Outsourcing

The long slide of the Harvard econ. department continues.

It seems that a Harvard economics professor has been fined for stealing horse manure from a neighbor’s farm.

Perhaps it was rational for the professor to steal fertilizer rather than producing it: comparative advantage, you know. And of course the difference between stealing and paying is no more than a transfer, with no efficiency implications at all.

On the other hand, a former Kennedy School colleague sees evidence of moral degeneration, and a step on the path toward plagiarism. “When I was there,” he writes, “it was a point of pride among Harvard faculty that we made up our own horsesh*t.”

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com