On Facebook an otherwise innocuous comment, that it is “undeniable there is an equity-efficiency tradeoff” really leapt off the screen at me.

By Stan Liebowitz,Ashbel Smith Professor of Economics, University of Texas at Dallas; Head of the Center for the Analysis of Property Rights and Innovation (CAPRI). Originally published at VoxEU.

Lambert here: Screamingly funny, in a deadpan sort of way, and reminiscent of Outis Philalithopoulos’s seminal work on academic choice theory.

Academic economists – especially in the US – are continuously evaluated, with salaries and promotions hanging on outcomes. This column argues that the methods – identified from a survey of economics department chairs – are likely to reduce the amount of research created, perpetuate inefficiently sized research teams, promote false authorship, and penalise honest researchers. They also provide departments with excessive leeway to engage in potentially capricious behaviour.

In the movie Moneyball, a nerdy Ivy League economics major, working for a general manager played by Brad Pitt, found undervalued baseball players by applying clear-headed logic and statistical techniques.¹ Many economists watching this movie probably felt a tinge of pride in seeing our tools portrayed as rigorously objective. After all, economists have long been proponents of using logic to eliminate inefficiencies and rent-seeking in the economy (e.g. Tullock 1967). Given this, it is surprising how infrequently that penetrating gaze has been focused on our own profession.

But some attention is warranted. Our methods for measuring and rewarding research – the key component for promotions and salaries – create inefficiencies and are inconsistent with what we teach our students about efficient production. Further, this inefficiency might be caused by economists’ own rent-seeking through the vehicle of departmental politics.

The manner in which we credit coauthorship and evaluate articles induces overly large research teams, encourages false authorship, enhances subjectivity, and penalises honest researchers.

In the household survey on employment, seasonally unadjusted, the October government shutdown took out expected October highs and created losses in numerous categories. In November, these were largely reversed. The biggest ongoing hit is to the labor force which is still 490,000 smaller than it was in September. And while employment increased, unadjusted, 631,000, most of this was in part time jobs (554,000). Unemployment fell 504,000, reflecting that most of the net change in employment came from the unemployed finding work, and not from an influx of those defined as outside the labor force.

The end of the government shutdown was also reflected in the decline of the official (adjusted) unemployment rate from 7.3% to 7.0%. My alternate calculation of this returned to its pre-shut down level of 12.6%.

In the business survey in November, seasonally adjusted (trendline) 203,000 jobs were added to the economy. Taken together with October, 403,000 jobs were added. This is essentially unchanged from the 407,000 added during this period last year. And this November’s number is 44,000 smaller than last November’s 247,000. Trendline, job creation for the first 11 months of 2013 is running 9,000 a month higher than in 2012 (188,000 vs. 179,000). The general rule of thumb is that only job creation substantially over 200,000/month will significantly affect the nation’s unemployment crisis.

Unadjusted, total nonfarm jobs increased 421,000, and the private sector grew by 309,000. Most of these jobs continue to be crap. One bright note was hours and earnings were both up slightly. Earnings for all workers are running ahead about 2.3% year over year.