INCURRING THOSE OPPORTUNITY COSTS. The Weaver Boston and Maine 2-8-0 models are in, and I found an Amtrak Pepsi can at a nearby hobby shop. These things are going to keep me away from the computer.

FOURTH TURNING ALERT. Have the SCSU Scholars discovered the three world views that must come to a once-and-for-all showdown? Will it play out as previously, with two allying against the third, and clashing thereafter? May we live long enough to see it.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES. Posted, this time, on Newmark's Door, with a link to a lengthy Gregg Easterbrook review of Keith Bradsher's High and Mighty, a criticism of sport utility vehicles that has also drawn fire from Brock Yates and Nick Gillespie.

I'll limit my observations to a couple of things in Easterbrook's article. (Disclaimer: I'm addicted to Volkswagen Rabbits and their Golf progeny). But look at this: "Can it be a coincidence that road rage started to become a national concern in the mid-1990s, just as these pharaonic contraptions began flooding the roads? Can it be a coincidence that road rage gets worse annually, pretty much in sync with the annual rise in the percentage of vehicles that are SUVs or pickups? These machines are designed to bring out the worst in their owners while simultaneously making them feel that they are invincible. And they simply take up space, shrinking the road and parking acreage and increasing all forms of congestion. Traffic studies show that the typical SUV occupies as much road and parking space as 1.4 regular cars."

Gregg, it is a coincidence. You even provided the explanation, later in the article, after more pop-sociology: "The nation's self-sabotaging unofficial moratorium on road-building further contributes to this culture of anger. In the last thirty years, vehicle-miles driven on U.S. roads have increased by 143 percent, while road miles have risen by a mere five percent. The number of miles we drive is a link to our greater prosperity: there are now nearly as many cars in the United States as there are licensed drivers, and almost everyone wants to drive alone, which we all find unreasonable on the part of the other guy but divinely convenient for ourselves." Non-pecuniary externalities work that way, don't they? And don't you suppose that, with a great jump in the labor force participation rates of women, a culture of equality that encourages working moms (with the inevitable, Say-aggregation-principle consequence that prices rise accordingly), a no-fault-divorce system that turns marriage into notarized dating, that there are going to be more people on the same roads trying to go to the same places, such as the school, or the mall, or to work alone. But nobody wants to have to move to build the next generation of superhighways, nicht wahr? (And there's yet another rant about how the new "family-friendly" workplace places more pressure on those not married or without kids ...) Blaming the SUV for the road congestion and the impatience is akin to blaming the sniffle for the cold.

There is, however, a point in Easterbrook's article that I commend to a reader who teased me about illegal station wagons: "People who once bought station wagons switched to SUVs as manufacturers phased out the wagon, which had no import protection, in favor of the 'sport-ute.'"

I will not comment on the crashworthiness, (there's a short piece here) or the psychological shortcomings of SUV owners, as I'm not an expert on such things. But if you are thinking about crashworthiness, a sport-ute loses to this (so does a bulldozer), and in my eyes, the ultimate transgressive vehicle would look like this. For the record, you'd have to run 166 of the Hummer-class SUVs into one of these babies, simultaneously, to have a million pound force on the collision posts.

HEGEMONIC BIASES. "Reading The New Yorker was like hanging out with the same tiresome group of upper-crust snobs every night--eventually, all talk turned to how fabulous the club members were, and how idiotic, deluded and beneath contempt the rest of the world was." By golly, I think she's nailed it.

MAKING THE TRAINS RELIABLE. Where Worlds Collide publishes his business plan, were he ever a passenger service operator. Mostly sound ideas. I disagree, however, with "I will paint my trains in a livery that cries 'train', rather than try to pretend that my trains are buses or aircraft. I will also make every effort to keep them clean both inside and out." The successes of the Flying Yankee, the Burlington Zephyrs, the New Haven's Comet, and the Electroliner owed much to their NOT looking like trains. You don't want a train to look like a bus. The 140 and 141 series nodding donkeys and the General Motors Aerotrain bear that out.

LEAVE EARLIER, OR WALK IN. "If you show up at 10, 10:30 [a.m.], it’s always a problem... You’ll have to park in the boonies, or spend a half-hour driving around looking for a spot." Context here. If I see any whingeing about rising tuitions, I'm going to point at all these articles about how the students "need" more parking spaces.

DISCRIMINATING FOR EQUALITY. Northern Star coverage of the University of Michigan case. Note especially this comment by LaVerne Gyant, director of the Center for Black Studies. "People of color have been denied their rights for so long, and affirmative action came about in the civil rights movement,” she said. “If people have the grades and test scores, they should just be let in." Actually, affirmative action as national policy came about in the Nixon administration, and the current case isn't about people who have the grades and the test scores. Rather, it is about using different admission standards for different people to the detriment of people who have higher grades and scores but not protected status (the gravamen of the case) and incidentally about setting the protected status students up to fail. Extending Discriminations, "If the University of Michigan were forced to abandon its race-based preferences and the minority students who would have been admitted under the abandoned program instead attended Michigan State Univ. or Eastern Michigan Univ. or Wayne State Univ. or Northern Michigan Univ., they would receive all the diversity-specific benefits they would have received in Ann Arbor. It is only the non-minority students at Michigan who would have experienced any loss," it is likely the case that some of the students at Ann Arbor received fewer diversity-specific benefits; precisely those students who flunked out or dropped out of Ann Arbor who might have done well at one of the other universities named -- where they would have provided those interaction benefits to other students that the University of Michigan is claiming are so important.

I BEG YOUR PARDON. Volokh Conspiracy argues that retiring Illinois Governor Ryan's pardon of a number of condemned principles, while wrong on point, is procedurally right. I'm not qualified to go there. The commentary on the Governor's actions has been interesting. Radio host and Democratic strategist (wannabe??) Nancy Skinner reflected that, if it's a Republican doing the pardoning, perhaps she ought not always to be so partisan. Charlie Sykes suggested it was an attempt by the Governor to go out with some praise, a point that a Northern Star commentator echoed. (Perhaps by the time they graduate, the writer and the editors will learn that it is "guilty conscience.")

