Game Theorist

A new shop for parents who've done better

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2018年4月03日 12:19:00 +0000

It has been a while. Actually, I am not sure anyone reads this blog anymore and even if they did how they might find out about a new post.

Anyhow, your economist parent blogger took some time this weekend to launch a T-Shirt business. Why? It was really just for fun.

The business is "My Other Kid" and if you go to this link you will get the idea pretty quickly. Here is a taste:

Of Bat Mitzvah's and Such

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2016年11月26日 18:51:00 +0000

It has been a while since I have published here but today was Child No.3's Bat Mitzvah and, by tradition, I post her speech and my speech here. (Here is Child No.1 and Child No.2).

Child No.3's speech was light-hearted and focussed on her Torah portion.

There are parts of the Torah that are quite exciting — like an action movie or even a drama. This part is not that. If I had to classify it, it would be a romantic comedy except without much romance nor really comedy. Anyhow, you know the deal. Concerned father is worried about his son finding a wife. Doesn’t want him to marry any of the locals and so sends a trusted servant back to the old country to find someone suitable. But son has other plans and finds love in front of him all long. The end.

Well, that’s the deal today. In the time of Abraham, the concerned father was 130 years old, he apparently hates the locals whose land he is pretty much claimed, his servant is, of course, a slave, who ends up basically purchasing some woman and bringing her back for Isaac. So ... same thing really.

I could harp on that but I instead think I’ll focus on a somewhat more universal message. Abraham’s slave who was tasked with finding a suitable bride did something interesting. The bride had to be kind so he sets up an experiment outside a village. He has a bunch of camels (and no Dad they couldn’t fly) and sets them down near a watering station. The idea is to wait until one of the women from the village comes down to get water and then to see if they see him there with his camels and offers to help. The first person down is the "extraordinarily beautiful" Rebekah. Why she had to be that I have no idea but there you go. And she basically passes the test.

Now the slave considers that a sign from God that she is The One. But when you think about it, the experiment was designed not to be a test of God’s will but instead about something inside Rebekah. After all, God could have just shouted out "that one! The pretty one with the watering pitch. Pick her." After all, the family has history and God wasn’t mincing words when he told Abraham to go out and sacrifice Isaac just a few weeks ago.

So that got me thinking. How do we judge people? Martin Luther King said that we should look to the content of character and Abraham seems to have been on that wavelength (well, at least for non-canaanites) but how do you tell whether someone is kind or not?

I have to admit, the whole idea of setting a test to see how people react is not something we do. We look at what happens and try to guess. When I started my current school, I knew people were kind just by the way they treated me. And I was right and they are here today.

So I’m not sure placing a bunch of challenges is really something that is practical despite this particular passage from the Torah. Indeed, one of the most famous passages relates to a person made King in my half-torah — you may have heard of Soloman — and his test was somewhat murderous!

That said, life has challenges. When I think about it, my parents have taken the opportunity to use challenges I have faced to teach me about what matters. When I have struggled with a mark, my mother told me to work harder because she knew I was smart. And I did, and I improved. When I have been mean to my brother (and there have been a few of those times ... sorry A), my father has told me how lucky I am to have a brother who didn’t treat me the same way. And I have changed and thought more about my attitudes. This is something I suspect isn’t going to end: "it’s a process"!

I am so grateful that all of you could come here today to help celebrate my journey to adulthood. It isn’t sudden but at the very least you all faced the challenges sitting through my singing. I especially want to thank ...

My speech is normally more light hearted but these days I have become more serious:

This is my third one of these. Somehow despite their mother's excellent speaking skills I am always tasked with this. I think it is because somehow they think I’m going to be funny. But I’m not sure it isn’t because me standing here allows others to say — "oh that’s where they got their large heads from." Of course, this time, I stand before you talking about a child with a normal sized head which I guess will just make you confused.

This speech is intended to look forward and think about the path my daughter will find herself on. But when I think today of the future, I am finding it hard to be anything but serious. Our world was shaken just a few weeks ago and, as a result, I have thought about little more than what our children will be inheriting.

The world has got tougher not easier. It has become more fearful rather than hopeful. But when I look at A I feel some hope. In so many ways, her qualities since the day she was born as I will come to, may turn out to be useful. Frankly, up until now they have made our lives as parents quite difficult. With the first two we had an easy run. A’s sister was a ruthless perfectionist which meant we never had to worry about her working hard. And A’s brother has a kindness to him to a degree not found in anyone I know.

It is hard to find a defining feature for A. To be sure, she has talents. A near photographic memory that allowed us to find our car after a week at Boston airport when she was just 5. A acute sense of empathy that leaves her in tears (the good kind) at so many movies. And a gifted imagination that combines those things into magnificent works of prose and poetry.

What defines A, I think, is a desire or maybe even a need for control. She needs to know what’s going on. And she needs to know she can change things around her. She’ll exercise that control even by attempting to change things that aren’t clearly in her interest. And it will happen relentlessly. For her mother and I, it can be challenging. Why? Because we kind of have that desire in us too. That leads to clashes and over her entire life, A has just had more fight in her.

To be sure, the games we have played have all been about things that are relatively trivial. But we have known that around this time in her life, the stakes might get higher. There are battles ahead and diplomacy has been a poor cousin for us thusfar.

It is easy to get caught up in the frustrations of day-to-day parenting and not see the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is rosier.

We saw the rosier future play out today. You may not have noticed but A had a very long portion. Her teacher wanted her to do less and that is all they practiced together. But secretly A did more and today read the entire lot. As I said, relentless.

I think back to why we are here today celebrating this coming of age. And what sticks out most strongly in my mind is that we wouldn’t have been here when I was A’s age. 35 years ago young women could have a Bat Mitzvah but it was a token. It wasn’t even on a Saturday and it was with a group of others. The Jewish religion was squarely for the men. A Bar Mitzvah required work and scholarship. For women, it was considered time wasted.

Today we stand here in a place where young women undertake the same ceremony as young men. So identical are they that it is a wonder we still name them differently. And I know that I personally do not come here often. Actually, I only come for these events. But the reason I am here at all is because the iron fist of discrimination has been removed.

Well, not completely. A read from the text of the old scriptures. And the stories she told were of misogyny and exploitation. The young girl handed to old King David had no choice in the matter. And Rebekah had but a semblance of choice (i.e., how long to pack) before being presented to Isaac. These issues were not lost on A and, not surprisingly, she struggled to draw out any message of relevance to the modern world.

I stand here, however, to tell A and indeed both of my daughters that this history reminds us precisely why we moved from Australia to Canada. When we are frustrated with the weather, immigration laws or being away from family, the top of our list as to why we did all of this is our daughters. What they faced in Australia was a longstanding culture of gender discrimination and sexism that we had already impacted them as children. This was the same culture that had driven your mother from her chosen field fifteen years ago. And when we imagine what you two would be today had we stayed, the thought chills us. For here in Canada, we have found friends, schools and shules that are far, far better. And we are grateful for it.

The events down South, however, tell us the world is not done yet. The leader of the free world now epitomizes the worst in men. And what’s more he got there by defeating an extraordinarily qualified woman. And even in Canada where in 2015 the Prime Minister could proudly claim a cabinet 50 percent comprised of women, I have to say: "give me a break." For 50 percent is not a threshold. 50 percent is a statistical average. We will not be able to claim that men and women are on equal terms until there are many more women than men in positions of power. Indeed, we cannot rest until we have seen a cabinet with 100% women because statistics tell us it is possible that for every position at a given time, a woman may be more suitable than a man.

With this in mind, I return to you, A, with your fight and your determination for control and I wonder what your future might bring. To be sure, if our goal was your pure day to day happiness, I would not wish you to be a fighter or to desire change. The world does not yield easily. But that is not our goal. Our goal was to produce someone who could be an independent adult. And with you I see someone who can be that and more. Someone who will not rest until change is achieved. And someone who will not tire until she has seen herself bring about that change. I don’t know where. I don’t know when. But world, when she leaves us, A is coming for you. And we can sit back and watch the disruption satisfied that we have done what we could to at least point your thunder in the right direction.

My first post for GeekDad

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2015年2月23日 14:31:00 +0000

I know it has been a while since you have seen me post here. But I've been busy with teenagers.

GeekDad opened up its platform to more bloggers and I am trying my hand there. My first post on digital free-range parenting is up.

Actual research on the economics of parenting

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2014年10月11日 14:40:00 +0000

I know it has been a while but something came up that I should link to. Here is a new paper by Matthias Doepke and Zilibotti. It argues that the choice of parenting style is itself driven by incentives -- something that stands in contrast to the usual thought that culture plays a big role.

I am not sure what to make of it all but here is a column by the authors with their take. They relate trends in parenting to trends in inequality. Falling inequality leads to less authoritarian or pushy parents. Rising inequality, the reverse. I suspect it also interacts with generic income levels as well.

Why does the market produce gendered toys?

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2014年4月21日 14:29:00 +0000

There was an interesting article in Slate today about one kid's fight to have Happy Meals with less gender bias in their toys -- or at the very least the presumption that the toy should match the gender. This is an issue that I have seen first hand. It is actually quite tough to have girl's receive the boy toy if they choose. I'm not sure about the other direction but I suspect that would be an issue too.

But why is McDonald's bothering with girl and boy toys at all? After all, it would be easier for it to limit choice. And is it really going to be the case that having gendered toys will drive more demand?

Here is my guess: McDonald's toys are sponsored, in part, by toy companies. They are promotional materials. So the toy company's preferences for marketing gendered toys is carrying over. Indeed, the difficulty in having girls receive boys toys may be a consequence of some contractual arrangements.

The more innocuous explanation, of course, is that the people behind the counter know that their day is more troubled if they run out of one type of toy. Hence, since kids are distributed 50:50 in gender, they try and match the gender of the kid with the gender of the toy. (Of course, this explanation requires there to be a greater overall demand for boy toys which may be true but I'll note it here as an assumption). Either way, why McDonald's is bothering is still an issue.

But let's get back to the toy companies. Why are things so gendered? While people like to suppose that the companies themselves are generating the problem, as an economist, I would prefer there to be an explanation that they would profit from it. So let me try and work this one out.

I'm going to take a leaf out of Thomas Schelling's book and suppose that there is a very small bias that is intrinsic to the child on gendered toys. My kids and, of course, your kids don't have this bias but imagine for a moment that there is a significant share of kids that if they are presented with a choice of toys with very little gendering will still choose the one 'intended' for their gender.

If this is the case, what would a toy company do? Well, what drives the demand for toys? Kids. So the more kids there are the more toys you sell, right? Not quite. The problem is that kids grow up and their siblings inherit their toys. Product safety laws force toys to be quite durable and so you can't just stop that flow by producing poor toys. But you can reduce it somewhat.

If you produce a gendered toy versus a non-gendered toy, then the first child in the household will determine which toy is bought -- at the margin. And if they have a preference (even a slight one) for the gendered toy, it will take a determined parent to forestall that demand. And parents only have so much fight in them.

