Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 67

Where Worker Productivity Really Comes From, by Bryan Caplan

During my day with Eric Hanushek, he repeatedly asked me, "If rising worker productivity doesn't come from education, where does it come from?"  Good question.  In the pre-modern world, workers got little education and had low productivity.  In the modern world, workers get much education and have high productivity.  Productivity (and education!) keep going up.  If formal academic training isn't the main reason, what is?

The safe answer is, "I don't know.  But whatever the answer is, it's not education."  However, safe answers are not my style.  While I'm not sure, I think I've got a pretty good guess.  Or to be more precise, two pretty good guesses.  To what does the modern worker owe his high productivity?

1. Practice.  Modern workers get really good at modern tasks by practicing modern tasks, under the the tutelage of other workers who have already mastered them.  Modern programmers get good at programming by practicing programming, under the tutelage of skilled programmers.  Modern offshore oil drillers get good at offshore oil drilling by practicing offshore oil drilling, under the tutelage of skilled drillers.  In the pre-modern world, these practice opportunities were simply unavailable.  Now they're everywhere.  Whenever a new industry arises, people get new practice - and new tutelage.  The same holds whenever an existing industry innovates: people get new practice - and new tutelage.

2. Management.  Production is a team sport, and the coaches are called managers.  Even if all the team members are great at their jobs, productivity will be low unless these managers expertly lead and direct their skills.  This is crucial because good management does not come naturally to human beings.  Forging an effective production team isn't quite as hard as herding cats, but it's in the same ballpark.  In the Third World, management practices are plain bad; common-sense policies like "Show up on time," "Pay for performance," and "Count the inventory and the money" are widely violated.  And remember, the whole world used to be the Third World!  What changed?  Common-sense slowly caught on - though as Alex Tabarrok reminds us, even First World businesses have ample room for improvement. 

So that's my story.  The foundation of the modern economy is not teachers, but craftsmen and bosses.  Not book learning, but experience and leadership.  Not studying, but doing and directing.  As a professor, this doesn't do much for my ego.  But why should everything be about me?

Update: Many readers have listed "tools" or "capital goods" as a third critical factor.  This is perfectly reasonable if you're just trying to explain GDP/worker.  I'm trying to explain why "worker productivity holding capital constant" is so high.



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Back Alley Regulation, by Bryan Caplan

Before Roe vs. Wade, pregnant women were almost never prosecuted for breaking anti-abortion laws.  Instead, enforcement focused single-mindedly on the sellers of abortion services.

[T]here is a long record of states treating women as the second victim
of abortion in the law that can be found and read. To state the policy
in legal terms, the states prosecuted the principal (the abortionist)
and did not prosecute someone who might be considered an accomplice (the
woman) in order to more effectively enforce the law against the
principal. And that will most certainly be the state policy if the
abortion issue is returned to the states.

Why did the states target abortionists and treat women as a victim of the abortionist?

It was based on three policy judgments: the point of abortion law is
effective enforcement against abortionists, the woman is the second
victim of the abortionist, and prosecuting women is counterproductive to
the goal of effective enforcement of the law against abortionists.

That's from Americans United for Life, but Katha Pollitt concurs in The Atlantic :

[T]he general lack of enthusiasm for prosecuting those who perform
abortions and the almost total failure to prosecute and jail women for
having them suggest that whatever Americans may consider abortion to be,
it isn't baby killing, a crime our courts have always punished quite
severely.

Now suppose you actually care about a woman's effective right to choose.  If so, the target of the punishment is far less important than the probability and severity of punishment.  If you had an unwanted pregnancy, would you rather live in a world where anti-abortion laws imposed a $50 fine on the mother with 1% probability?  Or a world where anti-abortion laws imposed the death penalty on the doctor with 100% probability?  Obviously the former.

In the topsy-turvy world of political debate, however, the target is what matters.  "You want to put women in
jail" is widely seen as a "pro-choice" claim, and "We don't - and never
did!" is widely seen as a "pro-life rebuttal."  Severity of punishment?  Probability of punishment?  These variables are too dull to discuss - even though strict punishment of doctors can easily be just as prohibitive as strict punishment of mothers.  (Indeed, strict punishment of doctors is probably more prohibitive than strict punishment of mothers, because one doctor is capable of performing thousands of abortions).

