CEO pay and the Lake Wobegon effect is my new favorite article in USpace. Rachel Hayes and Scott Schafer, both from the David Eccles School of Business, wrote the paper in 2007 as a way to explain recent CEO pay increases at U.S. firms. They take a game theory model and apply it to what many in the business press refer to as “The Lake Wobegon Effect.” And what’s the Lake Wobegon effect? Most boards want to make sure they look strong, or, at least above average (as are all the kids from Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon), so a CEO’s pay will increase at the same rate as a peer company’s even if the CEO performed poorly. For someone who is mystified by the business world, I find this to be comfortingly human. And their conclusion? Well, read for yourself http://content.lib.utah.edu/u?/ir-main,7291 The paper is part of a series from the Institute of Public and International Affairs (IPIA). To see other papers from IPIA, go to http://bit.ly/bOOPAT
The annual Governor’s Medal for Science and Technology awards ceremony will take place tomorrow and one of the seven recipients is Randall J. Olson, MD, Director, John A. Moran Eye Center. The awards program recognizes people and companies in Utah whose career achievements or distinguished service have benefited the state in the areas of science and technology http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14111462. We have archived many of Dr. Olson’s research articles in USpace which you can view here http://tinyurl.com/y9uu55a
Tim Garrett, an associate professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah, has been in local and world news recently. His provocative study, Are There Basic Physical Constraints on Future Anthropogenic Emissions of Carbon Dioxide?, was published online this week in the journal of Climatic Change. We uploaded it today to USpace. At the foundation of his study is Garrett’s use of physics to create a new global economic growth model. The article has created some controversy because of the study’s indications that energy conservation ultimately increases economic growth and therefore leads to accelerated energy consumption; and that stabilizing CO2 emissions even at current rates is not possible. A good summary of the study can be found here.
USpace now has the capability to archive research posters created by students and faculty at the UofU in a media-rich format. Posters in USpace may now include embedded audio and video, PowerPoint slides, PDF or Word documents, and Web links.
Today’s article, then, is a research poster. It’s a poster created to highlight a class for researchers and other creators here at the U, called Publishing SMART: How to Make your Article Visible. The aim of the class is to help scholars achieve the most impact for their publications through the publishing and archiving choices they make.
This year’s Siciliano Forum will focus on global aging–specifically healthy aging, an aging workforce, and shifting inter-generational relationships. I searched U Scholar Works on the subject of aging and found several results. The article “Why Generation(s) Matter(s) to Policy” by Susan McDaniel seemed relevant.
Professor McDaniel states that generation is “a unique kind of social location, premised on a dynamic interplay of birth time and the socio-political events occurring at crucial life course moments for [a] birth cohort. The importance of generation, in this view, is not the year of birth or the size of the birth cohort, but the social relevance of being born at a particular historical time in a given society.” She goes on to say that generation, as a concept, “opens policy to exploring who does what in relation to whom.” For example, looking at what kind of sacrifices one generation has made for another and what impact this would have on policy making. McDaniel indicates that this is an unusual approach to policy, yet is one that “provide[s] a sense of contribution and entitlement in [...] the expected transition into retirement at a particular or approximate age.”
For more information on the University of Utah’s Siciliano Forum, see http://www.csbs.utah.edu/siciliano_forum.html
I recently came across Prof. John Flynn’s article in USpace: the University of Utah’s Institutional Repository titled “Antitrust policy and health care reform” and thought it might be interesting to showcase given President Obama’s recent speech to Congress on the matter of health care reform. The article, written in 1994 and published in Antitrust Bulletin, “examines case law developments [from 1984-1994] in applying antitrust policy to health care markets and suggests how antitrust policy…relates to legislative proposals for reform of health care markets” (pg. 6).