The comment that got me thinking was Skinner's contention that supporting capital punishment was the easy choice. That's a claim that other commentators, from other points of view, have also made. I'm not persuaded that there is a well-defined easy choice to any issue. In the case of the pardons, I'm also not persuaded that they were a mistake. Several pro-death-penalty commentators have pointed out the vicious nature of some of the murders that got those people into those small cells. Am I missing some subtlety about the deterrence effect of capital punishment? And now, all of those folks who are pardoned will suffer the same fate, only at a time not of the state's choosing.

NO RIGHT TO BE A MALL RAT. Milwaukee talk radio host Charlie Sykes has some observations about the Mayfair Mall losing its good reputation. Sykes is somewhat closer to the facts on the ground than am I.

BULLS*** DETECTION COURSE. Read more, at No. 2 Pencil. One of these centuries, we will apply the same rigorous standards of design and evaluation to teaching that we do to diesel engines.

OPPORTUNITY COSTS. The Cold Spring Shops are likely to remain with Blogger for now. A paid site with a professional design and relocation of archives trades as a small brass steam locomotive or a very good dolly for a Laser.

LOOKS LIKE A CHINESE PAINTING. Welcome, visitors from Atlantic Blog who checked out the new look there, and wandered over here. Today, there's a fine photograph from the Sligo area that gives the impression of a Chinese painting. On a trip to Taiwan, I figured it out: island, humid, lots of clouds. True also of Ireland, apparently. Less so of New Zealand, particularly the South Island, where midsummer snowfalls at 500 meters are not out of the question. (Imagine it snowing on Rib Mountain outside Wausau, Wisconsin, on the 4th of July.)

VICTORY CONDITIONS. "How would you know when you had enough diversity?," ask the SCSU Scholars. Perhaps it's like the sound of a saxophone, you can distinguish it from a Hiawatha in full cry ... Anyway, the diversity boondoggle at Northern Illinois University (perhaps the university got a deal on yellow paper, a lot of the REMF stuff is printed on yellow these days) assembled a multi-page program list (there goes another faculty appointment) with this upcoming (time yet to be announced, look for another onslaught of yellow paper) panel discussion. "Affirmative Action and Diversity Resources will host a panel discussion entitled Best Practices in Diversity. Please plan to attend this interactive discussion regarding how to attract and retain a diverse population of professionals and the benefits of achieving a diverse workforce." Bet nothing about letting professionals be professionals, and treating them accordingly, will come up. But if there are best practices, perhaps there is a victory condition.

ADMINISTRATIVE BLOAT. Just-inaugurated Governor Blagojevich of Illinois has already sacked some political appointees and frozen hiring. Until the dust settles, our recruiting efforts are on hold (for the second year.) There is, however, money to duplicate and distribute an announcement from Weight Watchers Corporate Solutions to all employees, under the auspices of the Employee Wellness and Assistance Program. Let's see, my wellness would be enhanced by smaller classes and by additional active colleagues. Are you listening, John Peters?

NEW APPROACH TO MEASURING RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION. Despite jokes about bridges between Africa and Poland, the received wisdom (Link from InstaPundit, the story might be moved to a new location), there is new research offering differing measures of residential segregation. (The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has been covering the new research extensively, with this criticism of the conventional view of northern cities as "hypersegregated," this report on possible sample-selection biases in existing research, and more to come.) The research is from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Employment and Training Institute (website includes the paper and some supporting maps) -- there's a profile of the principal investigators, who have published some stuff in good journals and worked with some good economists.

That's not to say there isn't some segregation, possibly including self-segregation, in Northern big cities (which appear segregated compared to some Southern big cities, but are less-segregated than some Western big cities, including Salt Lake City with too few people with African ancestors to count.) Milwaukee's Mayor Norquist was a guest of talk show host Charlie Sykes on Monday morning, and he acknowledged the presence of some extremely white suburbs that have proven to be extremely resistant to integration measures such as scattered-site public housing. The mayor was good enough to note that some inner city homeowners also were not enthusiastic about having such housing nearby. The hypothesis that suburban sprawl is in part driven by white flight remains alive, and this Brookings book is a good place to begin your reading. In Milwaukee, several formerly upscale shopping centers close to "the inner city" have fallen on hard times, starting with Capitol Court (demolished), Northridge (at one time the largest enclosed mall in the Milwaukee area, now mostly empty), and Mayfair (getting a reputation as a dangerous place). The topic of residential segregation remains one for extensive research and reflection. The new research suggests there's more than one way to measure it.

COMPENSATING DIFFERENTIALS. "As a result of high turnover, the toughest schools are staffed by a large number of inexperienced teachers, a handful of dedicated survivors and burn-outs. Paying more money won't help, as the study showed. Making it possible for teachers to be effective is the only way to retain decent teachers," notes Joanne Jacobs. Indeed so. Illinois (funds permitting) is looking at ways of forgiving some fraction of, or paying some fraction of, the student loans of teachers who will go to the toughest districts. Perhaps the incentive will work. But giving teachers the ability to keep disruptive students in line is likely to be more effective.

THE EVOLUTION OF GOOD MANNERS. Nick Gillespie trashes a proposed law making riding transit with strong B.O. a crime. Perhaps it's a bad law, and about as enforceable as sodomy laws, or laws against butchering hogs on Sunday. But the law is indicative of a greater problem. If good manners, which include washing up from time to time so as to not stink up public places, are an arbitrary social construction, to be ignored if that's convenient, such that people stink up the buses, what substitute is there for the police power of the state?

MUGGLE V. BOARD OF WIZARDRY. Stephen W. Carson is a bit behind the curve. Hermione, who is Harry's puppy-love interest, was referred to as a "Mugblood" by one of the louts in Slytherin. Kieran Healy has some thoughts on the possibility of such a suit, a long time ago (before Hogwarts bought a train from God's Wonderful Railway and dared to paint it red?)

EDU-BABBLE, BAD DRIVERS, AND LITERARY RELATIVISM. Get thyself Tightly Wound.

HAVE YOUR TICKETS READY. Transport Blog proposes that all stations be staffed, as a way of improving passenger perceptions of safety, and that all tickets be checked. Where Worlds Collide suggests that having all stations staffed is asking a bit much, although he reports an interesting adaptive reuse of stations that encourages their continued upkeep. Checking tickets on each train strikes him as doable. Indeed so, we call them conductors over here. (The concept is, I admit, alien to the British. I was on a late-evening scoot from Reading to Paddington one pleasant March evening -- spring break trips don't have to be to the tropics -- and instinctively displayed my ticket when the trainman walked through. He was a bit surprised but I think my accent put him somewhat at ease.) And some of those buses on rails could easily be set up for ticket checking by the operator, much as our streetcars and some interurbans were.