But there is another characteristic at work: price. If there was a monopoly toy company (and often they have partial monopolies over specific types of toys), then for them selling a gendered toy opens up a 50:50 chance that the next kid in the household will want a new toy whereas selling a non-gendered toy reduces that chance considerably especially if child gendered preferences are weak. So in pricing these toys, the you company will want to push the gendered toy more, at the margin, and so we will have more gendered toys sell. Add to that the cost of putting toys on retailer shelves and you have yourself a complete theory as to how weak preferences for gendered toys (from children or others) can lead to big differences in gendering of toys in the market place. Basically, the logic I just indicated holds even more strongly for toys that have strong gender distinctiveness. Get a Barbie in the house and you have an option on completely new demand if the next child is a boy.

This is, of course, just a theory. We can test it. For instance, it requires some market power on the part of toy makers. So ones without market power will provide less gendered toys than ones with it. Or as you grow in market power, you move towards more gendered toys -- I'm looking at you Lego!

It will also relate to the number of children in a household. China, one suspects, may have less of this issue on the basis of this theory as well countries with a large number of children per household.

Anyhow, this is just some theorising. But I think it highlights that the forces at work here are more complicated than they appear.

Parentology = Parentonomics + Sociology - Economic Theory

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2014年3月30日 15:22:00 +0000

What happens if you take Parentonomics, you substitute an economist for a sociologist, keep the Australian mother (without changing the first name), add empirical social science, subtract economic theory and lose one child? The answer is Parentology a book by Dalton Conley a NYU sociology professor. The book is subtitled "Everything you wanted to know about children but were too exhausted to ask."

As is often the case, of course, the book doesn't give you everything you wanted to know about children but more everything you wanted to know about two specific children. In this case, the children's names are E (a girl) and Yo (a boy). One might be forgiven that Conley is covering up his kids' names to protect them just as I did by numbering my children but, in fact, that is far from the truth. He and his wife named them that way and were happy to go on television to talk about it. (E is the shortest name and Yo's full name is Yo Xing Heyno Augustus Eisner Alexander Weiser Knuckles Jeremijenko). Indeed, Conley is more liberal with personal issues than I have ever been able to be but then again he did have the bright idea of giving his kids a cut of the book sales for their future troubles. But that does mean that he covers a ton of things you have never seen covered here.

The book starts with pregnancy and a basic lack of birth control, risk taking or something else. It spends some time on issues of scientific studies there (although by no means in the comprehensive way Emily Oster did so) but, more so, to indicate that the parents would like to engage in proper evidence-based decision-making but their investigations are somewhat constrained by Internet bandwidth at the time of various critical emergencies.

Then we see what appears to be only loosely a time sensitive set of essays through other issues. One is their decision to have two but not three children -- it turns out that if you have a third you may end up harming the second somewhat in a way any consumer of Happy Days was aware of with respect to Richie Cunningham -- at least until they disappeared his older brother Chuck. Then is a traverse of birth names -- although not in the Freakonomics sense but in the sense of giving children unusual names. Then follows, the value of reading, a chapter on bribing your kids (which worked about as well as it did when conducted by a trained Parentonomist), what to do if you have too many animals (literally the long-tail of parenting issues), a dissertation on discipline and, in particular, how not to have your children embarrass you when you have former New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark, over for dinner (again a notion that doesn't necessarily scale), a frank discussion of ADD which is well worth anyone's time and attention, what happens when you really go at it for evidence-based eating (certainly more McDonalds than our kids have ever seen) and then the chapter on divorce that is really a chapter on genetics and how strong that is.

So unlike Parentonomics that stuck to the core of issues facing parents of 0-8 year old kids, this book one would have to say deals with 'other stuff.' That said, it is a wonderful read. It is hysterically funny in places and has enough of a smattering of academic studies to feel like you are on the good end of respectability. But really, you don't read it for that. You read it for the story of a complicated family dealing with eccentric parents although not eccentric if you condition on the fact that they are academics. In other words, if you liked Parentonomics you are going to like this book and should buy it and read it right away.

It's not complicated, just chill

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2014年2月27日 16:06:00 +0000

I have just finished danah boyd's new book, It's Complicated: The Social Life of Networked Teens. danah was (and still is) a researcher at Microsoft Research when I was there in 2011. I didn't interact with her too much as I was focussed on other matters but it always struck me that her investigations into the behaviour of teenagers would prove very interesting. The book does not disappoint in that regard. I couldn't put it down.

Like Emily Bazelon's recent book on bullying and Lenore Skenazy's Free-Range Kids, it's underlying heart is to bring common sense to an important set of issues in parenting. However, unlike those books, its head is most clearly in the academic rather than journalistic space. This is not to deride journalists, of course, but there is a noticeable difference between work that reports on research and work that is the report on research. boyd's book falls into the latter character but somehow manages to do so in a written style that is fluid and engaging.

It took 8 years of research, mostly involving in-depth interviews with teens and some parents, for boyd to put together a model and evidence of how teens interact and behave in the digital world. Along the way, it was clear that boyd had a theory as to how teens were motivated and also a hypothesis: that the digital world has changed little in those motivations and only the expression and instruments of their behaviour and interaction. What is more, like the past, parents' motivations have not changed too much and teenager choices are driven as much by parental actions (or, in most cases, restraints) as they are by teenager desires.

In trying to conduct research over that period of time with regard to the digital world, there is a clear challenge: the instruments and platforms teens used to engage, digitally, changed. When the research started out MySpace was king, then Facebook and most recently, literally as the book was going to press, SnapChat and Instagram. There was a real danger the book would feel dated. However, boyd turns that into a strength. Yes, sure, this teen was using MySpace when they were interviewed but here is what that platform has in common with others today. It is basically the same deal.

So let me do incredible injustice to the book and try, as briefly as possible, to summarise its findings. Teens are extremely social and want to interact with one another (so if you think looking at a screen is a sign of isolation, think again). What is more, they want to engage in that social interaction independent of adults (so if you think your kids don't want you around, remember when you were a teen). Thus, teens are trying to balance being social (sharing) with being independent (privacy). They are (a) like teens forever and (b) like people. That balance is hard to learn, understand and manage.

Now insert into that mix parents (and teachers and others). Those parents are concerned for safety and have their own, largely out-dated model of what social and anti-social behaviour is. They also don't really know what they are doing but have an image of a 'stepford' like teen that they want in the end. (I should say boyd is more diplomatic than I am being here but I think that captures the true essence of the average parental mindset). So the parents engage in behaviour regulation -- usually a series of prohibitions. For instance, to keep teens safe they don't let them out. Then they are surprised when their kids want to spend all their time on social media and complain that they are not engaging in real interactions. Yes, because the only ones they would have left is you and they don't want that. If you want to see them have real social interactions, they have to be left out. This is why they go to football games (who would like to do that otherwise) or rush to school early. They are desperately pushing through the cracks to get more interaction with one another.

Everything else follows neatly from that model. It is just pure substitution, plain and simple. What is more, any of the dangers from online activity -- addiction and predation -- are not borne out by any data. Instead, there is a new danger -- that the assumption by adults is that kids actually understand digital technology. They don't. That means when they are told by teachers that Google is good and Wikipedia is not, they actually believe them! They over-trust one and ignore the other. At the same time, they find it hard to work out what will last and what will not. Finally, and this is important, if parents try to peek in on teen's digital world's -- by cyberstalking them on Facebook -- they will either force teens to be cryptic to obscure potential trouble or simply not understand the context of the behaviour they are seeing.

One point I want to emphasise is with respect to privacy. Because teens share so much on social media, there is a perception to think that teens do not care about privacy and also how they are perceived. The book dispels that perception. Teens are more concerned about this than we adults. They care about how they are perceived with one another and publicly in general. The self-regulate their behaviour to do so; often in really innovative ways. But when it comes to privacy, they aren't worried about governments, the media or corporations -- that is for their future fears. Instead, they want to be private essentially from their parents. They go to social media because they want to interact socially even if it looks like it is in plain site (actually, these days if they go to MySpace, they'll have all the privacy they want). They use codes and shift themselves around, to avoid the gaze of parents. And the more parents hover, the more effort teens put into being private with regard to them. Parents may wonder, "what do they have to hide?" but in reality, they just want to hide out a bit. We don't really understand the motives for privacy amongst adults too well but surely, it takes just a little respect to believe that teens might want privacy, "just because."

All that said, I have one quibble with the book and also one comment. The quibble is the title "It's Complicated." It really isn't. As you read this book, you'll see it is actually quite simple: that's what a good theoretical model gets you. Teens need to be evaluated as (a) not being unusual; (b) acting like human beings and (c) being given the benefit of the doubt rather than objects of fear. Just stepping back and asking yourself "if this thing I see my kid doing is actually OK, what is really going on here?" For instance, I have seen my daughter stick her tongue out, take a picture and "share" it on SnapChat. One interpretation of this is: why would you do that? The other interpretation is: it is good that you chose to do that on SnapChat where the picture will last only 10 seconds? In one interpretation, she is an unusual deviant. In the other, she is someone who has actually learned what appropriate behaviour is and sensibly chosen the right technology for the job. My point here is that it is not complicated at all. It is really simple: just chill, it is normal behaviour going on and no permanent harm is being done. Indeed, it is probably all for the best.

I've only scratched the surface of this issue in this review. boyd's examples are great and really give you a sense as to what is going on. But here I come to my comment. There is one limitation of being a book grounded in what we know and that is, this isn't a parenting book. There is no big advice chapter in the end. boyd doesn't tell parents to chill although you would have to be a moron not to take that away. She doesn't list a set of advice to follow. That is because she hasn't evaluated how to deal with these things and so cannot speculate on it. Moreover, she hasn't studied what happened before (should younger kids be on social networks) and what happens after (do teens that are on social networks turn out to be 'better' young adults). The focus is on teens and nothing else but, in many respects, that still left me wanting more.

Nonetheless, that does not mean this isn't a book for parents. It is a book that will give you perspective and reduce the fear in managing teenagers and give you the opportunity to have a better relationship with your teens; even if it is not the ideal fantasy in your mind.

It's time for Flappy Economist

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2014年2月17日 15:22:00 +0000

While most of the world think that Flappy Bird is fairly useless and without redeeming value, some think there is opportunity.

Folks, thanks to my son, I bring you Flappy Economist. In it you control the money supply but you have to balance between the economy going between disastrous unemployment or rampant inflation. Of course, if you fail then the economy dies.

You'll also notice that the economy has a Keynesian bias in that you have to keep active with enough money to stop the economy falling into depression. I am sure that others can work on an Austrian version.

The Lego Movie

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2014年2月09日 17:17:00 +0000

Over at Medium I have written my take on The Lego Movie. I am not posting it here as there really are spoilers and you shouldn't read it unless you have seen the movie.

Of Bar Mitzvahs and such

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2013年11月26日 12:24:00 +0000

Last Saturday, Child No.2 celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. We are not a religious family but like Child No.1, he elected to do it and got lots out of the process. He also managed to sing quite well which was a relief for us and certainly a benefit for the audience.

As part of all of this, Child No.2 had to make a speech related to his Torah portion. Ultimately it reflects his personality and what he thinks of his parents very well including a very dry sense of humour. Here it is.

The Pharaohs of Egypt had a lot of power. So much, that they didn’t make very good choices. Because of this, ancient Egypt was riddled with injustice. My portion demonstrates injustice on a pretty high level.

