Many markets have trouble coordinating on the timing of transactions, and this has led to market failures in markets as diverse as the market for college football bowls, and the labor market for federal court clerks, and in various medical markets, such as (most recently) gastroenterologists and orthopaedic surgeons.
Why do transactions in some markets happen inefficiently early? Here are the concluding paragraphs from our recent NBER working paper Unraveling Results from Comparable Demand and Supply: An Experimental Investigation
by Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth, M. Utku Unver - #15006 (LS)
" It has been known at least since Roth and Xing (1994) that many markets unravel, so that offers become progressively earlier as participants seek to make strategic use of the timing of transactions. It is clear that unraveling can have many causes, because markets are highly multidimensional and time is only one dimensional (and so transactions can only move in two directions in time, earlier or later). So there can be many different reasons that make it advantageous to make transactions earlier. There can also be strategic reasons to delay transactions; see e.g. Roth and Ockenfels (2002) on late bidding in internet auctions.
Thus the study of factors that promote unraveling is a large one, and a number of distinct causes have been identified in different markets or in theory, including instability of late outcomes (which gives blocking pairs an incentive to identify each other early), congestion of late markets (which makes it difficult to make transactions if they are left until too late), and the desire to mutually insure against late-resolving uncertainty. There has also been some study of market practices that may facilitate or impede the making of early offers, such as the rules and customs surrounding "exploding" offers, which expire if not accepted immediately.
In this paper we take a somewhat different tack, and consider conditions related to supply and demand that will tend to work against unraveling, or to facilitate it. There seems to be a widespread perception, in markets that have experienced it, that unraveling is sparked by a shortage of workers.
But for inefficient unraveling to occur, firms have to be willing to make early offers and workers have to be willing to accept them. Our experiment supports the hypothesis that a shortage of workers is not itself conducive to unraveling, since workers who know that they are in short supply need not hurry to accept offers by lower quality firms. Instead, in the model and in the experiment, it is comparable supply and demand that leads to unraveling, in which attention must be paid not only to the overall demand and supply, but to the supply and demand of workers and firms of the highest quality. This seems to reflect what we see in many unraveled markets, in which competition for the elite firms and workers is fierce, but the quality of workers may not be reliably revealed until after a good deal of hiring has already been completed."
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W15006
Postscript: Skip Sauer over at The Sports Economist has a post about a 9th grader offered a college football scholarship in what is becoming a seriously unraveled market.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query unraveling. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query unraveling. Sort by date Show all posts
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Further unraveling of basketball recruiting
Zhenyu Lai, a graduate student in Economics at Harvard, who is taking Market Design this semester, sent me the following email, which he gave me permission to reproduce below.
After last friday's class discussion on unravelling in markets, I came across this article about unravelling in NCAA basketball with a ton of good quotes and anecdotes.
What is particularly interesting is about the role played by agents. Increasingly, agents try to form relationships with potential NBA players early on in their college careers. And they're not just targeting the surefire stars, but gambling on marginal prospects.
Interesting excerpts:
1. Technological improvements aid unravelling markets. Agents are using facebook to make contact with players early.
2. Official rules are abused. Similar to the market example on clinical psychologists, looking at the NCAA rules for agent recruiting is very indicative of the unraveling problem. "Agents are free to contact players in high school or in college through social networking sites, on the phone or in person. As long as there is no written agreement or money exchanged, an agent or a representative of an agent can form a relationship with a player, his family and/or his handlers." An agent is quoted, "It's not breaking the rules. You're just building a relationship with a potential client down the road.". The columnist describes this as "the new normal in amateur basketball."
3. Coaches are in on it too. Much like the market for law clerks, agents (aka judges) develop relationship with coaches (aka law school deans) to ensure that they are making "a sound investment" on their prospect. However, coaches are getting ticked off. The "right way" to do this is apparently for the agents to approach the coach and the player's parents first, not to directly add the player on facebook, where the player may then bypass the coach completely.
4. Agent's argument for unravelling. "Domantay's argument for an agent's trying to make inroads in a profession dominated by an elite few is that if he were to wait until a college player's senior year, he becomes just another name on the list."
