tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post1098063337128536636..comments2024-03-22T22:37:02.639-07:00Comments on Stephen Williamson: New Monetarist Economics: Equality, Monkeys, and BananasStephen Williamsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01434465858419028592noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-81623453650759765002014-05-13T10:29:12.647-07:002014-05-13T10:29:12.647-07:00Angeletos and Alesina halfwits. Hmm... I wonder ho...Angeletos and Alesina halfwits. Hmm... I wonder how your publication record compares to theirs. By the way, it's beliefs, a noun, not believes, a verb!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-80520724663154457942014-05-11T18:59:50.032-07:002014-05-11T18:59:50.032-07:00dredging up an old post to tell the OP anonymous: ...dredging up an old post to tell the OP anonymous: you're a trailer trash monkey. read a fucking book; you're so dumb it hurtsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-37754682263149576222014-05-11T15:07:37.496-07:002014-05-11T15:07:37.496-07:00You are welcome. Always funny when the halfwits co...You are welcome. Always funny when the halfwits comment on economics.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-88245036905989664322014-05-11T11:18:54.732-07:002014-05-11T11:18:54.732-07:00Google "John Kennan economics" He pops r...Google "John Kennan economics" He pops right up.Stephen Williamsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01434465858419028592noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-26907435760214601332014-05-11T11:17:40.083-07:002014-05-11T11:17:40.083-07:00Exactly. Kennan told me about this, and it's c...Exactly. Kennan told me about this, and it's clear that the people who thought up the story had organizational behavior in mind. But we could think of this as an economy - albeit a very primitive one. There's an obvious inefficiency and there appears to be equality. But can we draw any useful economic lessons from it? I wasn't sure. It's at least funny, so I thought I would just throw it out there and see what people might say. Some people are very excitable apparently.Stephen Williamsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01434465858419028592noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-8302907258383983732014-05-11T03:23:38.423-07:002014-05-11T03:23:38.423-07:00Jesus Christ, the quality of commentors on this bl...Jesus Christ, the quality of commentors on this blog....<br /><br />http://lmgtfy.com/?q=john+kennanAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-55705805851460943242014-05-09T12:30:37.220-07:002014-05-09T12:30:37.220-07:00Why did you choose that particular title for this ...Why did you choose that particular title for this blog post? It seems tailor-made for generating hostile responses.<br /><br />John Kennan doesn't have a wikipedia page. Is there a faculty page for him somewhere?TGGPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11017651009634767649noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-22154950578622727242014-05-08T15:55:58.568-07:002014-05-08T15:55:58.568-07:00Well, here is what I do. I give some points for ef...Well, here is what I do. I give some points for effort to help weak but not indifferent students get a reasonable grade. But among the better students, I reserve the A for the top performers. Weak students appreciate this, the best students like it, but many decent students who are used to get easy As are not that happy. Nevertheless, I think this is a good rule, and not just for grading.CAnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-50516501710973640552014-05-08T13:22:55.580-07:002014-05-08T13:22:55.580-07:00It's almost impossible for me to properly be a...It's almost impossible for me to properly be a consequentialist about student grades when I don't have knowledge about the rest of the world! How I respond depends on what other policies are in place. In general, I do not believe the student should change his grade, but this is because I further assume that policy controls for demography! :P If that isn't true, then I think the student should bow to their pressure and offer a lower score, knowing that society may very well have screwed them over in the first place. Jefftopiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05005211633248766565noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-69365349343791168122014-05-08T12:53:20.723-07:002014-05-08T12:53:20.723-07:00Good point on affirmative action, it is a topic I ...Good point on affirmative action, it is a topic I go back and forth on. It is complicated.