What's going on?  This heated discussion is a special case of a more general pattern of "back alley regulation" that I discussed five years back.  Governments strongly prefer to concentrate their coercion on dehumanized "businesses" rather than human beings... even though businesses are, in fact, composed of human beings.

Governments rely on indirect coercion because direct coercion seems
brutal, unfair, and wrong.  If the typical American saw the police bust
down a stranger's
door to arrest an undocumented nanny and the parents who hired her, the
typical American would morally side with the strangers.  If the typical
American saw regulators confiscate a stranger's expired milk, he'd side
with the strangers.  If the typical American found out his neighbor
narced on a stranger for failing to pay use tax on an out-of-state
Internet purchase, he'd damn his neighbor, not the stranger.  Why? 
Because each of these cases activates the common-sense moral intuition that people have a duty to leave nonviolent people alone.

Switching
to indirect coercion is a shrewd way for government to sedate our moral
intuition.  When government forces CostCo to collect Social Security
taxes, the typical American doesn't see some people violating their duty
to leave other people alone.  Why?  Because they picture CostCo as an
inhuman "organization," not a very human "bunch of people working
together."  Government's trick, in short, is to redirect its coercion
toward crucial dehumanized actors like business (and foreigners, but don't get me started). 
Then government can coerce business into denying individuals a vast
array of peaceful options, without looking like a bully or a busy-body.

My point: Regulating sellers is a "back alley" method of regulating consumers.  If you actually care about consumer welfare, you won't focus on the de jure targets of the punishment.  You'll focus on what the punishment accomplishes de facto.  Indeed, if you think a regulation is a bad idea, you should probably prefer regulations that target the most humanized humans involved.  Why?  Because when the law orders people to harshly punish sympathetic targets, law enforcement looks for excuses not to enforce the law.  And such excuses are never hard to find!



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My Conversations with Tyler and Taleb, by Bryan Caplan

On April 17, I'm having an official Conversation with Tyler. 

Send Tyler questions for me here.

On April 23, Tyler and I are having back-to-back conversations with Nassim Tabeb. 

Tyler's doing his usual free-ranging conversation; Taleb and I will be discussing The Case Against Education .

Send Tyler questions for Taleb here. 

Send me questions for Taleb in the comments below.

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We Rule: A Socratic Dialogue, by Bryan Caplan

Socrates: You look troubled, Glaucon.

Glaucon: [sighs] I'm tired of all the lies, Socrates.

Socrates: What lies do you have in mind?

Glaucon: Did you witness the Festival of Barbaric Thought?

Socrates: No.  Did I miss anything?

Glaucon: Hardly.  But the whole Athenian elite was there, oohing and aahing over the paltry "achievements" of mere barbarians.

Socrates: Did you criticize them for their lack of discernment?

Glaucon: How I wanted to!  But they'd have called me a Son of Hades if I'd spoken the truth.

Socrates: The truth that their festival was a farce?

Glaucon: I suppose that would have galled them, too.  But I have a far greater truth in mind.

Socrates: Namely?

Glaucon: [whispering] That civilization rests upon Athenian achievements.  Objectively speaking, we Athenians rule.  Whatever the barbarians have, they owe to us.

Socrates: And you think everyone ought to know and admit this?

Glaucon: Exactly.

Socrates: I'm puzzled.  Most of the Athenians I know haven't contributed anything to civilization.

Glaucon: Don't be dense, Socrates.  I'm not claiming that the average Athenian is a great thinker.  I'm claiming that the great thinkers are Athenian.

Socrates: Not all, Glaucon.  Think of the brilliance of Adalwin the Vandal.

Glaucon: [sigh] Yes, I am well-aware of Adalwin's accomplishments.  My point, obviously, is that great thinkers are disproportionately Athenian.  A few outstanding barbarians do nothing to vitiate this point.

Socrates: True enough.  But why then do you say that civilization rests upon Athenian achievements, or that barbarians "owe us" anything?

Glaucon: Have I not made myself clear, Socrates?  We Athenians have built civilization.  Without us, the barbarians would be even more barbarous than they already are.

Socrates: Perhaps I am simply slow-witted, Glaucon.  But answer me this.  How many Athenians have been great thinkers?

Glaucon: Hmm... about 300.

Socrates: Very well.  And how many barbarians have been great thinkers?