5. Argument that unraveling is bad. "If an agent contacts a kid directly, then there should be repercussions. Guys get in with kids and prey on the youthfulness and financial backgrounds and offer things to lock them in and set up a potential for blackmail: If I gave you this, then you owe me." Agents are using runners to form relationships with kids early and leveraging on family contacts and relationships. There is an aura of suspicion where high school kids are wary of who to trust.
6. Agent's motivation for promoting unraveling. "Whoever can control the kid can control the revenue stream -- [maybe] it's a kid going to college benefiting the college coach and leading to a better job. the player dictates the revenue. Everybody is trying to get in sooner and sooner however they can."
Interestingly, the columnist ends off with this quote which is filled with a tone of finality that unraveling is inevitable and an enduring legacy of capitalism,
"The pool of talent, with leagues all over the globe to fill and money to be made, means that anybody with potential is in play to be courted, and so too are their families, their friends, and their AAU and high school coaches. That's the new reality for college coaches. And there's no reason to think it will ever change back."
My thoughts on unraveling in college basketball:
1. High school students are usually at an impressionable age and easily influenced by people close to them, prompting this 'unraveling' process of agents trying to get close to them. While high school students might not be expected to make savvy long-term agent decisions, more needs to be done to make the agent seem like the "bad guy" for approaching the student early. No binding contract is allowed, and kids are empowered to change agents anytime. However, especially if the agent has some influence on a family member (or is a family member..), severing an agent relationship might be tricky. To discourage unraveling, there needs to be lower barriers to changing agents.
2. The NCAA doesn't have jurisdiction over agents (like in the case of federal judges), but some states do where a law states that there can be "significant damage resulting from the impermissible and often times illegal practices of some athlete agents. Violations of NCAA agent legislation impact the eligibility of student-athletes for further participation in NCAA competition". This law is passed in 38 states. However, this law affects the athletes and not the agents. One remedy would be for the NBA to revoke the right of agents to represent their clients if a recruiting violation is found. Agent's licenses could be subject to yearly review. Entry into the agent profession could be tightly regulated.
3. Perhaps NBA draftees could attend an "agent convention" where they could interview various representatives and have the right to choose from among them without any pressure. If it were a standard practice to be connected with legitimate agents only after you enter the NBA, players would then in no way be obliged to sign with an agent early even if they were to have already accepted illegal gifts.
After last friday's class discussion on unravelling in markets, I came across this article about unravelling in NCAA basketball with a ton of good quotes and anecdotes.
What is particularly interesting is about the role played by agents. Increasingly, agents try to form relationships with potential NBA players early on in their college careers. And they're not just targeting the surefire stars, but gambling on marginal prospects.
Interesting excerpts:
1. Technological improvements aid unravelling markets. Agents are using facebook to make contact with players early.
2. Official rules are abused. Similar to the market example on clinical psychologists, looking at the NCAA rules for agent recruiting is very indicative of the unraveling problem. "Agents are free to contact players in high school or in college through social networking sites, on the phone or in person. As long as there is no written agreement or money exchanged, an agent or a representative of an agent can form a relationship with a player, his family and/or his handlers." An agent is quoted, "It's not breaking the rules. You're just building a relationship with a potential client down the road.". The columnist describes this as "the new normal in amateur basketball."
3. Coaches are in on it too. Much like the market for law clerks, agents (aka judges) develop relationship with coaches (aka law school deans) to ensure that they are making "a sound investment" on their prospect. However, coaches are getting ticked off. The "right way" to do this is apparently for the agents to approach the coach and the player's parents first, not to directly add the player on facebook, where the player may then bypass the coach completely.
4. Agent's argument for unravelling. "Domantay's argument for an agent's trying to make inroads in a profession dominated by an elite few is that if he were to wait until a college player's senior year, he becomes just another name on the list."
5. Argument that unraveling is bad. "If an agent contacts a kid directly, then there should be repercussions. Guys get in with kids and prey on the youthfulness and financial backgrounds and offer things to lock them in and set up a potential for blackmail: If I gave you this, then you owe me." Agents are using runners to form relationships with kids early and leveraging on family contacts and relationships. There is an aura of suspicion where high school kids are wary of who to trust.