My portion starts on the birthday of the Pharaoh. His baker and wine specialist had both angered him by not providing a sufficient feast. He sent them to jail. In jail, they met Joseph. One night, the men had a dream. They consulted Joseph, and he said that they were going to be hung. He was right. Before they were sent to be hung, Joseph told them to mention him to the officials, since it was common that prisoners be forgotten about in jail, even after their sentences had been finished. Sadly, they completely forgot about Joseph.

Pharaohs are flat out dictators, no question. As in, nobody questions their actions. This generally leads to bad governing, since people make mistakes. This gets even worse, since dictators have control over everything within their borders. That means a lot of decisions, and not a lot of time to make or think about them. They can’t think straight, and make bad decisions.

To bring some geek to the table, I’m going to relate this to the Star Wars prequel trilogy. When hiring people to make his trilogy, George Lucas only hired people that would never question his choices and intentions, giving him complete control. He had so much control that he could have even written the entire 3 scripts in one draft. That would be crazy, right? But this is exactly what he did! The one thing you do not do when writing ANYTHING! In photos, you can see the people around him face palming, as he reads his scripts. But they don’t speak up because at this moment, he is the powers that be. I suppose they were earning so much money, that they would rather have George ruin the trilogy than get fired

Now, you could argue that the prequel trilogy to Star Wars was a huge success, since it did manage to continue to keep Star Wars’ legacy of always getting movie of the year in Metascore. That did not necessarily mean it was a great trilogy. If you would like to challenge that, I have a list of YouTube videos that will change your mind. I won’t show them to you right now since they are 4 hours long in total.

Nevertheless, it was pretty obvious that George Lucas had so much power, and so many decisions to make, that he didn’t have enough time to look back, reflect, and change anything. George probably learnt his lesson when he sold out to Disney who seem to make pretty good movies and theme parks.

Speaking of ruthless dictators that aren't considered dictators, I’d like to talk about my parents. Before I start, I would like to say that Mum and Dad, you are just doing your jobs, and there is nothing wrong with what you are doing. Opposite of George Lucas, who doesn't have enough time to think about his decisions, is my Dad, who has way to much time. When I read his book, Parentonomics, I saw how much thought he had put into raising me and my sisters. He had strategies and tactics that he used to bring us up to be optimal children. Despite the fact that really, from an evolutionary point of view, you are just supposed to rely on instinct, like Mum. Mum most of the time. And sometimes, you guys are so caught up in financial stuff and work trips that you forget to make good decisions, like the ones you make when you consider your children’s point of view. I like those decisions.

Most companies don’t look in their costumers shoes, they just don’t. Then they start to loose business and go bankrupt. And in that time of debt the CEO is so stressed he can’t make good decisions, which makes is worse. That’s what you need in a company, or a country, or a movie production, or a parental government. You need to look in the shoes of those people of whom you are serving. You need to look back, reflect, and take a deep breath.

I feel this is why democracy was born. And why it’s so great. It listens to the people, it sees what they want, and is forced to execute it. It takes weight off the backs of the political officials, and spreads it out, so that the political officials have more space on their backs to tackle harder problems, that they would not be able to tackle before.

I had school running through my head when writing this speech, and about the IB learner profile, and how, if this was school, that I would have to relate it to the "perfected" student profile that the International Baccalaureate has created. This portion seems to relate to Open mindedness, how we should be open to new ideas. I usually assume a leadership role when doing projects at school, or anything that involves teams that I have at least some small background knowledge of. And sometimes I feel I am taking too much control over things, and this Torah portion has helped me see that the end result of whatever teamwork I was participating in would be better if everyone’s ideas were listened to. Open Mindedness is one of the IB learner profile things. I could relate my portion to every aspect of the IB learner profile but my computer would crash again because the document would be too big.

So, in this journey that has been my Bar Mitzvah studying, I have learnt that with too much power, comes injustice. That with too much control, comes bad decisions. That too much stuff to do, causes stress. That singing for fifteen minutes straight causes the consumption of a lot of water.

And most of all, that I am a big boy, now.

There are some people I need to thank before I leave. I’d like to thank my parents, for driving me to my Bar Mitzvah lessons, and supporting me, and helping me. I’d like to thank, ... I’d like to thank everyone who has come from far away to be here. And last of all, I’d like to thank the Internet for helping me make sure the part about George Lucas was factually accurate.

I also made a speech. I'll indulge myself by reproducing it here. As you will see I am quite proud of my son.

About thirteen years ago I was prepared. After a comically bad attempt at the delivery of my first born, I had spent 6 hours of an 8 hour labor practicing putting on latex gloves and donning protective gear. A baby was on the way and this time I was going to catch cleanly. I’d be waiting and ready. Then into my hands plopped this blonde and blue eyed boy. He looked different from what we were expecting. And, as it turned out, no amount of preparation would be enough for what was inside. He was so different that for the next 13 years his mother and I would constantly be shaking our heads and saying "where did we get him from?"

In many respects, preparation, however, is what this day is about. As parents, we experimented on our training child in order to learn something to make it easier for the next one. Her sacrifice would surely benefit her siblings. That preparation really didn't help. There was nothing conventional about A. Even a few minutes after birth he was looking around as if to say "well, this is new" and was taking it all in. Everything was a curiosity and every problem had to be solved.

That continued. At the age of 4 he reasoned he would die claiming "It is impossible to live to infinity. If you live to infinity then you would die at more than infinity and nothing can be more than infinity. So you can’t live to infinity." Years later, A then went on to reason that the universe could be conceptualized as a bunch of sheets lining up in a constrained manner and he lost me. Eventually, we had to ban all discussions of the size of the universe at breakfast because, you know, it would take infinitely long to get ready!

He was also intensely focussed. Not much could distract him from a task. Hunger, bee stings, the need to go to the bathroom ... One time I watched as his younger sister who could barely walk, came up to him with a toy broom as he was intensely concentrating on some activity. She then waked him, hard, over the head. "Ow, A!" he said and kept right at whatever it was he was doing. Then she hit him over the head again. A then complained to us. We figured that he could wrest a broom from her and he did.

A’s mind is constantly at work. Very often it is channelled to various creative activities. At times this creativity was useful. On the night we moved to Boston, A was on the Internet before any of us. That might not sound like much except that Comcast was still three days away. Our 8 year old had hacked our neighbour’s WiFi guessing the password "12345." We all ended up using that service and we know we didn’t upset our neighbours too much as they are here today.

At other times, A’s creativity was a problem. He spent 3 hours one night drawing all over his wall with art that might have made Michelangelo but not his parents proud. He would cook dinners with new and imaginative combinations of ingredients that used to cause us to guess what they were until we learned that some things were better not to know. Even his creative attempts to get around my toilet training incentives made the Financial Times as news.

A is even thoughtful in his complaints. And he has plenty of them. He will evicerate movies upon exiting a cinema or apps because of their poor design. I am sure he is, as I speak, making a list of problems with this speech.

And he is certainly often upset about our parenting especially with regard to his little sister. For instance, A believes we have been too easy on her giving her access to iPhones and iPads with their fancy touch screens. When he was her age, A pointed out to me, he didn’t have those things so he learned to type. I guess that one was true.

But he has also become concerned about our parenting of him. He remarked to me that he had read about the lives of lots of great people like Steve Jobs and Barack Obama and they all had hard childhoods that they learned from. He pointed out that this was a common narrative for great people in fiction as well. But what about him? A noted that I hoped for some greatness in his future but his childhood was a pretty happy one. He hadn’t suffered enough. I commented that more hardship could be easily arranged if he wanted. He declined my offer.

A does, however, face struggles that I hope he can overcome. He is organizationally challenged and loses many things. He went to camp and came home with a single sock on one foot. All others were lost. He has lost lunch boxes, iPhones and even pants he was wearing. He was elected to student leadership on multiple occasions but struggled to remember meetings. A knows this and has invented various contraptions to tie things to himself. As parents we don’t fear him going missing, we expect it. Hopefully he will know how to be found.

A is also incapable of boredom. This would have been a problem had he been borne in another age but thanks to the Internet he has never experienced it. At the same time, A doesn’t know what procrastination is. The idea that something is boring so you would distract yourself from it is alien. He even conducted a research project on his classmates to work out why they procrastinated with some very interesting findings subsequently ignored completely by his teachers.

Judaism and, indeed, Facebook celebrate the age of 13 as an age where you are prepared to face life’s challenges and take more responsibility. Is A prepared for the world he faces? Sometimes I wonder. Based on what we have seen so far, I suspect that it is more likely A will end up shaping the world so he can live in it. I just hope the world is prepared.

Finally, Child No.2's party was a light one. It coincided with the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary which he is quite into at the moment. Here is a picture of the cake (yes, a Tardis) and also of a Lego structure made by one of his friends and another three dimensional card. (Note to all: as it turns out children love to receive made presents as much as adults do).

Ender's Game is worth taking your children to see (after they have read the book)

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2013年11月03日 14:04:00 +0000

Yesterday, in a highly anticipated family event, we took our three children to see Ender’s Game. 25 years earlier Ender’s Game had been a revolutionary reading experience for me. I loved the book, the entire series and the author. (Of course, I realise that there is controversy in being a fan of Orson Scott Card but more on that below). It is hard actually to identify one particular thing that placed Ender’s Game so highly in my life. The plot and the twist at the end, the idea of super intelligent and capable children, or, the notion that understanding requires you to see the world from the perspective of others. That last one is at the core of my academic field, economics and strategy, so much so that I am not sure I’d be where I am today without Ender’s Game.

For this reason, Ender’s Game was dutifully read to my children. Each separately and each of whom had a similar experience to my own. The last one had her reading completed just hours before seeing the movie. This was not a movie you would be allowed to see without having experienced the book. So, for the children, the movie was an important event. My son refused to read any reviews or opinions about it. He wanted his experience to be unsullied. (He also loved Card’s books so much that he wanted to change his own name to ‘Orson’).

I wasn’t so worried about reading reviews. Most of them were written with some angst by the reviewers who appeared to me to not want to like the movie. They felt they could not review it independently of the controversy surrounding Card but, for me, that meant they weren’t really reviewing the movie. For example, Dana Stevens in Slate ended up concluding:

"I can understand wanting to skip Ender’s Game as a matter of moral principle, but you can also feel free to blow it off just because it’s not that good."

Now that is putting a knife in and twisting it.

You would think, therefore, that my expectations were too high. That I was bound to be disappointed. But I saw the movie and was not at all disappointed. Now this might seem paradoxical given that I am now going to tell you that the movie failed to capture the book and probably failed to be a good movie. Fundamentally, it was paced too quickly. We couldn’t get a sense of the characters, their motivations and ultimately their depth. They either grew up too fast or didn’t grow up at all. I’m not quite sure which. They were too single dimensional. We had no real idea what they were thinking. And the moral issues were either absent or then forced on us. If you were just to see the movie you would probably appreciate the excellent performance and direction of the lead playing Ender and also the appropriate picture of the technology in the book. So it would not be a terrible experience. It just would not be the experience the author intended.

But none of that disappointed me. Frankly, I did not see how they could make Ender’s Game into a two hour movie. Card writes his books so much from the perspective of characters and what they are thinking that I don’t know how you put that in a movie. But upon exiting the movie, I knew why I wasn’t disappointed. I wanted to see them try.

