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We Repeat Our Solution to Eliminate the Federal Bureaucracy

Last night, we caught a glimpse of one of the evening talk shows where someone complained to the host that no Senator or Congressman has the time to read and understand proposed amendments and bills...

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Government Takeovers and Ungraceful States

William McGurn has an excellent column in today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal. It is entitled, “My Big Fat Government Takeover.“ In the column, he decries those in favor of governmental...

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Sad but True: Intelligence Failures & Bad Information Systems

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” —George Santayana Preface: on Monday, we wrote Human Error (versus Systemic Failure), which supplemented our longer post from Sunday:...

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Government Whining and Bailout Fees

Given the past two days’ front page headlines in the The Wall Street Journal, it seems that banks are doing a lot of bracing. Monday’s headline announced that Banks Brace for Bonus Fury, and today’s...

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Inefficient Bonus Schemes

The Outrage Makes Them Larger Recently, much has been written about “Wall Street” bonuses. Almost all of those articles mention the same two things: (1) populist and government sentiment against the...

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The Volcker Rule: Obama’s Right…

…To Propose a Ban on Prop Trading at Insured Institutions We applaud President Obama’s proposal to eliminate proprietary trading at insured institutions. In fact, long-time readers will recall that we...

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Good (Late) News from the SEC

We Missed It a Few Months Ago On the front page of the The ‘Money & Investing’ section of today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, there is an article entitled, At SEC a Scholar Who Saw It...

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Solving the Social Security Problem

Actually, a New Idea to Mitigate the Problem Update: after publishing this post very late Sunday (or very early) Monday, we noticed the column, Toward a Different Fiscal Future, by Glen Hubbard. His...

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College Tuition Subsidies and their Costs

Or, The High Cost of Subsidies A few weeks ago there was an article in The Wall Street Journal, What’s a Degree Really Worth. In it the reporter Mary Pilon discussed the estimated difference in the...

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This is So Cool!

Our Dissertation is on-line in Korea We rarely “Google” our name, but today we did so out of curiosity. We had thought it had been forgotten; so, we were surprised to find that a scanned version of our...

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Why It’s Difficult to Break Bad Habits

Or, why it’s hard to learn to do it the right way Coaching softball for girls (eight-and-under) has been an illuminating experience for a number of reasons. We’re writing about one of those today....

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On the Use of a Single, Corporate-wide Performance Measure

We have substantially updated and expanded our analysis of a common fallacy of performance measurement and compensation: One (Performance) Measure to Rule them All. Many firms use overly-gross or...

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Information? Knowledge? and Wisdom?

Which One (or more) Is (are) Missing? Peggy Noonan has an excellent column in this weekend’s edition of The Wall Street Journal: Youth Has Outlived Its Usefulness. In it, she laments the lack of wise...

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Paying to Play in High School

That’s the title of the front-page article in the sports section of today’s paper edition of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.1 As it turns, the article is about budget shortfalls and participation fees,...

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The More Things Change…

and ‘Be Careful What You Wish For.’ A long, long time ago, I can still remember how it used to make me smile. The smile may have an additional crease or two–yes, it is true–but otherwise, little has...

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Ignoring Opportunity Costs & other Performance Measurement Mistakes

When we were in St. Louis and taught MBAs at Washington University, we lived in a subdivision that wasn’t completely built; so, the developer had a small billboard with the gentle command to passersby...

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The New Health-Care Law & Age Discrimination?

Adverse Selection & Other Unintended Consequences Back on March 31, we wrote Unintended Adolescent Consequences. That post focused on the need to motivate or induce young adults into the workforce...

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The Mortgage Debacle, Foreclosures & Moratoria

Why We Support the Moratoria A couple of years ago, we were very particular about distinguishing between the Mortgage Debacle and the larger Liquidity Crisis that it precipitated. Our argument was (and...

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Who Really Owns Your Securitized Mortgage?

These Little Things Do Matter A few weeks ago, we wrote The Mortgage Debacle, Foreclosures & Moratoria: Why We Support the Moratoria. In that post, we explained why it’s in the banks’ best...

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Why Expediting Foreclosures Won’t Help

& Could Hurt: Be Careful What You Wish For! Many economists and politicians argue that expediting foreclosures will “help clear the real-estate markets sooner,” which they argue is a good thing. We...

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