6. Agent's motivation for promoting unraveling. "Whoever can control the kid can control the revenue stream -- [maybe] it's a kid going to college benefiting the college coach and leading to a better job. the player dictates the revenue. Everybody is trying to get in sooner and sooner however they can."
Interestingly, the columnist ends off with this quote which is filled with a tone of finality that unraveling is inevitable and an enduring legacy of capitalism,
"The pool of talent, with leagues all over the globe to fill and money to be made, means that anybody with potential is in play to be courted, and so too are their families, their friends, and their AAU and high school coaches. That's the new reality for college coaches. And there's no reason to think it will ever change back."
My thoughts on unraveling in college basketball:
1. High school students are usually at an impressionable age and easily influenced by people close to them, prompting this 'unraveling' process of agents trying to get close to them. While high school students might not be expected to make savvy long-term agent decisions, more needs to be done to make the agent seem like the "bad guy" for approaching the student early. No binding contract is allowed, and kids are empowered to change agents anytime. However, especially if the agent has some influence on a family member (or is a family member..), severing an agent relationship might be tricky. To discourage unraveling, there needs to be lower barriers to changing agents.
2. The NCAA doesn't have jurisdiction over agents (like in the case of federal judges), but some states do where a law states that there can be "significant damage resulting from the impermissible and often times illegal practices of some athlete agents. Violations of NCAA agent legislation impact the eligibility of student-athletes for further participation in NCAA competition". This law is passed in 38 states. However, this law affects the athletes and not the agents. One remedy would be for the NBA to revoke the right of agents to represent their clients if a recruiting violation is found. Agent's licenses could be subject to yearly review. Entry into the agent profession could be tightly regulated.
3. Perhaps NBA draftees could attend an "agent convention" where they could interview various representatives and have the right to choose from among them without any pressure. If it were a standard practice to be connected with legitimate agents only after you enter the NBA, players would then in no way be obliged to sign with an agent early even if they were to have already accepted illegal gifts.
Sunday, November 22, 2020
Akhil Vohra on unravelling (and on the job market this year)
Akhil Vohra, who will be finishing his Ph.D. in Economics at Stanford this year, has been thinking about unraveling for a long time. His job market paper explores a novel channel by which markets can unravel in time, with early, inefficient hiring, even when talent isn't scarce.
Unraveling and Inefficient Matching by Akhil Vohra
Job Market Paper, November 5, 2020
Abstract: Labor markets are said to unravel if the matches between workers and firms
occur inefficiently early, based on limited information. I argue that a significant determinant of unraveling is the transparency of the secondary market, where firms can poach workers employed by other firms. I propose a model of interviewing and hiring that allows firms to hire on the secondary market as well as at the entry level. Unraveling arises as a strategic decision by low-tier firms to prevent poaching. While early matching reduces the probability of hiring a high type worker, it prevents rivals from learning about the worker, making poaching difficult. As a result, unraveling can occur even in labor markets without a shortage of talent. When secondary markets are very transparent, unraveling disappears. However, the resulting matching is still inefficient due to the incentives of low-tier firms to communicate that they have not hired top-quality workers. Coordinating the timing of hiring does not mitigate the inefficiencies because firms continue to act strategically to prevent poaching.
You can see him talk about his job market paper in this four minute video:
He applies his model to a number of labor markets, both those which are unraveled and those which aren't:
***********
My advice if you're hiring: check him out.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
A trading firm promises to restrain itself from early exploding offers
Self restraint doesn't always do the trick, but is worth a try: here's a post from the Jane Street blog.
Recruiting talented people has always been challenging.
In some years that meant competing with a hot new company that aggressively courted every fresh graduate with promises of stock options and IPO glory. In other years there wasn’t a specific company so much as an entire rising industry looking for people (I’m looking at you cloud services, driverless cars, and peer-to-peer sharing). Either way, we understood the yearly back and forth. Our job was to explain to candidates how we stacked up, and more importantly, why a career at Jane Street might be the right choice for many of them.
