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Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

wyclif.substack.com

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Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#21

Post by whimsicalism »

It's interesting how much of Substack has quickly become an opinion page for a bubble of "rationalist", pseudo-libertarian thinkers. It is almost a mono-culture at this point: the obligatory links to Tyler Cowen, the obligatory mention of race and biology, and footnotes just for the aesthetic.

> Trade-offs between the quality of research, and the welfare of social scientists, should always be resolved in favour of research quality.

This seems non-obvious to me and quite glib for someone who is allegedly a social scientist (which is basically applied ethics/utilitarianism).

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#22

Post by z3ncyberpunk »

greenail wrote: post #14

Maybe the incentives for universities are all wrong. In the early 1900's only 4% of the US went to university. There ended up being a big push to get more people into college with the assumption that it would benefit society. Eventually we ended up with a notion that everyone should go to college and this has been buttressed with government support but what if this idea is wrong? What if the incentives created lots o…

Universities producing MBA grads, still produce nothing of value. At least liberal arts challenges you to think.

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#23

Post by whimsicalism »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #12
eyeundersand wrote: post #7

> We should stop trying to pay for good work, and instead, try to hire people who like doing good work and damn the pay. This is in line with the traditional folk wisdom of Cambridge: “hire good people and let them get on with it”. > Lastly, to make the economists less greedy, they should be paid less. Ha, I needed a good chuckle in the morning. I'll be damned if I accept a job where they except high-quality work for…

Yeah this reads like some nonsense wankery, and subscribed to nonsense ideas like “Great Men of History”, eg in the part about preferring the output of sexual harassers over the output of many more less problematic researchers. There’s a reason the saying is “Science progresses one death at a time”, and not “Science progresses by being sexual-harassment apologists”

I expect you'll be downvoted for this comment, as most of HN appears also to be engrossed by "Great Men" theories.

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#24

Post by deertick1 »

thebean11 wrote: post #16
greenail wrote: post #14

Maybe the incentives for universities are all wrong. In the early 1900's only 4% of the US went to university. There ended up being a big push to get more people into college with the assumption that it would benefit society. Eventually we ended up with a notion that everyone should go to college and this has been buttressed with government support but what if this idea is wrong? What if the incentives created lots o…

Agree with your larger point but: > This may show up as lots of superfluous/unreproducible papers and journals many not even based on the scientific method. seems very STEM-centric. It sounds like you're saying academia outside of the realm of science is useless which I completely disagree with.

Not OP, but would like to say : I don't think science outside of stem is useless, but it is fundamentally different and fundentally less reliable/reproducible. In terms of reliability and rigor, it seems to go about like : Math -> computer science -> physics/chemistry -> biology -> everything else.

As you continue, you must ignore more independent variables to conduct an experiment. By the time you get to social sciences where you're doing self reported survey studies on your sensation of gender acceptance, you cant really call it science anymore.

Not saying its useless, but ir absolutely should not be treated with the same level of reverence and trust as the harder sciences. People act like the government should be making policy decisions based on psychology thesis papers, or that id you disagree with some purple haired feminism professor, you are a science "denier."

Ultimately this is a function of poor education, and hivemind thinking caused by our inundation with news and various media.

But yeah, my point is STEM (in its colloquial usage) is really all that can be considered science and people tend to mistake any academic paper or public persona for science or a scientist respectively, and that just isn't so.

Sorry for the rant.

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#25

Post by whimsicalism »

ggggtez wrote: post #10
eyeundersand wrote: post #7

> We should stop trying to pay for good work, and instead, try to hire people who like doing good work and damn the pay. This is in line with the traditional folk wisdom of Cambridge: “hire good people and let them get on with it”. > Lastly, to make the economists less greedy, they should be paid less. Ha, I needed a good chuckle in the morning. I'll be damned if I accept a job where they except high-quality work for…

> to make economists less greedy they should be paid less How about we tax billionaires, and pay our academics real wages? I was an academic once, and I made near minimum wage. It's insane to set up a reward structure that punishes thinking people and rewards the randomness of birth.

I'm very much in favor of taxing inheritance at much higher levels, but I think there is a debate to be had whether the marginal dollar is best spent on social science research or academia writ large.

