Nov

30

Academic business rankings

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Academia, Economics | 1 Comment

A new study by the Melbourne Institute looks at how Australian universities ranking by discipline (as opposed to department). The results are based on surveys as well as comparisons to direct measures of performance. Suffice it to say, the survey result has the University of Melbourne ranked number 1 in Australia in business (and indeed in the Top 50 in the world there) and internally within Australia as number 1 but externally ranked as number 2 (behind ANU) in economics alone.

In terms of direct measures, Melbourne is number 1 in Australia in terms of articles published and SSRN downloads in economics and business (click here and here for details of that). It is a pity that researchers outside of any university weren’t doing this paper (to avoid inevitable appearances of insider-bias). I guess that is what the RQF is for.

Nov

30

Cheaper by the Dozen

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Other, Parenting | Comments Off

Earlier this month, Ernestine Gilbreth Carey passed away. Here is an obituary. She was famous for authoring the memoir, Cheaper by the Dozen, about her parents who were obsessed with ‘time and motion’ studies and efficiency. And a good thing too: they had 12 children. The only thing the two movies have in common with the book is that there are 12 kids. The book is far richer and, in many ways, fare more amusing. I mean when you hear a family with a couple of cases of tonsillitis have their house turned into an operation factory — “might as well get them all done at once including those without any problems” — it is nothing but compelling. I can highly recommend this book. It is timeless.

Nov

29

OK, so why would Apple agree?

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics, Strategy, Technology | Comments Off

Universal Music would like a slice of every iPod pie (click here).

Universal, the world’s largest music company, owned by French media giant Vivendi, was the first major record label to strike an agreement with Microsoft to receive a fee for every Zune digital media player sold.

“It would be a nice idea. We have a negotiation coming up not too far. I don’t see why we wouldn’t do that… but maybe not in the same way,” he told the Reuters Media Summit, when asked if Universal would negotiate a royalty fee for the iPod that would be similar to Microsoft’s Zune.

I would like that slice too. (Actually, come to think of that, I get it in the form of consumer surplus.) But why would Apple give Universal that? Read more

Nov

29

Finally, the cervical cancer vaccine

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics | 3 Comments

So I am very glad the hear that the cervical cancer vaccine will be rolled out by the Australian government (cf: my earlier post). Tony Abbott’s willingness to sacrifice his daughters also appears to have saved the government some money. It still strikes me that we haven’t got our way of thinking right on our collective willingness to pay for things like this. For the moment, we can celebrate a good outcome.

Nov

29

Optimised!

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics | 1 Comment

This from Slashdot:

An anonymous reader writes, “Researchers at Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen, Scotland used a new form of magnetic resonance imaging to collect images from 22 healthy volunteers, who assumed three different sitting positions: slouching posture in which the body is hunched forward, an upright 90-degree sitting position, and a relaxed position where the subject reclined backward 135 degrees. They concluded that the reclined position is the best, and the forward slouch the worst.” From the article: “‘We were not created to sit down for long hours, but somehow modern life requires the vast majority of the global population to work in a seated position,’ Dr. Bashir said. ‘This made our search for the optimal sitting position all the more important.’”

Woo hoo, I am at the optimum; reclined here at a perfect 135 degrees. All that nagging to sit up straight, optimally ignored!

Nov

29

Catchphrases

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Television | 3 Comments

CNN reports on a list of the 100 best catchphrases from television. As usual, these lists are as interesting for what they appear to have left out as much as what they have in them. So here is my list of omissions (obviously with my own tastes); feel free to add to it in the comments.

  • “Make it so” (Star Trek: TNG)
  • “Beam me up” (Star Trek)
  • “By your command” (Battlestar Galactica, 1978)
  • “So say we all” (Battlestar Galactica, 2003)
  • “Oh boy!” (Quantum Leap)
  • “Survivors ready, go” (Survivor)
  • “I’m listening” (Frasier)
  • “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow” (Dr Who)
  • “Exterminate” (Dr Who)
  • “I’m not here” (Drop the Dead Donkey)
  • “Mary Todd” (The Civil War)

Nov

28

Non-voters have ideas

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics, Politics | 3 Comments

Following up from my views at the weekend regarding children and voting, Google today released the results of a collaborative project for school children to put forward ideas to deal with climate change. Here are the Top 10 ideas:

Include global warming/climate change in school curricula (as part of National Science Standards), so when the students are in charge they can make educated decisions.

Increase availability of low-interest Energy Efficient Mortgages to support homeowners who increase the energy efficiency of their homes.