INSTITUTIONS EVOLVE TO REDUCE TRANSACTION COSTS: "If people know they can break the rules and get away with it, then you'll get a lot of that. On the other hand, if people know that they'll only be treated well if they themselves treat others well, then there's an incentive to do so. By my unwillingness to be magnanimous to jerks, I encourage them to act ethically and cease being jerks. Being magnanimous to jerks isn't moral; it's just being a sucker. It lets them take advantage of you, to your detriment and the detriment of nearly everyone else. If you're nice to jerks, you get more jerks." And much more, from USS Clueless. (Posted on Newmark's Door.)

BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY. Clayton Cramer has a picture.

SPONTANEOUS ORDER. A republic, not an empire, because it's efficient, argue the Chicago Boyz.

SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST. Extensive coverage of allegations against Bjorn Lomborg provided by Atlantic Blog and the SCSU Scholars

UPDATE: Croooow reports that Lomborg's publisher stands by the work.

CURIOUS GOOGLE HITS: clinton+funeral+home+cold+spring (There is such a business, in Cold Spring, New York.) Atlantic Blog shows up on the search string, too, but with a more coherent reason.

PROVERBS FOR THE NEW SEMESTER. A commentator on this SCSU Scholars post commends Proverbs 26:11 as an accurate description of professional committee members. Indeed so. King Solomon was wise in the ways of the academy, see also Prov. 26:13, 16-17.

CLEVER. Coca-Cola's new refrigerator-friendly 12 pack. I'm probably a late adopter, but I'm impressed. Will watch for diffusion of this packaging. (If you're even less connected to reality than I, this packaging mimics the function of those gravity-feed can holders many people use in their refrigerators.) At the margin, the packaging might be environmentally friendly, depending on the elasticity of demand for plastics. The cardboard and ink usage is a wash for enclosing 12 cans of pop, but the demand for those plastic can holders is diminished. I, for one, see no reason given this packaging, to buy such a thing.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES. The U.S. Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency standards require that the mix of cars sold by automobile manufacturers meet a miles per gallon standard. Automakers respond to the standards by producing relatively more high-gas-mileage cars or relatively fewer low-gas-mileage cars. Why do you suppose station wagons are so hard to find? It's less about esthetics than it is about complying with the law. So why the oversized shopping cart called an SUV? Those are trucks, subject to the truck fleet fuel efficiency standards, and an unintended consequence of different rules for pickup trucks, intended at the time of the law to exempt farmers from hardships that others would be subject to.

The SUV has become a symbol in some circles of the wrong kind of conspicuous consumption, most recently in an Ariana Huffington anathema on them, now made public in something called the Detroit Project. A Small Victory is not impressed with the campaign. She makes the point that SUVs make carpooling a bit simpler. So would station wagons, but they're illegal. Result: people who want to transport larger families, or shopping cart loads of goods, end up buying SUVs instead, and consuming more gasoline for a trip of given length, and exposing themselves to a slightly greater risk of a rollover crash, while exposing others to a slightly greater risk in a collision. This last is not a trivial point. Several economists, most notably Brookings's Robert Crandall, have published research establishing a higher death rate as a consequence of the fuel efficiency standards. Meanwhile, people do not see the kind of price signal (more expensive fuel) that would encourage them to buy smaller cars, or to invent larger hybrid cars, although that work is in progress. That is not to say that more expensive petroleum products is desirable: that makes consumers poorer, and it encourages substitution toward coal or wood, whose combustion contributes to the Asian Brown Cloud. The life of an economist is challenging at times, but one never lacks for things to investigate.

TAX INCIDENCE. Cal Pundit provides a visual showing the share of income, broken down by quintiles, that people pay as various STATE taxes. The combined effect of state and federal taxes on income does not appear to be taken into account by the researchers, whose full report is available here. (The list of foundations that supported the research might be instructive if you're into motive-questioning.) Cal Pundit's observation, that poorer people pay a greater proportion of their income as taxes of various kinds (which likely continues to hold true once income and payroll taxes, which likely make up a large and risky proportion of poorer peoples' pensions) are added, does not contradict the Administration's position that richer people pay more taxes. Both assertions are true, they are different perspectives on the same data.

Why neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have looked at expanding the Social Security tax base escapes me. The Democrats could argue that raising the upper bound on income subject to Social Security tax -- or subjecting capital income -- NEVER call it "unearned" here -- to self-employment tax would provide additional resources for the trust fund, and the Republicans could offer to cut the rates for "working people" -- much like the 1986 tax code rewrite eliminated a number of exclusions, exemptions, and deductions and lowered marginal rates. The danger to either party, particularly the Democrats, is that expanding the Social Security tax base gets more people interested in learning what a bad investment Social Security is. Readers saw that dimension here first.

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS. A Scottish train crew (based at Motherwell depot) refused to move a train of munitions. Wouldn't it be simple enough to allow the crew to mark off and then call another crew, possibly including a road foreman of engines or someone else with route knowledge?

LOWERING THE BAR AT INDIANA LAW. An "impressive and depressing" confession.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS in the Brooklyn College denial of tenure for lack of collegiality case. Lots of link fodder.

DEVALUING THE CURRENCY, in this case the currency of "relationships." [Ed: that last word deserves to be in scare quotes. I like Miss Manners's definition of the term: "commit and switch."

GET RICH SLOWLY. What to do in order to be in a position to build equity.

MORE MATH, LESS RELIGION. That's in Yemen's schools. Perhaps it's something for U.S. school administrators to consider. Substitute pop-psychology or relativist multiculturalism for religion and do as before.

REVEALED PREFERENCE. "Both America and Israel were founded by peoples who were refugees from prejudice in Europe." The exposition leading to that conclusion is here. (Via One Hand Clapping.)

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, INACTION? Perhaps, reports Discriminations. Developing ...

POLICY WONK? Here's Capitol.net's recommended reading. (Via Tim Blair, from down under.)

THE PLANNED IGNORANCE IS PROFOUND. Thank you, Professor O'Connor.

