I am struck, these days by the extra effort that seems to have gone into de-emphasizing competition. Whenever they play kickball or something similar in P.E. at K1 and K2's school, the teacher always says to the kids that they are not to keep score. It doesn't matter who wins or loses (it's how they play the game?). This summer at horse camp, first place ribbons were given out to all the riders (though when they are given out, the counselors always pick something positive to say, such as "most improved post-and-trot" which I liked).
Is winning and achieving something to be frowned on? Are children too young to learn the "agony of defeat?" Are we protecting them too much from disappointment? We don't have any experience in competitive leagues such as soccer or hockey but even with the de-emphasis, they instinctively know what it means to win or lose. When told not to keep score, some one always will.
Yet in this year's Olympics we celebrate an athlete's desire to win:
Michael Phelps - Phelps etched his name with Mark Spitz and Carl Lewis among the winningest Olympians ever with his third gold medal and third world record in as many days. ... Phelps all the way. “I hate to lose,” he said. “When you lose a race like that, it motivates me even more to try to swim faster.” (From an AP report.)
An announcer on NBC compares Michael Phelps desire to win (or his dislike in losing) to Tiger Woods. "He's the Tiger Woods of swimming."
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
Is more regulation the answer?
We may well be in the tail end of the subprime crisis but with the news that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have also been substantially affected, there have been calls for increased regulation of the financial markets. Perhaps the answer is not so much more regulation, but better regulation although the balance is always hard to find. I was reminded of this aspect of trying to achieve a good balance when reading "The Commanding Heights".
From page 369:
[In addressing environmental concerns and health] ..
He [Judge Stephen Breyer] points to the challenge of building flexibility into regulation. "It is always a problem to get discretion into the process so that the regulator can apply a reasonable amount of cautios regulation. Because no one trusts anyone else, there is less discretion, more rules, more rigid results. The only way to improve this regulation is to give the administrators more discretion. But Congress writes the rules to prevent discretion. If there is too much discretion, there is a risk of abusing it. If you stop discretion, you get rules and rigidity."
Critics of the current system worry about its rationality and the "last 5-or 10-percent problem." Remediating 90 or 95 percent of a pollution problem can be done in an efficient, cost-effective fashion. The last 5 or 10 percent - purity - is a much more difficult - and sometimes an almost unachievable - goal, and one that diverts resources from more pressing needs. "The drive for perfectionism has created a very big mess," said Justice Breyer. In his book Breaking the Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk Regulation, he cited a case he presided over when he was a federal judge. The case involved a ten-year battle to force the cleanup of a toxic waste dump in New Hampshire: "The site was mostly cleaned up. All but one of the private parties had settled. The remaining private party litigated the cost of cleaning up the last little bit, a cost of about $9.3 million to remove a small amount of highly diluted PCBs and "volatile organic componds" (benzene and gasoline components) by incinerating the dirt. How much extra safety did this $9.3 million buy? The forty-thousand-page record of this ten-year effort indicated (and all parties seemed to agree) that, without the extra expenditure, the waste dump was clean enough for children playing on the site to eat small amounts of dirt for 70 days each year without significant harm. Burning the soil would have made it clean enough for children to eat small amounts daily for 245 days per year without significant harm. But there were no dirt-eating children playing in the area, for it was a swamp. Nor were dirt-eating children likely to appear there, for future building activity seemed unlikely. The parties also agreed that at least half of the volatile organic chemicals would likely evaporate by the year 2000. To spend $9.3 million to protect non-existent dirt-eating children is what I mean by the problem of the 'last 10 percent.'"
From page 369:
[In addressing environmental concerns and health] ..
He [Judge Stephen Breyer] points to the challenge of building flexibility into regulation. "It is always a problem to get discretion into the process so that the regulator can apply a reasonable amount of cautios regulation. Because no one trusts anyone else, there is less discretion, more rules, more rigid results. The only way to improve this regulation is to give the administrators more discretion. But Congress writes the rules to prevent discretion. If there is too much discretion, there is a risk of abusing it. If you stop discretion, you get rules and rigidity."
