a dynamic inventory model with periodic auditing consider a single item periodic review stationary inventory model with stochastic demands proportional ordering costs and convex holding and shortage costs where shortages are backordered and veinott s well known terminal condition holds orders can be scheduled for any period but the actual inventory level is determined every t periods through an audit this leads to a dynamic programming model where stage n contains periods n 1t 1 through nt for both discounted and averaging criteria a simple rule optimally describes the orders for the t periods of a stage as a function of the state beginning inventory level and the cumulative t period order the latter is optimally determined by a base stock policy with two base stock levels one for the final stage another for the rest the horizon may be finite or infinite methods are presented for computing optimal policies together with bounds on the costs of suboptimal myopic policies models with proportional costs and continuous demands are studied in detail computational experiments indicate that myopic policies perform quite well for such models the selection of a best review period t is covered briefly applications of our model include just in time settings where audit decisions play a negligible role

the optimal frozen period in a dynamic production model abstract we consider a periodic auditing model for manufacturers in a supply chain who observe stochastic demand proportional holding expedited ordering costs and setup cost customer demand for a component can arrive in any period but the procurement quantities are determined every t periods which is defined as a frozen period the demand forecasts are updated every period as more information becomes available from the marketplace this paper studies a forecast order policy and compares it with the optimal order policy our objective is to determine the optimal length of a frozen period and the safety stock in a frozen period such that the expected total cost per unit of time is minimized

open access and academic journal quality ing from complicated signaling behavior by informed authors lerner and tirole show that adding upstream private information does not alter their basic analysis their proposition 4 454 aea papers and proceedings may 2005

evolving standards for academic publishing a q r theory this paper develops models of quality standards to examine two trends academic journals increasingly require extensive revisions of submissions and articles are becoming longer and changing in other ways papers are modeled as varying along two quality dimensions q reflects the importance of the main ideas and r other aspects of quality observed trends are regarded as increases in r quality a static equilibrium model illustrates comparative statics explanations a dynamic model in which referees with a biased view of their own work learn social norms for weighting q and r is shown to produce a long gradual evolution of social norms

agon and ag ec styles of persuasion in agricultural economics it is a tradition that these addresses be given by an outsider i speak as an outsider in praise of agricultural economics an outsider presuming to praise could be accused of condescension but i assure you i come by a favorable opinion of the field honestly i am practically an insider maternal relations own farms in illinois near watseka the same roger gray of the food research institute whom president elect johnston mentions in his paper is my second cousin once removed in england i have worked as an agricultural laborer once in vermont i milked a cow ag econ is in my blood

is peer review in decline i introduction for the past half century or more peer reviewed journals have played a central role in the evaluation and dissemination of scientific research the internet has enhanced scientific communication in many ways and there is considerable excitement around new institutions for disseminating research 1 a more sobering thought however is that new technologies can also be disruptive this paper begins with some documentation of recent trends in economics publishing roughly the trends involve economists from top ranked departments publishing fewer papers in many top journals this could be a welcome change but is also potentially troublesome one way in which the internet could be disruptive is that it could allow high profile researchers to disseminate their work without subjecting it to peer review which in turn could lead to a broader unraveling of the peer review system the majority of the paper is then devoted to analyses of several additional data sources with the goal of understanding better what may be causing the observed trends the facts part of this paper documents two main facts 1 economists in top ranked departments now publish very few papers in top field journals there is a marked decline in such publications between the early 1990s and early 2000s 2 comparing the early 2000s with the early 1990s there is a decline in both the absolute number of papers and the share of papers in the top general interest journals written by harvard economics department faculty although the second fact just concerns one department i see it as potentially important to understanding what is happening because it comes at a time when harvard is widely regarded i believe correctly as having ascended to the top position in the profession the decline of peer review theory i allude to in the title is that the necessity of going through the peer review process has lessened for high status authors in the old days peer reviewed journals were by far the most effective means of reaching readers whereas with the growth of the internet high status authors can now post papers online and exploit their reputation to attract readers many alternate explanations are possible i focus on four theories the decline in peer review theory and three alternatives 1 the trends could be a consequence of top school authors being crowded out of the top journals by other researchers several such stories have an optimistic message for example there is more talent entering the profession old pro elite biases are being broken down more schools are encouraging faculty to do cutting edge research and the internet is enabling more cutting edge research by breaking down informational barriers that had hampered researchers outside the top schools 2 2 the trends could be a consequence of the growth of revisions at economics journals discussed in ellison 2002a 2002b in this more pessimistic theory highly productive researchers must abandon some projects and or seek out faster outlets to conserve the time now required to publish their most important works 3 the trends could simply reflect that field journals have declined in quality in some relative sense and become a less attractive place to publish this theory is meant to encompass also the rise of new journals which is not obviously desirable or undesirable the majority of this paper is devoted to examining various data sources that provide additional details about how economics publishing has changed over the past decade these are intended both to sharpen understanding of the facts to be explained and to provide tests of auxiliary predictions of the theories two main sources of information are used data on publications and data on citations the publication data include department level counts of publications in various additional journals an individual level dataset containing records of publications in a subset of journals for thousands of economists and a very small dataset containing complete data on a few authors publication records

