It's hard to see how Levitt could possibly believe that Oxoby's working
paper was anything else but a "toy" model and hardly worthy of comment.
http://www.econ.ucalgary.ca/fac-files/rjo/wp0807.pdf
In fact Oxoby's discussion paper (authored with Dickinson) on optimism
versus pessimism is equally parodic and in some ways points to the
meta-criticism embedded in the more controversial debate with Levitt,
since the heavy metal genre application of the other paper could be
extended to the blues or country and western music:
"This paper reports results from a unique two-stage experiment designed
to examine the spillover effects of optimism and pessimism. In stage 1,
we induce optimism or pessimism onto subjects by randomly assigning a
high or low piece rate for performing a cognitive task. We find that
participants receiving the low piece rate are significantly more
pessimistic with respect to performance on this task. In stage 2
individuals participate in an ultimatum game. We find that minimum
acceptable offers are significantly lower for pessimistic subjects,
though this pessimism was generated in a completely unrelated
environment. These results highlight the existence of important
spillover effects that can be behaviorally and economically important -
for example, pessimism regarding one’s initial conditions (e.g., living
in poverty) may have spillover effects on one’s future labor market
outcomes." http://www.econ.ucalgary.ca/fac-files/rjo/oxoby0907.pdf
And on the usual Sokol trope extended by the Bogdanoffs, I suppose any
Kuhnian normal science like economics or physics is a big tent that,
like all circuses, needs to have clowns. Perhaps the worst versions are
those whose PhDs in physics makes them believe (optimistically) that
they can be great economists.
Ann