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#26

Post by Frost1x »

thebean11 wrote: post #16
greenail wrote: post #14

Maybe the incentives for universities are all wrong. In the early 1900's only 4% of the US went to university. There ended up being a big push to get more people into college with the assumption that it would benefit society. Eventually we ended up with a notion that everyone should go to college and this has been buttressed with government support but what if this idea is wrong? What if the incentives created lots o…

Agree with your larger point but: > This may show up as lots of superfluous/unreproducible papers and journals many not even based on the scientific method. seems very STEM-centric. It sounds like you're saying academia outside of the realm of science is useless which I completely disagree with.

There's a lot of non-scientific papers produced from the sciences, they're just heavily laced with jargon, complexity, or intentionally limited scope to make publication viable and hide the shortcuts behind them.

When I was young I believed things outside of the sciences and math were useless. As I've grown older, I realize the tremendous value of the arts, humanities, and other studies. They're just not as obviously functional or as easily quantifiable and much of this work is difficult. These studies help us think as humans and not machines. Yes, they can be gamed by disingenuous and often do get low rewards in society, but they're not inherently useless disciplines. The other studies provide much value to what makes life worth living, IMO.

Literature, art, the human state. I love science, don't get me wrong, but I also enjoy the rest.

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#27

Post by bachmeier »

p_j_w wrote: post #17
eyeundersand wrote: post #7

> We should stop trying to pay for good work, and instead, try to hire people who like doing good work and damn the pay. This is in line with the traditional folk wisdom of Cambridge: “hire good people and let them get on with it”. > Lastly, to make the economists less greedy, they should be paid less. Ha, I needed a good chuckle in the morning. I'll be damned if I accept a job where they except high-quality work for…

There are an unfortunate amount of people out there who think everyone else should do their jobs out of love of the work and not worry about pay. I've found they rarely hold themselves to this standard, though, and try to find excuses for why it shouldn't apply to them. You hear people who aren't teachers say this about teachers quite often, especially when they're complaining about the yearly education budget.

Many humanities faculty will complain that they're paid lower salaries than faculty in other areas, yet they'll say students should major in their (low paying and hard to find a job) fields because education is not about money.

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#28

Post by whimsicalism »

greenail wrote: post #14

Maybe the incentives for universities are all wrong. In the early 1900's only 4% of the US went to university. There ended up being a big push to get more people into college with the assumption that it would benefit society. Eventually we ended up with a notion that everyone should go to college and this has been buttressed with government support but what if this idea is wrong? What if the incentives created lots o…

> Have we reached a state of elite-overproduction?

I'm very curious about this line of thought, as it seems to have become very popular in the blogospher over the past year or two.

What are the consequences of "elite overproduction"? I'm curious what the implications of this line of thought are.

Generally, I think more education is better than less - I am wrong to think that?

My personal hypothesis is that this fear of elite overproduction is being generated by existing professionals who are afraid an increasing supply of educated workers reducing their negotiating position/compensation.

Re: Incentives in economics are wrong, but how?

#30

Post by nohuck13 »

We're walking into the middle of an argument that's been going on for a while here.

"Economic(s) imperialism" is the tendency of economists to write papers topics outside traditional economics. While the people in (say) the sociology department seem to have to confine themselves to sociology.

As Tyler Cowen writes on Marginal Revolution [1] quoted by Kevin Munger in the piece this piece is responding to:

" - Mammograms and Mortality: How has the Evidence Evolved?

- Surviving a Mass Shooting

- Representation is Not Sufficient for Selecting Gender Diversity

- Back to School: The Effect of School Visits During COVID-19 on COVID-19 Transmission

- The Public Health Effects of Legalizing Marijuana

Those are all new NBER working papers, issued today. To be clear, I do not intend this list as criticism, either of these papers or of the NBER (for one thing, I have not read them). But surely it is worth pointing out that something has changed. If you think economists should be doing these papers, does that translate into a relatively low opinion of the quantitative standards in those fields proper? Or maybe the economists are better at spotting interesting questions and seeing the work through? Yes or no? How exactly should we imagine the (possible) comparative advantage of economists with these topics? I mean these as genuine questions, not snarky ones. I have never been a per se opponent of economic imperialism. "

[1] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/04/wo...

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