TERROR ON A TRAIN. InstaPundit has a link to a report of a plastic-knife-wielding man who had a bit much to drink and threatened some passengers on Amtrak's westbound Sunset Limited, somewhere west of Jacksonville. (InstaPundit puts the train at Big Sandy, Texas, unlikely given that the arrest happened around 8 pm on a Sunday evening, with the Jacksonville, Florida paper picking up the story.) Weblog commentary draws parallels between the United Flight 93 passengers and the passenger reaction on the train. Perhaps. But those cross-country trains draw a pretty no-nonsense crowd. Somebody who got liquored up and disruptive likely would have been subdued by other passengers before September 11.

LUCID TREATMENT OF ECONOMICS, endorsed by Professor Drezner.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE. "America's hopes of being the world leader in wheelless, high-speed magnetic-levitation trains appear to have been dashed by the Chinese, who took officials on a ride last Tuesday between the city of Shanghai and its airport on the world's first operating maglev railway," goes the story. Some thirty years ago, an observer in Trains made the observation that, had the U.S. defeated the Soviets in World War II with the assistance of the Japanese, only to get into a cold war later, the bullet train, not space satellites, would have provoked a crash government program. Airport shuttles ... maglev, monorail, whatever ... is it practical if not all air travelers are headed to the financial district, or if driving speeds exceed 19 mph airport-to-city-center?

FALLING MEDICAL COSTS. Here's an Asymmetrical Information post on the reasons for expensive health care. Note in particular the first three.

"Better, more costly technology."

That really means falling costs. If the ability to do a surgery wasn't available before, and now it is, that surgery is cheaper. Sure, it might set you back $100,000. But if it isn't available, you might as well price it at $100,000,000,000.

"Better, most costly medications."

Same argument, but this time with a kicker. Atlantic Blog noted late last year that the new medicines often get people back to their duties faster. Sure, a $3.98 six-pack of Pabst might be sufficient therapy, if you're willing to pass up a week's pay.

"Increased health care labor costs."

"Cutting the diamond, five bucks. Knowing where to cut it, $495."

And I haven't yet gotten to the missing incentives in the final couple of points. Those I leave to the reader as an exercise.

HATS OFF, GENTLEMEN, A REAL MAN. Thank you, One Hand Clapping.

PROGRESSIVE INTOLERANCE. Critical Mass notes the swamp the Rutgers administration has landed itself in by defunding the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, because the organization's by-laws require chapter officers to be ... Christian. I suspect I'm late to this story, surely someone has already raised the possibility that other identity-based organizations require chapter officers to ... The good news is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is all over Rutgers on this one.

MORE ABOUT THE SANDWICH WARS, incidental to a more general point about complex adaptive systems.

BUILDING EQUITY. James Glassman provides useful advice. Nothing fancy.

RECOMMENDED READING. Go Big Ed takes on the Blob (you have read and understood Joanne Jacobs, have you not?) in Nebraska.

BLAMING THE VICTIM. Achievement-resenting bully beats up two good kids and it's ... the good kids' fault! Some context. There's a bully who is beating up one of A Small Victory's kids. She's not happy. She's not getting much help from the school principal. (No big surprise there.) Joanne Jacobs offers two substantive suggestions, one relatively simple, one probably asking for the Moon. "I also think it's good for small, victimizable kids to learn karate or something similar that builds confidence and self-control."

Indeed. Nothing concentrates the mind of a bully like the possibility that the victim will hit back. Many of A Small Victory's readers recommend just that.

"And sometimes the only thing to do is to find a new school that's not run by mush-headed wimps."

Right. Find a principal who isn't a girly man, or a crayon-box diversity woman. You might as well look for cheese-wedge hats in the Woodfield Mall.

There is one lever Small Victory hasn't pushed. Bully's father, a widower, owns a pizza parlor. Sometimes an informational picket and a boycott are in order ...

SIMPLE RULES FOR A COMPLEX WORLD. Andrew Sullivan prefers his Presidents "uncomplicated and unconflicted." Indeed. Philosopher-kings are a thought experiment, and Hamlet is a fictional prince.

LONG MEMORIES? The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel calls for a closer look at commuter rail service for Milwaukee. Here's their response to potential critics: "Many rail cynics routinely argue that no matter what form it takes, rail will never work here. They need a remedial history course. It wasn't all that long ago when commuter rail played a big role in interurban transportation in southeastern Wisconsin."

Somebody's age is showing. The electric railway network began shrinking in 1938, when the St. Martin's - Burlington section quit. In 1939, the rest of the southwest passenger service ended with the abandonment of the Hales Corners - Mukwonago section. By the outbreak of World War II, the western service to Oconomowoc and Watertown was truncated at Waukesha, and the Port Washington - Sheboygan service ended. The slaughter continued after the war, with the Racine-Kenosha and Port Washington gone by the end of 1947, and the remaining Waukesha-Hales Corners abandoned in June of 1951. The last streetcars tied up in March 1958, and the North Shore Line quit in 1963, just after the Badgers lost the Rose Bowl for the last time in 40 years. There was some intercity service remaining on the Milwaukee and the North Western, but most of that ended in 1971 with the coming of Amtrak.

"But we also understand, as a recent poll by the National Association of Realtors confirmed, that in order to attract riders, modern commuter rail must be convenient, safe and accessible."

All of which was true of the pre-Public Utility Holding Company Act interurban service, for all the good it did.

WORKED ON THE RAILROAD. Installing cork subroadbed is a lot of work, particularly in tight spaces, but those tracks sure look nice once they're in place.

TAX CUTS. The South Knox Bubba poses some good questions: "Many of our current economic problems can be addressed or at least influenced positively through economic policy. Are more tax cuts the answer? Do businesses spend money to save money or do they spend money to make money? Existing tax benefits (and loopholes) seem quite generous and tax rates did not seem to deter investment during the previous decade. Lower interest rates, however, did seem to encourage investment.