<br /><br />On the example I gave, you are changing the parameters. There is no choice of redistributing income. Let's keep it simple. How do we deal with the student who does so well, therefore making the rest look bad, either as a result of effort or because he was lucky enough to be smarter than the rest of us? Personally, I do not think there is an easy answer here. I believe we all agree that a student shouldn't be allowed to get a good grade by cheating. But beyond that, it is not clear to me what the appropriate response is. CAnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-87037912415268415562014-05-08T12:33:30.380-07:002014-05-08T12:33:30.380-07:00Yeah, I was pretty confusing at the end there. I&#...Yeah, I was pretty confusing at the end there. I'll try this again. But first, I with you on institutional memory; things should be done for good reasons, not because it's the way things have been done. <br /><br />Redistributing grades in a world where we sortof redistribute income is like double taxation - doesn't make much sense. The question then is, which are you going to do? I say target income, or wealth for that matter. It's not a punishment; punishment assumes one was entitled to that reward in the first place - an assumption, not a truth. <br /><br />But in the bigger picture, the student should aim as high as he wants and get that top grade. You say it brings everyone else down, I say not necessarily. Smart policy analysts look at performance relative to SES (socioeconomic status). So instead of, "Wow, Jimmy had a GPA of 3.8!", it would be more like, "So Jimmy got a 3.8, which was the expected result for a student with characteristics x,y, and z". <br /><br />It's not needed to redistribute grades because our analysis should already be conditioned to expectations. This is why the affirmative action case in Michigan opens the door for more interesting admissions policies. We're getting off topic now, but I posted a comment about this and got a great response from Miles Kimball over at this blog: http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/83614366672/michigan-university-and-state-occasion-a-landmark<br />Jefftopiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05005211633248766565noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-78530874812038653362014-05-08T12:12:02.292-07:002014-05-08T12:12:02.292-07:00I am a bit confused. Suppose the students are not ...I am a bit confused. Suppose the students are not lazy, but just not as smart as the "nerd". Should he play dumb to avoid their wrath? Or should grades be adjusted according to IQ? I am not sure either one is a good option.<br /><br />By the way, there is another, perhaps the main point in the story that has been neglected. Eventually the behavior of beating up the monkey that goes for the banana (or calling someone a nerd) becomes engrained in the culture. No one knows why they beat up the monkey that goes for the banana since no monkey has seen a fire hose. They do it because that's what they have always done. It becomes institutional memory.CAnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-27484417004335012922014-05-08T11:41:53.145-07:002014-05-08T11:41:53.145-07:00Let me be more concrete: there's no reason to...Let me be more concrete: there's no reason to redistribute grades if we're redistributing income, and it makes far more sense to redist income. We don't want to send idiots to the top, we just want to ensure that whatever inequities that are present in the system are economically accounted for. Jefftopiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05005211633248766565noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-6635891550438166232014-05-08T11:29:46.946-07:002014-05-08T11:29:46.946-07:00That's an interesting but fundamentally differ...That's an interesting but fundamentally different situation from the monkeys for a few reasons. One notable difference being that students in a classroom aren't a legislative body. I do actually wonder whether whether students under some veil of ignorance would vote to redistribute grades so as to maximize average utility or perhaps the utility of the lowest, etc. <br /><br />Of course, there's another important difference, that we already know that all students save one are lazy - not disadvantaged per se, but lazy. Were the other monkeys lazy? No, they were just pissed. <br /><br />So in the classroom case, the differences are in social make up. Gates helps himself and others, but only because others are willing to accept those benefits. In the classroom example, this is not also true, which is an absurdity. It's an absurdity because there's no a priori incentive to punish or remove any and all achievement; there's just an incentive for everyone to try to take a cut from the achievers. There's no such thing as natural law; if that's what constitution designers want, then that is what is right. <br /><br />And that's my answer: with the way the world is, the student should do as well as he wants. In another world, scores would be recognized as high or low based on how a given student does given their demographic characteristics, so there would be no need for a student to underperform. Relative performance makes sense, but only if relative to the right control. <br /><br />More generally, abstracting away from your example, we can recognize the adverse effects of low SES, and offer programs to alleviate the burdens. <br />Jefftopiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05005211633248766565noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-957473099468967192014-05-08T09:32:58.414-07:002014-05-08T09:32:58.414-07:00Jefftopia, but to say that Gates' action benef...Jefftopia, but to say that Gates' action benefited society is not the same as saying that it benefited everyone. Often times the gains are unequally divided, with some people ending up worse off than before. This applies to innovation as well as international trade. I do think that people who get hurt should be helped to stand back on their feet, but the responsibility to provide assistance should fall to everyone, not just Gates. <br /><br />Here is another example that involves positional externalities, a favorite topic of Steve's favorite economist (just kidding), Robert Frank. Suppose that a teacher scales her exams. If everyone studies less they will get the same grade as if everyone studies more, since each student's performance is graded relative to the performance of others. Now suppose that the students are lazy except one who is unusually smart and also hard working. To deter him from performing so well and therefore making them look back, the other students start calling him a nerd and bullying him. This is not a hypothetical situation, it happens in real life all the time. Should the good student underperform to satisfy the others?CAnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-55146754789864566882014-05-08T09:03:51.525-07:002014-05-08T09:03:51.525-07:00Now here is a fine example of a postmodern comment...Now here is a fine example of a postmodern comment. Thanks!CAnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-9609538901517239552014-05-07T18:28:27.545-07:002014-05-07T18:28:27.545-07:00Nope. Keynes was far to vague to be considered a s...Nope. Keynes was far to vague to be considered a scientific economist while Akerlof tried to connect economics with sociology and psychology. But luck aka probability distributions are not subject to belief, either an event is more likely to occur or less likely. Unless you wanna regress to non-adaptive expectations and claim that people can have wrong believes about a distribution the entire time ... but this seems kind of pre-Lucasian backwards into the stone ages.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-17008279894242359772014-05-07T07:17:18.922-07:002014-05-07T07:17:18.922-07:00I think you guys missed the point where the parabl...I think you guys missed the point where the parable is just a bad analogy. Bill Gates et al actually brought benefits to society. In the story, one monkey got the banana, while the others bore the burden of its consumption. Hence why I asked why it didn't share - sharing it would represent social benefits to innovation. I mean, imagine if Bill Gates invented an OS that worked perfectly for himself, but then allowed his friends to use his technology to spy on everyone. You'd think he would owe society. Innovators should enjoy the benefits of their success but pony up when they harm. Not a radical concept. <br /><br />Sheesh. Jefftopiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05005211633248766565noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-71572357042936392322014-05-07T07:05:00.970-07:002014-05-07T07:05:00.970-07:00Postmodern? Was Keynes postmodern for talking abou...Postmodern? Was Keynes postmodern for talking about animal spirits? Or Akerlof with his identity economics? Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-3489098522917755222014-05-07T07:02:23.565-07:002014-05-07T07:02:23.565-07:00Where they born with these rents? How did they get...Where they born with these rents? How did they get them?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-37243608118274005242014-05-07T04:11:19.808-07:002014-05-07T04:11:19.808-07:00It's funny how you can always take apart Aless...It's funny how you can always take apart Alessina's papers via merely reading the abstracts. I like his notion that luck (i.e. probability distribution) depends on people's believes. Always entertaining when an economist goes postmodern.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-39878590246650200122014-05-07T04:05:46.970-07:002014-05-07T04:05:46.970-07:00Interesting that you name Allen and Gates, i.e. pe...Interesting that you name Allen and Gates, i.e. people whose incomes consisted to some degree in monopoly rents.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-26774795447197981952014-05-06T16:37:20.987-07:002014-05-06T16:37:20.987-07:00That's right Jefftopia, Bill Gates, Paul Allen...That's right Jefftopia, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, etc. are morally obliged to compensate postal employees because, due to their inventions, people can now use email rather than snail mail. They should also compensate clerks and typists because their inventions have made it so much simpler for people to write and file documents, and accountants because without their inventions people would not have access to Turbo Tax. This should teach other ambitious inventors to think twice before they act, wouldn't it. Schumpeter was on to something, I believe.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-74599809926174188372014-05-06T12:26:11.739-07:002014-05-06T12:26:11.739-07:00By the way, Steve, did you have these in mind:
ht...By the way, Steve, did you have these in mind:<br />https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/0002828054825655<br />http://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/moneco/v52y2005i7p1227-1244.htmlCAnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499715909956774229.post-56401466191094121602014-05-06T12:12:34.484-07:002014-05-06T12:12:34.484-07:00It is because the monkey-oligarch bough the allegi...It is because the monkey-oligarch bough the allegiance of the Monkey Old Party which, serving the interest of monkey-business, blocked the passing of a law that would require the top 1 monkey to compensate the other monkeys when he went bananas.CAnoreply@blogger.com