Posts

Traditional last post

I think that the most valuable lesson that I learned from class is how to look at organizations. Before taking this class I rarely thought about the reason that organizations were the way they were. This class has given me a sound understanding of the basics. This ground work enables me to be able to look at an organization and understand the forces and reasons that it is the way it is. While I think that this is an enormously valuable skill to have it is a bit vague in regard to this post.  If I were to be a bit more specific I would say the transaction costs was an extremely useful lesson that we learned in class. Nearly every economics professor I have taken a class with talked about transactions costs, if only in passing. This is the first class were I fully understood what transaction costs are and how they related to other economic ideas. I do think that a part of this is the article that my team read. I would not have as strong as a grasp on transaction costs if I did not read
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Group behavior

In Ocean’s 11 (2001) a group of eleven men, gather together to rob a casino in Las Vegas. As a side note the Las Vegas Strip and pretty much everything that Las Vegas is known for is actually in Paradise, Nevada. Paradise is an unincorporated town, which allows the casinos to pay fewer taxes. The leader of the group (Ocean) is trying to get his ex-wife back from the man who runs the casino that the group is going to rob.  This leads to a conflict between the group. While the majority of the group are only there for the heist, Ocean and his friend are there for the money and Ocean’s ex-wife. In the beginning the rest of the group does not know about Ocean’s secondary mission. Throughout the movie more people find out about it, until the problem comes to head and everyone confronts Ocean. Ocean’s motivations are pretty simple, he loves his wife and so he wants her back. The heist is a way for this to happen, while allowing him to mess with his wife’s current boyfriend. The rest of t
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Altruism

I found the third article “The Power of Altruism” to be really interesting. In every example but one that David Brooks, the author, givers there is only a mechanism meant to dissuaded a certain behave and not one meant to encourage. In every example that he gives there is only one mechanism involved. This mechanism is meant to either dissuade or to encourage. Each example does not provide the carrot and the stick. It either provides the carrot OR the stick. This strikes me as incomplete. In the two “stick” examples the people involved are given a mandate. You will be punished if you have already taken 15 sick days and you take another, or you will be punished if you do not pick up your kids. In both of these cases the participants are not give an incentive. Brooks says that “arrangements that arouse the financial lens alone are messing everything up.”  I do not think that this is true. I think the major problem with all of these example is that the mechanisms do not fit with the pre-e
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Risk

To me college is an investment. While I may have fun at college, make friends, and sometimes ignore classes. I am at college first and foremost to get a degree. There is ample evidence that a college degree will result in larger earnings throughout my life, and that it is a smart investment. I choose my major (economics) with this mindset. I wanted a major that I enjoyed, but I also wanted a major that I would be able to profit from throughout my life. This mindset also impacted what I did over the summer. I have taken summer school three out of my four summers, to be able to allow to me graduate this semester. I also worked at the same company for every one of those summers to build relationships. I have been lucky enough to be able to graduate without any debit. I say all of this to demonstrate that the last four years of my life has been to reduce income risk. I invested the last four years of my life into college as a way to try to improve my future. To achieve this, I have made t
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Connecting the dots

The most obvious themes that I saw with all my blog posts were economics and how organizations work. Since that is the name and the purpose of the class I do not think that this is what was meant by the prompt. I am going to assume that everyone in this class has written about those themes in each of their posts. In all my blog posts, I have loosely touched on opportunism and/or the lack of it. I do not think that I have done a great job explaining that in every one of my posts, but each one of my posts talks at least alluded to it. I think that opportunism is a part of working as a group, and while I may not have noticed or talked about it in my earlier posts it definitely was on my mind and influenced what I was writing. I also loosely talk about how organizations are structured in my blogs. Every one of my posts talks about a different group I have been a part of. I then talk about the way that those groups functioned, who was in it, and what the purpose of the group was. Like oppo
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Illinibucks

I think the idea of Illinibucks is an interesting one. While it might not be the first thing that must be addressed, the distribution of Illinibucks would be a long, and difficult system to establish. That said it makes sense that you would use the current system as a basis, and simply try to make the system compatible with Illinibucks. I think you would have a “standard package” of Illinibucks, you would then add to that package every time someone should receive priority. People who receive priority in the current system would receive some amount “x” more than the standard “Illinibuck package”. This would mean that senior would receive more than a freshman, honor students would receive more than non, and students with special needs would receive more than those who do not have any. It would then be a matter of deciding what could and could not be bought with Illinibucks and then assign values to each of those things. I do not think any of this would be easy or simple. The Illinib
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Summer internship

During a summer internship, I was on a team of 5 people including myself.  We were hired to digitize paperwork that the company had in storage. The company was in construction and they had to hold onto the paper work in case of law suits. The company was moving which meant that we had to finish before the summer was through. We had to scan, name, and organize about 56 boxes in 13 weeks. This means that every week we had to do a little bit more than four boxes. When we were hired, our supervisor showed us the storage room with the boxes, explained how to label and save the documents in the computer, and how to scan the documents. After we scanned the documents we then had review the documents to make sure that they scanned correctly. If this was the case we were supposed to throw away the paper files.  Every Friday our supervisor would count the remaining boxes, this was the only time that they would check on our progress.  Occasionally an intern would be taken off scanning duty an
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