The very notion of putting this book into a movie format was so challenging that those who love the book did not know how it could be done. But the act of trying was an intellectual exercise that made you think more deeply about the book and appreciate it more. And that was the discussion that ensued amongst our family yesterday evening. And it was a long discussion. We did not discuss morality except insofar as whether the issues in the movie were the same as the book. We discussed how it could have been fixed. What parts should have received more due. What parts could have been dropped. Which characters were neglected. In the end, a consensus arose that perhaps the movie should receive the Peter Jackson like treatment. Ender’s Game was a book that could have been made into a trilogy. Maybe that is what they would do next.

Herein lies the point of Ender’s Game, the movie. It is a reinterpretation for a different medium. It is a discussion of story-telling and character development. But above all it is an appreciation of the written word as a vehicle for expression and dialogue. For that reason, Ender’s Game, the movie, enhances the value of the book. I can imagine many classrooms who assign the book then turning to the movie to build on a discussion as to why books are important. And for the rest of us, I can’t wait until somebody else has a go at trying to make Ender’s Game, the movie. I’ll see it again and again even if they never get it right.

Upon concluding this review, I do want to say a few words about the controversy surrounding Card. This too was discussed with my children last evening. Card is apparently homophobic and writes some crazy political stuff. I have known this for years. I can’t for the life of me understand it and, personally, could not really get this from his writing. People like to attribute it to his Mormonism but that seems to me a prejudiced statement in of itself. Indeed, one of the books of Card’s I most enjoyed was Saints about the history of the Mormon church and I’m a card carrying atheist. Read that and the mystery of Card’s other beliefs will only be deepened.

But at the same time, there are times Card writes outside of fiction and is a model of common sense. Here, for instance, is a piece on parentingand what encouragement means and here is Card on why "wanting the best" for your children is a crazy goal.

Here is the thing: do we really want people like Card to be recluses? To only speak to the world through their published books and not by other means. For me that is a terrible outcome. It is an outcome that would keep Cory Doctorow and Charlie Strauss away from us for more than once a year. But the boycott against Card is sending that signal. It is saying, if you want commercial success (and I don’t buy Card’s line that he wasn’t being paid a cent for the movie as its success would drive studios to make movies out of his other books), you have to keep to yourself. Card’s views are whatever they are. It is more useful to know them or have the opportunity to know them than not. And you can disagree violently with them while still loving their other half. I can’t pretend to no longer like Orson Scott Card’s books because he appeared unnaturally devoted to George W. Bush. And what is more, I don’t want my children to think like that. I want them to tolerate and that means they have to experience.

My now 15 year old daughter summed up her opinion on this. To boycott the movie and his books and to deny him commercial success will only divert Card to spend more of his time writing the other stuff. But if his books are successful, he will devote more of his energies to them. In other words, she understood the signals being sent to Card and wanted them to go the other way. Apparently, you can expose children to things and they can make up their minds.

Tweeting Curriculum Night

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2013年9月20日 19:23:00 +0000

It is that time of year again where parents are invited to their school's curriculum nights. This is when they are told what the learning plan is for their kids. I have gone to these for years but I must admit I can't be bothered any more. I just don't really learn enough and certainly nothing of consequence.

Anyhow, the calls to action reminded me of what I did during these events last year -- I live tweeted them. This is something @dlin71 did last year as well and it inspired me. For those attending curriculum nights this year I thought I'd post my tweets.

Middle School Edition (Grade 7)

"OK. It's time to tweet curriculum night: Middle School edition"

"Apparent innovation this year: more home room time. I hear substitution of soft for hard skills."

"Apparently they want parents to drop the worry ball. But it could hit my foot?"

"In the home room. There is a heated battle for class rep."

"Apparently middle school is a social minefield. Well I got that from diary of a wimpy kid."

"My son has a science teacher with brown blonde and purple hair."

"Up next drama. Not sure the middle schoolers need formal training in that."

"Brief panic. Is my son in grade 6 or 7. Hopefully am in the right home room."

"Next up. Vocal music. Ouch. Boys hitting puberty. That can’t be fun."

"Trying to encourage us to not send children to basement when practicing musical instruments. Ok but I draw the line at vocals."

"Outlining the music performance schedule for the year. Kind of like scheduling torture sessions."

"I need to schedule out of town seminars to match these music events."

"Art project. Last year we hunted for gargoyles. This year we hunt for graffiti. Imagine it will involve a different neighborhood."

"We have now come to the don’t do you child’s projects part of the program. I was hoping for another A."

"Now advertising the monitoring technology they use to work out your child is doing math rather than minecraft."

"Apparently the big arse calculator they sell at Staples is not appropriate. But they won’t lose it and it is only 12ドル!"

"Hoping the kids will learn to tolerate maths."

"Bonjour. In comes French. Lets start with massively different levels."

"French event. They are sending them to Quebec City."

Elementary School Edition (Grade 3)

Elementary school curriculum night.

Oh crap. I have forgotten my third graders teachers name. How will I find the right classroom. May have to wing it.

All parents with athletic children have to stay after 8pm. Not me. I get let out early.

I found the right room. Others not so lucky. But I had the advantage of crowd sourcing.

In the little chairs. It’s a power thing.

Small chairs very effective. Everyone well behaved. Well except for me who keeps typing on my iPhone.

Being show kindness corner now. Basically a place for enforcing contracts.

Ton of social engineering. Especially of friendships.

Good tips here for being nice to people.

They have a traffic light system. I wonder how many red lights my daughter has got.

Birthday policy. Everyone gets invited otherwise you have to go stealth.

They want healthy birthday treats. Tell them they’re dreaming.

Arts now. Annual call for recycled material. Another opportunity to get rid of the trash.

Pleas to move after school clubs to lunch so as not to interfere with over-scheduled activities.

Music. Rationale for starting with recorders. An investment in blowing before they get larger instruments in later years.

Ooh iPads key in music this year. Can practice at home. With headphones!

Goal in recorder. Try not to sound horrible. It is a subjective standard.

Homework speech time. Supposed to be meaningful. Apparently that means a focus on data collection. Hmm embarrassing questioning.

Plea to label clothes. Same incentive problem as vaccination.

Apparently ‘differentiation’ in maths has nothing to do with calculus but everything to do with learning differences.

Soft way of dealing with who is smarter. The parents are seeing right through it. Well the smart ones are.

Got another frown due to my tweeting. Thinking of stopping.

Just kidding. What are they going to do?

There is a math problem of the month. This month: what things make up 47 percent.

It’s hard to tweet secretly under these little tables.

Sports. In flux as Ontario govt has rewritten the curriculum. No longer sport specific. No volleyball. Net games instead.

Ooh. Standardized physical fitness testing.

I see you other parent looking at Facebook.

Now differentiation comes to reading. Shakespeare is apparently not expected in third grade.

Well the playground seems very Macbeth to me.

Big debate raging in class about the status of Pluto. Let it go! The IAU have decided.

Apparently it is ok to all a planet a dwarf in third grade.

It’s past 8. Don’t the sporty parents have to go.

I’m looking at you parent whose kid will only read books about hockey.

Another debate. Funding NASA versus private space exploration. Now I have a comparative parental advantage on this one.

Oh great. They are teaching about the brain later on and are calling for parents who are literally brain surgeons. Come on. Not fair.

Now they are teaching parents how to log on to the school net. I have that down and so I’m off. Good night all. High school next Monday.

I couldn't find a subtle way to tweet High School Curriculum Night. The teachers were too experienced in using faces to stop phone usage.

Is there any point to preventing your child from being digitally recognised?

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2013年9月04日 11:53:00 +0000

In Slate, Amy Webb proudly describes the fact that they have kept all pictures and information about their daughter offline. The reason is: option value. They want their daughter to choose her online identity.

She’ll have the opportunity to start cashing in parts of her digital identity, and we’ll ensure that she’s making informed decisions about what’s appropriate to reveal about herself, and to whom.

This is in contrast to a friend of theirs who posted all manner of pictures of their daughter online thereby "essentially robbing her of a digital adulthood that’s free of bias and presupposition."

As regular readers know, this is an issue I have long been concerned about. Unlike many other parent bloggers, I have not posted recognisable pictures of my children to this blog and not used their names. I had the same idea as Webb that I would give them options to control their identity. I also thought this blog would be so famous that I needed, prior to my inevitable fame, to protect the kids. It is safe to say that the dire consequences of fame have not been forthcoming but at least I planned for it.

What is interesting to me is apparently how useless that has been. Child No.1 has pictures that identify her all over the place, mainly on Facebook. Now those aren't visible publicly (apart from a grainy profile image) and the only other ones that are clear were posted by her school. Google Images reveals that those ones contain her but you would have to work out who she was from a crowd. And what is the best way to do that? You look at which of those kids look the most like me.

Somewhat surprisingly, Child No.2 only appears in a cartoon created form which only looks like him to people who know him. But the clearest picture of them all is of Child No.3. A single Google Image that we have no idea how it got there. But it is her and it comes up with a search for her name.

Webb talks about being able to choose the age that her child is old enough to choose her online identity. But what age is that? Child No.1 has done that by age 12. We try to educate her on such matters but when you see what her friends are doing, it is hard to image that anyone knows what the consequences of these things are to make an informed decision. Giving her the option of control is all well and good but you can't imagine that there is a magic day whereby you relinquish parental responsibility.

Moreover, the horrors Webb describes of facial recognition seem strange.

That poses some obvious challenges for Kate’s future self. It’s hard enough to get through puberty. Why make hundreds of embarrassing, searchable photos freely available to her prospective homecoming dates? If Kate’s mother writes about a negative parenting experience, could that affect her ability to get into a good college? We know that admissions counselors review Facebook profiles and a host of other websites and networks in order to make their decisions.

There’s a more insidious problem, though, which will haunt Kate well into the adulthood. Myriad applications, websites, and wearable technologies are relying on face recognition today, and ubiquitous bio-identification is only just getting started. In 2011, a group of hackers built an app that let you scan faces and immediately display their names and basic biographical details, right there on your mobile phone. Already developers have made a working facial recognition API for Google Glass. While Google has forbidden official facial recognition apps, it can’t prevent unofficial apps from launching. There’s huge value in gaining real-time access to view detailed information the people with whom we interact.

But baby pictures are hardly going to matter there. You need to recognise the child as an adult and, moreover, the consequences of those pictures (like getting into college) are surely not going to be harm because of poor parental judgment. In the meantime, Webb cowers in secrecy and prevents any interaction with a broader social community on parental sharing. Facebook provides that opportunity and, as far as I can tell, there is little leakage from that interaction.

In any case, the protection from facial recognition is hopelessly naive. Skynet won't need pictures of her daughter if they have pictures of Webb. That should do the trick. So the cat is out of the bag.

What we are left with is common sense. You post pictures and try to keep them secure. You teach your children about what these things mean. And then you watch as they take the most ridiculous photos of themselves and post them to SnapChat so that their friends can view them for 10 seconds before they are automatically deleted. And you realise that the kids themselves have some ideas about how to manage this one.

What to expect from an expecting economist

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2013年8月22日 18:56:00 +0000

It is not every day that a new book about parenting comes out from an academic economist. This time around, however, the book was not about parenting but pre-parenting. Emily Oster, a University of Chicago Booth School economics professor, became obsessed with the rules being laid down for her when she became pregnant; so much so that she decided to research them and now write a book about what she found. The book is called Expecting Better and I have to say that I picked it up with relish in the hope that I could start this review with "well, I was expecting better" but instead, I have to say, upon reading it cover-to-cover in a single sitting, "I was expecting worse."