Glaucon: [scoffs] Very well, about 50.

Socrates: Why then do you say that barbarians owe civilization to Athenians?

Glaucon: Isn't it as obvious as your bald head?

Socrates: Not at all.  What's obvious as my bald head, if your numbers are correct, is that mankind - Athenian and barbarian alike - owes civilization to 350 great thinkers.

Glaucon: But six out of seven of those great thinkers were Athenian!

Socrates: How is that a legitimate source of pride for the vast majority of Athenians who are anything but great thinkers?

Glaucon: So the citizens of Athens should kneel before these "great men"?

Socrates: I didn't say that.  But if you want to give credit where credit is due, you should say not "Athenians rule," but that "Great thinkers rule."

Glaucon: No doubt you count yourself among these "great thinkers"!

Socrates: It's presumptuous to say so.  But suppose I did; would that be so terrible?

Glaucon: Absolutely.  Being a great thinker is no excuse for bad manners.

Socrates: So it is bad manners when the great alert the not-so-great to their unequal achievements?

Glaucon: Indeed.

Socrates: Was it not then bad manners when you declared that "Athenians rule"?

Glaucon: I wasn't proclaiming my personal achievements.  I was proclaiming the achievements of the Athenian people.

Socrates: I see.  So it would be rude to call attention to my own brilliance, but acceptable to call attention to the brilliance of brilliant people in general?

Glaucon: No, that's even worse!  You should identify with fellow Athenians, not "great thinkers."

Socrates: But do we not owe civilization itself to these great thinkers?

Glaucon: Ha!  Where would these great thinkers be without the mass of people to implement their ideas?  The great thinkers earn ample rewards in the market; they shouldn't think themselves entitled to popular adulation as well.
 
Socrates: Could we not say the same about the Athenians?

Glaucon: What ever do you mean?

Socrates: The barbarians pay us for our products, bringing great riches to Athens.  Why should we expect them to augment their gold with gratitude?

Glaucon: Without Athens, they'd be nothing!

Socrates: It is far more to the point to say that without great thinkers, mankind would be nothing.  But even that is a half-truth, for without the rest of mankind, great thinkers would be too preoccupied with menial labor to advance civilization.  Great and mediocre minds alike profit from this specialization and trade.  Or so it seems to me; perhaps one day a great thinker will put my conjecture to the test.

Glaucon: Maybe a Gaul?  Or even a Briton! [laughs] 
 
Socrates: [waits for Glaucon to stop laughing]  What's so funny, Glaucon?

Glaucon: Why don't you just denounce me as a "Son of Hades" and be done with it?

Socrates: I have no wish to denounce anyone.  I'm merely puzzled.

Glaucon: Then I return to my original claim: Compared to Athenian greatness, the barbarians' paltry accomplishments make me laugh.

Socrates: Then I return to my original critique: If we're going to laugh at anyone, it is not "barbarians," but the mass of unaccomplished human beings - barbarian and Athenian alike.

Glaucon: [points at Socrates] Arrogant Son of Hades!

Socrates: Hardly; I said "if we're going to laugh at anyone" to make a deeper point.

Glaucon: [glares] Namely?

Socrates: Great thinkers, rather than laughing at the common man, should acknowledge his value.  Civilization is not the product of knowledge alone; it is a partnership of knowledge and effort.  Yes, great thinkers bring most of the knowledge.  But the common man provides most of the effort.  And neither is worth much without the other, my dear Glaucon.

Glaucon: You would deprive the common Athenian of his pride.

Socrates: No more than you would deprive the barbarian of his.

Glaucon: Well, if Athenian greatness is a lie, at least it is a noble lie.

Socrates: Could you not say the same about the Festival of Barbaric Thought? 

Glaucon: [shudders]

Socrates: To be honest, I share your disapproval.  People should stop seeking solace in the accomplishments of strangers.

Glaucon: Including me, I suppose?

Socrates: Yes, I suppose so.

Glaucon: [sighs] Then what's left?

Socrates: Instead of spreading allegedly noble lies about Athenians or barbarians, my dear Glaucon, let us spread the noble truth that civilization is the product of human knowledge and human effort - and celebrate both wherever they may be found. 

