Re: Not such a fantastically entertaining paper
OK Robin so you want to say that consumer wants not truth or relevance but signals about smartness. Then our profession is doing a decent job, but the opportunity cost of this is huge. Economics is a particularly relevant discipline for public policy and social understanding. I believe there our truths in the economic world that are particularly costly not to recognize. Can you make an argument that the unintended consequence of this smartness signalling actually is closer approximations to the truth? If so, then I think you would have a neat argument. BTW, in the economy we can discuss efficiency (technical) because somehow the underlying realities of tastes, technology and resource endowment are reflected in the induced variables of prices and profit/loss. If there was no connection between these, then in what sense would we be able to talk about allocational efficiency? Similarly, in academics if we don't have an underlying reality of truth and the scientific community somehow following the induced variables of prestige, position, power that gets at closer approximations of the underlying reality then in what sense is the academic market efficiently organized? Pete Peter J. Boettke, Deputy Director James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy Department of Economics, MSN 3G4 George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030 PHONE: 703-993-1149 FAX: 703-993-1133 EMAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] HOMEPAGE: http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/pboettke - Original Message - From: Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 21, 2002 11:14 AM Subject: Re: Not such a fantastically entertaining paper Peter J. Boettke wrote: ... But the bottom line problem with this entrepreneurial hope in the market for academic economics is that we don't have institutions that serve the functions analogous to property, prices and profit and loss. The standard story is that authors have a property right in their articles, which are in effect sold to students, and research patrons. Journals and universities are intermediaries in this process, but all these transactions seem to voluntary, and real money is on the line. What's wrong with this story? P.S.: Robin, I think the statement that entry is cheap is a little dubious. We go through an entire process ... graduate school ... getting a job. ... The topic was entry into the journal industry, which takes even more effort than entry into the professor industry. But I meant easy in the industrial organization sense of closer to free entry than to monopoly. I'm sure its not easy to be a farmer, but farming also seems to be an industry where entry is easy enough to keep the industry competitive. ... Scholarship should never be cheap, nor easy, nor kind ... but I think it is at best a noble lie to believe that the truth wins out in academics ... Careerism, fadism, cults of personality, and generally a waste of intellectual resources describe academic life, not truth seeking and original thinking. I would have thought you'd be more sympathetic. I agree that academia wastes vast resources relative to the goal of seeking truth, but I disagree that this implies a market failure, mainly because I don't think the ultimate customers fundamentally want truth. In fact, I think customers in part want faddism and cults of personality. My working model of academia is that students and research patrons primarily pay to be associated with people who are publicly validated to be smart in certain ways. People try to show that they are smart by publishing writings that are articulate, clever, thought-provoking, require difficult techniques, and anticipate fads. Truth is often a side-effect, but is incidental to the main purposes of the parties involved. Different academic disciplines have settled into equilibria with different mixtures of these elements. I think this model can explain many otherwise puzzling features of academia. [We had a similar discussion of this topic on this list last November] Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hanson.gmu.edu Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030- 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
Re: Not such a fantastically entertaining paper
Wait a minute Alex, I am not sure that journal organization has little to do with the professional organization in the university. Change the nature of the way resarch is published and presented and the research game will change within the academy. Journals are like the arbiter of the rules that govern academic discourse if you change the idea of what a good question is, or more importantly even for this conversation, what a good answer is, then the academic game will change accordingly. I admit to selection bias, but I am not sure we can avoid it on this topic. BTW, I hope nobody views my comments as whining about the profession, because they are not meant to be in that vein. It is just that I think much of what goes on in the profession as so-called research is intellectual masturbation. That is fine in itself but the opportunity cost is a more relevant economics engage in social intercourse. Those of us who want to make this argument are failing to persuade our colleagues of the benefits of this and as a result have nobody to blaim but ourselves. Peter J. Boettke, Deputy Director James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy Department of Economics, MSN 3G4 George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030 PHONE: 703-993-1149 FAX: 703-993-1133 EMAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] HOMEPAGE: http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/pboettke - Original Message - From: Alex Tabarrok [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 21, 2002 12:50 PM Subject: Re: Not such a fantastically entertaining paper Pete writes We go through an entire process of being cultured to the ways of the profession called graduate school and especially the process of writing a dissertation and getting a job. Then you get more of that as an assistant professor -- especially if you are at a top 20 research university. You learn to value certain journals and types of arguments and dismiss other types of arguments and evidence as not serious. If you resist you are thrown out, if you try to assimilate and fail you are thrown out. Yes, this is correct - this is why journal organization form has very little to do with the substantive issues that you and I care about. This seems obvious to me. The examples you give of good editors are biased because self-selected! Alex -- Dr. Alexander Tabarrok Vice President and Director of Research The Independent Institute 100 Swan Way Oakland, CA, 94621-1428 Tel. 510-632-1366, FAX: 510-568-6040 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Not such a fantastically entertaining paper
