PRODUCTIVITY GAINS OR LOSSES. The Atlantic (scroll down) looks at the college basketball tournament, with particular reference to Challenger, Gray's look at the lost work attributable to office pools. (The report appears to have been withdrawn, so any further discussion is speculation on my part.) I have to wonder if the article overstates the cost of the office pools: don't people work together better if they have some reason to view each other as human? (Steven Landsburg wrote, long ago, about how drinking coffee might make people more, not less, productive. I'm simply revisiting the same argument.) Furthermore, office pools are intellectual ammunition for economists.