{"id":694,"date":"2007-11-10T07:06:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-10T13:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=694"},"modified":"2007-11-10T07:06:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-10T13:06:00","slug":"the-simple-economics-of-editorial-decision-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2007\/11\/the-simple-economics-of-editorial-decision-making\/","title":{"rendered":"The simple economics of editorial decision-making"},"content":{"rendered":"

F<\/span>ollowing David Warsh<\/a>\u2019s recommendation<\/a>, I am currently reading Partha Dasgupta<\/a>\u2019s Economics: A Very Short Introduction<\/a> (US edition here<\/a>). Warsh writes:
<\/p>\n

Dasgupta is supremely well qualified to write an overview of economics for the layman. Originally, he says, he had it in mind to lay out what he understood to be the research frontier.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut even though the analytical and empirical core of economics had grown from strength to strength over the decades,\u201d he writes, \u201cI haven\u2019t been at ease with the selection of topics that textbooks offer for discussion (rural life in poor regions – that is the economic life of some 2.5 billion people – doesn\u2019t get mentioned at all, nor with the subjects that are emphasized in leading economic journals (Nature rarely appears there as an active player).\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is a serious textbook treatment shaped around the lives of two ten-year-old \u201cliterary grandchildren,\u201d Becky in a small Midwestern suburb where her father works for a firm specializing in property law, Desta in a village in southwestern Ethiopia, where her father farms half a hectare of land.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is a lot in here to chew on. But to give you an example of how elegant the book is, here is a little adaptation of Dasgupta explaining fads, to illustrate (very simply) the herd effect in editorial decision-making: <\/p>\n

Imagine that each [editor] can choose one of two stories A<\/span> and B<\/span>. Suppose that everyone has an intrinsic preference for A<\/span>, but that they also like to conform.<\/p>\n

To model this, imagine that each editor would choose story A<\/span> over story B<\/span> if the proportion of people wanting B<\/span> is expected to be less than 65%, but that each editor would choose B<\/span> over A<\/span> if the proportion is expected to exceed 65%.<\/p>\n

The figure 65% is a critical mass<\/span> … simple herd behaviour could lead every editor to run story B<\/span>, even though they and their audience would have preferred story A<\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So now you know why stories no one seems to like stay in the news…<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following David Warsh\u2019s recommendation, I am currently reading Partha Dasgupta\u2019s Economics: A Very Short Introduction (US edition here). Warsh writes: Dasgupta is supremely well qualified to write an overview of economics for the layman. Originally, he says, he had it in mind to lay out what he understood to be the research frontier. \u201cBut even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}