But this year I got to learn a new name for a new challenge. “Unraveling”.
I first encountered it in a book I was reading for fun: "Who Gets What, and Why", by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Alvin Roth. He does a lovely job explaining the idea of a matching market. In a matching market each person wants only one of each item, each item is unique, and each item can be given to at most one person at a time. Jobs are a classic matching market, and just like any market, matching markets can work well, or poorly.
Unraveling is one of the primary things that makes a matching market fail. When a market unravels matches start to happen earlier and earlier, to the point where people no longer get a complete view of their options. In the book Roth relates the story of a person who stepped off of a plane to find three voicemails on his phone. The first offered him a job, the second urged him to respond soon, and the last rescinded the offer because he hadn't responded quickly enough.
We call them exploding offers, and this year they have gotten completely out of hand as companies race to the bottom in their efforts to recruit the next wave of interns and fresh graduates.
Colleges try to impose deadline limits explicitly to stop unraveling, and in the past these have largely been honored. The cheating and fudging, such as it was, was kept to the fringes. But this year it seems like the seal is broken, and we've seen major companies delivering internship and full-time offers with 2 week (and less) hard deadlines. Other companies now routinely deliver expiring bonus offers for signing early. Many of these offers circumvent or outright break the guidelines set down by schools, and if past matching markets are a model for this one, next year will come with even earlier offers and worse conditions.
This unraveling has been the subject of a lot of discussion, both internally at Jane Street and with the various schools we recruit at, who see it - rightly - as bad for their students. How can someone make a thoughtful decision about where they want to build a career without the time to interview at more than one or two places? Unfortunately, most of this discussion is out of the public light, and so the unraveling continues.
We can't control the actions of others, but we also don’t have to follow the herd, so we'd like to be clear:
Jane Street is committed to making sure that you have the time and information you need to decide on an offer from us. Our offer letters do have good-until dates as a matter of professional practice, but we try to work with every candidate to choose a date that works for them. We are also happy to extend the date if something unexpected comes up, or, frankly, if someone just needs more time.
Choosing where to start your career is a big decision and we hope you have the time to make a good one.
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
Unraveling and (lack of) self confidence by Dargnies, Hakimov and Kübler
Online, in Management Science, a behavioral look at unraveling via early exploding offers:
Self-Confidence and Unraveling in Matching Markets
Marie-Pierre Dargnies , Rustamdjan Hakimov, Dorothea Kübler
Published Online:22 Oct 2019https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2018.3201
Abstract
We document experimentally how biased self-assessments affect the outcome of labor markets. In the experiments, we exogenously manipulate the self-confidence of participants in the role of workers regarding their relative performance by employing hard and easy real-effort tasks. Participants in the role of firms can make offers before information about the workers’ performance has been revealed. Such early offers by firms are more often accepted by workers when the real-effort task is hard than when it is easy. We show that the treatment effect works through a shift in beliefs; that is, under-confident agents are more likely to accept early offers than overconfident agents. The experiment identifies a behavioral determinant of unraveling, namely biased self-assessments. The treatment with the hard task entails more unraveling and thereby leads to lower efficiency and less stability, and it shifts payoffs from high- to low-quality firms.
Self-Confidence and Unraveling in Matching Markets
Marie-Pierre Dargnies , Rustamdjan Hakimov, Dorothea Kübler
Published Online:22 Oct 2019https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2018.3201
Abstract
We document experimentally how biased self-assessments affect the outcome of labor markets. In the experiments, we exogenously manipulate the self-confidence of participants in the role of workers regarding their relative performance by employing hard and easy real-effort tasks. Participants in the role of firms can make offers before information about the workers’ performance has been revealed. Such early offers by firms are more often accepted by workers when the real-effort task is hard than when it is easy. We show that the treatment effect works through a shift in beliefs; that is, under-confident agents are more likely to accept early offers than overconfident agents. The experiment identifies a behavioral determinant of unraveling, namely biased self-assessments. The treatment with the hard task entails more unraveling and thereby leads to lower efficiency and less stability, and it shifts payoffs from high- to low-quality firms.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Unraveling of college football recruiting
Two articles on unraveling in college football recruiting:
Timing is everything with offers: How programs wrestle between getting evals while also making prospects feel wanted
"While coaches like Dooley face challenges to offer early in a prospect's junior year, other coaches have to ramp it up even further. Georgia coach Mark Richt said not offering an in-state prospect can put the Bulldogs in a permanent trail position for a prospect.