Here is what I was expecting: a fairly dry review of the medical basis behind lots of pregnancy advice with a high degree of qualification that would really only be of interest to people while they or their spouse was pregnant. In other words, I didn't think it would be interesting to me as I was more than done with pregnancy but I did hope it was something I could recommend to the pregnant.

Instead, what was delivered (pun intended) was quite a personal account. Here is the story of a woman who finds herself completely at sea and out of control in what is most likely the major transformational event of her life. She receives a raft of rules set down by convention and medical dictate that have the immediate effect of making her life worse and more stressful. And so to cope she does what surely many have done before her and asks, why?

The problem most people face when they ask "why" is that they are not equipped to wade into the medical literature and sort something useful out. There is a raft of terminology, a myriad of journals (if you can get access to them) and then there is the methodology behind the studies. Oster believes that it was her training as an economist that gave her the skills to take on the challenge of answering the why question but, in fact, she was much more than that. Oster is a health economist and one who has already delved deep into the medical literature for her research. To do so again for this task was, in fact, quite natural. Indeed, as I'll come to in a bit, Oster has received huge amounts of criticism for her findings, many of which claimed she had no right to write this book as an economist. However, when you look at her research, that charge is completely unfair. Compared to some of us who make pronouncements on things outside of their economic expertise, Oster was close to her core speciality here.

But it was the style of this book that gives it power. It is a narrative of Oster's own pregnancy with her first child and takes us through those stages. But along the way she explains to the reader statistics, the importance of distributional assumptions, selection bias, correlation versus causation, and decision theory. While the subject matter is special, the explanations are first rate. A great example is the chapter on prenatal screening and testing. This involves the decision to undertake noninvasive and invasive tests for chromosome disorders in your baby. This is actually a situation where parents have some discretion over what to do. But Oster convincingly takes the reader through the real probabilistic calculations (including conditional probability) in a very accessible way. That entire chapter would surely be one of the great cases to give to MBA students. I only wish we had thought about half of the issues there when making our decisions 15 years ago on this issue.

Not all information was as hard to parse as prenatal screening and when it is easy, Oster is straightforward about it. Even so, she finds the underlying studies and presents them. There is hardly an issue from conception timing to choosing whether to induce that she does not touch on. To be sure, she skirts the entire subject of whether to prepare the baby's room prior to pregnancy and also whether her pre-birth house changes actually ended up making sense but, for the stuff where there is a medical literature, Oster is there. That said, she never touched on the issue of whether father's should deliver their own babies (as I ended up doing) but I suspect there just isn't a literature on that.

Inevitably, coverage of this book has been controversial. Not surprisingly, her publishers put out extracts, not on whether gardening is a good idea or even whether to take anti-nausea medication (although one wonder's what Oster's mother-in-law thought of the chapter title "Nausea and My Mother-in-law"!) but instead that it was OK to drink alcohol and have coffee in moderation. This flies in the face of the general blanket advice and also the cultural lore on pregnancy. And before Oster, millions of mothers have forgone much for the "good of the baby" and surely had built a mindset that it was all worth it. Here, Oster was saying that maybe it wasn't worth it and, it was hardly surprising, that this was seen as an affront; the sort of affront that can get you many one-star Amazon reviews from people who clearly had not read the book.

I can sympathise with that. I've been there. I mean, I suggested that parents should think about themselves when getting a baby to sleep. How dare I!

There is, however, a deeper issue here. I know many people who like to understand where blanket rules come from and to decide for themselves. This is hardly surprising as academic economists constantly are asking why and challenging one size fits all approaches. However, there are also people who prefer to be told what to do, especially when it comes to medical issues of which there are possibly consequences. Do you really want to have personal responsibility for issues when you can leave it in the hands of professionals? After all, when it comes down to it, in no place did Oster give advice that it was OK to decide what to do when the baby's health was at risk. Whenever that happened she unambiguously advised against breaking conventional norms. Instead, what she does is reduce the set of rules that you have to obey. For some people, being given discretion may not give them satisfaction.

This book is not for them. It is for, I guess, those on the more neurotic side of parenting who want to know what is going on. Oster serves them well. She takes her own angst and has generated a public good that may actually go along way towards making people's pregnancies easier, more understandable and less stressful. We could have used this book 15 years ago and my spouse would have had more sushi as a result.

But I couldn't help but think what is coming. Oster is a parent now and if you think the advice is ambiguous prior to birth that is nothing compared to what it is post-birth. I can only imagine Oster is devouring those studies and will in a year or so produce the next volume in the series. For me, that involved a more rigorous application of economic theory than books on parenting had ever done. However, I look forward to the data on those issues being neatly synthesised. It will be doubly interesting because Oster's parents, both academic economists, did the same thing using Oster as a three year old subject; finding that baby babbling in a crib was actually coherent. Actually, make that triply interesting, as Oster's husband, economist Jessie Shapiro, will likely be a stronger part of that (he was kind of hands-off during pregnancy) and has already, as pointed out on page 1 of Expecting Better, delved into controversial parenting subjects in his own research. I definitely have high expectations for that work now.

Advances (?) in data-driven parenting

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2013年7月10日 13:03:00 +0000

I don't have a lot to say about two items that appeared today on data-driven parenting. Suffice it to say, they say more about the parents than the child. That said, how can I, as an academic economist, be adverse to gathering more data.

First, there is this article in Slate about obsessively keeping data on your child. The point is (a) you can do it and (b) it is nice to get to know your child. The classic quote:

It occurred to us that while our baby daughter couldn’t communicate directly beyond crying, we could have a deeply intimate, beneficial conversation with her through data. We realized that we could quantify and study her in an attempt to optimize all of her development.

It also has the point that the primary driver of parenting behaviour is the ability to judge over parents and this article has that in spades.

Second, and I am not making this up (click here) the New York Times reports on a new innovation to help data-driven parents out; a digital diaper. Apparently, the idea literally came to him:

"I was driving with my wife and daughter one day, when my wife asked if the baby had wet herself," said Yaroslav Faybishenko, Pixie’s founder. "I realized she was sitting in data."

And here it is:

In contrast to those things, the technology behind the diaper is relatively simple, and it owes as much to the quality of smartphone cameras as it does to clever chemistry.

At the front of the diaper is a patch with several colored squares. Each square represents a different interaction with a protein, water content or bacteria, and changes color if it detects something is outside of normal parameters. There is also a neutral white square, to more easily check for color changes in the other squares.

A smartphone app takes a picture and can make precise readings of the chemical data based on color changes. The data is uploaded to a central location, where physicians can get information about how the child is doing and whether the baby needs further testing.

Suffice it to say, if you aren't doing this you aren't really data-driven. If course, if you are doing this, then good luck to you. My personal opinion is that even with this it is pretty hard to get data. In the future, we need a sensor in the diaper along with a bluetooth connection and we will get some results. It may also forecast the "rate of smell explosion" so that you can work out how urgently you need to change the diaper.

Anyhow, I have written about "data-driven" parenting before and probably will do so again.

Lemonade Stands and Entrepreneurship

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2013年7月09日 13:28:00 +0000

This article in Slate appeared this morning and soon after an email pointing to it appeared in my inbox. The sender thought the article's author, Michal Lemberger, was just baiting me. They were right.

The article claims that having kids run a lemonade stand teaches them nothing about capitalism, entrepreneurship or, I guess, hard work. The evidence for this comes from a single experience from the writer's own children.

My kids had a lemonade stand, and it didn’t look like any version of capitalism I’ve ever seen. If we really want our kids to learn how the modern American economy works, we’re going to have to take off the kid gloves.

Here is what happened. Her kids aged 4 and 6 wanted to set up a lemonade stand. With what appears to be a considerable amount of help from their father, they set up their stand and were charging 50 cents per glass. No explanation is given as to where they got that price point but as it turned out lemonade was only part of the product these kids were selling.

The kids then just started shouting out their ads onto the street. But it was the location that proved important.

I suspect that location may have had more to do with their success than advertising. We set up the stand across the street from our house, in front of a community center with a park and heavily used basketball courts. On that busy corner, their lemonade sold out in less than half an hour.

There was no explanation also given as to location choice. Again, I suspect there was no thought given to that, it was the parent's choice of convenience.

But it turned out the sold out lemonade was no barrier to profits.

One woman stopped her car, rolled down the window, handed over a dollar, and then refused to take the plastic Solo cup offered to her. An older couple out for a stroll bought a round for three twentysomething strangers who were already on their way to the corner 7-Eleven to get change. The pitchers were empty by the time the three guys got back, but one of them handed my daughter three bucks anyway. And not a single person who bought lemonade from my children would take the change owed them.

And apparently with that, capitalism died. Lemberger claims that when their kids were obviously making money from a combination of cuteness and community, they then didn't get to learn the lessons of capitalism. But I have to ask, in what friggin' world did they not learn those lessons. They learned that they only have to stand outside a look cute and life will be a lot easier. And from the economics of the labour market this is pretty much borne out everywhere. Just check out this book by Dan Hamermesh, aptly titled Beauty Pays, if you want evidence of that.

This happens all of the time. We were once at a bakery buying bread. I was with my then 7 year old and 13 year old daughters. The baker then asked me: "She is so cute, can I give her a cookie?" She was talking to the 7 year old with dimples blaring. I said sure. The 13 year old then exclaimed, "you know I am right here!" I said, "I know. Cuteness wears off. Your time has passed." Now that is how you teach your kids about the harsh realities of capitalism.

In any case, Lemberger never really set out to teach his kids about capitalism or entrepreneurship. The only idea her kids had was to have lemonade stand. First, she doesn't appear to have let them set the price. That would require them to understand and pay for the costs of their business but there appeared to be a complete family endowed subsidy -- although in a Mitt Romney way that is pretty much how many entrepreneurs get started. Nonetheless, when my kids went to the streets, they set the price and, as it turned out, did it innovatively as well. There wasn't even a maths lesson there.

Second, the kids didn't choose location. This is the other dimension of entrepreneurial choice for the lemonade business. Worse than that, she knew that they had an easy location near a park. So it just wasn't going to be hard. The same applies to the time the stand was open. In other words, there was hardly any risk of failure here. Again, when my son took to the streets last year, location was the thing he had to consider.

Third, if your concern is that the kids were plying their wears for charity, then send them out to do it again. I am pretty sure, the cuteness factor will wear off if they are out there everyday. There was no return outing and Lemberger appeared reluctant to ever let it happen again. But it was doing it again and again that would teach them what was going on here. The problem with most kid-entrepreneurship is that it is once off. Real entrepreneurship is about sustainability but these kids were given no opportunity to work that out.

Finally, in the end, Lemberger, apparently disgusted at the lack of true capitalism, ended up taking the kids profits and donating it to charity. In what world would that teach them about capitalism? It might teach them about socialism. But in any case, as Lemberger found out, the kids actually didn't think of this at work at all. Despite having no profits, they wanted to do it again. But denied the opportunity to continue until it was out of their system, they even failed to get a lesson about over-consumption (that is, the law of diminishing marginal utility).

