The Undercover Economist

Girls schools vs Boy's schools

Andrea Enthal — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 11:24:39 GMT

The problem with all-girl schools (and all boy schools) vs co-ed schools is one of curriculum, particularly in the adolescent grades and above.

Not every girl (or boy) fits into the typical gender-based interest spectrum. A girl sent to an all-girl school will never be exposed to subjects like auto mechanics to even find out if that interests her.

Teens girls in all-girl schools also tend to be more boy-crazy. When they have boys around them all the time, they see that a percentage of them are hormone-crazed creeps, not anything to be desired. It is important for teen girls to understand boy-thinking, so they don't think they have to go to bed with their first dates. The only way to understand that is to see lots of boys, rather than to have boys be a rarity in their lives, only interacted with in a dating context.

The people who do these studies about girls faring better in all girl schools are studying this from a liberal arts academic perspective. They usually find that girl students get higher grades in maths and science when there are no boys.

But one is not sending boy or girl children to school only to become better academic acheivement machines. Children and teens need to be raised to be whole people, because that is what counts in your real life, not whether you got a 4.0 gpa or a 3.79. I mean really, now that you are an adult, when was the last time anyone ever asked you your HS gpa? You are judged in real life by what you do, not what academics you did long ago.

What is needed are more male educators in the primary and junior high school levels, to understand boy-thinking in co-ed schools. Female teachers try to make the boys behave in girl ways, and judge boy-behavior as mis-behavior. When the boys don't sit still and act as passively as the typical girl student does, they see the boy as being bad.

When boys are no longer judged by predominantly adult female perspectives, they will not be seen as mis-behaving versions of girls.

wrong on so many levels

henryd — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:12:47 GMT

This column is wrong on so many levels it's hard to know where to being.

The author seems to be making the case that because self-interest is involved in giving, it demonstrates that people aren't altruistic. This is a false dichotomy. Of course, self interest is involved. Of course people want something in return, even if that something is the good feeling you get from helping. But that doesn't in any way make these acts less altruistic.

Unless of course you define altruism as a completely selfless act to which the giver cannot receive any benefit -- which is, of course, silly.

Doing good is always a mixed bag, partly for the giver and partly for the receiver. The fact that the giver benefits doesn't take anything away from the act or mean that it's not an act of altruism.

Henry D

Productivity Spillover in real marketing work setting

ruoyu — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:08:29 GMT

I just read another very interesting new research paper related to this one. While Bandiea and her colleagues only look at the productivity spillovers among low level workers (fruit pickers) in single-firm work settings (a farm), this new research examines peer effects not only within a single firm but also across firm boundaries. In particular, it looks at an open market (a shopping mall) where multiple cosmetics brands are co-located at a retail floor area. Salespeople of these co-located brands compete for customers, either with their peers working for the same brand, or with peers from the competing brands. The research uses a fantastic and smart method to model and identify the peer effects in this multiple-firm work setting. More interestingly, some brands compensate their salesforce based on the sales revenues of the entire team, while others pay their salespeople based on their own sales performance. The research identifies significantly different peer effects under the two types of compensation schemes.
For more details, you can download the paper at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1367441

List similar economic proposals here.

Issywise — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:02:50 GMT

Let's use this place to honor the reasoning of the Start the weekend on Wednesday proposal by listing other such economic arguments.

Here's my contribution to getting the ball rolling.

During the oil shock slump of the 1970s, economist Walter Heller proposed that 1) because the automakers had a vast inventory of unsold cars and could not produce more cars until the inventory was somehow liquidated and 2) because auto workers living in Detroit would be unemployed until the inventory was liquidated; it would be wise to jump start the economy by giving each unemployed autoworker in Detroit a free car if he'd agree to use it to invade and conquer Canada.

Heller admitted his proposal was premised on a couple untested but, he though, likely premises: First, that every unemployed autoworker living in Detroit had a gun. Second, that the unemployed workers would find a free car worth committing themselves to driving over to Canada to begin a campaign of ad hoc insurrectionist imperialism.