Put light sensors in all office and school buildings so all lights go off when the rooms are empty.

Require that all products contributing to global warming be marked with a specific color (e.g., chemical pesticides could be marked with a red sticker for being extremely dangerous to the environment).

Use less paper; use the back of the paper to print on or write on; use recycled paper.

Plant more trees to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Teach recycling techniques in classes and school-wide programs.

Make recycling mandatory in all public facilities, such as schools, parks and beaches.

Do public service announcements on TV featuring celebrities promoting carpooling, walking, riding bikes, using public transportation, conserving electricity and recycling.

Give grants and tax credits to companies that invest in alternative, sustainable, emission-free fuel technologies while ending such subsidies for fossil fuel production.

You can read the rest of the Top 50 here. What is interesting is how many involve the provision of good economic incentives to internalise externalities. You can also read there about the process by which these ideas were generated and prioritised. Would that millions of dollars of commissioned government reports could do so well.

Nov

26

The Federal/State Conundrum

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Politics | Comments Off

Andrew Leigh wonders why Labor has lost the last 4 Federal election but has won the last 20 State and Territory elections. Here is my two cents worth: it comes down to the pool of talent. Labor and Liberal have fixed talent pools. The best talent will migrate to the forum the gives the best chance in government. So for Labor the best talent stays State-based with no incentive to move to the Federal level because things are going badly for them there. Similarly, Liberal talent is quite happy to by-pass the State-level and try their hands at Federal politics. So we have an equilibrium whereby State politics is dominated by Labor and Federal by the Liberals.

Nov

26

A little on the side

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics | Comments Off

There is a new feature on the sidebar of this blog: “The CoreEcon Bookstore.” This is a link to an amazon.com site that I have put together to point to books that have either been mentioned in this blog or are related to topics discussed here. Click here to see the main site.

If you decide to buy a book, I get a return but I have specified it to go into my amazon.com account allowing me to buy more books myself. As most of these are academic and bought from grants, it will make my grant money go a little further.

Nov

25

Movie bits

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Movie Reviews | Comments Off

With all this plane travel, I got to watch a number of movies recently. Let me do a quick run through. Read more

Nov

25

Letting children vote

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Parenting, Politics | 8 Comments

Today is the Victorian state election. For us, we always make going to the polls a family activity with various children stuffing the ballots. This year I went further and delegated my vote to my 8 year old daughter. There were lots of good reasons to do this. First of all, votes don’t really count. According to Andrew Leigh, there are only a handful of elections in Australian history where individual votes may have mattered. In our electorate, Ted Baillieu (the leader of the opposition Liberal party) is the sitting member and it is a very safe Liberal seat. So there is no chance a vote will actually matter. Read more

Nov

25

Same price, different goods

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics | 1 Comment

Today’s Washington Post has an article on why movie ticket prices are pretty much the same for all movies at all times [Hat Tip: Greg Mankiw]. I have pondered this question before in relation to iTunes song pricing. The Post article cites research arguing that the answer lies in the prices paid by theatres for movies; in particular, that distributors want that outcome. And why might they do that? Well that appears to be hard to gauge. It may be because movie theatres sell other things (popcorn etc) whose price distributors have no direct control of. The original article by Orbach and Einav has a good discussion but no real resolution. This is one to ponder further.

Nov

24

Nalebuffcast

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics, Game Theory, Innovation | Comments Off

Yale Professor Barry Nalebuff has a podcast of one of his lectures on creative thinking. Click here for the iTunes link. It is a thoughtful and often funny talk.

[Update: there is a link to a video version here]

Nov

24

GameTheorist: Recent Posts

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Game Theory, Parenting | Comments Off

A couple of new posts on GameTheorist recently. One on the 4 losses from parenting and another on getting children to eat vegetables.

Nov

24

Working with turkeys

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Academia, Economics | 1 Comment

Kevin Fox (UNSW) and Ross Milbourne (UTS) have a new paper in Australian Economic Papers entitled “Is it harder to soar with eagles when you work with turkeys?” Apparently, the answer is ‘yes.’

Lucas (1988) modelled the productivity of workers as being a function not only of their own human capital but the human capital of the people with whom they work. Using individual data, this paper investigates whether there are such human-capital externalities. In particular, we look at the research output of academic economists, and ask whether research-output productivity is affected not just by individual human-capital factors, and institutional and funding factors, but additionally by productivity of those in the same academic department. Our findings are also of relevance to the literature on peer-group effects and the ‘Bell Curve’ debate.