Critics of the current system worry about its rationality and the "last 5-or 10-percent problem." Remediating 90 or 95 percent of a pollution problem can be done in an efficient, cost-effective fashion. The last 5 or 10 percent - purity - is a much more difficult - and sometimes an almost unachievable - goal, and one that diverts resources from more pressing needs. "The drive for perfectionism has created a very big mess," said Justice Breyer. In his book Breaking the Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk Regulation, he cited a case he presided over when he was a federal judge. The case involved a ten-year battle to force the cleanup of a toxic waste dump in New Hampshire: "The site was mostly cleaned up. All but one of the private parties had settled. The remaining private party litigated the cost of cleaning up the last little bit, a cost of about $9.3 million to remove a small amount of highly diluted PCBs and "volatile organic componds" (benzene and gasoline components) by incinerating the dirt. How much extra safety did this $9.3 million buy? The forty-thousand-page record of this ten-year effort indicated (and all parties seemed to agree) that, without the extra expenditure, the waste dump was clean enough for children playing on the site to eat small amounts of dirt for 70 days each year without significant harm. Burning the soil would have made it clean enough for children to eat small amounts daily for 245 days per year without significant harm. But there were no dirt-eating children playing in the area, for it was a swamp. Nor were dirt-eating children likely to appear there, for future building activity seemed unlikely. The parties also agreed that at least half of the volatile organic chemicals would likely evaporate by the year 2000. To spend $9.3 million to protect non-existent dirt-eating children is what I mean by the problem of the 'last 10 percent.'"
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Dangers of globalization from 'The Commanding Heights"
Jagdish Bhagwati's upbeat speech on free trade (and by extension globalization) seems to be in contrast to the current situation. The last chapter of The Commanding Heights seemed appropriate to consider at this point:
From pages 408-415:
Five tests, in particular, are likely to be decisive in shaping people's thinking and judgment about the market. The outcome of these tests will over time provide the signposts to the future frontier betweens state and market - and the character of the battle over globalization.
1. Delivering the Goods?
... Will market economies deliver on what they promise in terms of measurable economic goods: growth, higher standards of living, better-quality services and jobs? After all, it was the failure of markets and the loss of confidence in their capaciy that led to governments' assuming a much more assertive role in economic management. If, ..., privatization, deregulation, and the opening up of economies to competition are seen as job-destroying rather than job-creating, market policies will surely be subject to continuing attack and constant revision. ...
2. Ensuring Fairness?
... For many, the market system will be evaluated not only by its economic success but also by the way the system will be evaluated not only by its economic success but also by the way in which that success is distributed. ... Is the system just and fair? Or does it disproportionately benefit the rich and the avaricious at the expense of hardworking people of more moderate circumstance? ...What a market advocate describes as "incentives" is translated into "greed" in the vocabulary of the market critic. Conspicuous consumption and the flaunting of wealth weigh the scales toward "greed" and thus accentuate the criticism of inequality. ...
3. Securing the Enviroment?
... The most pressing environmental issues are those that affect the 5 billion people in the rest of the world. A large number of these countries start from low levels of standards and practice - and management. Their environments are under stress because of poverty ...
4. Coping with Demographics?
Population trends will challenge the performance of market economies. ... Those [developing countries] confront an enormous swelling in the younger age groups and the difficult tasks of generating jobs and increasing per capita income. The surge in population has created a combustible mixture of idleness, poverty, disillusionment, and a bitterness that can be a tremendous source of political and economic instability that spills over borders.
5. Upholding Identify?
... But it [participation in the global economy] also challenges the values and identities of national and regional cultures, including ethnic and religious identities. It can undermine a taditional and comforting sense of security ...