However, Heller was clear that his goal was not to conquer Canada, but to clear the inventory that was blocking renewed use of the available productive capacity. Heller's goal was to re-employ the autoworkers and provide stimulus for broader economic recovery.

This proposal was printed in the Detroit News at the time. One responsive letter to the editor pointed out that if the autoworkers were off conquering Canada they could not be available to be re-employed when the inventory was liquidated and the factories re-opened.

I think that letter to the editor killed any further serious consideration of the idea.

More leisure? Please!!

sambrit10 — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:01:13 GMT

This was obviously written by someone who's not part of the standard working world.

For many of us, at least currently, neither greed nor status explains why we work a 40 hour week. It's that our employers won't let us work less. I would be extremely interested in moving my position to part time and / or job sharing, but there's no provision for that. It's full time or nothing. Such has been the case with everyone I've worked for.

However, I definitely agree that an economy dependent on ever-increasing consumption of plastic crap is not a viable longterm strategy.

I keep wondering why we're constantly worried about being more "productive" when there are people out of work, and especially when the things we're so productively producing are things that use precious resources and that we probably don't even need.

The change to a more leisure-oriented culture can't come soon enough for me!

One Word: Insurance

Chomjangi — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:15:48 GMT

I know quite a few people who do this, actually. What do they all have in common? They're insured through a spouse. Many people at many companies I know allow scaled-back schedules; but they don't pay for your benefits.

If people wanted to scale back in today's world and spend money like their parents did, they could probably live without the 401k, the transit pass, and whatever other things most companies add as perks. But with even the cost of independently purchased health insurance ridiculously expensive (and I live in Massachusetts, where health insurance is mandatory!) people without partners who provide health insurance, or a recipient of health insurance from some other entity, cannot live with paying the health insurance premiums they receive deeply discounted at work.

Would we love to live simpler lives? Sure. But until we have widely available, cheap insurance or universal healthcare, we will remain tied to our forty-hour work week for one reason: health insurance.

Huh Wha? Twice as much as our parents?

Tea_Sea — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:18:12 GMT

...only if you ignore the effects of inflation, and consider that the budget for today's double-income families stretches approximately as far as that of your father's single income.

When my mother (a single woman) bought her first house, the rule of thumb was approximately one year's salary. My first house, on the other hand, cost three years of my salary, and I was earning about 20% more than the national average. Don't get visions of sugarplums or anything--it was a modest duplex and it was "within my means" according to the relatively responsible banking practices of that day. Before you ask, yes, that was before the housing bubble. That house is now "worth" approximately double what I paid for it. And don't get me started on the price of cars.

I think a more realistic view of our actual incomes, relative to the cost of living, can be found in the Two Income Trap, written by a couple of Harvard professors who found that American families are running harder on the treadmill--to less effect--than ever before.

That said, it's true that work a lot less than I used to. I lost my job in the financial sector in October. Perhaps I should have become an economist.

sabbaticals for everyone

cravingpizza — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:11:18 GMT

I am a member of the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn. We have about 12,000 members, each of whom must work 2 hours 45 minutes once every fourth week. It's not the most efficient arrangement. In order to find work for everyone: (a) there is always stocking of the shelves going on, which makes an already crowded store even harder to navigate; (b) it's easy to forget how to do your job when you do it for so little every month, albeit there's not that much in the way of skilled labor required; and (c) the chance that someone won't show up for work increases dramatically when there are so many shifts per day, though the negative effect of each no show is reduced.

I can't help feeling this is a microcosmic representation of the US. Do we really need 37,000 nail salons in Manhattan? Or the Big 3 auto manufacturers? Why does consuming more have to be a patriotic duty rather than an occasional indulgence?

In a world, or at least in a country, where a very small portion of the population is capable of feeding and clothing and sheltering and medically caring for the rest of us, there really is no need for everyone to work as much as we do. Of course, we find uses for most people, but I'd like to think that if we had fewer lawyers and accountants maybe we'd figure out how to make law and taxes a little less ... requiring of a professional degree to sort out.

