The Journal of Political Economy published this correction:
There is an error in “Self-Control at Work” (Kaur, Kremer, and Mullainathan 2015), published in the October 2015 edition of this journal (vol. 123, no. 6). In section VI, on page 1274, the paper includes the following incorrect quote from a paper by Steven N. S. Cheung:
The second view—that joint production necessitates the need for monitoring (Alchian and Demsetz 1972)—is summarized in a story by Steven Cheung (1983, 8): “On a boat trip up China’s Yangtze River in the 19th Century, a titled English woman complained to her host of the cruelty to the oarsmen. One burly coolie stood over the rowers with a whip, making sure there were no laggards. Her host explained that the boat was jointly owned by the oarsmen, and that they hired the man responsible for flogging.”
While the incorrect quote also appears in other earlier sources, it does not appear in Cheung’s original article. [For example, the incorrect version of the quote also appears in Jensen et al. (1998).]
The accurate quotation from Cheung (1983, 8) is as follows:
My own favorite example is riverboat pulling in China before the communist regime, when a large group of workers marched along the shore towing a good-sized wooden boat. The unique interest of this example is that the collaborators actually agreed to the hiring of a monitor to whip them. The point here is that even if every puller were perfectly “honest,” it would still be too costly to measure the effort each has contributed to the movement of the boat, but to choose a different measurement agreeable to all would be so difficult that the arbitration of an agent is essential.
The inaccurate quote was included simply as a way to illustrate the idea that joint production might necessitate the need for monitoring. . . . However, the quote is in no way central to the core point of the paper, or even for the discussion in section VI of the paper. . . . Consequently, this incorrect quote can be omitted from the paper without any impact on the substance of the paper.
See here and here for background.
I’m glad the journal fixed the error.
Some loose ends remain. I’m still not clear how the authors of this article ended up taking an over-the-top description from an obscure collection of practice exam questions (Jensen et al., 1998). I also remain disturbed by the whole “titled English woman” thing, as it just fits in so well with economists’ attitude they are superior to the sort of softies who think flogging is a bad thing. Also not clear how they attributed the story from a collection of practice exam questions to a specific page in the Cheung (1983) article. I’m not saying there was anything nefarious going on here, just that they were a bit too comfortable with a ridiculous story that confirmed their preconceptions.
To put it another way: If the original story was a good illustration of their general point, then it should make a difference that the original story was fabricated (or, to put it more charitably, was elaborated to a ridiculous degree), no? What does it mean to mistakenly use a false story as evidence? At the very least, it’s informative that the authors and others seemed to have believed the story was true. The whole thing’s still eating at me. It would be as if I wrote a political science paper and used a story from Game of Thrones to illustrate a point—but presenting it as if Westeros was a real place. Using a made-up story as explanation is fine; just clearly label it as such, and maybe reflect on what it is about the story that’s so appealing to you.
I find the correction bothers me as well. Yes, it’s good that it has been corrected. But it is presented as a technical correction – the quote is not correct – but the paper stands as is. If the misquote bothers you, just ignore it and nothing changes. I think the fuss that was made on this blog about the quote provoked them to do something – make the correction – but the substance of whether the story is a fictional illustration or a true story should be of no consequence.
This begs the question of whether it should be of any consequence. The standard economics view would be that it does not matter – it could have been true, given the point of the paper that monitoring is costly and can lead to counterintuitive behavior. The idea that whether the evidence is true or not is of no consequence – yes, that bothers me. Why? Because the difference between what could be true and what truly happened involves a variety of human behaviors (conscience, empathy, sympathy – all nuisance, difficult to quantify variables) that are being downplayed relative to the economists’ preferred point about monitoring costs and incentives. I agree with Andrew that presenting it as a fictional story to illustrate the point would be fine – but presenting it as a true story and then “correcting” the precise quote but avoiding the question of whether or not the story is true, bothers me.