Do businesses plan their operations around tax savings, or are taxes simply one other operating cost that must be dealt with and complained about? Are businesses more interested in the availability of low-cost capital, a trained and qualified workforce, stable prices for equipment and materials, and opening new markets for new products? Or are they more interested in tax savings? Will tax cuts result in higher deficits, which lead to higher interest rates and inflation? Should economic policies focus less on "stimulus" and more on long-term strategies that promote a stable economy and sustainable growth?"Good questions, not easily answered. Alas, you won't learn much on television. Tonight, Bill O'Reilly was quite rude to Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute (disclosure: classmate at Wisconsin.) Larry was making the argument that changes in marginal tax rates would have a long-run effect on investment, but with some fraction (he said one-fourth) of manufacturing capacity idle, providing some disposable income immediately would have a short-run effect on returning people to work. He went the Democrats a bit better on the tax rebate: $500 per single person, $1000 per married couple. He did not get the chance to discuss the implications of the permanent income hypothesis (go to Asymmetrical Information and look around) or the rational expectations hypothesis (if anybody remembers what that is) on the stimulus a one-time tax rebate provides, because Bill O'Reilly was more interested in accusing Larry, or the Institute, of being some kind of socialist front. Totally irrelevant to the topic at hand, which is really the last of the Bubba's questions ... when there's idle capacity, does it make sense to encourage its immediate use or its more rapid replacement by something else. There's room for debate either way, as there always is in recession. We're nowhere near the levels of idle capacity of 1980-1983, when there was a lot of interest in short-term stimulus that might have preserved some of the smokestack industries that instead closed and were replaced by startup companies. The raw material intensities of heavy industry are probably much lower today than they otherwise would be.

SEASONAL ADJUSTMENT. It's not for the faint of heart. But it's a phenomenon, and it's worth thinking about. Deionychus suggests there is a holiday lull in blog traffic. A correct seasonal adjustment is likely to be difficult as many writers as well as readers took a break. My own counts suggested fewer than 20 readers per day during the Christmas closure. I resumed more-or-less regular posting after January 2. On Monday the 6th I had 50 visits, many arriving via one or another of the academic weblogs. Some of those have gotten back to more or less regular schedules.

COST CUTTING. Viking Pundit endorses the idea of the airlines selling meals to those who wish to eat, and offers a wish list of extras. In reality, United Airlines has eliminated or scaled back meals in first class. There will be no first-class meal service on flights of less than three hours, if the trip is not during a meal time, and there will no longer be sandwich service to coach passengers on the five hour Pacific Coast-Hawaii trips. Talk about giving the advocates of re-regulation some material! In 1969, the Interstate Commerce Commission investigated the downgrading of passenger train service and decided that it did not have the authority to establish minimum service standards for long-distance trains absent an act of Congress (Trains, November 1969: 10.) The 1970 legislation establishing Amtrak gave the Secretary of Transportation power to set service standards, including food service to be provided on "all trains running two hours or more between 7 am and 8 pm" and "nonrevenue louhge space to be provided on all trains running more than six hours." (Edmonson, Journey to Amtrak (Milwaukee: Kalmbach 1972): 10)

FLIMSY EUROPEAN TRAINS. Apparently true at the N-scale level as well, according to Where Worlds Collide. Lest I sound too smug, there are problems with the plastic gears on the original Atlas diesels and on some versions of the Weaver diesels. I endorse Northwest Short Line gearboxes.

RAILWAY SAFETY. Where Worlds Collide has picked up the Los Angeles grade crossing accident story and observed the inconsistent press coverage of transportation accidents: "We're content to accept the equivalent of a 9/11 every year on the roads, but whenever there's a single fatality on the railway, all hell breaks loose, there are public enquiries, people recommend vastly expensive high-tech safety systems which will end up pushing up fares and forcing people to go by road instead." That analogue to 9/11 must refer to the UK, we come close to a 9/11 a month aggregating all the driving fatalities in the States. The simplest safety system is to keep the roads separate from the tracks. On that score the British do much better than the US, although all but two of the level crossings have been eliminated on the New Haven-Boston segment of the Northeast Corridor. More commonly, four-position gates are in use on sections of track cleared for 110 mph running, and an adaptation of aircraft carrier arresting gear to a barrier introduced by the North Shore Line some 70 years ago has been tested in Illinois.

We're not as likely to have this objection, however: "No doubt there will be some clueless idiots who will blame the railway for operating a push-pull train with the locomotive at the back, just like they did at Selby, without placing the blame where it belongs - with the stupidly reckless road user." Unlikely in North America, as push-pull operation of trains is a matter of course. On off-peak trains the Californians tend to close the cab coach to passengers anyway, and one impediment to the use of overseas high-speed trains in the US is their relatively flimsy construction. We have learned a lot about the effects of overturning trains on passengers, including the effects of contact with the track structure on human bodies ejected through broken windows. Thus our coaches are sufficiently sturdy that they are difficult to break out of, which led to the fire deaths of ten passengers in Maryland a few years ago. The safest place to be in a train derailment is usually on board, notice that two coaches overturned and no passengers died. They are tough. Thirty years ago, I was flagging on an interurban car at a preservation railway when a station wagon drove in front of our car at a crossing. (Driver made a left turn, he must have been concentrating on the road and forgot about the tracks.) The car made a mess of the driver's side cargo area of the station wagon ... there was a white paint chip on the coupler knuckle. No injuries, fortunately. Don't mess with trains.

VICAR OF VACILLATION. St. Cloud State University Vice-President for Student Life and Development Nathan Church (the story neither confirms nor denies that his portfolio includes the encouragement of virtue and the prevention of vice) has apologized, sort of, to the campus College Republicans for his attempt to censor their display of an Israeli flag. The Scholars characterize Mullah Church's apology as "tortured English," it reads, "Upon reflection, I accept that I could have managed my concerns about your display in a fashion that would have left these matters clearly within your hands to consider and manage as you thought would be appropriate." Years ago, Professor Alfred Kahn, at the time saddled with the job of inflation tsar in the Carter administration after successfully beginning airline deregulation and introducing sanity into telephone pricing, gave a talk at the University of Wisconsin. For some reason one of the main points I recall was his trashing of the term "appropriate" as a weaselly placeholder that meant nothing. My sense is that "concern" is, similarly, a non-working word. And the Scholars are being kind to their Vice President. Mullah Church has invented the non-apology apology. A real man would have kept his "concerns" to himself. A man who slipped up and recognized it would have said, "I screwed up. I should have kept my concerns to myself." And I would have recommended that he be placed on the short-list for any administrative openings that came up at Northern Illinois University.

The little matter of the attempted mugging the same day at the same display remains unresolved.

WHO WOULD YOU RATHER HANG OUT WITH? Hit and Run discovers that firefighter chic is out among New York's yuppie chicks. Based on the story, it sounds like there are some predatory high-achiever women who deserve to spend their weekends with their cats.