Earlier retirement could be one possibility, though I like the idea of incorporating years off throughout our lives, not unlike the current European practice between secondary school and university (but multiple times during life -- say one year every decade). During that year, we encourage personal and professional growth as well as community service. Maybe entrepreneurship. But it's a year in which (a) society doesn't punish you for not having continuous employment on your resume and (b) the state perhaps pays something akin to unemployment benefits. It'd be kinda like Peace Corps, but at home, and more often, and widespread. Why do only professors get sabbaticals?

Of course, there is the catch-22 that if we're not working, we're more likely to consume. More food, more entertainment, more makin' babies, more shopping at Wal-Mart because there's nothing else to do where you live, more driving around and causing traffic and pollution. Which means more demand for services provided by people who aren't working because they're on their decadal sabbatical. And there is the fact that, back to the analogy of the Park Slope Coop -- one of the main reasons I joined is because I enjoy working there, feeling useful and part of something.

But this is precisely why the idea could work. People have an inherent need to keep busy -- so things would get done during sabbaticals. Volunteering, new hobbies, reading, traveling, spiritual growth. Who's with me?

Unemployment Is Not Leisure

jack_cerf — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 15:23:03 GMT

Leisure is not the absence of work. It is the absence of the need to work, either because the necessary work has been accomplished, or because you have sufficient income and/or savings that you can pay someone else to do it for you.

The paid vacation is a form of savings; you are getting 12 months nominal pay for doing 11 months work, rather than being paid at a higher rate for 11 months on the job and saving what was needed to cover the 12th.

Greater efficiency can create leisure, but only if the definition of what is necessary remains unchanged. Cool Hank Luke's road gang got to do nothing by hurrying through a paving job, but they wouldn't have enjoyed their leisure if the guards had been smart/flexible/malicious enough to set them immediately to some other task.

I would work...

Mmmmm — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:22:26 GMT

I would work half my hours for half my pay right now if I had the choice. Unfortunately, that isn't a real option.

The first problem is benefits. My health insurance costs would remain the same, so in terms of actual take-home salary I'd have to take probably a 60% cut to do it.

I might still do it, but that's not all. Companies that hire high-paid professional people don't want them for 20 hours a week. If I delivered pizzas for a living I might be able to cut back my hours by half. But as it is, this deal is not available to me. I would either have to take whatever (likely low-grade) employer I could find in my current profession that would agree to such a deal, or switch to another job which would pay much less. Either way, my hourly wage would go down in addition to my hours.

There are practical reasons why employers don't want their employees working 20 hour weeks, even if the employee is willing to absorb the benefit costs of hiring twice as many people to get the job done. There are a lot of overheads. Employing 40 people at 20 hours a week to do the work of our current 20-person group at 40 hours a week would incur a lot of extra everhead costs: IT support, HR overhead, etc. And actually, a larger team working half the hours wouldn't get the job done, due to communication inefficiencies.

So I guess my dream of working 20 hours a week in the corporate world will remain unfulfilled. I'd quit and start my own business so I could "do things my way" except that everyone I know who has done that works even harder than I do.

Are you serious?

PC_Tech84 — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 06:45:12 GMT

This has got to be the worst "blog/post" I have ever read. It must have been written by someone who is right out of school(I hope) and want's to earn top salary at a company without expeirence or actually "WORKING for a living", which is typical lately.The problem with todays attitude, is everyone wants to earn more and work less, just like the problem with our economy, companies are focused on profits, benefits and NOT on customer satisfaction! which leads to profits.BTW: without customers, companies go bankrupt.For example, I remember about 15 years ago when you pulled into a service station for gas, a person came out, pumped your gas, washed your windows and asked "can I check your oil", and nowadays God forbid if you even ask for directions(years ago they would say, I may not know but I'll look it up for you), try that today and good luck.When I was young, we were always taught that when you work for a company, the customer ALWAYS came first! and if your "shift" ended at 4 o'clock and a customer came in at 3:55 you took care of them until they were helped to the end of their purchase.Nowadays if that same situation came about (which I've seen Too many times, the employee says " I can't help you, my shift ends in 5 minutes"), so ending a work week on Wednesday is just another way of LAZY people stating that they want "everything for nothing!!!".