+1
Dale Lehman wrote, “The standard economics view would be that it does not matter – it could have been true.” Lots of things in life could have been true and I offer this personal example to amplify his point. One morning, my wife was very angry with me because in her dream, I behaved very badly. When I pointed out that I was innocent because it occurred in her dream, she replied, “But it doesn’t matter, because it was exactly the thing you would have done.”
A more recent, public example: It could have been true that George Santos was a star volleyball player in college and it does not matter so long as no one does any vetting. Is his tale in the same league as the “burly coolie” and the “titled English woman”?
I feel that George Santos in his position as a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics should himself address this question ;-)
I don’t know, going from “whether this particular story is true is of no consequence” to “whether evidence is true or not is of no consequence” seems like a huge leap. The reason this particular story is of no consequence is because a story about one boat in China is very weak evidence even if it is true. Sure it might be interesting to confirm whether it is in fact true or whether it’s false (my money would be on false or an exaggeration of a related truth) but it’s much easier to just remove the story from the paper.
Matt Yglesias actually did write a series on the economics of Game of Thrones:
https://slate.com/business/2013/06/game-of-thrones-economics-red-wedding-robb-stark-and-breach-of-trust-in-marriage-alliances.html
Although he never presented it as a real place.
One may use a story to convey in a more tactile way a conceptual framework that’s too general, or has too many parts, to be quickly grasped when presented solely in the form of a theory or equation. If that’s all the water their (false) anecdote was carrying, then sure, omitting it changes nothing of substance. I suspect they also intended it to make the idea seem more plausible, in which case it now seems less plausible.
What I think still lingers as troubling is a) even the corrected quote misrepresents the original anecdote, which was likely a fable made up by an Asian woman to shield her child from harsh social (and economic!) realities, b) it can be read as a post hoc rationalization of historical abuses, and c) it’s definitely a rationalization of a punitive approach to contemporary management.
Michael:
The revised story has several elaborations, most of which seem like the result of unthinking ignorance:
– Changing from an unspecified river to the Yangtze: That’s the #1 river that Americans think of, when they hear about a river in China. According to the original teller of the story, it was a “journey from Liuzhou to Guiping,” which according to the map is not near the Yangtze.
– Changing from the 20th century to the 19th: The scenario sounds old-fashioned, so the storyteller unthinkingly moves it back in time.
– Introducing the word “coolie”: Adding this slur contributes to placing the story in the more distant past. We wouldn’t refer to a modern worker as a coolie, partly because it’s rude but also because it’s an old-fashioned word to use, even descriptively.
– Adding the physical description, “burly”: This is the kind of detail that can make a story seem more real; also “burly” is another old-fashioned word, again placing the story back in the mists of time.
– Changing from riverboat pullers to oarsmen: A boat being rowed is more familiar than a boat being pulled.
But three of the elaborations are particularly striking because they don’t just elaborate the story, they also make it more compatible with the usual ideology of academic economists:
– Changing from “the collaborators actually agreed to the hiring of a monitor to whip them” to “the boat was jointly owned by the oarsmen, and that they hired the man responsible for flogging”: In this new version, the workers actually own the boat. As independent agents—owners of capital, in fact!—these workers are now unambiguously hiring the whipper out of their own free will, not acting out of some desperate economic necessity.
– Adding the “titled English woman”: At first this elaboration might seem the most puzzling, as it transforms a Chinese refugee into an upper-class foreigner, introducing an entirely new element to the story. From the economists’ perspective, though, it’s perfect, as this upper-class twit is a perfect foil to the down-to-earth economists who understand the real world (as here and here, for example).
– Adding the bit where the woman “complained to her host of the cruelty to the oarsmen”: This bit helps to make the woman unsympathetic (she “complains”; it is her host who gets to “explain”) and also reinforces the idea of the economists as taboo-busters who can marshal the cold facts to support apparent “cruelty.”
Whether or not the story is “central to the core point of the paper,” it does seem central to a certain way that economists often present themselves, and I do think some reflection on their part is in order.