controlled trials to test policy interventions; and
3. are highly motivated individuals capable of developing innovative solutions to often complex policy problems.
4. are strong team playersCandidates should be prepared to work on potentially any aspect of government or wider public sector policy. For example, over the past year the team has led work on health, energy, fraud, electoral registration, charitable giving, consumer affairs, the labour market, and access to finance for SMEs [that’s Euro-speak for “small and medium enterprises“]
Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is called “Can Selling Beer Cut Down on Public Drunkenness?”
(You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.)
It features Oliver Luck, the athletic director at West Virginia University, whose Top 10-ranked football team opened the 2012 season by beating Marshall 69-34. Luck himself played quarterback at West Virginia from 1978 to 1981 and, after a four-year NFL career, got into sports administration. These days, he is best known as the father of Indianapolis Colts’ rookie quarterback Andrew Luck.
As the A.D. at West Virginia, here’s what Luck saw happening at home football games:
“People drinking far too much at pre-game parties and tailgate parties before games. Sneaking alcohol into games. Leaving at halftime or any point during the game to go back out to the tailgate to drink even more and come back into the game. … They would usually drink hard liquor — ‘get their buzz back on’ and come back into the game for the third quarter. And the police again would know exactly at what point in the third quarter these ‘throw-up calls’ would start to come over the radio.”
Binge drinking is a big problem at college football games. Oliver Luck — father of No. 1 N.F.L. pick Andrew, and the athletic director at West Virginia University — had an unusual idea to help solve it.
Wowie kazowie! The Marginal Revolution blog, whose excellence is routinely noted on this blog, is launching a free, online Marginal Revolution University (MRU). From the announcement:
We think education should be better, cheaper, and easier to access. So we decided to take matters into our own hands and create a new online education platform toward those ends. We have decided to do more to communicate our personal vision of economics to you and to the broader world. …
Here are a few of the principles behind MR University:
In the forthcoming book Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame
(HT: M.T.)
Miguel Sancho, a senior producer with ABC’s 20/20, writes in with a question I’ve often wondered myself but cannot answer. Can you?
A thought – every hurricane season we see headlines ascribing blame for lives lost on a given storm. “Hurricane Irene Blamed for Five Deaths in North Carolina,” etc. Certainly when people drown, are killed by floating debris, or die because they can’t make it to the hospital, the statistic sounds logical. But it occurred to me that perhaps, in the interests of fairness and accuracy, we should also give Hurricanes “credit” for lives not lost thanks to the interruption of normal human activity. How many homicides, vehicular fatalities, or drug overdoses didn’t happen [last] week in New Orleans, for example, because people were otherwise occupied protecting themselves from Hurricane Isaac? Just wondering if anyone has ever studied this, comparing average morbidity rates in hurricane zones to the stats during the times when hurricanes roll through.
This is not to suggest that overall, hurricanes are a social good. Bastiat’s broken-windows fallacy and all that. But perhaps in this one particular metric, we aren’t seeing the whole picture.
Please don’t judge Sancho’s observation as insensitive to the death and destruction caused by the hurricane itself. I can assure you he is not.
What we know — and don’t know — about the gazillions of dollars that never show up on anyone’s books.
If you think working from home offers too many distractions, just think about what happens at the office.
If you work in an office, do you ever find yourself thinking that you could get more work done at home?
That’s the question we address in our latest podcast, “There’s Cake in the Breakroom!”
You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.
There are at least two primary perspectives on this topic:
But there’s at least one more perspective to consider. A firm might look at the office rent it pays and think it might be worth the trade-off to let employees work at home instead.
A reader in Australia named Ian Lyons, in response to our “Herd Mentality” podcast, writes to say:
At the 2012 Sydney Festival, we created a sophisticated set of interactive dashboards showing which artists were buzzing (on Twitter and Facebook) in real time, where people were coming from, interesting facts and live photos.
To my astonishment the most popular tool simply allowed you to see which show other people from your postcode were going to see. Viewed through the lens of behavioral economics, this makes perfect sense but it’s the opposite of what I would have predicted instinctively. In fact it almost didn’t get deployed because it was too simple.
I blogged yesterday about a Department of State (N.Y.) government website page that only accepts information during business hours. You offered several other similar examples (many of them government sites as well) and possible explanations. We also received, via comment and e-mail, an explanation from Edison Alban, press officer for the D.O.S. (BTW, his name could be considered a pretty good aptonym, since Albany is the capital of New York.)
He begins by objecting to the post, particularly the headline, which was “This Website Only Open During Business Hours”:
The New York Department of State’s Division of Corporation website is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The Division of Corporation does not shut down its website during non-business hours.
No comment.
An interesting e-mail from a reader/listener named Andrei Herasimchuk about what he calls “gamification”:
It’s a word and term that drives me nuts these days. I design software, and have done so for two decades now. Everyone is trying to add gamification features to their products these days in the tech industry. Think badges, achievements, and things normally found in a game like World of Warcraft. People in this industry lately seem to believe that these sorts of things drive engagement in their products. From everything I’ve seen, and from influences of your work, I’d assume what people really want to do is find ways to design incentives into products. Incentives versus Gamification? What works better?
Andrei (and I) would love to hear what you have to say on this question. I have a few superficial thoughts:
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