"Our biggest problem at Georgia is trying to make those evaluations properly and making those offers," Richt said. "It does put pressure on us sometimes to offer a guy a bit sooner than you'd like to. I think everybody across the board has to project a little more. You have to hope that we've made the right projection.
"If you get your class nailed down a year in advance and all of a sudden some of those guys didn't keep progressing like you thought and some other guys came up, [you say] 'Man, I wish I had waited and offered that kid because I like this guy better than I like that guy.' Some people find a way to dump that guy and take that [other] guy. At Georgia, if we offer and he commits to us, we're not dumping him."
********
Iowa recruit not old enough to drive (HT: David Backus)
"Football programs are increasingly entering the territory of basketball scholarship offerings. John Allen was told twice last week Iowa was on the verge of offering his son Brian a football scholarship. John Allen didn't believe it either time. Brian Allen was after all only a high school freshman and had never played varsity football. But on Monday, John Allen called Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz as he was advised, and Ferentz confirmed that he would like to extend a scholarship offer to Brian Allen. "We're all kind of amazed by it," John Allen said. "I don't think it's sunk in yet. He's 15 years old. He can't drive a car yet, etc."
***********
One impetus behind the unraveling of markets is that people make early offers to avoid being left behind as others make even earlier offers. As Yogi Berra said (in a different context), "it gets late early out there."
Timing is everything with offers: How programs wrestle between getting evals while also making prospects feel wanted
"While coaches like Dooley face challenges to offer early in a prospect's junior year, other coaches have to ramp it up even further. Georgia coach Mark Richt said not offering an in-state prospect can put the Bulldogs in a permanent trail position for a prospect.
"Our biggest problem at Georgia is trying to make those evaluations properly and making those offers," Richt said. "It does put pressure on us sometimes to offer a guy a bit sooner than you'd like to. I think everybody across the board has to project a little more. You have to hope that we've made the right projection.
"If you get your class nailed down a year in advance and all of a sudden some of those guys didn't keep progressing like you thought and some other guys came up, [you say] 'Man, I wish I had waited and offered that kid because I like this guy better than I like that guy.' Some people find a way to dump that guy and take that [other] guy. At Georgia, if we offer and he commits to us, we're not dumping him."
********
Iowa recruit not old enough to drive (HT: David Backus)
"Football programs are increasingly entering the territory of basketball scholarship offerings. John Allen was told twice last week Iowa was on the verge of offering his son Brian a football scholarship. John Allen didn't believe it either time. Brian Allen was after all only a high school freshman and had never played varsity football. But on Monday, John Allen called Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz as he was advised, and Ferentz confirmed that he would like to extend a scholarship offer to Brian Allen. "We're all kind of amazed by it," John Allen said. "I don't think it's sunk in yet. He's 15 years old. He can't drive a car yet, etc."
***********
One impetus behind the unraveling of markets is that people make early offers to avoid being left behind as others make even earlier offers. As Yogi Berra said (in a different context), "it gets late early out there."
Monday, April 15, 2013
Clerkship hiring: early, and concentrated at top schools...
Above the Law reports on Which Law Schools Had the Most Clerkship Placements? and
Clerkship Hiring Is Getting Earlier and Earlier
Here's a quick look at which schools are doing well at placing students into clerkships...
As for earlier and earlier hiring following the recent abandonment of the most recent timetable by the DC Circuit, here are two announcement over at OSCAR (the Online System for Clerkship Application and Review):
As it happens, a new model of unraveling of markets just came by email:
STRATEGIC UNCERTAINTY AND UNRAVELING IN MATCHING
MARKETS, by FEDERICO ECHENIQUE AND JUAN SEBASTIAN PEREYRA
From their introduction:
"Strategic unraveling in our model proceeds as follows. There is a loss in efficiency when some agents go early: Information about the quality of the matches arrives late, so it is better for efficiency to wait until the information has arrived to make a match. If some agents go early anyway, this forces later matches to be less efficient. The result is a negative externality that makes it more tempting for all agents to go early. It may push some additional agents over the threshold by which they decide to go early. In turn, these additional agents going early makes it even more tempting to go early|and so on and so forth."
