Career concerns and personnel investment in the Major League Baseball player draft

This study examines the relationship between career concerns of organizational decision-makers and their investments by analyzing data from Major League Baseball's (MLB) annual player draft. Career concerns for MLB general managers (GMs) can create incentives to prioritize near-term success and thus spend fewer draft resources on high school players (who, being younger than college players, are less likely to provide near-term benefit to an MLB team). Findings are consistent with this: underperforming expectations in the prior season leads teams to spend significantly smaller proportions of signing bonus dollars on high school players, an effect driven by GMs with relatively short tenures.     

ACCOUNTING FOR COMPLEMENTARY SKILL SETS: EVALUATING INDIVIDUAL MARGINAL VALUE TO A TEAM IN THE NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION

Identifying an individual worker's contribution to firm production can be difficult in a team setting where spillovers in labor productivity exist among team members. This paper studies a model of labor productivity where workers have heterogeneous abilities, and can differently affect the productivity of their fellow teammates. Applying the model to the setting of the National Basketball Association (NBA), I can identify the marginal value that a basketball player brings to a particular team lineup, both through his own individual contributions and his complementary contribution to teammates' productivity. Estimates from the model imply that teammates have a significant impact on individual player productivity, and that taking into account spillovers across teammates is important to assessing both overall team productivity and an individual player's contribution to team productivity. I then evaluate whether player complementarities are valued in the NBA labor market in terms of higher salaries, and find that they are undervalued, and that players are instead paid mainly for their individual offensive production. This creates an asymmetry between player incentives and the team objective. To assess the size of this inefficiency, the top trading cycle algorithm of Shapley and Scarf (1974) is used to identify a Pareto optimal matching between players and teams, that accounts for the complementarities between heterogeneous players' skill sets. (JEL J30, L25, L83, M51)     

ON EQUILIBRIUM PLAYER ORDERING IN DYNAMIC TEAM CONTESTS

We study equilibrium player ordering in a dynamic all-pay contest between two teams. The contest lasts two periods, and each team consists of two players who perform in different periods on behalf of their teams. The team with the higher aggregate output wins the prize, which is a public good to its players. Each team has one stronger player and one weaker player, and the two teams can differ in their values of the prize. The teams maximize their winning odds by strategically assigning their players to different periods. We find that when the intrateam heterogeneity in player ability is not excessive, the teams would allocate their stronger players to the late positions as the “anchormen.” When both the intrateam ability gap and interteam heterogeneity in teams' values become excessively large, the team with high value always places its stronger player in the early position, who will place a large bid to preempt late competition. (JEL C7, D7, D8)     

Insurrectional Arts: Restoring a Politics and Ethics of Attention

Abstract

This chapter is inspired by contrasting passages in two stories. The first is in Jamaica Kincaid's story, ‘The Embassy of Cambodia'. Her narrator, who is following a transversality between two forms of atrocity: those practiced by states, as in the case of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge exterminism and that inflicted on abused migrant domestic workers from third world countries. The narrator notes that people in her village are too distracted to heed peoples’ afflictions: ‘The fact is if we followed the history of every little country in this world?…?we would have no space left in which to live our own lives or to apply ourselves to necessary tasks?…?’. In contrast, in Daniel Alarcon's story, ‘Collectors', a seasoned convict is explaining to his new cell mate how to survive by reading signs as you watch the men in the prison yard:

Did they have their arms at their sides, or crossed in front of them? How widely did they open their mouths when they talked? Could you see their teeth were their eyes moving quickly, side to side? Or slowly, as if taking in every detail?     

In search of the glass ceiling: gender and recruitment to management in Norway's state bureaucracy1

There are still fewer female than male managers in Norway's state bureaucracy. This article asks if there are organizational barriers which prevent women from entering these positions. Is there really a glass ceiling, or must one look outside the organizational environment to find an explanation? Is it rather the case that the scarcity of female managers is caused by women's own preferences or their life situations outside work? Or do both contribute to the situation? The study shows that female managers are treated just as well as male managers in central parts of the state bureaucracy. Employers give equal shares of respect and attention to both genders. Female managers are encouraged to apply for the same number of jobs as men and are offered an equal number of jobs as men when they apply; in fact, women are offered more jobs than men, when one controls for the number of job applications. This indicates that organizational barriers are not the problem. The study also shows that there are no differences in work orientation between male and female managers. Female managers are just as ambitious as male managers. Nor do female managers find it more difficult than male managers to combine work and family life. So, how can one explain the low number of female managers? The study shows that one reason can be that female managers apply for management jobs less often than their male colleagues. The cause of this seems to be anticipated discrimination rather than lack of ambition or self‐confidence. However, this slows down women's movement into higher management positions in the state bureaucracy.     