Europe

Cedricirdec — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:40:42 GMT

This is what Europeans have been doing for 20 years: see Germany or France.

When counting vacations, weekends, holidays and extra days from the 35 hour work week (most wor 40 hour weeks and get extra time off), the typical frenchman has more days off than working days.

They manage to do this and retain a high standard of living by being very productive. Although the average french worker produces less than the average US worker in a year, he/she prduces more per hour worked.

The extra leisure time has completely changed the economic picture, as teh average frenchman spends a lot of money on leisure activities.

The drawback is that it may be a bit inefficient. There are only so many people who can be neurosurgeons and it is very expensive to train them. It may be better for a society to get its neurosurgeons to work 60-hour weeks...

Why not start the weekend on Wednesday

katchas — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 03:11:42 GMT

I remember hearing that tribal members spent at most 3 hours of their day spent on survival and the rest was spent on entertainment or creativity or leisure activities. The educational program that prompted this information escapes me but the need for expertise seemed to be the biggest reason for any change to less leisure. Just an observation.

Limousine Liberals

disigny — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 17:11:41 GMT

Many of us have had greater income than our parents, but that in no way makes for security, unless you have a lot of Net Worth, i.e., ability to pay your own bills indefinitely without any outside income, whether paycheck or dividends. If you are living paycheck to paycheck, no matter how large, you have good reason to worry. If you're worried like that, won't be able to enjoy your "leisure", i.e., unemployment. What was running through the mind of this writer? If you are saying that our society could conceivably arrange it, I agree, but we are very far from doing that. Years ago some economist suggested a 2 tier economy , with no interconnections: one for "Free Enterprise " fans, with no safety nets, the other, like the Displaced Person camps of Post WW2: Dorm residence in former army camps, food and clothes provided , but little or no money. (Free crossovers from one to the other.) sounds good to me..disigny

Other Methods Preferable to Shortening the Workweek

narby — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:25:44 GMT

There are several better ways to reduce working time than shortening the work week

1. Provide long, paid parental leaves as several Scandanivian countries do.

2. Provide 4 weeks of paid vacations for everyone as is done in most European countries instead of providing 1 or 2 weeks after a year with the same employer, 3 weeks after 5 or 10 years and so forth. The current practice short changes the increasing number of people who don't spend their entire career with a single employer.

3. Provide more holidays juxtaposed with weekends and Friday and Monday "bridge" days off to create more 3-day weekends.

4. Provide more generous educational leaves and sabbaticals.

5. Provide for job sharing arrangements for people who want to work part-time.

6. Provide for phased retirement depending on the individual's health, financial circumstances and personal wishes.

Look`s Bad, works fine.

robdet — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 05:15:47 GMT

Least is more, weak is strong, old is new, the sound of the brook is a roar of Wisdom.

Work less, breathe more.

If you seek, you will be found. Hide in plane site; Never eat the dandelions. Couer de Leone 2012

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Me&theboys — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:07:29 GMT

Quoting Tim "The other part is that we do have more leisure. According to economists Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst, leisure time for women has increased by at least four hours a week since 1965. Men have done even better."

OK, yes, Aguiar and Hurst did say that, but, as a journalist, Tim should know that the soundbite is not the story, and as an economist, he should know that statistics can only fool some of the people all of the time. What the study actually shows is that SOME people have more leisure, and these people are mostly the less well-educated and the non-working.

I know that I did not have more leisure in 2003 than my mother did in 1965, because I work full time and my mother did not. However, one of my best friends who does not work had vastly more leisure time in 2003 than her mother did in 1965, due to the many time saving conveniences and technologies available today (1965-2003 is the period of time Aguiar and Hurst's study is based on). I think most people would be pretty uninspired, if not depressed, by a study that found that the leisure time of people who don't work and are less well educated is on the rise.

Here's what Aguiar and Hurst also said, points that do not work so well for Tim's story:

"....Specifically, in the sample, the fraction of women who were employed increased from 48 percent to 74 percent between 1965 and 2003. Given that, in 2003, working women spent 21 hours fewer hours per week in Leisure 3 [than did non-working women], the increase in labor force participation of 26 points reduced leisure for the average women by about 5.5 hours per week. That is, women transiting into the labor force may be experiencing declines in leisure while their continuously employed or continuously nonemployed counterparts are experiencing large increases in leisure."

