Primaries and Markets

October 27, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston

My friend Marty Schram, who is a Real Journalist and not a blogger, had a column this week about what he calls “Campaign Calendar Leap-Frog.” So far, four states have rescheduled their presidential primary elections to come earlier than the traditional firsts, the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Other states may join in the madness.

I see it as an example of classic laissez-faire – a negative example.

The Market is supposed to be a magical invisible hand that transforms self-interest into public good. Through each participant pursuing his own self-interest, the competition in the market generates the greatest amount of total satisfaction. Therefore, all we need to do is stop regulating and let people pursue their self-interest, and everyone will be better off.

The classic counter example is the guy who stands up at the ball game to get a better view. He’s doing what’s best for himself. But by standing, he blocks others’ view, so they in turn stand, and so on until everyone winds up standing for the entire game rather than sitting comfortably. Even if the Red Sox win, everyone winds up worse off than they were before.

The primaries are doing the same thing, though in the dimension of time rather than height. Michigan and Florida have decided that it is in their interest to have an early primary. They’re probably right. Early primaries bring lots of candidates with lots of money to spend. But then Iowa, still wanting to be first, has to leap frog its caucuses back to January 3, 2008. Maybe other states will get in the race as well. New Hampshire may hold its 2008 presidential primary in 2007.
In the free market of primary scheduling, most of the states will wind up worse off than they were before. More crucially, the system will probably not be as good at doing what the primaries are supposed to do – giving the public the candidates it wants and that can best serve their parties and the nation.

Maybe the free market doesn't always have mojo.

(Marty has a neat solution – regional primaries. But that would require a very visible hand of regulation telling each state when to hold its primary.)

Search Committee

October 23, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston

Wicked Anomie has created search engine for searching sociology blogs. Apparently, you too can cobble together websites for a customized search engine - once you figure out how to do it in Google. But the Caped Crusader (I think that's a cape she's wearing in the picture/icon) has done it for us. You can even add it as a widget to your own blog, as Anomie has done.

If you want your blog or site included, tell Anomie, and she'll put you on the list.

Cyberweight - Update II

October 22, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston

(Update: October 23. I ended the count of hits on this website too soon. Since yesterday, Jeremy ("The Hits Just Keep on Coming") Freese narrowed the gap and then pulled ahead. See the chart below.)

How much influence does a Website wield? My own egocentric measurement is to count referrals to this blog.


So lets compare the personal blog of a sociologist (Jeremy Freese) with an commercial site (Inside Higher Ed). Both these sites mentioned the Montclair SocioBlog recently, and Google Analytics allowed me to count the number of times the link was clicked at each site in the two or three days following.

Las Vegas made Freese a 50 click underdog - hey, this is Internet influence, not Scrabble.

Here are the results.


The late surge of Jeremy's readers put him ahead by only 3 clicks , 89-86. Not bad for a single blogger up against a team of at least eighteen on staff at IHE.

Take This Job And . . .

October 20, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston

Both New York City tabloids had the same front page yesterday – a photo of Joe Torre and the headline SHOVE IT.
The Torre story is big news in New York. Even the Times had it on the front page, and all the TV networks pre-empted their afternoon soaps (or Judge Alex on Fox) to carry Torre’s press conference live.

Torre – does anyone not know this?– has been the manager of the Yankees for the last twelve years. In that period, the team made the playoffs every year, the ALCS seven years, the World Series six years, and won the Series four of those six times.

After the Yanks lost in the division series this year, the management, disappointed, offered Torre a one-year, $5 million contract – not as much as his current salary but higher than any other manager in baseball.

So it’s interesting that the tabloids and probably most of the fans approve of Torre’s decision to quit. They see the Yankees’ offer as an insult, one that well merits the Johnny Paycheck response. Maybe it’s because of the Boss he worked for.

George Steinbrenner, prior to the Torre era, used to fire and hire managers – usually Billy Martin – more often than most of us get an oil change. But the pace of change – different in degree, not in kind from other teams – represents a general tendency in sports. When the team does badly, change managers. But why?

Here's one idea: In an environment dominated by uncertainty, people attribute greater power to leaders. Charismatic leaders don’t arise in times of certainty but in times of crises. If things turn out well, we glorify the leader (or in cases like Rudy Giuliani, the leaders glorify themselves). Institutions that operate in a climate of uncertainty (e.g., a baseball organization) follow a similar logic. If things turn out badly, fire the manager.

But how much difference does a manager make? Managers don’t pitch down the middle, they don’t boot ground balls, they don’t pop up with men on base. More important for social scientists, how could we get any evidence that would allow us to measure that difference? I can’t think of anything. You’d have to have some way of controlling for the quality of the players on the team.

Either that or something like a duplicate bridge tournament. As football coach Bum Phillips said when asked how good a coach Don Shula was, “He can take his’n and beat your’n, and he can your’n and beat his’n.” But in the real world, no such switcheroo experiment is possible.

I did a quick search at the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports (statisticians love sports, or at least those who like sports love to analyze them statistically), but I struck out swinging.


Hat tip to my brother for the JQAS lead and for reminding me of the Phillips quote.