OWN‐NATIONALITY BIAS: EVIDENCE FROM UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FOOTBALL REFEREES

We examine the existence and magnitude of own‐nationality bias. Using player‐match level data from 12 seasons of the UEFA Champions League (UCL) and referee assignment policies that pair players and referees from the same country, we determine the bias that referees exhibit toward players from their native country. Players officiated by a referee from the same country receive a 10% increase in beneficial foul calls. Referees' own‐nationality bias is more pronounced for national team players, players at home, and in later stages of the tournament. Elite referees exhibit as much, or more, own‐nationality bias as their less experienced counterparts. (JEL L83, J15)     

TMZ shifts blame from police to drugs in Floyd death coverage

Last week, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner released the cause of death report of George Floyd, and when celebrity website TMZ got hold of it, it started what seemed like blaming the victim. Floyd's murder by the police was followed by days of protests around the country. The Minneapolis police officers involved — one choked him to death with a knee on his throat while the others watched — were fired. But TMZ's headline said “M.E. says he died from heart attack, had fentanyl…,” and the article went on to interpret the death certificate as follows: “In other words … he suffered a heart attack while they were arresting him, and that complicated their efforts to subdue him. The report says George had fentanyl in his system, and they also found signs of recent methamphetamine use. It also says his manner of death is homicide.”     

Social work and therapy: Reclaiming a generic therapeutic space in child and family work

This paper reflects upon some mixed messages found in recent consultation and framework documents that have been issued as part of the debate surrounding the Government's emphasis upon education and training within its 'modernisation' agenda. It identifies the long-standing arguments about 'testing' versus 'learning' or 'contextual' paradigms and suggests that, perhaps, there is still scope to influence the future direction of social work. The author has drawn upon his research with social workers and their team managers in current post-qualification award programmes to argue for a renewed emphasis upon the inter-personal and relationship aspects of educational processes within more broadly conceived socio-cultural contexts. A focus upon reflexively defined concepts of 'engagement' and 'assessment' is used to explore constructivist arguments that locate individuals within an interplay of potential and constraints. It is argued that constructive engagements within revised conceptions of assessment can form the basis of a framework of continuing professional development that starts from and develops the unique realities of social work practice. This requires the committed involvement of more people, in the negotiation of a professional practice agenda for knowledge creation through relationships, rather than the imposition of more measures.     

Problems recruiting volunteers: Nature versus nurture

In a national study of public charities in the United States, we find that some organizations experience little difficulty recruiting volunteers while others report substantial problems. We study which organizations are more likely to report recruitment problems, separating the underlying forces for those problems into two camps. One, which we label “nature,” represents organizational conditions that cannot readily be overcome by a management response. The other, which we label “nurture,” represents organizational conditions that volunteer resource managers and other members of the top management team can directly influence as they seek to make their organization more inviting to prospective volunteers. We find some support for both camps, concluding that managers must be prepared to work with both immutable and malleable conditions when devising strategies for recruiting volunteers whose schedule and skills fit the organization's needs.     

Ilyenkov on Aesthetics: Realism,Imagination, and the End of Art

It is sometimes claimed that Evald Ilyenkov's writings, particularly those on the problem of the ideal, best express the philosophical framework of Russian cultural-historical psychology and activity theory. In this article I consider a neglected part of Ilyenkov's legacy: his work on aesthetics. Ilyenkov's writings on art cast significant light on his views of culture and mind and on the humanistic vision at the center of his philosophy. In 1964, on a rare trip to the West, Ilyenkov visited an exhibition of pop art in Vienna. He was disgusted by what he saw and wrote a scathing critique entitled "Chto tam, v Zazerkal'e?" ("What's there, through the looking glass?"). Does Ilyenkov's antipathy to pop-and, indeed, to so-called modern art in general-show him to be enamored of a narrow, reactionary form of socialist realism? If so, how can this be squared with his reputation as a creative, critical voice within Soviet Marxism? I examine Ilyenkov's other writings on aesthetics in search of a nuanced interpretation of his reaction to pop. I consider his idea that art should serve to cultivate higher forms of perception and his attendant concepts of aesthetic sensibility and imagination, and I explore how these notions contribute to his view of the unity of the cognitive virtues, his hostility to the division of labor, and his ideal of genuine human activity, guided by reason. Such themes are vital constituents of Ilyenkov's humanism, which celebrates free, creative activity as a life principle that must assert itself against the mortifying forces of mechanization and standardization. Although these ideas may not entirely redeem Ilyenkov's hostility to modern art, they reveal his stance to be far more sophisticated than appears at first sight.     