These days there are many opportunities for kids to learn about entrepreneurship. From the traditional lemonade stand to the new application development. But don't dress up a parenting activity as some broad statement about the world and how it has changed. That is what Lemberger did here and I suspect she was the one distressed that her kids had an easier road in life. The point here is that one of the key parenting choices is how to make that road a little harder when it is in your control. Lemberger has not exercised that choice and should be ignored.

Economists arguing over child enrichment

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2013年6月23日 13:10:00 +0000

The story: Economist 1 writes a piece "Defending the 1%." Economist 2 writes a blog post criticising that article on the basis of "equality of opportunity." Economist 1 returns fire noting that Economist 2 doesn't have kids and so at least on one point doesn't know what he is talking about.

So now the details. At the basis of some arguments defending income and wealth inequality is that the rich are getting what they deserve because of effort in at least exploiting their naturally endowed skills. The objection is that that outcome does not occur because there is inequality of opportunity and so the rich are getting more than they deserve because their parents were and are rich. A pretty simple and old story really.

What about going to the evidence? Economist 2 in the above is Paul Krugman and he displayed this graph.

It shows what parents spend on enrichment activities for their children. You know, piano lessons, high quality child care, private school and summer camp. Krugman then writes:

Maybe all that spending is wasted — but I doubt it. We have become both a more unequal society and a society with more unequal opportunities.

Economist 1, Greg Mankiw, then countered:

I am a parent of three, and as far as I know, Paul does not have any children. So I have probably spent a lot more on this category than he has. And I can report that much of it is consumption, not investment.
A book I probably should have cited in my article is Judith Harris's The Nurture Assumption. The main thesis of this great book is that, beyond genes, parents matter far less than most people think. Raising three children has made me appreciate Harris's conclusion. It is frustrating how little influence we parents have.

Since we are going mostly on experience, it is clear to me that Economist 1 is right here. My kids are just being packed off to summer camp and I know it is pure consumption. They are very happy and we are very happy to have a month off. That said, I am hoping one of them can come back with a marketable iPhone app.

I think it is a reasonable hypothesis that Economist 2 didn't know what he was talking about because (a) he didn't read the actual evidence which tips us that most of these expenditures do nothing and (b) he doesn't have kids. There are times where that matters.

But here is the thing: so frigging what? We are now going to move what some people thought of as investment into the consumption bundle. But consumption for whom. If it is consumption for the parents, then it is I guess part of the 'reward' for 'high effort' if you believe in that. But if it is consumption for the children, then it is just an early passing of the rich wealth to them. In other words, they are rich right now because their parents are rich. If the basis for defending the 1% is that the individual gets the reward because self-interest matters but you have to tweak this to the individual's dynasty getting the reward to make it hold together, then that seems to make Economist 2's point that there is inequality of opportunity for consumption at least. Either way, if the goal of all this discourse is to educate the public on the debate, we aren't quite getting anywhere with this one.

Ironic punishments: Snot edition

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2013年3月23日 17:01:00 +0000

Ironic punishments: Snot edition

Apparently one of the behavioural challenges as a parent is to convince children to wipe snot and other related facial dirt from their face in an appropriate manner. It turns out that they learn fairly quickly that transference of snot to other body parts is not pleasant and look for alternative means. I know this because I have observed a two year old of mine toddle up to their mother saying "I want a hug," getting said hug and, while the parent was suitably caught up in a loving embrace, deposit a snotty nose onto the parent's shoulder. The parent is completely fooled by this, interpreting the snot swiping as some affectionate nuzzling. A shrewd child learns to also throw I legitimate hugs regularly so as to hide their parent's role as a handkerchief.

As they get older parental hugs are not as easy to come by. So the child resorts to the use of their own clothing. This is usually a sleeve but again a sophisticated child might note that this gives rise to external evidence and so instead uses the underside of a sleeve or shirt as a covert alternative. There is also the issue of using other materials but as those post is nauseating enough I'm not going to go there.

Child No.2, who is now 12, is not a sophisticated snot transferer. For some reason he continues to use the outside sleeve and continues to be caught regularly. He does this with a tissue already i his pocket! He even does this with short sleeves. Then again these aren't far from the nose.

We haven't been able to nip this in the bud and are worrying he may not grow out of it. So we are resorting to ironic punishments.

Our first of these is to remove his shirt privileges. He literally loses his shirt if he transgresses. This is embarrassing if in public and cold if outside. But it hasn't done the trick.

My new initiative which I have not yet had an opportunity to put into practice is to go with it. OK, so your shirt is a tissue now? Well then it is a public good. Anyone in the family can use it as a tissue. Even he admitted this punishment was a "good one" but I know it requires a supply of snotty noses on hand to really have an effect.

Anyhow given that spring allergies are around the corner I thought I'd post this to see if anyone else wants to share their strategies for dealing with perverse snot behaviour in older children.

Bullying, what is it good for?

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2013年2月18日 14:00:00 +0000

You know what the thing about bullying is? I don’t like it.

"Great," you are probably thinking (rolling your eyes), "this is sure going to be deep and insightful post."

But I have thought about it and that is what I’ve got. I thought about it because I was – I’d like to say fortunate enough but I guess I can’t – to receive an advance copy of Emily Bazelon’s new book, Sticks and Stones, subtitled Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy. This is a book written for adults and, indeed, all adults with some responsibility towards kids. And as one of those responsible adults, I came away from the book thinking that "bullying really sucks and really I would prefer it didn’t exist. It’s just so unfair."

However, if my teenage daughter can whine to me about things that are hard to deal with that she just would prefer wouldn’t be there – such as the cost of paintballs or why her clean clothes haven’t emerged from the magic basket that transports them to her closet or the fact she has to write another poem in iambic pentameter – I don’t see why I can’t just join her.

Bazelon is not an unfamiliar person toreaders of this blog. Her kids must be about the same age is mine and so for a good eight or so years, her issues in Slate were my issues too. I didn’t always see eye to eye on her approaches but I was forced to think about my own after reading her work.

This time it was different. Bazelon was not motivated by anything that was happening to her kids – or if she was, she didn’t say. Instead, she was motivated by the criminal trial of six teenagers accused essentially of bullying another teenager, Phoebe Prince, to take her own life. This turned out to be a case of prosecutorial over-reach that makes what happened to Aaron Swartz look very tame in comparison.

What Bazelon does is centre a broad investigation of bullying focussing on three children. The first, Monique, is a straightforward (if that is the right word), case of a bullied child. The second, Jacob, is the bullying of a gay kid. And the third is not Phoebe Prince but Flannery, one of the six accused of bullying her. Bazelon does something that, when you think about it, is surely extraordinarily difficult. In each case, she investigates and tries to work out what really went on.

I cannot imagine what that was like. The easy case would have been Flannery because there were court documents that assembled evidence and testimony (including texts and Facebook posts). But the other cases, she would have been forced to be the judicial investigator; basically disentangling the hearsay, the inferences, the judgments, the interpretations to find out what was real and what wasn’t. All by interviewing and talking to teenagers. In reading this, I kept wondering what kept Bazelon herself from just shouting at them all asking them "to get a grip." I know there were times I was doing that, rolling my eyes so much that they hurt. "Oh please, you cannot be serious."

But Bazelon kept her cool and ploughed on. She took us back and forth from the stories to the academic literature on the subject. She touched on cases written about in the past. And she kept an eye on where she wanted us all to go.

And where I ended up was: I was essentially grateful; which I know contradicts how I seem to have begun this post but bear with me. Right, at this moment, my kids are not being bullied and have never been bullied to the extent of the stories Bazelon tells. It is just hard not to breathe a sigh of relief at that because what was happening to the kids in Sticks and Stones was a parental nightmare. To be sure, we, as parents, have had to deal with a bullied child (I’ll come to that in a bit) but it was dealt with and things are very good now. But it is hard not to read this book and really just think that we are currently very lucky. Not just to not have bullied children but what personally would seem much worse, to be the parent of a bully.

To cover this, I am going to reverse the order that Bazelon chose and start with Flannery. Flannery was not bullied but, as I am pretty sure Bazelon wants us to conclude, she was bullied be the system. She was the victim of a culture that finds it easy to assign simple blame in the face of tragedy. She was also the victim of a enforcement approach that now values "making a public example" of would be wrong-doers. In that she disproportionately is harmed by the system trying to minimise future enforcement actions. Again, the analogy to Aaron Swartz would not be lost on anyone. This time, however, it was another, essentially troubled kid who died. The problem is that in some ways more lives were taken with her. All of this perhaps could have been avoided.

But this also reveals the difficulties associated with bullying. It can be mis-diagnosed. Accusations of bullying may be made where none exist. Bullying may be ignored or passed off as something else where it does exist. And this is all made worse by the fact that it is all hard to deal with even when it is properly diagnosed. This is because teenage social existence involves an awful about of pain and learning. The issue is when to intervene.

The second case of Jacob is an insidious one. Jacob was openly gay at school in much the same way as other kids are openly geeky or otherwise express a preference from differing from the norm and thereby drawing attention to themselves. It is so easy to cringe and plead for conformity just to avoid the pain. But that is precisely the wrong response. One does not necessarily expect Jacob to be popular as a result of his chosen style but when he is subject to trauma as a result of it we are creating a less free society if it is allowed to continue. The appropriate response isn’t to hide or to bide your time until you can move to an accepting group; creating social ghettos. Instead, it is to bake acceptance into the pie early.

The first case of Monique is, in many respects, what should trouble parents the most. There is a sense in which it is typical. Basically, Monique seemed to be doing just fine at school until one day, it all changed. And by one day, I mean one day. Monique went to school an unbullied although not necessarily popular kid and came home a bullied and isolated one. And it never stopped. And it was miserable. And for some reason, it seems to happen in almost every grade of almost every school in the world. I saw it happen and it happened for a time to me when I was in high school. And when it is bad, to the beleaguered parents there is no easy course of action.

The problem parents face is that they usually suspect it will pass. They advise changing strategies, avoiding the bullies and reassurance it will get better. The problem is that the reason this has occurred is that there is a bully playing this game. The bullied child is a unwitting victim of a bully’s desire to exercise power. For them to rise to the top of the social heap, they have to demonstrate some form of superiority over another. The bullied child is their victim and, moreover, they just don’t do it once and move on. Instead, it seems to be a continual target. In other words, bullies don’t spread the pain around. Not only is it wrong for obvious reasons, it is fundamentally unfair. Why my child and not some other? If it is some other, then I wouldn’t have to deal with it.

Dealing with it is hard. My daughter became the target of a bully a few years ago. The bully wasn’t popular and had a history of bad behaviour. But she made my daughter miserable. Eventually, like Monique’s parents, this was only solved by moving schools. In our case, we had other reasons to shift schools than the bully but she was at the top of our daughter’s list. Indeed, she vetted new schools herself to see if there were likely bullies among them. Somewhat ironically, during the time we were in the US, the bully actually moved schools herself – to my daughter’s new school! It won’t surprise you that this was one of the things at the top of her list advocating a move to Canada rather than going back to Australia. And to tell you the truth, we were grateful with a by-product of that decision not having to deal with the bully issue again.