... The backlash against globalization is premised exactly on the idea that there is something seriously wrong with the workings of the global marketplace, and that is where the focus of the debate is. On one side are those who say, though often with more emotion than data, that a globalized economy is fundamentally unfair and immoral and that the markets and capitalism are the economy. On the other are those who say that the priority is to develop the new and appropriate rules for the new world that will enhance and broaden the benefits while dealing with the downsides. (pg. 417)
From pages 408-415:
Five tests, in particular, are likely to be decisive in shaping people's thinking and judgment about the market. The outcome of these tests will over time provide the signposts to the future frontier betweens state and market - and the character of the battle over globalization.
1. Delivering the Goods?
... Will market economies deliver on what they promise in terms of measurable economic goods: growth, higher standards of living, better-quality services and jobs? After all, it was the failure of markets and the loss of confidence in their capaciy that led to governments' assuming a much more assertive role in economic management. If, ..., privatization, deregulation, and the opening up of economies to competition are seen as job-destroying rather than job-creating, market policies will surely be subject to continuing attack and constant revision. ...
2. Ensuring Fairness?
... For many, the market system will be evaluated not only by its economic success but also by the way the system will be evaluated not only by its economic success but also by the way in which that success is distributed. ... Is the system just and fair? Or does it disproportionately benefit the rich and the avaricious at the expense of hardworking people of more moderate circumstance? ...What a market advocate describes as "incentives" is translated into "greed" in the vocabulary of the market critic. Conspicuous consumption and the flaunting of wealth weigh the scales toward "greed" and thus accentuate the criticism of inequality. ...
3. Securing the Enviroment?
... The most pressing environmental issues are those that affect the 5 billion people in the rest of the world. A large number of these countries start from low levels of standards and practice - and management. Their environments are under stress because of poverty ...
4. Coping with Demographics?
Population trends will challenge the performance of market economies. ... Those [developing countries] confront an enormous swelling in the younger age groups and the difficult tasks of generating jobs and increasing per capita income. The surge in population has created a combustible mixture of idleness, poverty, disillusionment, and a bitterness that can be a tremendous source of political and economic instability that spills over borders.
5. Upholding Identify?
... But it [participation in the global economy] also challenges the values and identities of national and regional cultures, including ethnic and religious identities. It can undermine a taditional and comforting sense of security ...
... The backlash against globalization is premised exactly on the idea that there is something seriously wrong with the workings of the global marketplace, and that is where the focus of the debate is. On one side are those who say, though often with more emotion than data, that a globalized economy is fundamentally unfair and immoral and that the markets and capitalism are the economy. On the other are those who say that the priority is to develop the new and appropriate rules for the new world that will enhance and broaden the benefits while dealing with the downsides. (pg. 417)
Friday, August 8, 2008
The Commanding Heights
This book covers the transition to market economy in most of the world in the late 70s and 80s after the failure of Keynesian interventionist policies. Notably absent in this story is Africa. Each chapter covers a region (Eastern Europe for example) or country (Great Britain) and relates the process in which the transformation to market economy takes place. It was fairly entertaining except that it was written in a tone that reminds me of a narrator on TV. (Of course, it was made for TV on PBS and makes me wonder which came first.) What I found really irritating was the phrase "commanding heights" was repeated much too often. It reminded me of a TV ad that keeps repeating its 800 number.
The cautions despite the success of capitalism, from page 404:
Yet, whatever the transformations in the world economy, an underlying mistrust of the market persists. Why? George Schultz pointed to one reasone when he said, "Markets are relentless." As competition becomes more intense, here is no respite from its pressures. People turn to government to provide shelter from the constant demands of the market. The move to the market may bring a higher standard of living, ... But it also brings new insecurities - about unemployment, about the durability of jobs and the stress of the workplace, about the loss of protection from the vicissitues of life, about the environment, about the unraveling of the safety net, about health care and what happens in old age.