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Janitorial Studies in South Korea, by Bryan Caplan

Economist Richard Vedder and co-authors once joked:

While people will become increasingly aware that a bachelor's degree is no longer a very assured ticket to success, more and more people will try to get a competitive edge in the labor market by obtaining master's or even doctoral degrees to demonstrate competence. We jokingly predict that colleges will offer a master's degree in Janitorial Studies within a decade or two and anyone seeking employment as a janitor will discover no one will hire unless proof of possession of such a degree is presented.

At least by some measures, South Korea now leads the world in college completion.  What's happening to its job market?  Well, a South Korean reader just sent me this story.

Many of the applicants seeking to become Seoul janitors have college degrees, Eunpyeong-gu district office said Thursday.

A total of 66 people applied for four janitor positions in the district, marking a competition rate of 16.5 to 1.

Over one-third of the applicants were college graduates, and one candidate had worked as a military captain before.

[...]

Of the four successful applicants, three had obtained a university diploma and one held a degree from a community college.

The four applicants will begin work next month.

Yes, this is very likely an outlier.  But still!

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Leftist Lessons of The Case Against Education, by Bryan Caplan

Overall, reactions to The Case Against Education have been civil and fair.  While I've been heavily criticized, I've been criticized for what I actually said and believe.  My main disappointment: While the quality of the left-wing critiques has been fine, the quantity is modest.  Yes, I had a great conversation with Sean Illig at Vox, and Steve Pearlstein has a nice write-up in the Washington Post.  And don't forget my animated podcast with center-left Michael Baranowski on The Politics Guys.  But I'd still say my un-left podcasts outnumber the left podcasts by 10:1. - and at least so far, no left-leaning think tank has invited me to speak. 

This strikes me as particularly unfortunate because there are many results in The Case Against Education that leftists should appreciate.  Starting with...

1. Lots of workers - especially less-educated workers - are paid less than they're worth.  If signaling is important, there are bound to be numerous "diamonds in the rough" - good workers who are underpaid because they lack the right credentials to convince employers of their quality.

2. Lots of workers - especially more-educated workers - are paid more than they're worth.  Again, if signaling is important, there are bound to be lots of bad workers who are overpaid because they obtained misleadingly strong credentials.

3. A lot of education is meaningless hoop-jumping.  Campus radicals have long accused the education system of imposing an irrelevant, backward-looking, elitist curriculum on hapless kids.  I say they're right.

4. The education market is inefficient.  In signaling models, education has negative externalities.  My story therefore implies a serious market failure, where self-interest leads students to pursue more education than socially optimal.

5. Locked-in Syndrome.  Due to conformity signaling, the market for education isn't just inefficient; it's durably inefficient.  The education market doesn't just fail; it durably fails.

6. The government's "ban" on IQ testing is grossly exaggerated, and does next to nothing to explain employers' reliance on credentials.  While the Griggs case nominally imposes near-insurmountable hurdles on IQ employment testing (as well as virtually every hiring method), it is cursorily enforced.  Lots of U.S. employers admit they use IQ testing, and the expected legal costs of doing so are tiny.

7. Credential inflation is rampant.  Technological change explains only a small fraction of the evolution of the modern labor market.  The popular perception that workers need far more education to get the same jobs their parents and grandparents had is deeply true. 

8. Working your way up takes ages.  While there's good evidence that worker ability raises pay, the process takes many years.  If you're smart but uncredentialed, even a decade of work experience isn't enough to fully catch up.

9. In many ways, the labor market used to be better for people from poor and working-class families.  Sure, average living standards are much higher today than in 1950.  But in 1950, there was far less stigma against high school dropouts, and very little stigma against workers who didn't go to college.  Moderns who look at college graduates from poor families and see "social justice" are neglecting the troubles of the massively larger number of kids from poor families who never get college degrees.

10. Forcing middle-class aspirations on everyone causes misery and failure for poor and working-class kids.  Lots of kids loathe school.  They're bored out of their minds, and humiliated by teachers' endless negative feedback.  Such kids disproportionately come from poor and working-class families.  But since the middle- and upper-classes control the curriculum, they've stubbornly moved to a "college-for-all" approach to school - and turned vocational education into an afterthought.  The result: Most poor and working-class kids endure thousands of sad hours, then leave school unprepared for either jobs or college.