WE ARE CHOPPED LIVER. Amitai Etzioni objects to a proposal that transplantable human organs are a commodity tradeable in a market: "I see a danger in paying for doing things we ought to do out of moral commitment. Furthermore, when we turn organs into a commodity, we lose the sense of closeness people have when they act as family or friends rather than as traders." Evidently Etzioni has been able to avoid faculty senate meetings. His alternative: "Let's start by formulating a strong statement that declares that we, as a community, hold that giving our organs to another after our passing is a moral act of the highest order. It is an act all human beings should engage in, and the community appreciates those who choose to do what is right." Fine, but how does the professor propose to enforce this? And, once his principle is enshrined by law, what assurance can he offer us that there will not be implied consent to donate, let alone implied consent giving way to coerced consent? Has Etzioni taken the first step toward Soylent Green?

Etzioni's argument has parallels in the recent emergence of proposals to resurrect the military draft, noted by InstaPundit, expanded upon by Occam's Toothbrush, with historical context provided by One Hand Clapping, who provides a link to Sgt. Stryker's objections to an earlier proposal.

Organ donations, and military service, have in common that they are useful but unpleasant to contemplate. The advocates of implied consent or of the draft raise the horizontal-equity argument that all ought to be equally subject to the risk of that unpleasantness. The advocates of markets for donor organs or the volunteer military raise the efficiency argument that participation by those who expect to derive some sort of gain from their participation is likely to be a more effective participation. I am hard pressed to evaluate moral arguments on any side of either of these policy debates, as all of them strike me as bad. Some of the posts I cited are instructive, as they suggest that military service is not the province of poorer people, particularly among the fliers and the special forces.

ADVANCING THE CAUSE. Some spot-on observations from Viking Pundit. Kindly be advised, however, that assertions to the effect that if I don't trade in my Volkswagen for an SUV, the terrorists win, will be cheerfully ignored.

WHEN IT'S A TIE AT THE GRADE CROSSING, YOU LOSE. A truck takes on a commuter train in Burbank, California. Developing ...

UPDATE: 1 pm news broadcast has an eyewitness who said the crossing protection was working, "looked like the truck drove into the train." One death confirmed.

ALTERNATIVE TO AMNESTY. David Frum's Diary has this: "Sen. Phil Gramm years ago suggested that Social Security could become a mechanism for enforcing the immigration laws. Under his plan, Mexicans would be admitted to work temporarily in the United States. They would pay taxes - including Social Security contributions. In return, they would receive a Social Security pension - payable only in Mexico. It's the germ of an idea that would give Americans the benefit of Mexican labor without law-breaking and without erasing either country's sovereignty." There might be yet another research paper...

HOUSE RULES. The generation gap, when the kids bring the latest shack-up honey to the parents' house.

TAX INCIDENCE. Cal Pundit notes that he pays income taxes, and then pays sales taxes out of after-tax income, thus there's double taxation. Indeed so. Those of us with longer memories recall that state sales taxes were at one time deductible from federal income, prior to the 1986 federal tax reform that broadened the tax base by eliminating a number of deductions and exemptions while lowering marginal tax rates. Tax incidence in general, as Musgrave and Musgrave's Public Finance in Theory and Practice notes, is a "fascinating but complex problem." In fact, Musgrave and Musgrave's presentation deals with the incidence of taxes in isolation. There's an attempt to look at tax incidence with multiple taxes by Fullerton and Metcalf available from NBER, in case readers have time and a high threshold of pain.

DURACHALSTVO. Instapundit is unable to come up with a Greek-derived word for this phenomenon noted by Brad DeLong: "Well, we do have a strong system of faculty committee governance. But that isn't a blessing: it's a curse. You see, rule by faculty committees translates into rule by those who come to meetings and stay a long time. And thus it becomes rule by those who have nothing better to do--rule by those who place a very low valuation on their time. In most cases, those who place a very low valuation on their time are correct in doing so. It's thus a form of rule by the incompetent." It's part of a DeLong report from the American Economic Association meetings, illustrating life among the economists. It's also a comparative advantage argument. In fact, it's a comparative argument that I've used in introductory economics classes for years. In my formulation, it's like this: "Why are there so few Presidential Research Professors on the University Council?" Those of you with some understanding of Russian will figure out the derivation of the word I offer describing the phenomenon.

PUT UP OR SHUT UP. Two challenges by Juan Non-Volokh to those in a position to do something about legacy admissions and viewpoint non-diversity.

OVER THE TOP. Commentator Paul Craig Roberts has a tendency to the hyperbolic, particularly on matters involving race relations. Eugene Volokh has a good takedown of a recent Roberts column on Trent Lott.

"I'M STILL HAVING FUN". Brett Favre decides to continue with the Packers. Fan sentiment tends to be favorable to the team, despite its losses the past two weeks. Favre's attitude is correct. When any job loses all elements of fun, it's time to quit.

PHATIC DRIVEL. Peter Kaminski reports that Words-L are looking at methods of attracting new meebers (er, members), possibly including weblogs. Notionally, the list is the English Language Discussion Group, but that's way down on the list of topics. Do have a look.

SHRIMP WILL LEARN TO WHISTLE. The SCSU Scholars have some suggestions for their administrators. Alas, all require administrators with some backbone.

PUBLISHED, BUT PERISHED ANYWAY. Professor Newmark found coverage of the Modern Language Association job meetings in New York. (Does the Modern Language Association schedule like the American Economic Association, with the job meetings alternating between an Acela Express city one year and a touristy destination elsewhere the next?) Most accurate quote: "Most dissertations are badly written." Why people insist on referring themselves as "Doctor" on the basis of a learning experience escapes me. Least accurate quote: "The famous line about the M.L.A. is that you’ve never seen a convention where people drink so much and f*** so little." The economists have the literary types beat, folks.

INTERESTING SPORTS ANALOGY. Here's the Left Leaner on shocking upsets: "This sort of thing happens all the time. We constantly see scenarios in which one competitor is cast by the pundits as enormously inferior or unqualified, when the fact of the matter is the discerned differences between the opponents are more hyperbole than reality. And then the so-called underdog wins, and crow is on the menu. The Dems learned this in 2000 and apparently decided to eat leftovers last November.

Did Karl Rove watch the game?"

