Reputation of a Reputation

[Duncan Frissell]

At 03:39 PM 12/3/01 -0500, Faustine wrote:
>Great points, but consider the example "Harvard University." People are
>willing to pay a premium to be associated with it regardless of the academic
>worth of the individual programs in the eyes of specialists. A lot of students
>are after the cachet and couldn't care less about the curriculum. But then,
>I'm sure it's a mistake to assume education for it's own sake has the 
>slightest
>thing to do with why the majority of people bother going to college at all.
>
>Ridiculous how so many employers put such stock in a word on a piece of paper
>too--pure credentialism. How ironic when you contrast that with the fact that
>the great Herman Kahn didn't have a PhD. I wonder where he'd end up today.

Special agents should read the Economist in addition to NLECTC Law 
Enforcement & Corrections Technology News Summary http://www.nlectc.org/.


http://WWW.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=S%26%2BX%28%2FQ%21%3B%26%0A

The lemon dilemma
Oct 11th 2001
 From The Economist print edition

This year's Nobel prize for economics honours work inspired by a simple 
observation about used cars

...

This year's other two laureates, Michael Spence of Stanford University and 
Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia, won their prize for analysing how firms and 
consumers separate the gems from the lemons in a variety of industries.

Mr Spence's early work focused on how individuals use signalling to 
communicate their abilities in the labour market. Job applicants, for 
example, want to distinguish themselves from the mass of other hopefuls. 
They may try to do this in a number of ways, from a fancy suit to a fancy 
education. But for signals to be believable, Mr Spence observed, they need 
to differ substantially in their cost of acquisition. For example, for 
education to work as a credible signal, it must be harder for less able 
employees to get. Indeed, even if such an education gives a student no 
tangible skillsreading classics at Oxford, sayit can still be a useful 
signal of relative quality to employers.

Signalling is used in many markets, wherever a person, company or 
government wants to provide information about its intentions or strengths 
indirectly. Taking on debt might signal that a company is confident about 
future profits. Brands send valuable signals to consumers precisely because 
they are costly to create, and thus will not be lightly abused by their 
creators. Advertising may convey no information other than that the firm 
can afford to advertise, but that may be all a consumer needs to know to 
have confidence in it. Perhaps advertising, as a signal, is not money 
entirely wasted, as some economists argue.

...

It's all about signaling.

DCF

----
What was the plea bargain which featured the greatest sentence reduction in 
the history of the criminal law?
A reduction from a charge of Sodomy to a charge of Following Too Close.
   --Courtesy of the National Commission for the Preservation of 
Politically Incorrect Law School Jokes.