Issue 28, Spring 2005

William A. McEachern, Editor

Odds and Ends

On December 5, 2004, Gary Becker and Richard Posner introduced their new blog (http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/index.html). Every Monday one of them opens a topic and the other responds. Follow-up comments appear later in the week. Issues discussed so far include tort reform, pharmaceutical patents, global warming, and student loans. About the same time the new blog was announced, Professor Becker gave up his monthly Business Week column—a sign of the times, migrating from hard copy to the Web.

Years ago, toward the end of a two-hour final exam, by which time most students had already finished, campus police told me they needed to talk to a student still taking the exam. I asked if the matter could wait, but they insisted it was an emergency and would say no more. The student spent five minutes with them in the hallway and returned to the exam. Later she told me that the encounter had upset her so (she was accused of theft by her roommate) that she wanted to retake the exam. At UConn only the dean can authorize a make up of a final exam. She received authorization and took another exam, doing about the same. In retrospect, I don't think the matter was an emergency. But the police were also in a bind; they could not reveal the facts of the case without violating the student's right to privacy. Still, I thought the police could have waited the fifteen minutes for the exam to end.

What economist has had the most impact on an economy since, say, 1990? Alan Greenspan is one possibility. My nomination is Manmohan Singh. In 1991, when Singh became India's finance minister, the government deficit had reached 8.5% of GDP (twice the current U.S. level). A current account deficit nearing 3.5 % of GDP left only two weeks of foreign exchange reserves on hand. At this time of crisis, Singh addressed the parliament. Quoting Victor Hugo, he said, "No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come." Manmohan's reforms encouraged competition, rationalized and simplified the tax system, and made risk-taking more attractive. India's economy turned into one of the world's fastest growers, at 6 percent per year. In May 2004 Singh was sworn in as India's Prime Minister and is widely regarded as the most honest politician in the country.

Last spring Harvard University released the first comprehensive report on its curriculum since 1978. A notable finding was that undergraduates needed more direct contact with faculty members, especially through small classes and seminars. The policy recommendation is that "the faculty should grow significantly in size" over the next decade (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/curriculum-review/report.html). But that won't help much if senior faculty avoid teaching undergraduates.

How often does one have the opportunity to critique a Nobel Prize winner's delivery? Videotapes of Nobel lectures in economics since 2000 are available online at http://nobelprize.org/economics. The best deliveries are by those who use some visual aids. For example, Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith offer contrasting styles in 2002. Although both more or less read their lectures, Kahneman's use of slides brightened his presentation and broke up the monotony of his reading. Smith was so tied to his text that he didn't seem to be thinking that much (for example, he mispronounced words he would be unlikely to mispronounce in a normal conversation). As Peggy Noonan says, "A speech should be a text in which, ultimately, the speaker and the audience are thinking, together." In the 2004 deliveries in December, my nod goes to Finn Kyland, despite too many "aah"s, because his use of a laptop forced him from time to time to depart from his text. Edward Prescott, on the other hand, pretty much stuck to his script, and I thought he was the worse for it. See for yourself.

"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn." —Ben Franklin

"Learning from a teacher who has stopped learning is like drinking from a stagnant pool." —Indonesian proverb.

"That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you have understood your whole life, but in a new way." —Novelist Doris Lessing

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