strategic disclosure of research results the cost of proving your honesty in situations where a biased sender provides verifiable information to a receiver i study how strategic reporting affects the incentives to search for information research provides series of signals that can be used selectively in reporting i show that the sender is strictly worse off when his research effort is not observed by the receiver he has to conduct more research than in the observable case and in equilibrium discloses all the information he obtained however this extra research can be socially beneficial and mandatory disclosure of results can thus be welfare reducing finally i identify cases where the sender withholds evidence and for which mandatory disclosure rules become more attractive in 2002 editors of eleven of the most prestigious medical journals announced that they would only publish the results of studies that were entered at their start in a publicly available database 1 pharmaceutical firms conduct clinical trials to test the efficacy and potential side effects of their drugs and to compare them to competitors products publishing results of studies is an efficient way to influence doctors prescriptions and patients tastes however firms can conduct multiple trials and select the most favourable results the system of mandatory disclosure adopted by medical journals is a response to the fear of such selective publishing 2 it makes the research effort of pharmaceutical firms more observable and will influence both the information they disclose and the amount of research they perform in the present article i study the interaction between the research and disclosure decisions which is an essential element in many settings the adoption of mandatory disclosure rules has subtle effects and i discover that leaving the research effort unobservable can sometimes be socially beneficial 3 i study the interaction between research and disclosure in a model where a biased sender searches for information and communicates it strategically to a receiver who will

estimating the armington elasticity the importance of study design and publication bias abstract a key parameter in international economics is the elasticity of substitution between domestic and foreign goods also called the armington elasticity yet estimates vary widely we collect 3524 reported estimates of the elasticity construct 32 variables that reflect the context in which researchers obtain their estimates and examine what drives the heterogeneity in the results to account for model uncertainty we employ bayesian and frequentist model averaging to correct for publication bias we use newly developed non linear techniques our main results are threefold first there is publication bias against small and statistically insignificant elasticities second differences in results are best explained by differences in data aggregation frequency size and dimension third the elasticity implied by the literature after accounting for both publication bias and study quality lies in the range 2 5 5 1 with a median of 3 8

succession planning vs agency theory a test of harris and helfat s interpretation of plurality announcement market returns in this note we respond to harris and helfat s 1998 reinterpretation of the results in worrell nemec and davidson 1997 harris and helfat argued that the negative stock market response associated with plurality announcements could be the result of inadequate corporate succession planning rather than with the agency cost explanation our results here show that duality and plurality announcements do not hurt shareholder wealth as long as there is an heir apparent and therefore are more consistent with the succession planning explanation than with agency theory copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

the review process in economics is it too fast rewards for publications in good economics journals are very high and submission fees and other monetary costs associated with submitting an existing manuscript are low consequently the editorial delay especially the first response time the time until the first editorial decision by postponing monetary rewards to publication constitutes the major submission cost from the author s perspective reducing the delay will induce many additional submissions of low quality papers to good journals increasing significantly the workload of editors and referees moreover the rejection rate will increase and cause papers to be rejected more times before publication offsetting at least some of the shorter first response times as a result the efforts of many editors to reduce the editorial delay although attracting more submissions to their journals may have adverse effects from a social perspective and the optimal delay might be longer than the current average of four months