Bazelon covers a lot of ground with all sorts of strategies that can be deployed to mitigate the bullying problem. It is all good advice. And it is all hard work. And it has to start early and continue on while involving the kids, their parents and the school. She spends an entire chapter on social media that concludes that those running Facebook and the like should also be part of the conversation. Bazelon has shielded her own sons from Facebook for the moment. As you may know, this is where I partsignificant company with her. I want my kids on Facebook early and with some parental supervision. That way I have a chance of helping them work through these things. Moreover, in social media, all of the evidence is in writing. That makes a difference in many ways. But importantly, and I have seen this, there is much mutual support and good social behaviour there as there is bad. And to have perspective you need to see it all and not just hear about things when there is a problem.

My point is this. For the most part, incidents of bullying are fundamentally random from the perspective of the parent. It would be awful for someone to read these cases and cocoon their child. For the vast majority of kids, they won’t be subject to the worst cases. Freedom socially is an important thing that they must have in order to really learn.

That said, it seems to happen all of the time to someone. If it is happening to your kid now, I suspect this book isn’t going to help much. You probably have already investigated the literature, talked with teachers and anguished at the situation. Once it happens, you are no longer an objective player in this as a parent.

But it could happen to you. And the message of this book is that you need to think about these things in advance. Sticks and Stones may break your heart on the way, but being forced to think about this when you are less emotionally invested, will never hurt you.

So I don’t care if you, like me, don’t like bullying. But deal with it today by taking a few hours to prepare yourself with this book.

An allergic story

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2013年2月15日 14:43:00 +0000

A well-known economist friend of mine wrote the following post on Facebook. It follows an algorithmic bent typical of those in my tribe so I asked for permission to post it here.

How to have your very first allergy attack when you have just turned two, by [a two-year old].

0. Prepare for incident by refusing to have your nails filed.

1. Try new food.

2. Start breaking out in hives. Scratch yourself with your pre-sharpened nails. Scream "tummy itch!" Draw blood. Repeat.

3. When adults try to give you spoonfuls of Benadryl, spit it back in their faces. Scream "mess!" Make sure it is distributed widely so no one has any idea if you swallowed any.

4. When adults hold you down and put a dropper full of Bendryl in the back of your throat, stay quiet for a moment until they think you must have swallowed it, spray it in their faces and all over yourself. Scream "Mess!" again and smear Benadryl on the bleeding wounds where you gashed yourself.

5. Scream and scratch yourself all the way to urgent care. Get increasingly red and puffy.

6. When you arrive at the doctor's office, recognize the place as the same place where you got a shot last month and start screaming "Poke leg! Poke leg!" Allow this to distract you from ripping at your clothing.

7. Writhe in your mother's arms as she attempts to explain to person at counter that you need to see a triage nurse. Scream "Lady no poke leg!" at her just to be sure she will not give you a shot.

8. Run around to see all the toys that the very ill looking children are playing with. Try to grab their face masks and get angry when your mother prevents you from getting near. Resist when your mother suggests you should sit in a chair with her.

9. Calm down when your mother pulls out the iPad. Play a game for 30 seconds. Switch to videos. Notice that some annoying adult has turned off the sound. Turn the sound back on as loud as it goes. Immediately attract a crowd of very ill looking children.

10. When your mother turns the volume down, scream "Loud!" as loud as you can. Hurl iPad to the floor. Hurl yourself to the floor. Scream "I fell down!" as loud as you can. Attempt to rip your clothes off, revealing that your entire body is now even brighter red, puffed out, streaked, and punctuated by self-inflicted gashes. Notice that parents of very ill looking children now look alarmed and are holding their kids back from you.

11. Remain on floor thrashing and scratching until nurse calls you in. Shout "Lady no poke!" to be sure you will not get a shot.

12. Behave nicely while getting examined. Listen to your mother breathe a sigh of relief that your airways are fine. Listen to lady discuss whether you can be restrained to get Benadryl or whether you need a shot of Benadryl.

13. Start scratching and flailing again. Wriggle out of your mother's lap and throw yourself on the floor. Bang your head on the way down. Scream and scratch more. Make sure to also rub your face so that any germs on the floor make their way to your nose and eyes. Scream louder when your mother wipes your hands.

14. Wonder why the lady decides you should get a shot.

15. Remain on the floor until the doctor comes in, screaming whenever your mother speaks or moves towards you. Repeat steps 12-14.

16. Scream bloody murder when more ladies arrive with shots.

17. Receive shot. Decide mother's lap is better than the floor. Curl up there and fall asleep while completing observation period.

To all this I added: 19. When wake up, ask for new food.

This kid is alright although the parents are somewhat traumatised. As it turns out the food in question was Indian masala sauce and so the reaction was likely to cashews there.

Canadians Irrational Fear of Snow Days

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2013年2月09日 18:44:00 +0000

My 13 year old daughter walks to school yesterday.

Just before we were going to move to Canada, many people in the US told us how different those Canadians were. Now we had met many Canadians and, to us, they seemed pretty darn normal and definitely polite. So we put it down to the Americans being the different ones.

During our first winter here there wasn't much or really any snow. But yesterday, a snow storm hit (as it did later on for the North-East of the US). This storm generated about a foot of snow, exactly as forecast. Now when we were in Boston that forecast would have triggered a snow day. Basically, school would be cancelled and we would be expected to stay home and off the roads. We must have had about four or five of these during our two Boston winters.

But here in Toronto, things were different. I would have conversations like this:

"So do you think they are going to call a snow day tomorrow?"

"No way. I can't remember there ever being a snow day. The University of Toronto has never had one and neither has my kid's school."

"The whole time I was growing up, we had only one snow day. My parents were so upset they marched us to school anyway just to check and left us standing at the school gates for an hour."

"Wasn't that terrible."

"Noooo. We wanted to go to school. What was terrible was that the teachers didn't show up."

The Canadians take pride in the fact that they don't let snow interfere with their intention to pursue normal activities. I say intention because when you get a foot of snow, it interferes with normal activities. This was driven home to me literally yesterday morning as I tried to drive the kids to school, ploughing through the snow as we went, windshield freezing up in the negative 10 degrees Celsius temperature. What were these people thinking? No one should be out on a day like this.

Thomas Schelling in his Nobel prize speech remarks at how amazing it was that for more than 60 years, no nuclear bomb has been dropped in anger. His thesis was the longer time went without a bomb, the more repugnant the idea of using it became. Jerry Seinfeld posits a similar way of keeping count on activities as a way to avoid procrastination.

For Canadians, this is encapsulated in the 'days since the last snow day' count. Yesterday's storm was the worst in five years. Five years ago, therefore, they had a worse storm. It was so bad that they had to bring out the army to clear the road. And did they have a snow day then? Noooo. The kids remembered the army on the streets as they drove or trudged by. In the real world, when the army is on the streets the public shouldn't be there save for an Armistice or Remembrance Day parade. For these Canadians they behave like the dark night in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "it's just a few flurries. That won't stop us" as their arms fall off from frostbite.

Now, as it turns out, my kids go to a more international school than is usual. So when they got there, half the class hadn't shown up. Why? They knew better unlike ourselves.

So what did they do that day? Well, and remember it was negative 10 degrees and a snow storm out, they increased the number and length of recesses and played outside! Basically, they doubled down on the snow day. Not only did they not stay away from the snow, they took it as a signal to get down with it. Suffice it to say, my two youngest kids had the best day ever.

That was until the drive home. That is something that usually takes about 15 minutes from my work as I navigate through the Toronto streets to pick up scattered children. Yesterday, it took 2 hours. Why? Because there is a hill going north in Toronto. Not a big hill but a hill nonetheless. And cars were just struggling to get up it. Not most cars but one or two without snow tyres etc. People got out to help push only for the car to slide back towards them. It was chaos ... the sort of chaos that would normally cause people to stay at home.

I proclaimed that we would 'go rouge' on our definition of snow days in the future. I would look at the forecast and if it seemed insane to go out, we would all stay at home and bugger the consequences. They can send the army for us for all I care.

"No way you can do that Dad."

"Why not?"

"Well, I'm not going to hold to it. My school has never had a snow day and everyone showed up today. I am not missing a minute of class!"

"Then you are on your own ..."

"I'll walk [it would be 8 kilometers]. I'm not stopped for just a little flurry."

"Or a flesh wound."

"Exactly."

I guess you could say, at least for one member of our family, assimilation achieved. Well played, Canada.

The Classroom Seating Problem

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2013年1月10日 13:32:00 +0000

I have blogged about the issues of matching students in classes previously. Last night, my son had a task ...

Me: "What are you doing?"

Son: "The teacher asked me to do the class seating plan."

Me: "Sounds like fun."

Son: "No, it isn't fun. I don't know how teachers can do this several times a year. There are four girls who want to be on the same table and three boys. There is one boy who wants to be in a corner. And there are several people who can't be near each other. All that and it has to be boy-girl, boy-girl. It can't be done."

Me: "Well, you know +Al Roth won a Nobel prize for doing this with thousands of people. Some of them married."

Son: "This is harder."

Me: "That doesn't seem ..."

Son: "Did he know any of these people? Did he have to turn up to class with them each day if he got it wrong?"

Me: "I guess not."

Son: "Maybe he should visit Middle school and deal with really hard problems."

He must have spent 2-3 hours on the problem. Eventually, he decided that the only solution involved re-arranging the design of the classroom to a 'horseshoe' format. It also transpired that the teacher had made the problem even harder as he was required to take into account who would work well together and who might be disruptive together. So it just wasn't about student preferences at all.

This morning he went to school quite anxious. Having submitted his proposal last night, he had received about 13 lobbying emails from his classmates. I don't think economics is going to invent any algorithms to re-solve all of that any time soon.

10 Years of Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2013年1月10日 13:26:00 +0000

I should have been paying more attention but I missed the 10th anniversary of my blogging career. It is more of a technical anniversary anyway. It started with this post on 3rd January 2003 which was, predictably, about toilet training. Some of the words of that post found its way into Parentonomics. But I actually didn't return again to this blog until 2006 when I literally rediscovered it as I decided to get into the parenting blog thing in ernest.

In the meantime, I started the Core Economics blog which involved into a multi-authored blog involving Australian academic economists. In 2011, I co-started the Digitopoly blog relating to economics and the digital world. I have also contributed to HBR Blogs, a venture that led to my recent book, Information Wants to be Shared. Finally, I contribute intermittently to a host of blogs at ContributionEconomy.net. I have really loved how blogging has changed my life prompting me to become both more informed and more engaged outside of academia. In addition to books, it even led to at least one published paper and certainly numerous policy advances.

This past year, my parenting blogging has appeared first at Forbes.com. However, I was recently informed by them that they were changing focus and that my blog would be sunset. So there will be no more of that and my parenting blogging will return here; a place that is more natural in any case.

Thanks to all those regular readers who have continued to visit along the way. I realise the frequency of posts has dropped off as my children have become older but hopefully it will still be a place where parenting and economics can meet for some time yet.

A Talmudic Shipping Problem

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2012年12月24日 19:07:00 +0000

We don't do Christmas but I do encourage my kids to take advantage of Christmas specials. So when ThinkGeek offered a 20% discount on orders over 100ドル my kids knew they had an opportunity.

It turns out that working out what you might want is quite tricky. This is because ThinkGeek has clearance items like Giant Inflatable Robot Fists that apparently no one other than my son wanted. But they eventually did it and their cart looked like this.

They came to me to enter credit card information.

"OK but I need to know what I am taking out of each of your bank accounts?"