I agree that academia wastes vast resources relative to the goal of seeking truth, but I disagree that this implies a market failure, mainly because I don't think the ultimate customers fundamentally want truth. In fact, I think customers in part want faddism and cults of personality. Posner, I think, pointed out that there are species of fish that lay thousands of eggs merely to produce one or two offspring that make it to adulthood. Even if we grant that the great bulk of academic publishing is useless dreck, it does not follow that it is wasteful. It may well be that the same net output may be producible with lots of low quality or with a little high quality. How readily high and low quality can be substituted for one another depends on the product. I offer an example from the only industry I know anything about. Grain is usually shipped on large ships, and is dumped into the holds through large chutes. A non-trivial amount is lost in the process, because it isn't worth the cost to save it all (although there have been improvements over the years reducing the loss). The loss is compounded as the grain is transferred, between ships and terminals, and between trains and terminals, many times. A very good way to eliminate the waste is to package the grain into containers and seal them for the duration of the trip. Very little grain is shipped that way (usually expensive seeds), because the lost grain is usually less valuable than the cost of containerizing. Milgrom and Roberts' text mentions the same problem in car production, comparing Toyota and GM. They note that back in the fifties when Toyota was small, inventories were expensive for it relative to the cost of inventories for GM, because GM was so much larger and therefore bore proportionally smaller inventory costs (by the law of large numbers). Hence the use of just-in-time production. Just-in-time requires tight quality controls, because defective parts are a problem if your inputs arrive just as you are using them. If you maintain large parts inventories, you replace defective parts out of inventory. For GM, lower average quality of purchased inventory could produce the same average quality of used inventory, so long as GM bore inventory costs. Toyota's higher inventory costs made that an unprofitable production decision. So, I think the question of whether the production of dreck (or alternatively clever theorizing of no use to anyone) is wasteful requires that we have some idea of how best to produce good research. Clearly, there are journals that exist solely as outlets for economists at little teaching colleges to get in the one or two papers they need for tenure, for no obvious reason. Beyond that, though, it is not at all obvious to me how you get The Problem of Social Cost or The Fable of the Bees while avoiding uninteresting or pointless work. Bill Sjostrom + William Sjostrom Senior Lecturer Department of Economics National University of Ireland, Cork Cork, Ireland +353-21-490-2091 (work) +353-21-427-3920 (fax) +353-21-463-4056 (home) [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ucc.ie/~sjostrom/
Re: Not such a fantastically entertaining paper
Bill Sjostrom wrote: "Clearly, there are journals that exist solely as outlets for economists at little teaching colleges to get in the one or two papers they need for tenure, for no obvious reason." What are some examples of those journals? Also, what are some good lines of research or questions or methods that are not being used or looked at due to the current state of the profession and the way journals are run? Cyril Morong
Re: Not such a fantastically entertaining paper
William Sjostrom wrote: I agree that academia wastes vast resources relative to the goal of seeking truth, but I disagree that this implies a market failure, mainly because I don't think the ultimate customers fundamentally want truth. In fact, I think customers in part want faddism and cults of personality. ... Even if we grant that the great bulk of academic publishing is useless dreck, it does not follow that it is wasteful. Grain is usually shipped on large ships, and is dumped into the holds through large chutes. A non-trivial amount is lost in the process, I agree that the mere fact that of useless dreck does not imply an overall failure. Even an ideal institution for generating truth would probably generate lots of useless dreck in the attempt to find a few valuable gems. My grounds for believing that there is more waste than can be attibuted to this are based on other sorts of observations, like what I think Alex and Pete have in mind.
Not such a fantastically entertaining paper
In addition to Robin's comments I found the motivating factor of Frey's paper to be weak. I take it that his main complaint is that referee's force authors to prostitute themselves by making changes the authors think are wrong. I personally have never experienced this problem and I would be surprised if many people have, although I am willing to be enlightened. To be sure, I have had papers rejected for bad reasons and sometimes I have made changes to satisfy referees that I thought were not necessary but I have never been asked to change a conclusion or to write something I thought was false. In a few cases, referees have actually helped me to improve the paper! (Yes, this does sometimes happen!). Now perhaps Frey is saying that the problem is that authors must write their papers in a certain way even in order to have any hope of getting published. Now certainly this is true - the profession demands a particulary style of paper especially in the top journals. I happen to think that much of what the profession demands is unnecessary, boring, absurd, and counter-productive but what has this to do with the way journals are refereed? Almost nothing. Alex -- Dr. Alexander Tabarrok Vice President and Director of Research The Independent Institute 100 Swan Way Oakland, CA, 94621-1428 Tel. 510-632-1366, FAX: 510-568-6040 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Not such a fantastically entertaining paper
Let me also add that the basic assumption of Frey's article is also wrong - the assumption that editors slavishly follow referee's. My take is that it's editors choose referees, so the editor's really do choose the articles because they choose referees and indirectly choose the outcomes. Fabio
Re: Not such a fantastically entertaining paper
I said I happen to think that much of what the profession demands is unnecessary, boring, absurd, and counter-productive but what has this to do with the way journals are refereed? Pete responded Well, that is the question isn't it? Yes, it is the question that Frey doesn't answer. Pete writes How about lack of accountability in double-blind systems? How about intellectual fadism within a profession? We have a problem of conspicous production in academics. But where is the argument that connects lack of accountability in double-blind systems to any of the substantive complaints we (or Frey) have about the industry? Do you really think that single or no-blind would lead to more relevant economics? If anything, double-blind does something to break the cartel although I don't think that it changes content much at all (i.e. it gives lesser-known people a better shot at the big journals but they still have to do the sort of work the profession likes). Furthering Robin's comments recall that economists do not have an unusual method of editing journals - practically all journals in all countries use a similar system so its hard to argue that the system is dominated. About the only profession that is different is law - would anyone care to make an argument that student edited journals are the way to go???! Alex -- Dr. Alexander Tabarrok Vice President and Director of Research The Independent Institute 100 Swan Way Oakland, CA, 94621-1428 Tel. 510-632-1366, FAX: 510-568-6040 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
