Author: Art Diamond

Tom Cruise as Joseph Schumpeter?

After the film “A Beautiful MInd” on economist John Nash, The Economist suggests that there might be a market for movies about Keynes and Schumpeter. Here are there comments on the Schumpeter project:

Joseph Schumpeter. He said he wanted to be the world’s “greatest horseman, greatest lover and greatest economist”, and later claimed two of three—he and horses just didn’t get along. A perfect role, surely, for Tom Cruise, who was first choice to play Mr Nash. Schumpeter’s best-known theory even sounds like a Hollywood thriller: “Creative Destruction”. Now how would they merchandise that?

“Economists on film: Keynes the movie?” (Dec. 20th 2001), downloaded online from: http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=917413

Creative Destruction in “The Man in the White Suit”

Source: Amason.com
From David Thomson’s Amazon.com review of the movie “The Man in the White Suit”:

The Man in the White Suit focusses on the destructive aspects of all new inventions. Although Joseph Schumpeter’s name is never mentioned, his creative destruction concept pervades the story line. Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness ) a non-credentialled and eccentric scientist who creates a new cloth that apparently will not wear out nor get dirty. The overall human community will enormously benefit—but what about those people who earn a living in the impacted industry?

Read the whole review, and others, at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00006FMAV/104-8533764-5015948?v=glance&n=130&n=507846&s=dvd&v=glance

Some Evidence Patents Matter

Apparently the evidence is mixed on the importance of patents as an incentive to innovation, though it always seemed intuitive to me that patents should matter. Petra Moser has just published research from his dissertation, that seems to add evidence on the side of patents mattering:

How Do Patent Laws Influence Innovation? Evidence from Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs

Petra Moser

Abstract: Studies of innovation have focused on the effects of patent laws on the number of innovations, but have ignored effects on the direction of technological change. This paper introduces a new dataset of close to fifteen thousand innovations at the Crystal Palace World’s Fair in 1851 and at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876 to examine the effects of patent laws on the direction of innovation. The paper tests the following argument: if innovative activity is motivated by expected profits, and if the effectiveness of patent protection varies across industries, then innovation in countries without patent laws should focus on industries where alternative mechanisms to protect intellectual property are effective. Analyses of exhibition data for 12 countries in 1851 and 10 countries in 1876 indicate that inventors in countries without patent laws focused on a small set of industries where patents were less important, while innovation in countries with patent laws appears to be much more diversified. These findings suggest that patents help to determine the direction of technical change and that the adoption of patent laws in countries without such laws may alter existing patterns of comparative advantage across countries. (JEL D2, K11, L51, N0, O14)

Source:
Moser, Petra. “How Do Patent Laws Influence Innovation? Evidence from Nineteenth-Century World Fairs.” The American Economic Review 95, no. 4 (2005): 1214-1236.

Massive Firings Get Reported; Massive Hirings Do Not

The media have a tendency to cover massive layoffs and firm failures but rarely mention when firms hire a large number of people or when a surprisingly large number of new firms are being formed in particular months. From an evolutionary point of view, firm bankruptcies are undesirable only if they are not brought about by other firms that provide better products and services. Joseph Schumpeter’s (1942) characterization of capitalism as a process of creative destruction underlines the evolutionary view that better economic structures can only be achieved by allowing underperforming entities to be replaced by organizations that can make better use of their resources. (p. 225; italics in original)

Murmann, Johann Peter. Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology, and National Institutions, Cambridge Studies in the Emergence of Global Enterprise: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Dear Feds: Stop Bugging US!

15bugs.1842.jpg Asian lady beetles (Photo source: online version of article cited below, downloaded from: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/national/15bugs.html?pagewanted=1)

(p. A18) This Asian cousin of the benign, beloved ladybug has transformed domestic life in rural and suburban regions from Louisiana to Canada, intruding on the peace – and the attics, curtains and nostrils – of a significant swath of the nation.

Some years, the beetle problem is terrible. Some years, like this one, there are fewer beetles. But even so, in the 12 years that the beetle has spread from the South through the East and Midwest, irritation has given way to fury in its favorite wooded haunts.
“Please help us get rid of these bugs!” one Kentuckian commented on an anonymous survey by the University of Kentucky’s entomology department. “It’s so bad you can’t eat safely. They are falling into the food and drinks.”
A second person wrote, “A huge swarm enveloped my house last fall, causing me to fall off the porch and break my shoulder.” From a third came a cri de coeur: “Get rid of these pests. They are making me crazy. They have ruined my life.”
Unlike domestic ladybugs, the multicolored Asian variety likes to keep its polka dots indoors in the winter. In older rural neighborhoods, where houses are not knit tight, only insecticide can hope to keep them out. They swarm by the tens of thousands. Unlike the domestic ladybug, the Asian variety leaves a yellow stain. It can bite. Worst of all, it stinks.
. . .
It was for the benefit of farmers like the pecan growers that the Department of Agriculture released Asian lady beetles in the 1980’s in Georgia and elsewhere. The promise of aphid-free fruit trees and crops had prompted the department to try to import the bugs repeatedly, from 1916 on. But they never seemed to survive, until the early 1990’s.
A 1995 article in the journal Agricultural Research quoted William H. Day, a federal entomologist with the Agricultural Research Service, saying, “U.S.D.A. scientists have gone overseas for more than 100 years to search for, test, import, rear, release and evaluate exotic beneficial lady beetles, parasitic wasps, other insects and microorganisms.”