"Well, just what each of us paid for what we wanted."

"Yes, but what about shipping? That's 42ドル.84 to Canada. What are each of you paying for that?"

"Well, we will divide it by three."

"Then your 8 year old sister, who is ordering one Hair Bow and a few Guitar picks will end up paying 14ドル.28 for that alone when her stuff only cost 3ドル.98. You need to come up with something fairer."

And then the problem ensued. What was fair? They would allocate the shipping costs using some other dimension.

Child No.1 argued that they divide it on the basis of the number of items ordered. Child No.2 argued that they divide it on the basis of the price paid. So they did the maths. This is what they came back with.

Well, Child No.1 was shrewd. While dividing on items had her pay much more than Child No.2 for shipping it was the better deal. It was also better for Child No.2. However, the amount for Child No.3 was still above what I would have regarded as fair. So they proposed to use the price-based cost allocation.

"I'm still not sure that is fair. Your sister is order very light weight things. Surely they don't contribute as much to shipping?"

"Well, how will we tell? We don't know what ThinkGeek is doing."

"You'll have to work that out."

So they went back and decided to look at what it would cost to ship each of these separately. For Child No.1 it was 29,ドル for Child No.2 it was 31ドル and for Child No.3 it was 6ドル.95. It turns out that weight was a consideration but there was some fixed component for each order -- perhaps for the box. The two eldest then tried to assert that the original 1ドル.67 allocation to their sister was fair.

"But is she really causing that amount of cost? What happens to shipping if you just leave off her order?"

With a sigh, they went back and did that run. It turned out that it made no difference to shipping cost.

"So shouldn't she pay zero then?"

"No, she is still getting a benefit of sharing our box. What is more, she is getting a discount. That wouldn't happen if not for us."

"Then how much should she pay?"

"She should pay an amount equal to the discount she is getting. She should pay 1ドル."

"But that means you two get her discount. Why should you get all of that?"

I argued, on Child No.3's behalf, that she should only have to pay 50 cents and she should share half her discount with her siblings. Child No.1 dug her heels in and argued with Child No.2 who want to accept the deal.

That took a little while but eventually they came back and argued Child No.3 should share 50 cents of her discount and contribute 50 cents towards 'the box.' While it was the same as the previous accepted deal, it was better argued so I accepted that.

Many will recognise this as a classic cost allocation problem. Eventually, with prompting, the kids ended up with a solution that was in the 'core.' This is something that Talmudic scholars had discovered centuries ago.

It was then time to finally order the goods. Unfortunately, this negotiation (and maths exercise) had taken too long. By the time it was resolved an hour or so ago, ThinkGeek had ended their promotion. The discount and an important basis for the whole exercise was gone. It turns out that this was one of those time sensitive negotiations but we didn't quite know it. Another lesson to accompany the maths and social choice of the day.

I persuaded the kids that they might be better waiting until December 26. There was argument over that. I fear this issue will last all week.

A Fear Tolerant Equilibrium

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua Gans) — 2012年12月16日 18:49:00 +0000

Like everyone else, it has taken me some days to even begin to process the tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. There is a part of me that wonders if we ever will but then again, evil things have happened before and somehow life goes on.

In thinking about this, I kept coming back to the strangeness of what Americans find acceptable and how different the experience is for those who come from many other countries, like me, from Australia. Let me provide a story that illustrates this.

From 2010 to 2011, we lived in Brookline MA. This is a fairly prosperous community with a very strong public school system. The strength of that system attracted residents who cared about the education of their children and that, in turn, fostered a community around those schools. One of the aspects of that community were regular meetings between parents to discuss issues. We hosted one of these meetings, which is why I was at it, amongst Grade 7 parents. The attendees discussed many things but one topic for conversation was "rules for where your children can have playdates." As it turned out, this is not something we had thought enough about to really have rules but I guess we implicitly had them. And I can't remember what rules emerged in the discussion except for one; the very first one mentioned. "Well, I don't allow my kids to go over to a house that has a gun." There were nods all around in broad agreement but to my partner and I, our jaws dropped.

This was a level of experience that had never occurred to us. We had simply not thought that there might be a gun in people's homes anywhere, let alone Brookline. But as it turned out there were. And I guess our initial reaction was that that sounded like a pretty good rule and we should probably adopt it.

It didn't take us long to start to wonder more about this. First of all, how do you know? Do you like ask the parents if they have a gun and then implement your rule accordingly? How does that discussion work?

Second, what precisely was the issue with the gun in the house? The first thing that I thought about was that it wasn't safe. The kids might play with it and it is safe to say that is a bad idea. But actually it wasn't clear that was the issue the other parents were worried about. The guns were usually locked away because, after all, the house had kids too. What the other parents seemed to be worried about was the type of person who would have a gun in the house. But I didn't know what to think about there either. I mean there are so many things that I might not like about other parents and having a gun is not necessarily at the top of the list. What would I be worried about? Were they violent? Were they too scared? Did they have a strong protective streak? Or was this a sign of mental instability? Something did not sit right about screening on guns. After all, some of the weird views parents express at these parent meetings gives me much more pause!

In the end, we left the US and moved to Canada where there is no need to have a 'gun in the house' policy so it became a moot point. But the whole experience was a wake up call as to how different it is in the US.

At some level, the US seems more tolerant of living in a fearful equilibrium. It seems obvious to so many outside the US, that it is better to keep guns tightly controlled, if only to keep them out of the hands of the mentally unstable that time and time again, the reaction to events where guns have been in the hands of the mentally unstable and done harm has led to more gun control rather than less. For instance, when 35 people died at the hands a single assailant in the town of Port Arthur Tasmania, the conservative Prime Minister, John Howard, instituted strong controls (although not a prohibition) on semi-automatic and automatic weapons. Moreover, realising that stopping future sales wasn't enough, engaged in a buy-back scheme to remove 600,000 existing weapons from the public hands. Think about it, this was expensive costing half a billion dollars and requiring a 1 percent tax on all income. (The scheme actually had a statistically significant effect on both gun related homicides and suicides). Here is Howard's response to the Newtown tragedy.

But what remains true is that there is no 100 percent protection. Someone determined and calculating can do terrible things as the Norwegian 2011 massacre demonstrated. That led to serious policing reorganisation but gun control was already tight. Interestingly, it did not lead to a weakening of gun controls.

Why do I say that is interesting? Well, it is worth considering the baseline argument in the US underpinning the right to bear arms. It comes from a belief that guns and gun proliferation actually deters gun crime. The quintessential case would be a mentally unstable person opening fire in a public place only to be cut short by gun carrying citizens. Better still, and this applies less to the mentally unstable, a would be murder would be deterred entirely. The point here is that the fear of armed crimes fuels a baseline argument for more gun ownership. In that respect, it is as much a symptom as a cause of that fear.

But how does this relate to the particular problem of protecting school children? One thing that gun control advocates and detractors appear to share is that school children should be protected from gun crime. The gun control method is to remove the guns. This won't prevent calculated criminals from getting guns but it may well prevent the mentally unstable ones from so doing. One of the things that came with the Australian gun laws was very strong monitoring of gun ownership.

What is the alternative view? The idea is that if there were more guns at hand, a gun criminal entering a school could be either deterred or stopped in their tracks. Now, for the mentally unstable, it does not seem plausible that deterrence is the issue. What about a gun-led response?

This is tricky on a number of levels. First of all, it is not necessarily an issue related to gun control at all. For instance, regardless of whether there is a right to bear arms, you could permit certain forms of security in schools. You could have guards or even arm teachers in some way. The point is that whether you choose to do that is unrelated as to whether you control guns elsewhere; although the need would be related.

Second, can it work? What would the plan be to defend a school? Should all schools in the US receive some combat training plus drills and contingency plans? That sounds expensive but what is interesting is that those who fear gun crime and believe counter-force is a response do not appear to be advocating this.

More likely is that trained security professionals are installed in the schools. Now I have had a taste of this. In Australia, my kids attended a Jewish day school. These schools received bomb threats and so there was always some security concern. There were security guards but they were not armed. The basic idea was that if there was some agitator, they could be dealt with. Perhaps if a bomb were being delivered there may be a little more warning. That was the idea.

One day some parents became concerned that that wasn't enough. So they moved to train more parent volunteers in hand-to-hand combat. As it was put to me, the logic was two fold. In both cases the logic was flawed. First, we were told that the security guards were low paid and so we couldn't expect them to really risk their lives for the children. Better to have parents there. Well, that was already wrong. If you believe the incentive issue for the security guard, it was even worse for the parents. They were parents of other kids. Did people really think that was better protection for their own kids? If I was the parent out there, I can tell you that it wouldn't be. In any case, as we have seen recently, teachers -- also low paid for what they were asked to do -- did have the motivation to protect the children.

The second argument was that with clearly visible parent volunteers (they would wear jackets) a would be criminal would see this and, if they are intent on doing damage, go to another school. While this argument was one that worked for one school it seemed to me to be morally abhorrent. You want to train parents in protection to get the crime to move to harm kids in other schools? That didn't work for me.

I wasn't alone amongst parents though of thinking that visible security was not what we were after. Yes, there were risks but living in a way that reacted to and acknowledged very low probability fears was not going to work.

The point, however, is a stronger one. When there is a non-zero probability of a gun related attack on schools, there is no way of countering that perfectly. You could put security into the schools but there is actually an incentive issue there, there is certainly an economics issue and there is an issue of the allocation of security strength. The last thing an education system needs is an arms race on protection. After all, the goal would be to be the most protected school in an area. That is a race to the bottom.

The alternative to all this is more guns in the community to prevent crime where-ever it might spring up. But the same issue -- you cannot eliminate fear -- remains. Israel which comes as close that situation as anywhere has not been able to stop terrorist attacks within its borders.

In any case, this is a digression. To the rest of the world, gun control is natural and obvious. Many in the US, were surprised when Rupert Murdoch tweeted as such two days ago. I wasn't surprised. He is an Australian and to non-US people, gun control seems obvious.

The question is why isn't it so obvious within the US. It could be a bad equilibrium. There are so many guns that it is (a) impossible to do anything about it and (b) that level of gun ownership leads to others wanting to have guns.

But I think there is also a tolerance for living in fear that exists in the US that doesn't exist elsewhere. To gun control opponents, they would rather live with the fear of another person with a gun potentially harming them and have that fear be acknowledged by a delegation of control to deal with that person themselves. This is the idea of putting safety in their own hands. They fear other people and also fear no other person can protect them.

To gun control advocates, they fear those with guns. This was the reaction of the Brookline parents. They fear that gun owners cannot be relied upon to be responsible. The vast majority are. So they often favour outright bans rather than the more intrusive licensing and regulations that other countries have put in place. In other words, they shy away from a nuanced response to gun control in favour of blanket bans. But those bans only last so long as someone invents around them.

The US is tolerant of fear. In this case, it manifests itself in lax gun control laws. But it also appears to lie at the root of other policies where the US differs from the rest of the world. Not having universal health care, comes with the notion that there it is alright for people to live in fear of a personal health crisis. And airport security perpetuates the fear of terrorism. In each case, the argument that something might be doing just because there will be less fear in the population does not win in the political process.

For the rest of us, last Friday was one of those days that reaffirmed our choices not to live in the US. We just can't understand it.