Seminar: Tom Scheiding

The next speaker for the Economics Department Seminar Series will be Prof. Tom Scheiding (UW Stout). He will present "Boundary Institutions for Reconciliation of Academic Chemistry to Industry: Germany vs. the United States," on Friday, December 2nd at 3:30 pm in room 230 Wimberly Hall.

Seminar: Yamin Ahmad

Professor Yamin Ahmad (UW Whitewater) will be the next speaker in the Economics Department Seminar Series. Professor Ahmad will present "On the Correlation Between Inflation Persistence and The Implicit Inflation Target," at 3:30 in room 122 Wimberly Hall.

Econ Jobs

The Wall Street Journal has a sort-able and search-able list of college majors and unemployment and salary statistics. Here are the 'Economics' stats:

ECONOMICS UNEMPLOYMENT RATE: 6.3%
INCOME (25TH PERCENTILE): $42,000
INCOME (50TH PERCENTILE): $69,000
INCOME (75TH PERCENTILE): $108,000

Nudge

Behavioral Econ gets a department in the UK government. A report on the group and the concept of nudge from BBC4.

Connections and Contagion

What is the potential impact of the Euro crisis? Here is an excellent graphic on the degree of financial market integration.

Corruption in India

The department has more news to share. Nabamita Dutta's research was recently cited in the Wall Street Journal online. She was also interviewed by the BBC!

There have been a few attempts recently by economists to quantify the link between corruption and the informal economy. As my example illustrates, the direction of causality can run in either direction. In other words, the existence of corruption could drive people into the informal sector, but likewise the existence of an informal sector can itself give rise to corruption. Is it possible to disentangle these effects?

The most promising recent attempt is a study by economists Nabamita Dutta, Saibal Kar and Sanjukta Roy. They combine data on corruption from Transparency International with official Government of India data on employment in the informal sector, which in turn is culled from 2004/05 National Sample Survey and the 2001 Census.

The statistical results in the study confirm the intuition that, other things equal, more corruption leads to a larger informal sector. They also perform statistical tests to rule out what economists call “reverse causality” – the possibility that it’s a larger informal sector that’s causing more corruption.

Brewers Baseball

The Brewers disappointed me again, just as they did in 1982, only this time I didn’t cry. And according to our esteemed sports economist colleague Mike Haupert, they were lucky to do what they did. Check out Mike’s article in the Washington Post.

As an economist, I am interested in efficiency. The best manager is the one who produces the most with the talent he is given. After all, how hard can it be to manage the deep-pocket Yankees, who can purchase the best players each year to satisfy their manager’s every desire? What a dream for a manager. Need a cleanup hitter? Enter Mark Teixeira. A mound ace? Enter C.C. Sabathia. Each earns upward of $20 million per year. Quality does not come cheap, but cost is no object when your average ticket sells for $98 and your television revenue rivals the GDP of some nations.

Managing the Yankees is easy. Just buy the best players and put them in the lineup. But what if you have to manage the Brewers? What if you don’t get to spend a fortune to pluck the best talent from the rest of the league, but you have to manage on a budget? After all, the owner of a team is looking for a return on his investment, so producing on a budget is not a crazy concept.

If efficiency—getting the best output from your available inputs—matters, which it should, then Ron Roenicke is your man. He was the best manager in baseball in 2011 because he was the most efficient. The manager can only work with the players he is provided, but it is his job to make the most of the situation. Let’s consider the job the Brewers’ skipper did this year.

First of all, the Brewers won 96 games, capturing the central division crown and securing home field advantage in the first round of the playoffs. It’s hard to ask for more than that. Consider that Roenicke, in his first year at the helm, accomplished this with a lineup that was largely unchanged from the same team that won only 77 games the previous year. That accomplishment alone merits serious consideration for Roenicke.