I don't deny, of course, that The Case Against Education has plenty of right-wing lessons, too.  Scoff if you must, but I try to just follow the arguments and evidence wherever they lead.  My point is that there is plenty between the covers of my latest book that the left should appreciate.  To all my left-wing friends, I say in all sincerity that I'd be delighted to discuss all this in depth!







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Inside the Monkey Trap, by Bryan Caplan

A decade ago, Robin Hanson introduced me to the metaphor of the "monkey trap":

It is said you can trap a monkey by putting a nut through a small hole
in a gourd. The monkey reaches in and grabs the nut, but then his fist
won't fit back through the hole. Greedy monkeys will literally let
themselves be caught rather than let go of the nut.

Robin had a specific monkey trap in mind: medical spending.  Robin says we can drastically reduce medical spending without hurting health, so we should drastically reduce medical spending.  His critics often seem to agree about the effects of spending cuts, but refuse to endorse them nonetheless.  Robin says they should.

So far, no
commenter on my essay seems willing to let go of the nut of effective
medicine, held in the gourd of the second half of medical spending.

As an analogy, imagine you ran a software company, whose many offices
had different wage levels and work cultures, with average work hours
ranging from seven to fourteen per day. Surprised to see these offices
were equally productive, you randomly changed wages, inducing changes in
work hours. You again found offices that worked more did not produce
more; after seven hours people got tired and added as many bugs as they
fixed. If instead of just cutting wages to get only seven hours of
work, you just told everyone "watch out for bugs," you would be in a
monkey trap, refusing to let go of the nut of productive work in the
gourd of extra work hours.

I like the idea of the monkey trap.  It's enlightening and funny.  But to fairly apply it, you must be mindful of three complexities.

1. It only makes sense to invoke the monkey trap if you have good evidence that, on average, the bad outweighs the good.  (Including opportunity costs, of course).  When someone objects, "The good outweighs the bad," you should dispute the claim, not joke about monkey traps.

2. Suppose you admit that the bad outweighs the good.  The monkey trap is not relevant if you're willing and able to distinguish good from bad.  After all, even if bad outweighs good by a factor of 10, why not throw away all the bad and keep all the good?

3. Suppose you admit the bad outweighs the good, and you're currently unable to distinguish good from bad.  However, you have a viable plan to acquire the knowledge you need to distinguish good from bad in the foreseeable future.  Are you stuck in the monkey trap?  Once again, no.  Why throw away the good with the bad if you'll soon be able to tell the difference?

So who genuinely is stuck in the monkey trap?  Just flip things around.  You're in the monkey trap if:

1. The bad outweighs the good.

and

2. You have little ability (or inclination) to distinguish bad from good.

and

3. You're unlikely to acquire this ability in the foreseeable future.

By this standard, I think Robin was right to tell his critics that their hands were stuck in the monkey trap.  Despite their numerous intellectual concessions, Robin's critics rarely claim to know much about wasteful spending - and don't seem like they're burning to learn more.  Instead, they want to obstruct the one viable reform on the table: cutting spending.  Why?  Social Desirability Bias is the best explanation.  Whatever the facts, "If we can help just one sick person, we should spend whatever it takes," sounds vastly better to psychologically normal humans than "Let's stop wasting taxpayer money." 

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Labor Hoarding and Labor Demand Elasticity, by Bryan Caplan

Keynesian economists have long argued that firms practice labor hoarding during recessions.  In laymen's terms, employers often refrain from laying off workers even when - due to low demand - there is little or nothing for those workers to do. 

Why would firms willingly keep paying superfluous workers?  The standard story is that firms are planning ahead.  If they keep their workforce intact, they won't have to reassemble it after the recession ends.  But you could just as easily appeal to firing aversion: For purely psychological reasons, many employers are only willing to terminate workers as a last resort.

At the same time, Keynesian economists have also occasionally argued that labor costs are irrelevant during recessions.  Why?  Because "the problem is demand."  Or as Krugman puts it:

Um, we have a problem with demand, not supply; time to
reread Keynes on wages.

If firms already produce more than they can sell, why would lower wages entice employers to hire additional workers?  This is basically a variant on the "Zero Marginal Productivity" theory of unemployment - but the problem is not that workers aren't physically productive, but that firms can't find buyers for workers' physical products.