Clerkship Hiring Is Getting Earlier and Earlier
Here's a quick look at which schools are doing well at placing students into clerkships...
As for earlier and earlier hiring following the recent abandonment of the most recent timetable by the DC Circuit, here are two announcement over at OSCAR (the Online System for Clerkship Application and Review):
Latest OSCAR News
RSS
Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan Date Change
Apr 10, 2013 4:30 pm
The OSCAR system will release all online third-year law school student applications on June 28, 2013 at 12:00 pm Noon (EDT).
OSCAR Version 7: Limit of 100 Clerkship Applications
Apr 08, 2013 11:10 am
To address judge concerns, Version 7 introduces a 100-application limit per applicant for clerkship applications.As it happens, a new model of unraveling of markets just came by email:
STRATEGIC UNCERTAINTY AND UNRAVELING IN MATCHING
MARKETS, by FEDERICO ECHENIQUE AND JUAN SEBASTIAN PEREYRA
From their introduction:
"Strategic unraveling in our model proceeds as follows. There is a loss in efficiency when some agents go early: Information about the quality of the matches arrives late, so it is better for efficiency to wait until the information has arrived to make a match. If some agents go early anyway, this forces later matches to be less efficient. The result is a negative externality that makes it more tempting for all agents to go early. It may push some additional agents over the threshold by which they decide to go early. In turn, these additional agents going early makes it even more tempting to go early|and so on and so forth."
Thursday, December 3, 2020
Unraveling of neurology fellowships
From the journal Neurology:
Current controversies in neurology subspecialty education: Insight from clinical neurophysiology by Heidi M. Munger Clary, Michelle Bell Neurology® 2020;95:669-670. doi:10.1212/WNL.0000000000010754
"Juul et al. help elucidate factors contributing to the unraveling of neurology’s fellowship application market. There has been mounting discontent among neurology residents and residency leadership regarding the timing of fellowship applications. Seventy-eight percent of residency program directors believe that the fellowship application cycle occurs too early, and 87% of residents believe that the process should start no earlier than the second half of postgraduate year 3.4,5 With each subsequent year, it appears that the application process occurs progressively earlier, a phenomenon described in economics as unraveling. This phenomenon is seen in unstable markets and has been described in fellowship applications for other specialties before the establishment of a match."
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Unraveling Results from Comparable Demand and Supply
Here's a new old paper (written quite a while ago, but recently published...):
Niederle, Muriel, Alvin E. Roth and M. Utku Unver, “Unraveling Results from Comparable Demand and Supply: An Experimental Investigation,” Games, 2013, 4, no. 2: 243-282 (Special Issue on Games and Matching Markets), http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/4/2/243.
Abstract: Markets sometimes unravel, with offers becoming inefficiently early. Often this is attributed to competition arising from an imbalance of demand and supply, typically excess demand for workers. However this presents a puzzle, since unraveling can only occur when firms are willing to make early offers and workers are willing to accept them. We present a model and experiment in which workers’ quality becomes known only in the late part of the market. However, in equilibrium, matching can occur (inefficiently) early only when there is comparable demand and supply: a surplus of applicants, but a shortage of high quality applicants.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Unraveling: a brief review (and reply)
The peer review process, for all its flaws, normally eliminates the need to write the kind of wide-ranging reply that I have forthcoming in the Journal of Labor Economics. Here's the abstract and introduction: the link to the full paper is below.
Abstract: In this reply I describe the unraveling of transaction dates in several markets, including the labor market for new lawyers hired by large law firms. This and other markets illustrate that unraveling can occur in markets with competitive prices, that it can result in substantial inefficiencies, and that marketplace institutions play a role in restoring efficiency. All of these contradict the conclusions of Priest (2010).
