An all too common view is that most markets work well, and government should leave them mostly alone, except the social area I most care about needs special attention and subsidies to make sure my side prospers. I know people who act this way about health, art, privacy, sex, and much more. This seems a good reason to be suspicious of our own intuition that the social area we personally care about, academia, is unusually inefficient.
Confirming this suspicion, most analysis of the economics of academia is remarkably shallow. For example, people who wouldn't dream of citing the failure of their favorite computer product twenty years ago as strong evidence of the inefficiency of the computer market nevertheless cite the failure of their favorite academic product as evidence of academic inefficiency. Academia seems to have little regulation, low entry costs, intense competition, and reasonable property rights. For example, people can mostly reliably show that they wrote the first published paper with a particular argument. While there are network effects of production, these are not especially strong compared to other reasonable efficient industries. Without more specific evidence or analysis to the contrary, I have to conclude that as an industry academia *is* relatively efficient at producing what its consumers demand. But the big question is: what exactly is it that academia consumers demand? If academic consumers demanded truth, then academia would be efficient at producing truth. But that's a big if. It seems to me that academic consumers primarily demand prestige. I.e., they want to associate with people with demonstrated high mental abilities. Students want employers to believe that they are smart by association with smart academics. Donors, even the ideologically motivated ones, primarily want to associate with smart people. There are several different styles of demonstrating smarts, including math, verbal eloquence, mastery of vast amounts of details, etc. Different academic disciplines emphasize of these mental abilities. Folks who use one style of showing smarts often complain that those other folks aren't getting real stuff done (like learning truth). But it is not clear to me that any approach more consistently gets real stuff done that other approaches to showing smarts. Pete wrote: >Economists as a group value "smarts" not necessarily being "good". >Cleverness wins over wisdom in the game we play. Most of the type of >questions which attract the interest of Austrians do not lend themselves to >the type of "smart" and "clever" analysis that so often impresses our peers. >Instead, sticking to one's knitting and getting the details correct in a >solid piece of economic history, or demonstrating a sense of judgement and >wisdom on policy relevant issues seems to be more the hallmark of the best >within the Austrian approach. Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hanson.gmu.edu Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