Now suppose we take Krugman's story for granted.  As long as you accept the reality of labor hoarding, he's still wrong!  When firms weigh the burden of temporarily useless workers against the cost of rehiring after the recession is over, wages clearly affect the size of the burden.  Why wouldn't it?  Indeed, the tradeoff between retention costs and hiring costs plausibly leads to high labor demand elasticity even during severe recessions.  When cash flow is low, keeping a superfluous worker on the payroll at 80% of his normal wage sounds a lot better than keeping him on at full price.

I've repeatedly argued that free-market economists should take Keynesian macro more seriously.  But Keynesian economists need to lead by example.  Before they confidently declare that key elasticities are zero, they should consider the many subtle margins of the labor market.

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The Putin Illusion, by Bryan Caplan

In late 2007, the Washington Post ran an op-ed by Boris Jordan called, "He Delivers. That's Why They Like Him."  In it, Johnson tries to explain Vladimir Putin's great political success: "With the presidential election only three months away, Russian citizens
appear prepared to vote their pocketbooks, rewarding the president for
rising economic security and public order with approval ratings that
regularly top 70 percent."  In other words, Putin is popular because he's doing a fine job.

Russians support their president because he did something rare for a
politician: He delivered. Russia today is a resurgent economic power,
with the tenth-largest economy in the world. Eighty percent of the
economy is privatized, according to the Accounts Chamber of the Russian
Federation. And the country is flush with oil revenue, having overtaken
Saudi Arabia as the world's leading producer of oil.

The ruble is convertible again, a move designed to increase confidence
among foreign investors, and it is once again the currency of choice.
The Putin administration has instituted a flat, transparent income tax
of 13 percent that Russians are actually paying -- in stark contrast to
the situation of mutual suspicion a decade ago. Public debt is low and
the stock market has taken off. Per-capita income and consumer spending
are up sharply. And the middle class is growing rapidly while crime is
down.

Over ten years later, Putin is still riding high.  He did even better than expected in last week's election.  Now, however, the Russian economy is doing dreadfully.  Yes, inflation and unemployment are low.  But real GDP has fallen over 40% since 2013, and oil prices are way down.  While it was indeed tempting to link his 2007 success to the Russian economy, the last few years show that this link was illusory.  If Putin does about equally well in good times and bad, it makes little sense to attribute his popularity to economic conditions. 

To be fair, Jordan also credited Putin's nationalistic foreign policy for his success:

Putin's platform of restoring national strength and pride clearly boosted his popularity.

Most Russians believe that ceding control of the former Soviet Union -- a
process enthusiastically encouraged by the West -- has gone too far and
gravely undermined their security. They also see their stability
compromised by American support for the Orange and Rose revolutions in
the former Soviet Bloc nations and the rumblings of NATO expansion into
Ukraine and Georgia. Russians once had high hopes for a partnership with
the United States, but today they look back on years of real and
perceived transgressions and ask, "If these are allies, why do we want
them?"

Those who discount these national security concerns overlook the sharp
asymmetry of global influence today. Russians are well aware that the
United States is unequivocally the world's most formidable military
force. As a practical matter, any country must react when the dominant
power moves to expand its principal military alliance into bordering
countries. What else do we expect from Russia, a nation with a long
history of foreign invasions, including the blitzkrieg of World War II
that took 20 million or more lives and decimated a generation?

For Russians, national pride is as much about sensitivity as about
sentiment. So it should come as no surprise that the West's habit of
treating their country like a second-rate power and junior partner fuels
resentment.

The main problem with this analysis: It casually blends symbolic and functional stories.  Yes, Russia's minor military victories over the last decade have swelled Russian pride.  But they've also turned Russia into a semi-pariah state.  I doubt serious war is likely anytime soon, but the Russian people's risk of living through serious war is probably greater than any time since the late 1980s.  Again, what Putin's success shows is that when pride and security conflict, most Russian voters choose pride.  (Though as my Myth of the Rational Voter emphasizes, this definitely doesn't show that Russians actually care more about pride than security).

The best way to save Jordan's original piece would be to claim that Russian elections were pretty honest in 2008 but pretty crooked today.  But while claims about electoral fraud in Russia are common, the severity of these allegations also seems quite stable.

