Spencer Pantoja

An intellectual giant and a wonderful, warm person in an otherwise very cold environment

Streaming films from @stanfordulibraries.bsky.social even while on Thanksgiving break tinyurl.com/3h769dcf. Just make sure you authenticate tinyurl.com/yc5527mj. Check it Out! @adiazcayeros.bsky.social @spantoja.bsky.social

This was a lot of fun! I presented joint work w/ @luozhaotian.bsky.social & @spantoja.bsky.social asking “How Is a Dictatorship (Not) Like a Firm?” Both dictatorships and firms are hierarchical organizations, but there are some illuminating differences. Slides here 👇

Dick Nelson, pioneer in the economics of technical change, has died at 94. His remarkable book with Sid Winter (1982) An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change spawned many literatures. His edited the first "Rate and Direction" volume and wrote a history-based investigation of 1/2

Which I guess is your point in a way a la “as-if”, I’m just saying I found these chapters interesting wrt to this discussion.

Yeah I guess I’m saying it’s fuzzy how much is “substantively” rational choice-esque and how much is just a choice amongst a set of basically isomorphic models which we chose the most “rational choice looking” one.

Yes, I think the advantage is when you change assumptions in the most limited way possible, it’s easier to see “where the bodies are buried” wrt key assumptions. But as Spiegler says their could’ve been a more ambitious reinvention of the econ theory paradigm we’ve overlooked. Tradeoffs.

Reskeets are not endorsements, I have no skin in this! Ex post it seems to be the way we’ve decided to do things, for better or worse.

the link appears broken if I try to share it but the pdf is freely accessible if you google the title+”pdf” :)

Also check out Rani Spiegler’s discussion of this in chapter 4 & especially 5 of his recent book “The Curious Culture of Economic Theory”, in a rather frank discussion of how the field chose to shoehorn non-rational phenomenon into maximization frameworks.

Quota Restriction and Goldbricking in a Machine Shop on JSTOR Donald Roy, Quota Restriction and Goldbricking in a Machine Shop, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 57, No. 5, The Sociological Study of Work (Mar., 1952), pp. 427-442

This 1952 AJS Donald Roy paper was what first excited me about ethnography. I assign it to PhD students w/classic org econ theory. I've always wanted to ask Bob Gibbons, Baker, Holmstrom, Milgrom, Roberts, ect. if they had read this. Ethnography is a wellspring of theory & policy. #orgsky #econsky

Recommend orgs nerd camp highly! It’s a great experience trying to train yourself to speak in other disciplinary languages, and I still talk to members of my cohort regularly.