The cautions despite the success of capitalism, from page 404:
Yet, whatever the transformations in the world economy, an underlying mistrust of the market persists. Why? George Schultz pointed to one reasone when he said, "Markets are relentless." As competition becomes more intense, here is no respite from its pressures. People turn to government to provide shelter from the constant demands of the market. The move to the market may bring a higher standard of living, ... But it also brings new insecurities - about unemployment, about the durability of jobs and the stress of the workplace, about the loss of protection from the vicissitues of life, about the environment, about the unraveling of the safety net, about health care and what happens in old age.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
The use of "I"
Edward Tufte's - see earlier post - criticism of David Galenson's book included Galenson's use of the word "I" (or rather too much use of the word "I"). I think that the main reason for this has been the move away from using the passive to the active voice:
"The hypothesis tested is ..." versus "I test the following hypothesis".
On a similar note, I also see articles where, instead of "I", the author uses, "We". This works fine when there are multiple authors but I also sometimes come across these even though it is a single-authored paper. I find it a little disconcerting but am willing to let it go.
Personally, I've always preferred the passive voice but at work, we are constantly being urged to write using the active voice. I'm not sure why there is a trend toward the active voice - I feel like I'm writing my resume or something.
"The hypothesis tested is ..." versus "I test the following hypothesis".
On a similar note, I also see articles where, instead of "I", the author uses, "We". This works fine when there are multiple authors but I also sometimes come across these even though it is a single-authored paper. I find it a little disconcerting but am willing to let it go.
Personally, I've always preferred the passive voice but at work, we are constantly being urged to write using the active voice. I'm not sure why there is a trend toward the active voice - I feel like I'm writing my resume or something.
The Anti Commons
A previous post on manging the fisheries commons led me to look at the following on the Anti-Commons problem, i.e. the problem that can arise when there are too much property rights (I think I'm summarizing the anti-commons correctly.)
1. The Tragedy of the Anti-Commons: A New Problem. An Application to the Fisheries
Abstract: The operation and management of common property resources (“the commons”) have been exhaustively examined in economics and political science, both in formal analysis and in practical applications. “Tragedy of the Commons” metaphor helps to explain why people overuse shared resources. On the other side, Anti-Commons Theory is a recent theory presented by scientists to explain several situations about new Property Rights concerns. An “anti-commons” problem arises when there are multiple rights to exclude. Little attention has been given to the setting where more than one person is assigned with exclusion rights, which may be exercised. We analyze the “anti-commons” problem in which resources are inefficiently underutilized rather than over-utilized as in the familiar commons setting. In fact, these two problems are symmetrical in several aspects.
2. Do Formal Intellectual Property Rights Hinder the Free Flow of Scientific Knowledge? An Empirical Test of the Anti-Commons Hypothesis
Abstract: While the potential for intellectual property rights to inhibit the diffusion of scientific knowledge is at the heart of several contemporary policy debates, evidence for the anti-commons effect has been anecdotal. A central issue in this debate is how intellectual property rights over a given piece of knowledge affects the propensity of future researchers to build upon that knowledge in their own scientific research activities. This article frames this debate around the concept of dual knowledge, in which a single discovery may contribute to both scientific research and useful commercial applications. A key implication of dual knowledge is that it may be simultaneously instantiated as a scientific research article and as a patent. Such patent-paper pairs are at the heart of our empirical strategy. We exploit the fact that patents are granted with a substantial lag, often many years after the knowledge is initially disclosed through paper publication. The knowledge associated with a patent paper pair therefore diffuses within two distinct intellectual property environments one associated with the pre-grant period and another after formal IP rights are granted. Relative to the expected citation pattern for publications with a given quality level, anticommons theory predicts that the citation rate to a scientific publication should fall after formal IP rights associated with that publication are granted. Employing a differences-indifferences estimator for 169 patent-paper pairs (and including a control group of publications from the same journal for which no patent is granted), we find evidence for a modest anti-commons effect (the citation rate after the patent grant declines by between 9 and 17%). This decline becomes more pronounced with the number of years elapsed since the date of the patent grant, and is particularly salient for articles authored by researchers with public sector affiliations.