So why am I picking on an op-ed published over a decade ago?  At least for me, the piece was extremely memorable; I read it when it first appeared, and haven't stopped thinking about it since.  When it was published, I bet that many readers thought, "I don't want to believe this, but the author has logic on his side."  Yet with the benefit of hindsight, we see that the piece was wrong all along.  Putin doesn't need to offer prosperity or peace to dominate Russian elections.  Personality and pugnacity are more than enough.

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How I Self-Police My Work, by Bryan Caplan

I have a long list of strange and extreme views, and I've been an arrogant hedgehog for as long as I can remember.  As a rule, arrogant hedgehogs with lots of strange and extreme views are severely biased and grossly unreliable.  Which raises two daunting questions.

The Reputational Challenge: Why should people take me seriously?  Even if I happen to be correct, why would a reasonable person bother giving me a chance? 

The Self-Referential Challenge: Why should I take myself seriously?  Why should I consider myself so epistemically superior to the typical arrogant hedgehog with lots of strange and extreme views?

In all honesty, I take both challenges seriously.  But it's the self-referential challenge that weighs on me.  I can endure the apathy of others, but not the idea that I'm living a lie.  So what should I do?  There are three basic paths:

1. Ignore the problem; just dogmatically assume I'm special.

2. Wallow in self-doubt; admit I'm an arrogant sinner and find another line of work.

3. Self-police; develop and follow epistemic procedures to offset my acknowledged shortcomings.

The latter option sounds best, of course - and it's the latter option that I take.  But the execution is crucial.  How specifically do I self-police?  Well, here's how I self-policed the creation of my latest book:

Rule #1: Try to read very widely before writing.  For starters, this means: Don't search for stuff that agrees with you.  Instead, search by topic, starting with Google Scholar.  If you don't understand a point, email the authors; most respond quickly.  Above all, don't limit your search to your own discipline.  For The Case Against Education, for example, I went out of my way to read not just economics, but psychology, sociology, and education research.  Without this interdisciplinary approach, I would have been painfully oblivious on dozens of crucial points.

Rule #2: Split big, interesting topics into small, boring topics.  Sure, read "big think" pieces; but once you run out of those, subdivide the topic and apply Rule #1.  When writing my latest book, I searched for research on scores of dull issues like "The effect of education on objective versus subjective health," "Labor force participation and ability bias," and "The effect of measurement error on estimates of the return to education."

Rule #3: Mentally set your main thesis aside when you read about small, boring topics.  Try to summarize each body of research on its own terms.  You'll never fully succeed at this, but it still helps keep you honest.  In The Case Against Education, for example, my conclusions about IQ employment testing and political correctness sharply diverge from my ideological stereotype.  I credit Rule #3 for shielding me.

Rule #4: Avoid controversial fundamental premises at all costs.  If you can't justify your position without making assumptions that would strike most people as implausible, go back to the drawing board.  You can still have controversial conclusions, of course.  But the point of an argument is to move from the known to the unknown.  Thus, I tried to build my latest contrarian book on a well-trod foundation: the first-hand experience of being a student.

Rule #5: Energetically seek diverse feedback, especially from everyone you cite.  Once I had a solid draft of The Case Against Education, I asked my RA to track down the email addresses for every single person in my References.  About 75% were alive and accessible.  Then I emailed every one of them the offer to read (a) the pages where I discuss their work, or (b) the entire book.  About 15% took me up on at least one of these.  As you'd expect, sympathetic readers were more likely to respond.  But I also received and carefully read a big stack of criticism.

Rule #6: If someone says you mischaracterized their work, you almost certainly did.  Experts are often wrong, but at minimum they know what they meant.  Fortunately, even researchers who strongly disagreed with me gave me high marks for my reading comprehension.  But whenever they had a nit to pick, I rewrote.

Rule #7: Be ready to bet on your beliefs.  When you do bet, pay attention to the results so you can find out how accurate you are.

Do these rules enforce themselves?  No.  Do they guarantee accuracy if followed?  No again.  Yet they're still great rules.  For an arrogant hedgehog like myself, they are often bitter to follow.  You know what?  They should be bitter!  The rules are designed to humble me before the truth, so I can do good work despite myself.


So this is how I try to cope with the self-referential challenge.  And you know what?  These rules for self-policing are also my best reply to the reputational challenge.  Yes, I am an arrogant hedgehog with strange and extreme views.  But unlike the vast majority of people in this questionable category, I'm not just self-aware of my flaws.  I methodically struggle against them every day. 



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