Perhaps the Miami Hurricanes had Bill Daley as defensive coordinator? Good on the Big Ten, by the way. The Badgers were able to beat Colorado in much the same way that they beat Northern Illinois.

FIRE OSAMA'S APOLOGIST. No. 2 Pencil discovers a site called Conservative Pagan that provides inter alia a link to a petition calling for Senator Patty Murray (Idiotarian - Washington) to resign.

DISCRIMINATING FOR EQUALITY? The SCSU Scholars point to back-from-vacation No. 2 Pencil's skepticism about actually existing affirmative action, where she gets right to the heart of the matter: it's the feeder schools that are the problem. There will not be comparable performance of university students from different school districts until the school districts are comparably effective, beginning with kindergarten.

TEN WORST CORPORATIONS. The Multinational Monitor's list is up, with program notes. The list isn't particularly coherent: would Caterpillar not be on the list if the Israeli Defense Forces purchased Terex 'dozers, or got some on sale from Belarus? Some companies are on the list for lowering prices, and others for raising prices. 'Twould be nice if there were some coherent basis for judging whether corporate plunder involved plundering the suppliers or plundering the customers.

PAUL KRUGMAN, WARHAWK? Professor Krugman applies a bit of game theory to the North Korean unpleasantness. "Let's be clear: North Korea's rulers are as nasty as they come. But unless we have a plan to overthrow those rulers, we should ask ourselves what incentives we're giving them." Is Krugman suggesting that there is in fact no such plan? Scroll down ... "So here's how it probably looks from Pyongyang:

The Bush administration says you're evil. It won't offer you aid, even if you cancel your nuclear program, because that would be rewarding evil. It won't even promise not to attack you, because it believes it has a mission to destroy evil regimes, whether or not they actually pose any threat to the U.S. But for all its belligerence, the Bush administration seems willing to confront only regimes that are militarily weak.

Can I interpret this in any way other than as an assertion that the Bush administration is being pusillanimous?

"The incentives for North Korea are clear. There's no point in playing nice — it will bring neither aid nor security. It needn't worry about American efforts to isolate it economically — North Korea hardly has any trade except with China, and China isn't cooperating. The best self-preservation strategy for Mr. Kim is to be dangerous. So while America is busy with Iraq, the North Koreans should cook up some plutonium and build themselves some bombs.

Again: What game does the Bush administration think it's playing?"

So, Professor, what is the dominant strategy?

FASTER THAN PEER REVIEW. Atlantic Blog discovered a particularly inane George Monbiot attempt at economics and checked some of Monbiot's numbers. Meanwhile, Indiawest got into the act, observing that Samizdata's didn't exactly have to fisk Monbiot, "simply quoting Monbiot was enough." (The comments section at Samizdata offers links to others who have weighed in, do go there.) Mindles Dreck opted to provide a fisking, and points to yet more analysis at Layman's Logic.

DINNER IN THE DINER, NOTHING COULD BE FINER. Amish Tech Support weighs in on the proposal by airlines to sell food to those who wish to buy it rather than issue rations to everybody. His preference: brown-bagging it. That used to be the reality on the railroads. Any number of trains running from South to North earned the nickname "Chicken Bone" account the favored finger food of coach passengers. Railroads were OK with that, in fact the dining cars tended to offer expensive, albeit good food, and the traditional placement of the dining car was between coach and first class (Pullmans on overnight trains, parlor or club cars on day trains). It's difficult for a number of reasons (imagine carting all that unoccupied space around at takeoff, for openers) to provide a dining section on an airplane, although such a configuration might make loading and unloading easier (I despise the practice of boarding first and business ahead of everyone else, then compelling the coach passengers to make their way through those sections, where beverage service is in progress and blocking the aisles. A dining section at the vestibule, with first forward and coach aft, would provide for better traffic flow while allowing the suits to have their pre-takeoff libations undisturbed by traffic.) The custom of providing food on airlines used to be a dimension of competition: if it is illegal to compete in price, nonprice competition breaks out. The International Air Transportation Association (the cartel for the transatlantic services) once had to have a meeting to define 'sandwich' to serve coach passengers, after the Scandinavian Air System got aggressive about putting things on bread. With deregulation, there's price competition and less incentive to offer better (or any) food.

UPDATE: See this entry at The Corner.

COMPETITION IN SPACE. Amish Tech Support notes the Chinese space program and offers a prediction: "Also, when they build their own space station it will be designed to be manned with enough of a support staff to allow lab experiments without some idiot Chinese Space Administrator cutting the budget of the emergency escape vehicle. They've been learning from all of our mistakes, and it'll be interesting to see mow many countries will throw support to the Chinese after declaring the ISS a camel-with-three-humps failure." There's learning by doing, which involves making mistakes, and there's bureaucratic inertia. It's been thirty years since Apollo 17. Has the development of space exploration progressed anywhere near as rapidly as aviation from 1927 to 1957, or home computing since 1980?

CREDIBLE COMMITMENTS. Lenghty Den Beste post on the limitations of bargaining and arbitration. It even touches on a topic I used on a recent final exam: why are there posted prices in U.S. stores, for items that sell at negotiated prices elsewhere?

THERE ARE LIMITS. Critical Mass reports on a potential breach of contract at the University of Maryland, College Park. A disappointed student has lodged a protest at No Indoctrination, complete with citations of relevant catalogue language.

WORKING ON THE RAILROAD. Sixteen feet of subroadbed in place from Monday night to Wednesday evening. Ballast board and track to follow. There's no dismantling the tracks when the Christmas decorations come down around here.

TWENTY MOST ANNOYING CONSERVATIVES give or take a few ties. These are Pandagon's picks (via Cal Pundit.)

THREEFER? African state, democratic government, offshore oil for sale. More here.

THE FATAL CONCEIT and how Professor Bunyip killed it.

THE DIRTY LITTLE SECRET OF THE TRANSGRESSIVES. "Why in order to be serious, do things have to be ugly?," is the topic for Charlie Sykes today. Doesn't have to be that way. Consider the Norfolk and Western Railway's steam locomotives. Definitely serious, but not ugly. Artists and intellectuals, take note.

SEPARATE BY EQUAL. Scrapple Face presents the new Republican diversity initiative, and Common Sense and Wonder recommends it.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE NOMINEE Governor George Ryan of Illinois??? Just another Third World potentate, I suppose, discovers irregularities in the death sentences handed out by his state courts, while taking bribes for truck-driving licenses.