While Prof. Flynn wrote in the context of the Clinton administration’s health reform policy, antitrust concerns quickly arose in the early days of the Obama administration’s announcement of a new health care policy the details of which included reducing health care costs by means of hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies getting together to agree on strategies for holding down prices http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/health/policy/27health.html
Prof. Flynn argues that “[h]ealth care is an industry that has too long been immune from rigorous review on fundamental legal and economic grounds, a fact for which we are now paying a heavy price in both extensive litigation and a major legislative effort to restructure the entire industry” (pg. 73). The great challenge of health care reform, according to Prof. Flynn, is “[f]inding the right mix of market and regulatory remedies.” It is the kind of challenge “that may well take…decades to resolve in light of the complexities of the issues” (pg. 74).
You can find the full-text of Prof. Flynn’s article in USpace at http://content.lib.utah.edu/u?/ir-main,26706
As the summer winds down and school is about to start for learners of all ages, I find myself wondering where the summer went. Many of us have the same feelings, I know. I think of my two teenagers, in particular, and the various ways they have filled their summer hours: sleeping-in, reading, swimming, paid employment, etc. I poked around UScholar Works for an article related to this general topic and came across a working paper by Professor Cathleen Zick titled Over-Scheduled or at Loose Ends? The Shifting Balance of Adolescent Time Use.
In this paper Professor Zick notes that, over the past decades, there has been a decline in the number of hours adolescents spend working a job. She uses two time diary studies (one from 1977-78; the other, 2003-2005) to obtain data to answer the following questions: How are adolescents spending their time, given that they’re working less? Are they filling their time with more developmentally enriching activities? Is the employment decline related to family income levels and/or declining wage rates? Visit the full paper here if you would like some answers to those questions.
The mission of USpace, the University of Utah’s Institutional Repository is to collect, maintain, preserve, record, and provide access to the intellectual capital and output of the University of Utah, to reflect the University’s excellence, and to share that work with others. The University’s excellence emanates through a range of venues including its teaching, research and service. While research is sometimes thought of in terms of scientific laboratories, clinics, journal articles and books, it also occurs within studios devoted to art, music, and movement with outcomes such as paintings, sculptures and performances. One such example of this is De metal y madera: for flute, cello, percussion, and electronics. Written in 1999 by Professor Miguel Chuaqui, the musical score represents a culmination of his research interests which include “collaborations with colleagues in areas as diverse as Modern Dance (interactive dance systems) and the School of Medicine (interactive software development for therapeutic musical applications).” While reading the score in USpace, you can listen to a brief performance. This kind of research represents a growing area for USpace as we look toward fulfilling our goal of collecting, maintaining, preserving, recording and providing access to the intellectual capital of the University of Utah.
We recently uploaded this article to UScholar Works. It’s by Elijah Millgram, Professor of Philosophy here at the University of Utah. The article takes as its topic Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality. Written in 1887, Nietzsche’s Genealogy is considered by many scholars to be one of his greatest works, and an important work in the ethical canon. What Millgram lays out step-by-step in his article is a new way of reading the Genealogy. Briefly, Millgram’s new reading of the work postulates that in his Geneology Nietzsche presents his position on the origin of moral values in precisely the way he seems to be condemning in the work; and that he does this in order to show the effectiveness of that which he is condemning. In Millgram’s words, “The Genealogy of Morals is a very sophisticated critique of morality—for intellectuals, and that is because it is, at the same time, an exposé of the intellectuals themselves.”
“As goes General Motors, so goes the nation,” Lee Iacocca reportedly said. With GM’s bankruptcy headlining the news in recent days, Ken Jameson’s article in USpace called “Castle or the tipi: rationalization or irrationality in the American economy” seems timely (originally published in 1972 in the journal Review of Politics). Written in response to the American economy in the 1960s, the article discusses the tension between an economy based on the castle and one based on the tipi. Jameson concludes that the contradictions in these two economic approaches can lead to fundamental change. GM represents the castle metaphor Jameson uses: it’s multinational, expansive and has several lines and brands. Now owned 60% by the federal government, perhaps Jameson would say GM is moving more towards the tipi: fewer distinct products, smaller geographic area of business and fewer mergers and acquisitions. While we watch what happens with GM (and our nation’s economy as a whole), Jameson’s final analysis provides some perspective: “castle and tipi interrelate in a fashion which yields stability to a system which would otherwise be unstable.”