Less technical:
1. James Surowiecki reviews a new book called the Gridlock Economy.
We hear a lot about the “tragedy of the commons”: if a valuable asset (a grazing field, say) is held in common, each individual will try to exploit as much of it as possible. Villagers will send all their cows out to graze at the same time, and soon the field will be useless. When there’s no ownership, the pursuit of individual self-interest can make everyone worse off. But Heller shows that having too much ownership creates its own problems. If too many people own individual parts of a valuable asset, it’s easy to end up with gridlock, since any one person can simply veto the use of the asset. ...
The commons leads to overuse and destruction; the anticommons leads to underuse and waste. In the cultural sphere, ever tighter restrictions on copyright and fair use limit artists’ abilities to sample and build on older works of art. In biotechnology, the explosion of patenting over the past twenty-five years—particularly efforts to patent things like gene fragments—may be retarding drug development, by making it hard to create a new drug without licensing myriad previous patents. Even divided land ownership can have unforeseen consequences. Wind power, for instance, could reliably supply up to twenty per cent of America’s energy needs—but only if new transmission lines were built, allowing the efficient movement of power from the places where it’s generated to the places where it’s consumed. Don’t count on that happening anytime soon. Most of the land that the grid would pass through is owned by individuals, and nobody wants power lines running through his back yard. ...
Property rights (including patents) are essential to economic growth, providing incentives to innovate and invest. But property rights need to be limited to be effective. The more we divide common resources like science and culture into small, fenced-off lots, Heller shows, the more difficult we make it for people to do business and to build something new. Innovation, investment, and growth end up being stifled. ...
When something you own is necessary to the success of a venture, even if its contribution is small, you’ll tend to ask for an amount close to the full value of the venture. And since everyone in your position also thinks he deserves a huge sum, the venture quickly becomes unviable.
2. The Environmental Economics blog is closer to the commons problem:
The Economist takes another tack. It reviews some of Elinor Ostrom's critiques of Harding. She has found several examples, including the "miracle of the Rhine," that showed how the commons can be managed without selling off every last bit and assigning ownership, the usual solution to Harding's problem. Management of Swiss (or Austrian) Alpine pastures is another example. Farmers don't tend to add animals until the ecosystem collapses. Quite the opposite: Many of these pastures have been managed successfully for decades or sometimes centuries, despite belonging to no one in particular.
The Economist also tracked down the 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons last month, where Charlotte Hess spoke about extending the concept of the commons to global public goods like oceans or Antarctica. That's where managing becomes more difficult. Once the entire Earth is the common, like with climate change, it's not as simple as having a handful of farmers divvy up a pasture or establishing unwritten norms for Sahelian nomads.
1. The Tragedy of the Anti-Commons: A New Problem. An Application to the Fisheries
Abstract: The operation and management of common property resources (“the commons”) have been exhaustively examined in economics and political science, both in formal analysis and in practical applications. “Tragedy of the Commons” metaphor helps to explain why people overuse shared resources. On the other side, Anti-Commons Theory is a recent theory presented by scientists to explain several situations about new Property Rights concerns. An “anti-commons” problem arises when there are multiple rights to exclude. Little attention has been given to the setting where more than one person is assigned with exclusion rights, which may be exercised. We analyze the “anti-commons” problem in which resources are inefficiently underutilized rather than over-utilized as in the familiar commons setting. In fact, these two problems are symmetrical in several aspects.
