Centives

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson are two academics who have a forthcoming book titled Why Nations Fail. In their blog of the same name they explore some of the issues involved with the first post looking at…Uzbekistan. Highlights include:

• Uzbeikistan’s literacy, primacy school enrollment, and secondary school enrollment are close to 100%. Why then does its economy continue to underperform?
• The “schools” are actually better thought of as labour camps, with the teachers the labour recruiters. Once the students arrive to school they are sent off to pick cotton, the commodity that forms the backbone of Uzbeikistan’s economy.
• Parents are not asked for consent, and each child is required to pick between 20 and 60 kg of cotton in a day depending on their age.

To read more about the conditions that the children have to work under, what this means for human capital, and what the children do during their ‘holidays’ click here.

Source: Why Nations Fail

Via: Pretty much every economics blog we follow linked to this. It was enough to convince us to preorder the book.

Liz Mullen took a look at the work-life of those that have built a career in sports broadcasting. Some of the highlights of her report include:

• The day begins at 5:30am when the broadcasters first arrive at the studio. It ends about 12 hours later.
• The top broadcasters make a salary of around $5 million.
• Ex-coaches say that the travel schedule for broadcasters is more hectic than the schedule for coaches.
• Broadcasters also struggle with the idea of having to criticize their former teammates and colleagues.

To read more about why broadcasters rarely switch networks, why there has never been a better time to get into sports broadcasting, and a startling trend that allows broadcasters to build their brand, click here.

Source: Sports Business Daily

Via: Newmark’s Door

Apple, through iTunes, has become the top music retailer. However, as Chris Foresman at Arstechnica reports, the music files bought by millions of consumers are of extremely low quality. Some of the highlights of his article include:

• All music bought from iTunes is compressed so that the resulting music file takes up less space on your computer’s hard drive. The compression is done by removing various sounds from the music file.
• This means that some of the ‘good’ part of the song is lost. Even the highest quality song files bought on iTunes contain just 3% of the data in the original music file.
• Attempts to change this are unlikely to be successful, because higher quality song files require more memory capacity, and as long as relatively low capacity iPods are the most popular music devices, people will be wary of music files that don’t fit on their iPods.
• Artists have begun to alter their songs to accommodate individuals who purchase their songs from iTunes. One common trick is to boost the amount of bass to make up for the “tinny sound” produced by the low quality headphones that ship with iDevices.

To read about some of the other things that artists have begun to do to try to enhance the quality of their music for users of iTunes, other forms of media that are compressed, and the steps that Apple could take to ameliorate the problem, click here.

Source: Arstechncia

Eve Tahmincioglu reports on a study that analyzed the relationship between the content of individual Facebook profiles and career success. Some of the predictors of success in your job include:

• Emotional Stability – not too many passive-aggressive updates or emotional images.
• Extraversion – having lots of friends helps.
• Openness –the ability to consider alternative viewpoints is a good thing. In this context those who have travelled have an advantage since they’ve been exposed to different people and cultures
• A dislike of cats. Research shows that cat-people are less extraverted and agreeable than dog people.

To read more about whether or not human resource departments can (or should) consider these attributes before making the decision to hire somebody, the other qualities that predict career success, and some limitations of the study click here.

Source: Life Inc.

Bill Wyman writes that the people behind the Oscar’s have over the past few years been struggling with declining viewership. He argues that this is because the films that win awards are those that people don’t watch, giving audiences very little reason to tune into the Oscars. In 2007 they tried to combat this by increasing the number of films nominated for best picture from five to ten, in the hopes that the blockbusters that drew the biggest crowds would win some of the nominations. Wyman reports on the results of that initiative:

• In 2009, the year after the policy was implemented, the move was successful: the average gross of best picture academy award nominees went from about $70 million to $170 million.
• Since then however the average gross of academy award best picture nominees has fallen, reaching a low of $67 million this year – the same level it was at before the switch.
• The problem is that sequels and comic-book movies have become the most popular box-office hits, and the list of nominees would have to be expanded to much more than just 10 before the academy would be willing to consider them for best picture.
• 2011’s winner – The Artist – epitomizes this problem. It is essentially a silent film from France that has grossed just $28 million – making it the second lowest grossing film to ever win an award. (The highest grossing film of the year was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. It’d be difficult to convince the committee to consider that film for best picture.)
• Wyman concludes that there are two Hollywoods now. Those that produce movies that are deserving of Oscar’s best picture nominations, and those that pull in the crowds and generate revenues.

To read which low-grossing films spurred the committee to make the change as well how the Grammys deal with this problem, and the role that affirmative action could play, click here.

Source: Salon

Catherine Rampell who lists “Dollars to Donuts” as her motto recently took a look at the change in history over the professions that dominate the US government. Highlights include:

• The share of lawyers in the US Senate peaked at 51% in 1972. It currently stands at 37% and the trend is downward.
• Senators with military experience also peaked in 1972 at about 75%.
• Bankers and businessmen, on the other hand, have become a stronger force in the senate going from 11% in 1946 to 20% today.
• These patterns are broadly reflected in the House of Representatives as well.

To read about what has happened to the agriculturalist in the US government, as well as the specific breakdown of the houses by occupation click here.

Source: The New York Times