Surely at least part of the issue is that producers of academic articles are often the consumers. They derive status, prestige (and pay) through articles and reviewing, whilst they themselves do not pay for the end good. Certainly in the uk academics (I believe) and their departments are ranked and funded on the basis of publications - I guess a as proxy of productivity. How easy, and beneficial, to become engaged in a multi issue 'controversy' for everyone involved...
David Mitchinson +447956256281 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Robin Hanson Sent: 20 June 2002 18:47 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: fantastically entertaining paper On 6/19/02, Bryan Caplan wrote: >I heartily recommend Bruno Frey's extremely fun working paper >"Publishing as Prostitution: Choosing Between One's Own Ideas and >Academic Failure." ... http://www.iew.unizh.ch/wp/iewwp117.pdf Peter Boettke added: >I completely agree with your assessment of Frey's paper. Well the paper is on an interesting topic that I'd like to see more papers on, but the paper is also an example of why we don't see more papers on this topic; people find it much harder to analyze topics where they personally have much at stake. As economic analysis, Frey's discussion is pretty weak. Here we have an industry (academic journals) where concentration is low, entry is cheap, and most firms use the same production technology (referees with veto power), even though an alternate technology (editors pick) has long been tried, and is easy to try. Frey claims that it is a market failure not to use this alternate tech, because the standard tech has agency costs, which has the effect of raising the costs to one of the inputs (authors). If this were any other industry, I'm sure Frey would be among the first to make the standard economist's response: If your preferred tech is easy, has long been tried, and has lower costs without other disadvantages, in a competitive industry why hasn't it long displaced the standard tech? I'm sure a clever person could come up with an externality or asymmetric information market failure argument, but the amazing thing is that Frey doesn't even try here. I'd say that the key stumbling block to a better theory of academic journals is identifying the real customers and their preferences. 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