2. Do Formal Intellectual Property Rights Hinder the Free Flow of Scientific Knowledge? An Empirical Test of the Anti-Commons Hypothesis
Abstract: While the potential for intellectual property rights to inhibit the diffusion of scientific knowledge is at the heart of several contemporary policy debates, evidence for the anti-commons effect has been anecdotal. A central issue in this debate is how intellectual property rights over a given piece of knowledge affects the propensity of future researchers to build upon that knowledge in their own scientific research activities. This article frames this debate around the concept of dual knowledge, in which a single discovery may contribute to both scientific research and useful commercial applications. A key implication of dual knowledge is that it may be simultaneously instantiated as a scientific research article and as a patent. Such patent-paper pairs are at the heart of our empirical strategy. We exploit the fact that patents are granted with a substantial lag, often many years after the knowledge is initially disclosed through paper publication. The knowledge associated with a patent paper pair therefore diffuses within two distinct intellectual property environments one associated with the pre-grant period and another after formal IP rights are granted. Relative to the expected citation pattern for publications with a given quality level, anticommons theory predicts that the citation rate to a scientific publication should fall after formal IP rights associated with that publication are granted. Employing a differences-indifferences estimator for 169 patent-paper pairs (and including a control group of publications from the same journal for which no patent is granted), we find evidence for a modest anti-commons effect (the citation rate after the patent grant declines by between 9 and 17%). This decline becomes more pronounced with the number of years elapsed since the date of the patent grant, and is particularly salient for articles authored by researchers with public sector affiliations.
Less technical:
1. James Surowiecki reviews a new book called the Gridlock Economy.
We hear a lot about the “tragedy of the commons”: if a valuable asset (a grazing field, say) is held in common, each individual will try to exploit as much of it as possible. Villagers will send all their cows out to graze at the same time, and soon the field will be useless. When there’s no ownership, the pursuit of individual self-interest can make everyone worse off. But Heller shows that having too much ownership creates its own problems. If too many people own individual parts of a valuable asset, it’s easy to end up with gridlock, since any one person can simply veto the use of the asset. ...
The commons leads to overuse and destruction; the anticommons leads to underuse and waste. In the cultural sphere, ever tighter restrictions on copyright and fair use limit artists’ abilities to sample and build on older works of art. In biotechnology, the explosion of patenting over the past twenty-five years—particularly efforts to patent things like gene fragments—may be retarding drug development, by making it hard to create a new drug without licensing myriad previous patents. Even divided land ownership can have unforeseen consequences. Wind power, for instance, could reliably supply up to twenty per cent of America’s energy needs—but only if new transmission lines were built, allowing the efficient movement of power from the places where it’s generated to the places where it’s consumed. Don’t count on that happening anytime soon. Most of the land that the grid would pass through is owned by individuals, and nobody wants power lines running through his back yard. ...
Property rights (including patents) are essential to economic growth, providing incentives to innovate and invest. But property rights need to be limited to be effective. The more we divide common resources like science and culture into small, fenced-off lots, Heller shows, the more difficult we make it for people to do business and to build something new. Innovation, investment, and growth end up being stifled. ...
When something you own is necessary to the success of a venture, even if its contribution is small, you’ll tend to ask for an amount close to the full value of the venture. And since everyone in your position also thinks he deserves a huge sum, the venture quickly becomes unviable.
2. The Environmental Economics blog is closer to the commons problem:
The Economist takes another tack. It reviews some of Elinor Ostrom's critiques of Harding. She has found several examples, including the "miracle of the Rhine," that showed how the commons can be managed without selling off every last bit and assigning ownership, the usual solution to Harding's problem. Management of Swiss (or Austrian) Alpine pastures is another example. Farmers don't tend to add animals until the ecosystem collapses. Quite the opposite: Many of these pastures have been managed successfully for decades or sometimes centuries, despite belonging to no one in particular.
The Economist also tracked down the 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons last month, where Charlotte Hess spoke about extending the concept of the commons to global public goods like oceans or Antarctica. That's where managing becomes more difficult. Once the entire Earth is the common, like with climate change, it's not as simple as having a handful of farmers divvy up a pasture or establishing unwritten norms for Sahelian nomads.