beyond publication bias abstract this review considers several meta regression and graphical methods that can differentiate genuine empirical effect from publication bias publication selection exists when editors reviewers or researchers have a preference for statistically significant results because all areas of empirical research are susceptible to publication selection any average or tally of significant insignificant studies is likely to be biased and potentially misleading meta regression analysis can see through the murk of random sampling error and selected misspecification bias to identify the underlying statistical structures that characterize genuine empirical effect meta significance testing and precision effect testing pet are offered as a means to identify empirical effect beyond publication bias and are applied to four areas of empirical economics research minimum wage effects union productivity effects price elasticities and tests of the natural rate hypothesis

the credibility revolution in empirical economics how better research design is taking the con out of econometrics since edward leamer s memorable 1983 paper let s take the con out of econometrics empirical microeconomics has experienced a credibility revolution while leamer s suggested remedy sensitivity analysis has played a role in this we argue that the primary engine driving improvement has been a focus on the quality of empirical research designs the advantages of a good research design are perhaps most easily apparent in research using random assignment we begin with an overview of leamer s 1983 critique and his proposed remedies we then turn to the key factors we see contributing to improved empirical work including the availability of more and better data along with advances in theoretical econometric understanding but especially the fact that research design has moved front and center in much of empirical micro we offer a brief digression into macroeconomics and industrial organization where progress by our lights is less dramatic although there is work in both fields that we find encouraging finally we discuss the view that the design pendulum has swung too far critics of design driven studies argue that in pursuit of clean and credible research designs researchers seek good answers instead of good questions we briefly respond to this concern which worries us little

the optimal review period in a dynamic inventory model consider a single item periodic review infinite horizon undiscounted inventory model with stochastic demands proportional holding and shortage costs and full backlogging orders can arrive in every period and the cost of receiving them is negligible as in a jit setting every t periods one observes the current stock level and orders deliveries for the next t periods thus incurring a fixed setup cost the goal is to find a review period t and an ordering policy that minimize the long run expected average cost per period flynn and garstka flynn j s garstka 1990 a dynamic inventory model with periodic auditing opns res 38 1089 1103 characterize an optimal ordering policy when t is fixed and study a myopic policy whose cost is often close to the optimal cost this paper covers the problem of selecting t we prove an optimal review period t exists characterize its properties and present methods for its computation we also study an approximation to t based on the myopic policy of ou

how much intraregional exchange rate variability could a currency union remove the case of asean 3 abstract a multilateral currency union removes intraregional exchange rates but not the union rate the pre union intraregional exchange rate variability is thus latent a two step procedure is developed to measure this the measured variables are used to model inflation and intraregional trade growth of individual union members counterfactual simulations of the union impact are carried out using the resulting models application to asean 3 shows that the intraregional variability mainly consists of short run exchange rate shocks that the variability significantly affects inflation and intraregional trade of major asean 3 members and that a union would reduce inflation and promote trade regionwide

an effective heuristic for the review period in an inventory model with staggered deliveries and normal demands abstract consider a single item periodic review infinite horizon undiscounted inventory model with stochastic demands proportional holding and shortage costs and full backlogging orders can arrive in every period and the cost of receiving them is negligible as in jit every t periods one audits the stocks and chooses a delivery schedule for each of the next t periods thus incurring a fixed audit cost and when one schedules actual deliveries a fixed order cost the problem is to find a review period t and an ordering policy minimizing the average cost an earlier article developed an algorithm for computing an optimal t and undertook a numerical study to evaluate various approximations assuming normal demands we characterize the asymptotic behavior for large of the optimal t and establish the asymptotic optimality of a heuristic calculable on a spreadsheet a numerical study indicates that patterns established here for large hold for above 2