FELICITY BARRINGER. “Asian Cousin of Ladybug Is a Most Unwelcome Guest.” The New York Times (Tuesday, November 15, 2005): A18.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

It’s Hard to Be Consistent

After Alfred Kahn succeeded in leading the effort to deregulate the airline industry, he apparently received some complaints about some of the results of deregulation:

When Senator Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican presidential candidate and author of the bestselling Conscience of a Conservative, wrote him to complain about unpleasant conditions aboard now-packed flights, Kahn replied that this was the inevitable consequence of breaking up a “cartel-like regime.” He added, “When you have further doubts about the efficiency of a free market system, please do not hesitate to convey them to me. I also warmly recommend some earlier speeches and writings of one Senator Barry Goldwater.” (p. 382)

Yergin, Daniel, and Joseph Stanislaw. The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.
The results of the free market combine the preferences and actions of all of the participants in the market. So even the most fervent advocate of the process, will inevitably find some of the results distasteful or unpleasant. But the advocate should try to be consistent for two reasons. Primarily, because the free market embodies free choice, and free choice is morally good. Secondarily, because the free market produces more good results than any other process.

Incentives Matter

    Traffic congestion on 7th Avenue near Times Square. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below, downloaded at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/11/nyregion/11traffic.html

(p. A23) It is an idea that has been successful in London, and is now being whispered in the ears of City Hall officials after months of behind-the-scenes work by the Partnership for New York City, the city’s major business association: congestion pricing.

The idea is to charge drivers for entering the most heavily trafficked parts of Manhattan at the busiest times of the day. By creating a financial incentive to carpool or use mass transit, congestion pricing could smooth the flow of traffic, reduce delays, improve air quality and raise the speed of crawling buses.

Source:

SEWELL CHAN. “Driving Around in Busy Manhattan? You Pay, Under Idea to Relieve Car Congestion.” The New York Times (Friday, November 11, 2005): A23.

In Millard, Parents Can Choose Montessori; In OPS, They Cannot

[p. 1B] The district contends that taking over dozens of suburban schools and thousands of students would minimize the impact of the option program and give OPS a better chance at integration.
But if OPS succeeds, it also could undermine the ability parents now have to choose the school that fits best for their children.
That’s important to Art Diamond, who lives within the OPS district but sends his 11-year-old daughter, Jenny, to Millard’s Montclair Elementary [p. 3B] because of its Montessori program.
“It seems to me the main issue is who is offering the best educational program,” Diamond said. “If they (OPS) had offered a Montessori program, we would have stayed in OPS.”
. . .
As Mackiel sees it, that departure causes problems for the Omaha district by altering its racial and economic makeup. But parents of option students don’t view their decisions through the same lens.
“It frustrates me when I hear OPS saying people live in Millard to get away from diversity,” said Diamond, the OPS resident whose daughter attends a Montessori program in Millard.
“I believe strongly in diversity, but I also believe strongly in Montessori.”

MICHAELA SAUNDERS and PAUL GOODSELL. “OPS Has No Option But to Let Whites Go.” The Omaha
World-Herald (Sunday, November 13, 2005): 1B & 3B.
Jenny is actually currently a sixth grader in Millard’s Montessori program at Central Middle School. But Ms. Saunders was mainly asking me questions about our original decision to option into the Montclair Elementary Montessori program. So maybe I was unclear that Jenny had moved on to the next stage of the Millard Montessori program. In any event, the story was essentially accurate in capturing the main point of my comments: we chose Millard because, unlike OPS, MIllard has the entrepreneurial initiative to offer the Montessori educational program.

Peter Drucker Saw the Importance of Creative Destruction

12drucker_184.jpg1999 photo of Drucker from NYT online article cited below.

Peter F. Drucker, the political economist and author, whose view that big business and nonprofit enterprises were the defining innovation of the 20th century led him to pioneering social and management theories, died yesterday at his home in Claremont, Calif. He was 95.

For the full obituary, see:
BARNABY J. FEDER. “Peter F. Drucker, a Pioneer in Social and Management Theory, Is Dead at 95.” The New York Times ( November 12, 2005) online version dowloaded from http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/12/business/12drucker.html?pagewanted=1

Peter Drucker is sometimes given credit for helping keep the ideas of Schumpeter alive, and helping spur their revival in the 1980s. See Drucker’s article:
Drucker, Peter F. “Modern Prophets: Schumpeter or Keynes?” Reprinted as Ch. 12 in The Frontiers of Management. New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1986, pp. 104-115 (originally published as: “Schumpeter and Keynes.” Forbes (May 23, 1983): 124-128).