David Galenson
The NYT recently featured David Galenson whom I've always thought of as an economist with an interesting research agenda. Therefore, I was equally surprised to find that Edward Tufte whom I had always thought of as a statistician with equally interesting research on visualizing data disparaging Galenson's research. Examples of Tufte's critiques are:
Here:
"For one thing, the book presents 15 data tables with 2,029 entries (artists' birthdates, deathdates, ages, and frequency of appearances in exhibitions and art history textbooks) - but not a single auction price or price index or anything else that might measure an economic transaction. Likewise for the text in the 265-page book: no prices at all. The book's 2 graphs show a vertical axis, Ln(Price) = natural logarithm of prices, along with age/price curves for Cezanne and Picasso. These 2 tidy curves, without any actual data points, are the only quantitative evidence about auction prices in the book. Readers are not told the number of paintings plotted graphically. The Cezanne age/price curve could result from all sorts of underlying data."
(Good Point - and taken. Galenson should have known better.)
And here:
"David Galenson begins with an intellectual history of the work, disarmingly written in the first- person singular with 35 self-references in the first 2 pages."
(I thought that this was a low blow. And although I dislike the trend where the reporter inserts himself/hereself into the story I've begin to accept it as a trend. See writer Caroline Kettlewell's opinion on narrative non-fiction.)
And here's the unkindest but perhaps not totally untrue cut of all:
economisting: (e kon' o mist' ing) 1. The act or process of converting limited evidence into grand claims by means of rhetorical ploys, especially punning. 2. The belief or practice that empirical evidence can only confirm and never disconfirm a favored theory. 3. Conclusions that are theory-driven, not evidence based. See also confirmation bias, painting with a broad brush, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, post-modern critical theory, marketing.
Ultimately, I feel that Tufte has an axe to grind against economists and when I sense such feelings of animosity in any kind of writing it leads me to believe that the author is biased and as such cannot be taken seriously. Pity.
See also comments here and here which seems to imply that Galenson is a sloppy/bad writer and no worse but I view this as being generous. I think that if a person is sloppy/bad that will reflect into his or her other areas as well. In the case of a book, such as this that I think is trying to extend the reach of economics, Galenson has a responsibility to write clearly and with more careful thought.
Here:
"For one thing, the book presents 15 data tables with 2,029 entries (artists' birthdates, deathdates, ages, and frequency of appearances in exhibitions and art history textbooks) - but not a single auction price or price index or anything else that might measure an economic transaction. Likewise for the text in the 265-page book: no prices at all. The book's 2 graphs show a vertical axis, Ln(Price) = natural logarithm of prices, along with age/price curves for Cezanne and Picasso. These 2 tidy curves, without any actual data points, are the only quantitative evidence about auction prices in the book. Readers are not told the number of paintings plotted graphically. The Cezanne age/price curve could result from all sorts of underlying data."
(Good Point - and taken. Galenson should have known better.)
And here:
"David Galenson begins with an intellectual history of the work, disarmingly written in the first- person singular with 35 self-references in the first 2 pages."
(I thought that this was a low blow. And although I dislike the trend where the reporter inserts himself/hereself into the story I've begin to accept it as a trend. See writer Caroline Kettlewell's opinion on narrative non-fiction.)
And here's the unkindest but perhaps not totally untrue cut of all:
economisting: (e kon' o mist' ing) 1. The act or process of converting limited evidence into grand claims by means of rhetorical ploys, especially punning. 2. The belief or practice that empirical evidence can only confirm and never disconfirm a favored theory. 3. Conclusions that are theory-driven, not evidence based. See also confirmation bias, painting with a broad brush, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, post-modern critical theory, marketing.
Ultimately, I feel that Tufte has an axe to grind against economists and when I sense such feelings of animosity in any kind of writing it leads me to believe that the author is biased and as such cannot be taken seriously. Pity.
See also comments here and here which seems to imply that Galenson is a sloppy/bad writer and no worse but I view this as being generous. I think that if a person is sloppy/bad that will reflect into his or her other areas as well. In the case of a book, such as this that I think is trying to extend the reach of economics, Galenson has a responsibility to write clearly and with more careful thought.
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