Issue 22, Spring 2002

William A. McEachern, Editor

Odds and Ends

The last issue of The Teaching Economist discussed problems of sleep-deprived students. PBS's Frontline series just weighed in with "Inside the Teenage Brain" Researchers conclude that teens need nine hours of sleep a night, but most get nowhere near that. To promote better sleep habits, researchers say students need to reset their body clocks by adopting a routine bedtime throughout the week (say 10 p.m), avoiding binge sleeping on weekends, and getting lots of daylight in the morning (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/from/).

The last issue of The Teaching Economist also talked about economic pundits who have little real background in the discipline. Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under Clinton and now candidate for governor of Massachusetts, has been called to task by The Boston Globe for promising to fix the state's "faltering" economy even though he has no graduate training in economics (he has a law degree). The story questions whether he is up to the task. (See D.C. Denison, "Lack of Formal Training in the Field Doesn't Deter Drive to Fix State's Finances,"
The Boston Globe, 01/20/02.)

But card-carrying economists are still ubiquitous, including, for the first time in history, the presidents of both Harvard and Yale. Larry Summers, Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton, was appointed Harvard's president last summer. He earned a Harvard Ph.D. in economics in 1982. Richard C. Levin was appointed Yale's president in 1993 after chairing its economics department and heading the graduate school. He earned a Yale Ph.D. in economics in 1974. Other economists serve as college and university presidents around the country, including University of Connecticut's Philip Austin, who earned a Ph.D. in economics from Michigan State. Economists have a long tradition in the top spot. Francis A. Walker, the first and longest serving president of the American Economic Association (1886 to 1892) and after whom the Walker prize is named, was president of MIT from 1881 to 1897, when he died in office.

A good example of the role of self-interest occurs when students who had been zombies to that point in the course, come to life once a couple of exam points are on the line. To argue their case, they use the imagination of Stephen King, the legal skills of Johnny Cochran, and the persistence of a pit bull. For better or worse, much of our personal contact with students during the term revolves around exams.

As a sign of the times, Dilbert, the title character by cartoonist Scott Adams, lost his job temporarily in January, the first cartoon casualty of the recession. Adams majored in economics at Hartwick College in New York.

"Only when the tide goes out, do you find out who's been swimming without a bathing suit."
     -William Seidman, former head of the Resolution Trust Corporation,
       commenting on CNBC about how a recession uncovers bad bank loans.

"I was a hot property, very much in demand as a speaker to business audiences: I was routinely offered as much as $50,000 to speak to investment banks and consulting firms."
     -Paul Krugman, Princeton economist and New York Times columnist,
       defending the $50,000 he received from serving on an Enron board that
       was mostly for show.

"Wealth can be concealed, but not poverty."
     -Finnish proverb

"Sleep is the poor man's treasure."
     -Latvian proverb

"An economist is someone who knows more about money than the people who have it."
     -Anonymous

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