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Assorted links
1. How economists lose weight
2. Does it matter if leaders are female?
3. Cory Doctorow on what is wrong with Facebook
4. Gretchen Rubin on Inner Economist and how to get people to tell the truth
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 28, 2007 at 01:17 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
Cory Doctorow is completely right (im not sure if you have the right link though, I found his take on craphound.com). Anyway, I know just where he is coming from. It's that immediate decision, are you my friend, yes or no? No in between. I find it's easier to make enemies then friends on facebook and thats why I gave up with it.
Posted by: lt.milo at Nov 28, 2007 1:48:38 PM
Hmm, so the strategy for getting people to tell the truth consists of asking them to say what they think other people think, and then assume that most people think that others think much like themselves.
I'm not sure that would work for, say, investing or luxury goods. In some areas, everyone imagines themselves a contrarian investor or a discriminating consumer, smarter than the foolish masses. So you'd have to finesse the question a bit.
Posted by: anonymous at Nov 28, 2007 1:48:58 PM
The article on female leaders fails to mention a huge confounder: Indian locals may have perceived female leaders as unqualified because one-third of the leaders examined in the study were statutorily required to be female.
Posted by: Brandon Adams at Nov 28, 2007 3:05:39 PM
I have a problem with the "facebook link". Could you check whether it is correct?
THX
Posted by: CS at Nov 28, 2007 3:38:45 PM
the facebook page loaded blank. does that mean nothing is wrong with it?
Posted by: anon at Nov 28, 2007 3:41:48 PM
for the people who want a working version of the facebook page, I found this:
http://craphound.com/?p=1961
Posted by: lt.milo at Nov 28, 2007 4:08:19 PM
The Duflo et al. study is oooooollld! Brandon's comment is irrelevant -- they looked at *results* of females in leadership positions.
Posted by: David Zetland at Nov 28, 2007 5:46:36 PM
Pretty sure this is the missing link:
http://www.informationweek.com/internet/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204203573
Posted by: odograph at Nov 28, 2007 5:47:50 PM
The Duflo et al. study is oooooollld! Brandon's comment is irrelevant -- they looked at *results* of females in leadership positions.
Posted by: David Zetland at Nov 28, 2007 5:48:01 PM
Another issue with the female leaders thing is that it doesn't make any mention of the costs of improved water services correlated with female leaders. Are other, more important, things being neglected? Are taxes being raised? The lower corruption reports are promising, but the myopia of the article makes me even doubt the validity of these findings. I also find it more than a little disturbing that the article focuses on coercive systems rather than examining voluntarily elected women leaders and describing their merits.
Posted by: Rimfax at Nov 28, 2007 5:49:42 PM
I'm wondering if the female leader effect might be somewhat driven by the most assuredly higher incumbency rate amongst the towns not forced to elect women.
Posted by: bil. at Nov 28, 2007 9:01:57 PM
I'm not sure the Yale professors are providing strong enough incentives. Presumably the professors will choose charities that have widespread support. Even when a dieter fails to lose weight, they may still win if their contractually lost money supports a charity the dieter likes.
Suppose instead they were forced to pay the O.J. Simpson defense fund. Or the National Organization of Pissed-Off Women. Or their brother-in-law's beer tab. Now those would be motivations to lose weight.
Posted by: John Dewey at Nov 29, 2007 9:55:21 AM
Is it me or can anyone else tell that Doctorow probably hasn't been on Facebook for very long? Almost all of the problems he relates probably wouldn't be issues on Facebook. Indicating who your "top eight" friends are? If you're friends with someone, you're friends with someone, unless you add some stupid "top friends" application, which most people don't do. The Friendster example probably isn't much of an issue because pictures have to be non-pornographic (not sure how well that's policed, but I can't for the life of me recall ever seeing a pornographic picture on facebook, and I've been using the site since near the beginning).
A more interesting article would be if a social scientist who's used the site for a while wrote an article about the social conventions and trends that have emerged on Facebook. The longer one uses the site, one realizes that there's some "do's" and "don'ts." For instance, why would someone conceal their relationship status when they're single? When they're in a relationship? Guys are much more likely to do the latter, girls the former. Why is there such a strong correlation between education and whether someone uses Facebook or MySpace?
Posted by: Bill at Nov 29, 2007 11:10:22 AM
There are evolutionary predispositions toward risk taking that suggest that male and female leaders, ceteris paribus, may react differently in predictable ways; for a discussion of risk preferences, reciprocal altruism and their relations to gender, wealth, and age see:
http://web.bsu.edu/cob/econ/research/papers/coelho2004tqm.pdf
Posted by: indiana jim at Nov 29, 2007 11:14:49 AM
Interesting diet idea, but potentially flawed. You can't promise to give money to just anyone or anything. What if you promise it to a favored charity and felt more philanthropic than overweight?
I'd suggest choosing someone or something really vile. The RNC for my wife. The NAMBLA Defense Fund for almost everyone. Hello, waistline!
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Posted by: 数据恢复 at Nov 30, 2007 2:09:03 AM
Eric H - "Interesting diet idea, but potentially flawed. You can't promise to give money to just anyone or anything. What if you promise it to a favored charity and felt more philanthropic than overweight?"
But according to the article, the company chooses the charity, not the individual. And while just about any charity will make you feel somewhat philanthropic, I doubt I would personally feel great about giving ten thousand dollars to, say, the Collars for Poor Little Puppies Fund.
Posted by: WillJ at Nov 30, 2007 4:02:52 PM
Eric H - "Interesting diet idea, but potentially flawed. You can't promise to give money to just anyone or anything. What if you promise it to a favored charity and felt more philanthropic than overweight?"
But according to the article, the company chooses the charity, not the individual. And while just about any charity will make you feel somewhat philanthropic, I doubt I would personally feel great about giving ten thousand dollars to, say, the Collars for Poor Little Puppies Fund.
Posted by: WillJ at Nov 30, 2007 4:03:28 PM
What's this 200 pushups and situps per week thing? I thought Tim Harford was young. Does he mean pushups per day but $1000 per week? The article is unclear on that.
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