SETTING A GOOD EXAMPLE. Brian Doherty weighs in on people who opt out of one or another modern convenience, then feel the urge to convert others: "She is full of complaints about how the choices other people make are clearly -- to her -- making their lives worse. People like Ms. Fox who delight in hanging clothes out to dry on the line and, who knows, strapping on a wooden yoke to plow their fields, should live long and prosper. But I'm always a little set on edge myself by the whiff of Big Brotherism that hovers around writing dedicated to telling most people that they are really, if they but stopped to think about it, going about this life business in entirely the wrong manner." Quite so. I joke about being rich enough to not have to own a cell phone. On the other hand, I would never have special-ordered cruise control on a car, but it's a nice feature on the five-speed Golf I recently bought (after the last one gave out after 14 1/2 years.)

WEBLOG PREDICTIONS. Brief index at Right Wing News. Wasn't it Ken Galbraith who quipped that economists made forecasts because they felt obligated to do so, not because they had any special knowledge?

THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL. Daniel Drezner's thoughts on why Left and Right respond differently to criticism are worth a look. But I have to wonder a bit about his transition from academy-to-public-life hypothesis. You're not supposed to take comments on your second-order conditions, or your sample selection, or your model specification personally. Are the academicians in public life the second string?

PUBLIC CHOICE. Virginia Postrel has a new column on the political economy of tax policy. Efficiency is a goal. It does not have to be the only goal.

DIFFICULT NEW YEARS RESOLUTION. Tim Hall resolves not to purchase any more rolling stock kits until he's built some of the ones currently in his repository. That's always a difficult resolution to keep. I'm somewhat older than he is and have never been able to keep that one.

LIBERAL RUSH LIMBAUGH. Rush Limbaugh just closed his first hour back with a suggestion: clone him, let the Clintons raise the baby, and in 30 years ...

THE BEAUTY MYTH and the vapidity of elementary education. Peter Kaminski has several thoughtful posts on those subjects.

GRADE INFLATION pro and con. (Requires registration.) The article expands on this post, and provokes yet another question: if more students are entering university prepared to do the current level of "A" work, is it time to rethink the standards for "A" work. In any other endeavor, I think the answer would be yes: the 2000 hp diesel becomes the 3000 hp diesel becomes 6000 hp in one engine; the 4 minute mile did not signify the end of the Olympics, the 386 became the 486 became the Pentium became ...

PLUS CA CHANGE. Bushonomics. Complex adaptive systems do what they d**n well please.

SCHOOL HOLIDAYS. The first school controversy of the new year in Illinois is whether or not to hold class on Martin Luther King's birthday (a Monday in January), Lincoln's birthday (February 12), Casimir Pulaski Day (after 16 years in the state I still don't know when this is), Columbus Day (October 12), and Veteran's Day (Armistice Day, November 11.) There has to be some kind of history for these school holidays. Wisconsin, years ago, didn't mandate any of these as holidays. I recall doing assorted projects involving Lincoln and Washington, Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, and stopping all work for a minute (sometimes involving the public-address, when the school had one) at 11 am on November 11. Martin Luther King was still alive in those days. Pulaski was a high school with a bad basketball team. On the other hand, schools did close on Good Friday (still do, if I understand the current rules.) From Labor Day to Thanksgiving, we stopped only for one conference day and a two-day state teachers convention. From shortly after the New Year until Good Friday, there was only one conference day. If Easter came late in April, we just dug in and kept working.

The proposal to hold classes on the five Illinois holidays is controversial. The Chicago Tribune coverage (registration required) suggests that a number of these holidays are early manifestations of identity politics. That was clear enough in the establishment of the King memorial day. Here's a perspective on Pulaski Day: "'As a former teacher, I enjoyed the day off, but from the larger perspective, it's more important that information about Pulaski be correct,' said Jan Lorys, director of the Polish Museum of America and a former Chicago school teacher who produced a video about the Revolutionary War hero. 'The important thing is that students learn. The best way we learn about each other is through our heroes.'" I have to commend Lorys for his heroism, venturing that heroes -- nay, achievers -- matter, and that schools present correct information! Mere social constructions, the modern experts would tell us. Did Pulaski Day come into being about the same time that the number of Chicagoans with Polish ancestors exceeded the population of Warsaw? Clearly that's how at least one person views Columbus Day. "'This is a dilution of the [Columbus] holiday and an extension of the ongoing assault against our culture,' said Dominic DiFrisco, spokesman for the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, an umbrella organization for about 100 Chicago-area groups.

'This holiday is very important to the Italian-American community. Columbus is a symbol for all the Italians who came to this country. But I don't think too many teachers would stand up today and extol Christopher Columbus.'" Live by identity politics, be marginalized by identity politics. Did Columbus Day come into being about the same time the number of Chicagoans with Italian ancestors exceeded the population of Naples?

The Illinois Association of School Administrators favors holding classes on holidays. "The IASA shall support legislation to reduce the current number of legal school holidays in Section 24-2 of The School Code and supports a moratorium on the creation of any additional legal school holidays." They'd also like more autonomy to discipline special education students, but coming before either of those is a plea for improved protection of railroad grade crossings. Indeed. That's one of my favorite lurid examples of the economics of human life. "You say you can't place a value on human life? Then why do school buses have the opportunity to drive in front of trains?"

THE ACADEMIC LIFE. Atlantic Blog disagrees with Ann Coulter's characterization of the workload of academicians. Atlantic Blog is correct about the joys of dealing with university administrators. Coulter is not completely off the mark. Take the whole quote: "Apart from being a college professor, there is no easier job in the universe than being a journalist. For 99.999 percent of writers, there is no heavy lifting, no physical danger, no honest day's work. Andrew Grossman has found a way to make it even easier. No research!" There is nothing honest about sitting around in committee meetings (which the REMFs seem to believe is the most important professorial function.) Years ago, John Panzar, who at the time was chairman of the economics department at Northwestern (located in interesting quarters -- one building, with the north entrance labeled Nathaniel Leverone Hall, leading to the economics department, and the south entrance labeled Arthur Andersen Hall, leading to the graduate school of business -- I wonder if there's a "naming opportunity" on offer for the south entrance.) But I digress. John Panzar had done some work on academic productivity, and he discovered that the modal number of refereed publications by economists with Ph.D.s was ... zero.