AND

"Within our time‐use surveys, over 97 percent of non‐retired men aged 21 through 65 were employed in 1965, while the corresponding number was 87 percent in 2003. .......To see how a 10‐percentage‐point change in labor force participation impacts the trend in male leisure, consider that the differential in Leisure Measure 3 between working and non‐working men in 2003 was 29 hours per week. Therefore, the reduction in male labor supply at the extensive margin accounts for approximately 3 hours per week in increased leisure, or roughly 60 percent of the total increase.

I think I'll hold of on working less until some of those with that excess leisure come along to pick up the difference.

Amanda

Is it that Economists (undercover) don't have a clue?

nelson46 — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:03:55 GMT

It's not about consumption of leisure or moralist concerns right now. It's not about why money creating money is such a huge fuq up industry. It's not why bonuses are paid during insane losses http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/opinion/27krasne.html?_r=2&ref=opinion, . Even more it's not about banks and what the fed rate is supposed to be. Rather, it is about employment.

"Here's the big question of the season, then: Why don't we do as countless moralists urge every year and focus less on money and more on leisure (or spiritual concerns, if you must)? Why haven't we all decided to work less, spend less, and consume less?"

There is strong evidence that the only fast track solution to this economic downturn for the American citizens (and it is unemployed American citizens that count) is to have the government start a payroll for the unemployed. Yes, as with FDR works with the CWA http://www.slate.com/id/2209781/ or as Keynes so rightly wrote long ago, the governments role is to respond to mass unemployment crisis http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/03/paul_krugmans_i.html .

Therefore, forget all of this article, it's small entertaining value is null and void based upon the zero impact it could have to enlighten any reader about current crises, needs or possible solutions.

No time for the trivial article now. GET TO WORK!

Poorly Written Article - Who's twice as rich as parents ?

dougcachet — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:47:27 GMT

The thinking that is the whole basis for the article --- that the current generation makes twice as much as their parents so we're so much better off --- is so incredibly flawed !!!!! My wife and I are in our 30s -- college graduates with pretty good jobs, and we've always tried to be good about spending/saving money. Most of our major expenses -- college tuition loans, housing/mortgage, oil/gas, day care -- have all gone up more than two fold compared to our parents' generation. These expenses are typical of people our age. It's pretty easy to figure out, if our expenses have increased at greater rate than our income compared to our parents generation, then we're not better off. I look at our parents (from both sides of the family) who have had good but hardly great jobs and all their fancy paintings/TVs, fancy vacations, bragging about shopping at Whole Foods Market. Heck, we can't even afford to shop there and our newest TV is 10 years old. (although I will admit it is nice to live in the "internet, cell phone generation", which, of course, eat some of our income.)

A lot of jobs are all or nothing

cat51 — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:42:20 GMT

Like others have said, jobs that are part time but have benefits are pretty much non-existent. Beyond that, it is hard to find a good part time job anyway. I am perhaps close to doing that because I am near retirement age and can imagine finding limited time consulting work, editing work, perhaps teach a course or two - because I have a lot of experience. But a young person generally needs to work full time for years to get the kind of experience it would take to lead that life. I have all my life tended to spend less than I make, I think that many people just don't recognize that it is possible to do that, and progress could be made in that area. Americans tend to live in much bigger houses than necessary, and move way out from their jobs to accomodate their desire for a big house, if they would live in smaller space with more people, close in to work, they could save a lot of money. But working only half a week... that would not be feasible for most people I am afraid, not the way the working world is organized now.

EIGHT DAYS A WEEK

SSASHWORTH — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 01:59:43 GMT

Here's an Idea:

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Funday*

*It would be illegal, immoral, and socially unacceptable to work on Funday.

Eight days a week results in 45 weeks per year with five days left over. It seems reasonable to add the five additional days, one each to May, June, July, August, and September; or, two additional days to November and three additional days to December, for example. Again, the additional days would be off limits for work.