initial labor market conditions and long term outcomes for economists each year graduate students entering the academic job market worry that they will suffer due to uncontrollable macroeconomic risk given the importance of general human capital and the relative ease of publicly observing productivity in academia one might expect that long term labor market outcomes for students graduating in unfavorable climates will resemble long term outcomes for those graduating in favorable climates in this paper i analyze the relationship between macroeconomic conditions at graduation initial job placement and long term outcomes for ph d economists from seven programs using macroeconomic conditions as an instrument for initial placement i show that a quality and type of initial job have a causal effect on long term job characteristics i also show that better initial placement increases research productivity which helps to limit the set of economic models that can explain the effect of initial placement on long term jobs

getting closer or drifting apart advances in communication and transportation technologies have the potential to bring people closer together and create a global village however they also allow heterogenous agents to segregate along special interests which gives rise to communities fragmented by type rather than geography we show that lower communication costs should always decrease separation between individual agents even as group based separation increases each measure of separation is pertinent for distinct types of social interaction a group based measure captures the diversity of group preferences that can have an impact on the provision of public goods an individual measure correlates with the speed of information transmission through the social network that afiects for example learning about job opportunities and new technologies we test the model by looking at coauthoring between academic economists before and during the rise of the internet in the 1990s

the slowdown in first response times of economics journals can it be beneficial the first response time henceforth frt of economics journals has increased over the last four decades from 1 2 months to 3 6 months the optimal frt however is not zero because the frt deters submission of mediocre papers to good journals and consequently saves valuable time of referees and editors the change in the actual frt is in the same direction as the change in the optimal frt which has increased because of the availability of research on the internet prior to publication and because the costs of refereeing a paper have increased

robust portfolio choice with learning in the framework of regret single period case in this paper we formulate a single period portfolio choice problem with parameter uncertainty in the framework of relative regret relative regret evaluates a portfolio by comparing its return to a family of benchmarks where the benchmarks are the wealths of fictitious investors who invest optimally given knowledge of the model parameters and is a natural objective when there is concern about parameter uncertainty or model ambiguity the optimal relative regret portfolio is the one that performs well in relation to all the benchmarks over the family of possible parameter values we analyze this problem using convex duality and show that it is equivalent to a bayesian problem where the lagrange multipliers play the role of the prior distribution and the learning model involves bayesian updating of these lagrange multipliers prior this bayesian problem is unusual in that the prior distribution is endogenously chosen by solving the dual optimization problem for the lagrange multipliers and the objective function involves the family of benchmarks from the relative regret problem these results show that regret is a natural means by which robust decision making and learning can be combined this paper was accepted by dimitris bertsimas optimization

submission fees and response times in academic publishing both submission fees and response times enable editors to maintain an acceptable refereeing burden by discouraging the submission of articles with low probability of acceptance when authors differ in their ability or willingness to pay submission fees and deal with delays journal quality is maximized under a combination of moderate fees and moderate delays

measuring intertemporal substitution the importance of method choices and selective reporting i examine 2 735 estimates of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption eis reported in 169 published studies the literature shows strong selective reporting researchers discard negative and insignicant estimates too often which pulls the mean estimate up by about 0 5 the reporting bias dwarfs the effects of methods with the exception of the choice between micro and macro data when i correct the mean for the bias for macro estimates i get zero even though the reported t statistics are on average two the corrected mean of micro estimates of the eis for asset holders is around 0 3 0 4 calibrations greater than 0 8 are inconsistent with the bulk of the empirical evidence jel e21 c83

the slowdown of the economics publishing process over the last three decades there has been a dramatic slowdown of the publication process at top economics journals a substantial part is due to journals requiring more extensive revisions various explanations are considered democratization of the review process increases in the complexity of papers growth of the profession and cost and benefit arguments changes in the profession are examined using time series data connections between these changes and the slowdown are examined using paper level data there is evidence for some explanations but most of the slowdown remains unexplained changes may reflect evolving social norms

