The first paragraph says it all: AETNA wants to attract and retain workers. That’s what efficiency wages are all about. Aetna to Boost Incomes of Lowest-Paid Workers (WSJ) There is also more to say about efficiency wages. The theory of efficiency…
Author: ruebeckc
MLK pairing
After listening to this story Students Describe What King’s Legacy Means To Them (NPR), go ahead and have fun spending some time with this “playable post” The Parable of the Polygons (Nicky Case). It’s Schelling’s model, redone in a very attractive…
Corporate strategies that don’t fit the times
“Appeasing, fleeing, and fleecing are precisely the wrong strategies” 3 Terrible Strategies for Companies Seeking Growth (HBR BLOG) Strategy is about building an institution that can compete. Competitiveness isn’t merely short-term profitability. It is about all the things that underlie…
Maps, rivers, and humans
Louisiana Loses Its Boot tells so much about the evolution of bodies of water, maps, and the human remaking of our planet. Edited with BlogPad Pro
Soccer, game theory, managament
Here’s a book that captures them all in one net. Beautiful Game Theory: How Soccer Can Help Economics
Inflation and “quality”
We need to adjust prices for the “quality” of the goods, or more generally for the goods’ features. My own work in this are has been on hard disk drives, in Ruebeck (2002, 2005). Marketplace has a series on inflation,…
Salmon and inflation
This is part of a series on inflation. The price of smoked salmon hasn’t swum upstream (Marketplace) Of course, what we’re asking when we “adjust for inflation” is how prices have changed relate to an average. (That average is weighted…
Diversity, who thinks it’s a good idea?
Google thinks it’s a good idea, that’s who. Google explores why everyone is a little bit racist (Marketplace) India evidently thinks so, too. Women are the face of India’s Mars mission, but they’re still the exception (PRI) (As featured by…
Data, people, and corporate culture
Stop Searching for That Elusive Data Scientist … the typical team was collectively less skilled and competent than a typical data scientist. But that collective team learned from each other and sent a message to the rest of the organization…
Firm size in Britain, under regulation
Retail locations are amazingly small in “world cities” like London, but they appeared to me even smaller there than most. It may be due to characteristics of the clientele or of the merchandise, but those shops appeared too small to…