And here are the opening paragraphs of the paper:
"Priest’s (2010) paper, “Timing ‘Disturbances’ in Labor Market Contracting: Roth’s Findings and the Effects of Labor Market Monopsony” seeks to rebut what he describes as “The work of Alvin E. Roth and colleagues writing in what might be described as the Roth tradition” about “a curious set of phenomena in some labor and product markets.”
"Briefly, the “tradition” Priest addresses has studied the timing of transactions, and observed that some markets go through episodes in which they unravel in time, with transactions becoming earlier and more diffuse in time from year to year, and with offers often coming to have very short durations (“exploding” offers). This has often led to changes in marketplace institutions, including rules and regulations to introduce a uniform time for market transactions, and restore thickness. Frequently this involves facilitating a marketplace at a later as well as a more uniform time. (For overviews, see Roth and Xing 1994, and Niederle and Roth 2009.)"
Roth, Alvin E, "Marketplace institutions related to the timing of transactions, and reply to Priest (2010)" Journal of Labor Economics, forthcoming (maybe April 2012).
Abstract: In this reply I describe the unraveling of transaction dates in several markets, including the labor market for new lawyers hired by large law firms. This and other markets illustrate that unraveling can occur in markets with competitive prices, that it can result in substantial inefficiencies, and that marketplace institutions play a role in restoring efficiency. All of these contradict the conclusions of Priest (2010).
And here are the opening paragraphs of the paper:
"Priest’s (2010) paper, “Timing ‘Disturbances’ in Labor Market Contracting: Roth’s Findings and the Effects of Labor Market Monopsony” seeks to rebut what he describes as “The work of Alvin E. Roth and colleagues writing in what might be described as the Roth tradition” about “a curious set of phenomena in some labor and product markets.”
"Briefly, the “tradition” Priest addresses has studied the timing of transactions, and observed that some markets go through episodes in which they unravel in time, with transactions becoming earlier and more diffuse in time from year to year, and with offers often coming to have very short durations (“exploding” offers). This has often led to changes in marketplace institutions, including rules and regulations to introduce a uniform time for market transactions, and restore thickness. Frequently this involves facilitating a marketplace at a later as well as a more uniform time. (For overviews, see Roth and Xing 1994, and Niederle and Roth 2009.)"
Roth, Alvin E, "Marketplace institutions related to the timing of transactions, and reply to Priest (2010)" Journal of Labor Economics, forthcoming (maybe April 2012).
Friday, October 1, 2010
Unraveling and diversity in the market for law clerks
One question about unravelling of markets--in which hiring becomes earlier, more diffuse in time, and characterized by very short duration "exploding" offers, is whether it reduces diversity. The idea is that if you have to hire people far in advance, e.g. when they are still in kindergarten, then you can't tell as much as you would like about individuals, so you had better be hiring from good kindergartens.
I'm reminded of this for two reasons. The first is a recent article on clerks in the Supreme Court:
"There are about 160 active federal appeals court judges and more than 100 more semiretired ones, yet more than half of the clerks who have served on the Roberts court came from the chambers of just 10 judges. Three judges accounted for a fifth of all Supreme Court clerks."
That from Adam Liptak in the NY Times: A Sign of the Court’s Polarization: Choice of Clerks
The second is this graph showing which law schools clerks have been coming from:
That is from a blog post from Dave Hoffman at Concurring Opinions, called The Quickly Unraveling Clerkship Market.
He writes that this year there is even more unraveling than usual, i.e. the plan for regulating the hiring of law clerks may be on its last legs, as the increasing levels of cheating we observed in previous years has apparently continued to increase.
(see Avery, Christopher, Jolls, Christine, Posner, Richard A. and Roth, Alvin E., "The New Market for Federal Judicial Law Clerks" . University of Chicago Law Review, 74, Spring 2007, 447-486. )
I'm reminded of this for two reasons. The first is a recent article on clerks in the Supreme Court:
"There are about 160 active federal appeals court judges and more than 100 more semiretired ones, yet more than half of the clerks who have served on the Roberts court came from the chambers of just 10 judges. Three judges accounted for a fifth of all Supreme Court clerks."