free labor for costly journals there is a remarkable difference between the prices that commercial publishers charge to libraries for economics journals and the prices charged by professional societies and university presses this price difference does not reflect a difference in quality the six most cited economics journals listed in the social science citation index are all nonprofit journals and their library subscription prices average about 180 per year only five of the 20 most cited journals are owned by commercial publishers and the average price of these five journals is about 1660 per year tables 1 and 2 compare library costs and measures of cost effectiveness for the ten most cited nonprofit journals and the ten most cited journals owned by commercial presses the average price per page of the commercial journals is about six times as high and the average price per citation is about 16 times as high as for the nonprofit journals in tables 1 and 2 the first column shows the year 2001 library subscription price and the second column shows the price per page calculated by dividing year 2001 price by the number of pages published in the year 2000 the third column reports the price per citation this is the library subscription price divided by the number of times that articles in this journal were cited in 1998 as recorded by the social science citation index the fourth column price per recent citation is the library subscription price divided by the number of times that the 1996 and 1997 volumes of the journal were cited in 1998 the citation rank is found by ranking journals according to the number of times that this journal was cited in 1998 the differences in prices and cost effectiveness between nonprofit and commercial journals are similar for less prestigious journals i have assembled a data

the rate of return to public sector agricultural r d in the uk 1965 80 1989 the rate of return to public sector agricultural r d in the uk 1965 80 applied economics vol 21 no 8 pp 1063 1086

does food safety information impact u s meat demand a theoretical model of consumer response to publicized food safety information on meat demand is developed with an empirical application to u s meat consumption evidence is found for the existence of pre committed levels of consumption seasonal factors time trends and contemporaneous own and cross commodity food safety concerns the average demand response to food safety concerns is small especially in comparison to price effects and to previous estimates of health related issues this small average effect masks periods of significantly larger responses corresponding with prominent food safety events but these larger impacts are short lived with no apparent food safety lagged effects on food safety concerns in the united states have dramatically increased in the past decade with regard to incidences of contaminated meat products concerns have arisen because contaminated meat products can result in serious risk to the well being and health of consumers contamination comes from a myriad of sources including but not limited to outbreaks of listeria monocytogenes escherichia coli e coli and salmonella centers for disease control and prevention food safety problems are not isolated to the united states as other unsafe contaminates in meats have emerged across the world including highly publicized outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy bse in europe the potential impacts of publicized food safety events on consumer s demand for meat products in the united states include own effects on the demand for the contaminated meat involved as well as cross effects impacting the demand for other meats the objective of this article is to investigate whether publicized food safety concerns surrounding beef pork and poultry chicken and turkey have impacted meat consumption food safety indices are constructed separately for beef pork and poultry

apprentice departure and demotion an examination of the three types of ceo board chair separation past research has consistently shown that separation of ceo and board chair roles has no systematic effect on firm performance in this study we introduce the different forms of such separation apprentice departure and demotion in a study of standard poor s s p 1500 and fortune 1000 firms we find that separation of the two leadership roles positively impacts future firm performance when current performance is poor but negatively impacts future firm performance when current performance is high we find that this effect is most dramatic for demotion separations finally we test theory about the permanency of ceo board chair separation our results show that the different types of ceo board chair separation have very distinct consequences abstract from author

do prices respond asymmetrically to cost changes this article investigates price asymmetry by using an almost complete sample of taiwanese industries to see whether output prices respond faster to cost increases than they do to decreases in contrast with the earlier literature the evidence shows that positive price asymmetry cannot be applied to all industries especially those industries with rapid productivity growth the evidence also indicates that firms exhibiting fast slow productivity growth see their prices react less more to cost increases than to cost decreases

the power of bias in economics research we investigate two critical dimensions of the credibility of empirical economics research statistical power and bias we survey 159 empirical economics literatures that draw upon 64 076 estimates of economic parameters reported in more than 6 700 empirical studies half of the research areas have nearly 90 of their results under powered the median statistical power is 18 or less a simple weighted average of those reported results that are adequately powered power 80 reveals that nearly 80 of the reported effects in these empirical economics literatures are exaggerated typically by a factor of two and with one third inflated by a factor of four or more

one hat too many key executive plurality and shareholder wealth tracing backward the career paths of the key executives of business week s 1990 listing of the 1000 most valuable publicly held companies we empirically examined the impact of announced changes in key executive plurality on stockholder returns we found the more complete the position consolidation the more negative were the shareholder responses to attempt to gain further understanding the additional variables of executive s origin the size of the board of directors of the firm the proportion of outsiders on the board and prior firm performance were examined 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