INTERMEDIATE INFORMATION,LOSS AVERSION,AND EFFORT: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

The present article empirically explores the impact of intermediate information on contestants' effort. Data involving substituted soccer players of the German Bundesliga indicate only weak evidence of a negative effect of ex ante heterogeneity on effort; in contrast, intermediate information, measured by goal difference at the time of substitution, significantly affects effort. Players exert the greatest effort when their team is leading by one goal and reduce their effort when it is trailing. When intermediate information suggests the contest is already decided, players from both teams reduce effort. This behavior is in line with loss aversion, such that players weight potential losses more than potential gains and adjust their effort accordingly. (JEL Z22, J41, M54)     

Traveling With the Ball Club: A Code of Conduct for Wives Only

When they accompany their husbands on road trips, the wives of major league baseball players must follow an unwritten code of conduct, a code socially constructed and enforced by men. This code is reflected in the way wives and ballplayers interact on airplanes and buses, and most strikingly, in the requirement that wives stay out of hotel bars where the team is staying. These interactions within a code reflecting female conformity to male dominance, and preserving male privileges, provide a lens through which we can inspect gender inequity and marital inequity, including what can fairly be called institutionalized adultery. We always talk about the unwritten rule book of being a baseball wife. We have our own rules. There's these unwritten rules that you do and you don't do. That's why everybody thinks that every wife should have to go into the minor league system, and not straight into the big leagues. —Marsha     

ARE WINNERS PROMOTED TOO OFTEN? EVIDENCE FROM THE NFL DRAFT 1999–2012

Firms engaging in hiring face recruitment costs. To reduce these costs, firms concentrate their efforts in locations that are perceived as talent rich or have produced successful employees in the past. Such recruitment mechanisms may lead to statistical discrimination if they reduce uncertainty for a subset of candidates or if firms relate current employee attributes with the institution. In this article, I test for statistical discrimination associated with an individual's institutional affiliation that results from targeted hiring practices by using a unique individual‐level data set of National Football League (NFL) draft prospects. I find that conditional on individual ability, individuals from highly ranked college teams are drafted earlier than individuals from lower ranked institutions. Over the length of a player's professional career, a player's college institution has no effect on career success, indicating that certain players are damaged by this recruitment mechanism. Even though players can suffer substantial financial damages as a result of being drafted later in the draft, NFL team performance is not sufficiently affected for teams to exploit this bias. (JEL J71, J31)     

Ages,Life Stages,and Generational Cohorts: Decomposing the Immigrant First and Second Generations in the United States1

This article focuses on problems with the definition and empirical identification of immigrant “first” and “second” generations in the United States. These loosely conceived aggregates are decomposed into a typology of distinct generational cohorts defined by age and life stage at migration for the foreign born and by parental nativity for the U.S. born. Differences in educational and occupational attainment and in language and other aspects of acculturation are then examined to consider whether the practice of “lumping” these generational cohorts together, or “splitting” them into distinctive units of analysis, is empirically supported by available evidence. The paper concludes with some thoughts on data needs and methodological considerations in the study of immigrant generations.

相似文献   

AN ESTIMATE OF THE RENT GENERATED BY A PREMIUM COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYER

The National Collegiate Athletic Association limits the payments athletes can receive for their services. Colleges are effectively monosony employers so players will not be paid their marginal revenue product. Therefore, colleges capture an economic rent from players. This paper measures these rents by estimating the marginal revenue product of a top college football player. The empirical results suggest that a premium college player generates over $500,000 in annual revenues for his team.     