Just a thought.

Gradual retirement

dawnzerleelight — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:38:42 GMT

A few years ago I suggested to co-workers that at a certain point when we were making a decent living, say age 45, we should trade pay raises for the equal amount of added hours off each year. This way, our work hours would gradually decrease until we eased into retirement. I thought it was a genius idea, but all I got was blank stares. No one could imagine not getting that pay raise. I am an unmarried woman who works with mostly married men, and I imagine they were thinking of how exactly they would break this new arrangement to their wives.

I still think it is a great idea, and plan to implement it as soon as I can find an employer who will pay me my present salary for a reduced work week.

Final comment: We don't call it the "dole" here in the U.S.

narby — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:02:49 GMT

Mr. Harford, FYI, we don't call unemployment compensation or benefits "the dole" here in the United States. My American Heritage Dictionary lists the following defininitions for "dole" or the dole: 1. The dispensing of goods, especially of money, food or clothing as CHARITY (emphasis added). 2. A gift or shareof money, food or clothing distributed as CHARITY (emphasis added). 3. Chiefly British. The distribution by the government of relief payments to the unemployed.

Comment: The U.S. state-federal unemployment compensation system was established in 1935 as a social insurance program. It is not a charity. Unemployment compensation payments are not charitable gifts to the needy or indigent. They are payments to which any involuntarily unemployed person is entitled provided he has been employed long enough to qualify and follows the prescribed procedures which require him to certify for each week that he is unemployed and available for and seeking employment. The duration of the benefits is limited to 26 weeks, except during recessions when they may be increased by the Congress. The benefits are funded by a tax on employers based on a variable "experience rated" scale depending on how many employees have been laid off by the individual employer. The experience rated tax on payrolls provides a powerful incentive for employers to police the system to prevent employees who are not eligible from collecting benefits against their account thus causing their tax rate to be increased. In Michigan the lowest rate is under 1% of payroll up to 10 % or more of pay up to $9,000 per annum, as I recall. The benefits received by laid off employees are taxable under IRS rules. I find your refering to them as "On the Dole" offensive, and I question your assertion that the "benefits increase joblessness." The counter-cyclical effect of the benefit payments far exceeds any tendency of individuals to remain idle as a result of the benefits. And when unemployment goes down and inflation increases, the tax paid by employers tends to exceed the benefits paid out which has a beneficial dampening effect on economic activity.

why common people cannot work less and spend less

citygurl104 — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:11:56 GMT

The simple fact is that the economy as a whole is always stacked against those of us born into this world without a silver spoon, trust fund and family wealth. I, for one, would love to work less and spend less. But how would I afford my rent, utilities and other living expenses? Even when I was working full time, I didn't spend my money on junk, because I was always fearful of the what-ifs in life.

It used to be that people could afford to take time off to smell the roses, ponder life and just enjoy nature. But now, everything costs so much that it takes two or even three incomes for each contributing member of a household to not feel poor.

On the other hand, if I could get a job that required me to work more than 40 hours/week in exchange for an expense account, vacations and a high salary, I would take it if only to build up my savings account and to give myself a better life. I have no children because I'm in my mid-20s so this setup would be perfect for me.

[Then again, if you think about it, there are people who work less and spend less. They're called retirees.]

Probably the best setup would be to have a choice. Those who want to work more in order to afford the good life (shopping at Williams-Sonoma, holidays spent in the Carribean) should have the choice to do without spite from those who'd rather work 12 hours a week and live in box under a tree.

Work less, spend less

VEH — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:13:20 GMT

This article posits some sort of disposable income that people are spending on frivolities or recreational shopping. I don't think that is the case for most working Americans. My income is so fully allocated to the mortgage the car payment (used minivan, thank you), and the daily necessities that a $20 expenditure has become a major decision.

I don't disagree that we have an economy based on buying yet more crap and as we see now that is unsustainable. I like the idea of working fewer hours--allow more people to work--since efficiency has made it possible to produce as much work with fewer people. But you have to keep wages high enough to keep people as consumers.