on publication refereeing and working hard we present a model for academia with heterogeneous author types and endogenous effort to evaluate recent changes in the publication process in economics we analyze the implications of these developments on research output lowering the precision of refereeing signals lowers the effort choices of intermediate ability authors but invites more submissions from less able authors increasing the number of journals stimulates less able authors to submit their papers the editor can improve the journal s quality pool of submitted manuscripts by improving the precision of refereeing but not by lowering acceptance standards the submission strategy of an author is informative of his ability

the nature and causes of unemployment in the federal republic of germany since the seventies an empirical investigation the leading economic problem of our time is the high and persistent level of unemployment as of early 1985 there are no signs that the severity of unemployment will weaken within the near future this paper discusses first some basic developments of labour supply and labour demand in the federal republic of germany frg the composition of the labour supply and the structure of the labour demand for persons and hours worked as well as the dynamics of the unemployment pool the next section reviews very briefly some empirical findings explaining the rise in the nairu where we make the distinction between the no shock and the actual nairu following suggestions put by the organizers of the conference we then elaborate on the employment function in the empirically oriented literature most employment functions use labour services i e total hours worked as the dependent variable thus assuming homogeneity of labour demand with respect to jobs and working hours in the german political arena however the distinction between persons employed and hours worked is particularly important first it figures in the employment aims of labour unions who request reductions in weekly working hours in order to induce higher manning second the distinction arises in the context of overtime work for it has been suggested that the reduction in overtime to standard working hours could create more than 1 million new jobs in germany we present some estimated labour demand functions which take into account these two dimensions of labour demand jobs and hours and which are used to elaborate on the direction and magnitude of the employment effects of reductions in wage costs and increases in overtime premia

the adjustment of the real interest rate to inflation this paper reports tests of carmichael and stebbing s 1983 inverted fisher hypothesis that it is the real rather than the nominal interest rate which adjusts to changes in the expected inflation rate unlike the earlier analysis the results presented here are based on a properly specified estimating equation derived from a short run open economy macro model the results support the inverted fisher hypothesis in the short run but indicate that there is some overshooting of the real interest rate so that after four quarters about 75 of the effect of an expected inflation change is reflected in real rates while the remainder leads to an increase in the nominal rate

what s in a p reassessing best practices for conducting and reporting hypothesis testing research social science research has recently been subject to considerable criticism regarding the validity and power of empirical tests published in leading journals and business scholarship is no exception transparency and replicability of empirical findings are essential to build a cumulative body of scholarly knowledge yet current practices are under increased scrutiny to achieve these objectives jibs is therefore discussing and revising its editorial practices to enhance the validity of empirical research in this editorial we reflect on best practices with respect to conducting reporting and discussing the results of quantitative hypothesis testing research and we develop guidelines for authors to enhance the rigor of their empirical work this will not only help readers to assess empirical evidence comprehensively but also enable subsequent research to build a cumulative body of empirical knowledge

inventory performance under staggered deliveries and autocorrelated demand production plans often span a whole week or month even when independent production lots are completed every day and service performance is tallied daily such policies are said to use staggered deliveries meaning that the production rate for multiple days are determined at a single point in time assuming autocorrelated demand and linear inventory holding and backlog costs we identify the optimal replenishment policy for order cycles of length p with the addition of a once per cycle audit cost we optimize the order cycle length p via an inverse function approach in addition we characterize periodic inventory costs availability and fill rate as a consequence of staggering deliveries the inventory level becomes cyclically heteroskedastic this manifests itself as ripples in the expected cost and service levels nevertheless the cost optimal replenishment policy achieves a constant availability by using time varying safety stocks this is not the case with suboptimal constant safety stock policies where the availability fluctuates over the cycle