ENDOGENOUS TIMING IN CONTESTS WITH DELEGATION

We study two‐player contests in which each player hires a delegate, and the delegates decide endogenously when to expend their effort. First, we look closely at the delegates' decisions on when to expend their effort, given contracts between the players and the delegates, and look at the players' decisions on their contracts. Then, we compare the outcomes of the endogenous‐timing framework with those of the simultaneous‐move framework. We show that the higher‐valuation player offers her delegate greater contingent compensation than her opponent, the delegate of the higher‐valuation player chooses his effort level after observing his counterpart's, the equilibrium expected payoff of the delegate of the higher‐valuation player is greater than that of his counterpart, and economic rent for each delegate exists. We show that, in the endogenous‐timing framework, each player offers her delegate better contingent compensation, each delegate's expected payoff is greater, and each player's expected payoff is smaller, as compared with the simultaneous‐move framework. (JEL D72)     

MYTHOLOGIES REVISITED: ROLAND BARTHES AND THE LEFT

This essay arises from the author's scepticism about the received notion, prevalent both in literary and cultural studies, that Roland Barthes's work of the 1960s constituted an abandonment of the previous decade's social critique. The paper develops the argument that, to the contrary, understanding Barthes's socio-cultural development following World War II and in the French cultural context helps to situate the political engagement of his writings in the 1950s and to clarify the continued political commitment of this work from the 1960s onward. This essay addresses a series of questions: what was Barthes's relationship to the 1950s French intelligentsia that prepared his active participation in the heterodoxical Marxist journal, Arguments, a forum for many of the urgent intellectual debates between 1956-62? What is the relationship of this activity to his writings of the early 1950s, developed into Mythologies in 1957, as well as to the shift toward semiology and structuralism and to the purported abandonment of social critique betokened by this shift? How do these phases inform the different readings of Barthes's work developed in more recent interpretations of his writing? It is argued that we would do better to view the structuralist phase and especially the ‘later’ Barthes (from the late 1960s onward) more fully and deliberately in relation to the early, explicitly political period. This revised perspective, one not limiting Barthes to works such as Mythologies, will help us better comprehend Barthes's continuing legacy for sociosemiotic critique both in literary criticism and in cultural studies and to create new ground for interdisciplinary dialogue that is very much needed in an era of questioning the limits and borders of this field.     

The individual in economic analysis: toward psychology of economic behavior

“… Economics is supposed to be concerned with real people. It is hard to believe that real people could be completely unaffected by the reach of the self-examination induced by the Socratic question, ‘How should one live?’—a question that is, also a central motivating one for ethics. Can people whom economics studies really be so unaffected by this resilient question and stick exclusively to the rudimentary hard-headedness attributed to them by modern economics?” Amartya Sen, On Ethics & Economics.“… Apart from a few exceptions, the international consensus view within sociology, anthropology, political science and psychology seems to be that agents are not irrational in the way that neoclassical economists presume. The orthodox economic canons of rationality are thus widely rejected elsewhere,” Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Economics and Institutions.“Once we realize that the human mind is everywhere active and imaginative, then we need to understand the routes of this activity if we are to grasp how the human mind works. This is true whether the mind is trying to come to grips with painful reality, reacting to trauma, coping with the everyday or just making things up. Freud called this imaginative activity phantasy, and he argued both that it functions unconsciously and that it plays a powerful role in the organization of a person’s experience. This surely, contains the seeds of a profound insight into the human condition; it is the central insight of psychoanalysis … a pervasive aspect of mental life …. Are we to see humans as having depth—as complex psychological organisms who generate layers of meaning which lie beneath the surface of their own understanding? Or are we to take ourselves as transparent to ourselves?” Jonathan Lear, Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul.     

The Foreign in Mandel'shtam's Poetry at the Beginning of the 1930s. A Look Through the Prism of Translation

Abstract

Mandel'shtam's poetry reflects a feeling of alienation from his surroundings both as a poet, whose calling endows him with unique perceptiveness, and as a person crushed by the Soviet regime. This alienation is concretized in different ways: familiar places and scenes are estranged and distanced, foreign names and places are mingled with native loci, and direct references are made to an encounter with foreign elements.

This paper offers readings of two poems through their versions in translation. Since translation attempts to familiarize the foreign, much can be gathered from these versions about the nature of the foreign, or alien, elements in each poem. The first of them, 'He …' ('Don't tempt foreign languages …'), presents ambivalent emotions aroused by foreign speech. In the second poem '' ('I'm still far from patriarch …'), the speaker strolls through Moscow, where he feels a stranger and a native inhabitant at once. The translations indicate to what extent each text is felt to be foreign through the degree by which they mitigate and familiarize it. They also shed light on the poems in specific places. Finally, the popularity of a given poem in translation often indicates its universal appeal. Thus, the present study suggests the comparative examination of translations as a method of reading and interpreting poetry.