And this from the current Vice Chancellor of UTS. According to the study, the recent move of Michael Keane from Yale to UTS under a Federation Fellowship will surely reduce any average turkey share there and have a positive spillover on others.

Nov

24

Economics blogs

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics | 2 Comments

A surprisingly long article appeared in today’s LA Times about economics blogs. It mentions lots of blogs but somewhat surprisingly misses some big ones including Brad de Long, Jane Galt and John Quiggin. It seemed to claim that there was something special about economics blogs in the blogosphere but really provided no evidence to back that up. I would be surprised if the share of economics was higher for blog discourse than other mediums.

Nov

23

Congratulations to Andrew Leigh

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Academia, Economics | Comments Off

My co-author Andrew Leigh has been awarded the Academy of Social Sciences Australia early career researcher award for 2006. It is very well-deserved. He joins to other co-authors of mine — John Quiggin and Robert Hill — who have won the award in years past. The citation does not single out a specific contribution but with 20 journal articles, a ton of op eds and 2 books, how could it?

Nov

22

Coca Cola Blak

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Technology | 3 Comments

Yesterday, I had my first taste of Coca Cola Blak; purchased in Chicago. This is Coke infused with coffee. And a fine tasting drink it is too. But what is more, one drink led to an afternoon of high productivity.

Now I have another problem. I am on my way back to Australia but I need another hit. Anyone know a Coke dealer?

Nov

21

Good grief!

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under IP | 2 Comments

According to the SMH, Australia’s new copyright laws could get you in trouble for mere possession of an iPod. The article quotes (and changes the gender) of my colleague, Kim Weatherall: Read more

Nov

20

Economists doing medical research (More)

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics | 1 Comment

I commented on this a little while ago in relation to a study linking autism to television but economists are increasingly getting involved in medical research. An example today (thanks Greg Mankiw) is in Esquire magazine with Emily Oster writing about how research on AIDS in Africa. Click here for the article. Suffice it to say, this is high value research.

Nov

20

Media Workshop II: Advertising

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Advertising, Economics, Television | 2 Comments

Following on from my earlier post (click here), the other half of the Media Economics Workshop was on two-sided markets: specifically, the challenges of using advertising.

Our paper (co-authored with Simon Anderson) was on TiVo. Something many people believe is that ad-avoidance technologies like TiVo will destory television. Indeed, that was the view of my random travelling partner a few nights ago. He was coming back from a conference on the future of television in New York. He gave me a IBM consulting report on “The End of television as we know it.” It was all about how traditional broadcasting was pretty much doomed and new ways would have to be developed. The only saving grace was a group of people known as (and I am not making this up) the “Massive Passives.” Massive passives are people who don’t adopt new technologies often and even if you gave them a TiVo they wouldn’t bother to skip the ads. Read more

Nov

20

For the love of Skype

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Broadband, Technology | 1 Comment

People do this all the time but I thought I would briefly comment on how wonderful Skype is. For the first time while travelling (and after a few teething problems between Mac-PC communication) I have been able to see my family.

Moreover, I was having trouble picking up my mobile messages (the Optus system didn’t recognise my Blackberry’s # key). I called using a hotel phone. Not only did it have the same recognitiion issues but a 30 second attempt cost me US$23! Those rates have skyrocketed to exploit those without mobiles. So I got on the troubleshooting page. The voice mail number had a link — call this number using Skype — and I did. So without Skype the Optus system doesn’t work. Oh, the irony.

Nov

19

Institutionalised technology

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Technology | Comments Off

It always interests me when technologies are institutionalised. We are all too familiar with email addresses being asked for in written forms these days; although surprisingly not being provided as a means of RSVPing to children’s birthday parties.

Yesterday, I saw mobile phones institutionalised in a new way. Washington’s Reagan National Airport had a sign directing cars to a ‘Cell Phone Waiting Area.’ This was a place where drivers picking up people from the airport could go and then get called in when the pick up was ready. In Melbourne, the freeway to the airport is dotted with cars pulled over on the side of the road. Perhaps something a little more formal (and possibly safer) could be put there too.

Nov

19

Who bought Telstra shares?

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics | Comments Off

There had been plenty written about why Telstra shares would be a bad buy. Now we learn that twice as many have been sold as expected (click here). So can we reconcile the investment advice with this fact? Read more

Nov

19

Media Workshop I: Media Bias

by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics | 2 Comments

So the Media Workshop here in DC was packed full of papers (here is the list). They fell into two categories. Those about media bias and those about two-sided markets. I was involved in the latter but wanted to offer my thoughts here on the former. (I have blogged about these issues before). Read more

Next Page →