academic journal pricing and the demand of libraries the prices of for profit academic journals have increased rapidly over the past decade barbara albee and brenda dingley 2001 there remains substantial debate as to the explanation for these increases among those put forward are the increased concentration of the journal industry see e g mccabe 2002 and the relatively recent effort by major publishers to bundle print and electronic journals aaron s edlin and rubinfeld 2004 while both explanations are undoubtedly important what is missing is the significant role of the primary customers of journal publishers the academic libraries as agents of college and university faculties libraries serve the interests of their principals while having only limited information about faculty journal demands facing little or no hard budget constraint faculty are unlikely or unwilling to make difficult allocative choices as a result libraries have been making hard choices for years between journals and books and among journals in a world of increasing budgetary pressure given that electronic transmission of knowledge is becoming increasingly important an understanding of the reasons for the increases in journal prices is a vital element in the ongoing discussion of best mechanisms by which scholarly communications can be disseminated in this paper we formulate a model of library journal demand and suggest how it can be used to analyze the optimal pricing of journals by publishers this represents part of a larger project whose long range goal is to explain the pattern of journal pricing over time and to evaluate two broad policy questions i to what extent have mergers and or bundling practices been responsible for the increase in journal prices ii to what extent are journal prices likely to change in response to changing library acquisition strategies reallocation of budgets between serials and books journal sharing among libraries setting hard budgets etc

ceo duality succession planning and agency theory research agenda in response to harris and helfat s commentary on our article one hat too many key executive plurality and shareholder wealth we suggest that their arguments are quite plausible but we believe further empirical tests are needed these proposed tests are described in our response 1998 john wiley sons ltd

writing as a responsibility of science a reply to laband and taylor it must have been around 1968 in the coffee room of the social science building at chicago that milton friedman and the late george stigler had a jovial and public conversation about being economists that made a big impression on me milton was lamenting the stupidity of tariffs and george broke in from a foot above saying something as follows milton you re such a preacher if people want free trade they ll get it if they don t want it no amount of jawboning by economists will change their minds ah that s where we differ george we admire markets but you think they ve already worked and why not people are self interested and they vote their pocketbooks that s enough to make the market work they bought tariffs tariffs must be what they want no they pursue their interests but often do not know what their interests are people need education the average citizen has no idea that a tariff hurts him education try educating a lobbyist for the textile industry as i said that s where we differ i m a teacher and think that people do some things because they are ignorant and i m a scientist an economic scientist people do what they do because they are wise laband and taylor are stiglerites they believe with dr pangloss that we are in the best of all possible worlds the friedmanites which is my own tribe believe that we could be in it if we would only stop to think the stiglerites assume rationality the friedmanites teach it the stiglerites want to praise the world the friedmanites to change it the stiglerites detest policy what is is the friedmanites embrace it what might be can be the stiglerites are pessimistic in the manner of the master the friedmanites are optimistic laband and taylor the reader can see have a pessimistic and stiglerite explanation of why they have not learned to write competently they defend themselves against advice such as i give in the original paper by saying that it is presumptuous of anyone to claim unique knowledge of the marginal benefit to authors of investment in better presentation if the investment we were talking about was oil drilling i d agree with their economics i ve written a book called if you re so smart that makes a similar point about economic experts going around offering advice but the investment in question here is where laband and taylor go wrong is economic education laband taylor and i are economic educators in the educational industry we are the oil drillers the experts we educate our student roughnecks in the craft teaching them because we do know better or else we should not be standing up there tuth 10 50 12 10 part of the craft laband and taylor agree is attending to elements of presentation so the initial mistake in their paper is economic they think that because some advice is silly and misinformed all advice must be even advice from teachers to students stiglerites tend to drive themselves into such extreme skepticism but no one can actually live as an extreme skeptic i d like to see what laband and taylor say to a student who thinks that markets are bad for you do they agree mildly that it s just a matter of opinion another stigler story george opposed requirements in the graduate curriculum at chicago around 1970 he killed off the requirement in the history of thought which was his own field and tried repeatedly to kill off economic history he succeeded in 1980 when i left the faculty his argument which is heard in many other departments of economics was that the graduate students should be free to choose listen up milton after all they are just like consumers what george and laband and taylor never answered was the teacher s point which milton made in the discussions about the history of thought requirement we are teachers we do know better graduate students because they are not educated already that s why they are students often make bad decisions about their curricula