That from Adam Liptak in the NY Times: A Sign of the Court’s Polarization: Choice of Clerks
The second is this graph showing which law schools clerks have been coming from:
He writes that this year there is even more unraveling than usual, i.e. the plan for regulating the hiring of law clerks may be on its last legs, as the increasing levels of cheating we observed in previous years has apparently continued to increase.
(see Avery, Christopher, Jolls, Christine, Posner, Richard A. and Roth, Alvin E., "The New Market for Federal Judicial Law Clerks" . University of Chicago Law Review, 74, Spring 2007, 447-486. )
Sunday, January 4, 2009
A word for unraveling in Singapore: "Choping"
"Choping" is Singapore English slang for reserving something well in advance, i.e. a place in school for your child, etc. That is, it is one of the actions involved in the unraveling of markets, the process by which transactions are arranged increasingly far in advance of when they will be carried out. Sometimes this has been a cause of market failures that lead to new market designs, with a prominent example being medical labor markets.
In some cases, the unraveling of a market has caused serious inefficiencies, as when college football bowl games used to be decided before the end of the regular season (which made it harder to arrange the kind of championship games that draw high television viewership), or when gastroenterologists used to be hired long before they finished their internal medicine residencies (which caused the national market to collapse into lots of regional markets). But, in most unraveled markets, data are lacking to directly determine if a particular set of market arrangments and timing are inefficient.
Tyler Cowen at MR has a (characteristically) very interesting post on choping at Singapore food courts, where patrons reserve seats by placing tissue papers on them, and then go to stand in line to get their food. He suggests (maybe just to be contrarian) that this is efficient. As one of the comments to his post points out, this would be the case in a model in which having to look for a seat once you have your food is incomparably more costly than any other outcome. Of course it is easy to see how (with different parameters) reserving seats in advance could be inefficient (although still an equilibrium). E.g. if it takes 15 minutes to get your food, and 15 minutes to eat it, then each chair could serve four people in an hour if people looked for a chair after getting their food, but only two people per hour if people reserve a chair before getting on line.
The discussion of all this in the Singapore press is satisfyingly nuanced. After a demonstration against choping by some students (Wiping out bad habit of 'choping' seats with tissue pack), the Straits Times has a story (Is this rude?) that explains both points of view.
On the one hand:
"But many people reckon there is nothing rude about reserving one's spot with a packet of tissue paper. Indeed, Mr Wong, who arrived in Singapore last month, said: 'It is a practical and creative way to reserve seats instead of standing around with a tray of food turning cold.' "
On the other:
"Tissue 'choping' seems to be uniquely Singaporean. Housewife Ivy Ong-Wood, in her late 30s, a Malaysian now living in Hong Kong, told LifeStyle: 'At the tea cafes or cha chan tengs in Hong Kong, people queue outside and are told where to sit. In Malaysia, there is no problem getting seats at the food centres.' "
Whatever the truth of the matter, this will not be an easy equilibrium to displace. The story notes: "It is so pervasive that companies even have tissue packs specially made with the word 'chope' for marketing purposes. "
In some cases, the unraveling of a market has caused serious inefficiencies, as when college football bowl games used to be decided before the end of the regular season (which made it harder to arrange the kind of championship games that draw high television viewership), or when gastroenterologists used to be hired long before they finished their internal medicine residencies (which caused the national market to collapse into lots of regional markets). But, in most unraveled markets, data are lacking to directly determine if a particular set of market arrangments and timing are inefficient.
Tyler Cowen at MR has a (characteristically) very interesting post on choping at Singapore food courts, where patrons reserve seats by placing tissue papers on them, and then go to stand in line to get their food. He suggests (maybe just to be contrarian) that this is efficient. As one of the comments to his post points out, this would be the case in a model in which having to look for a seat once you have your food is incomparably more costly than any other outcome. Of course it is easy to see how (with different parameters) reserving seats in advance could be inefficient (although still an equilibrium). E.g. if it takes 15 minutes to get your food, and 15 minutes to eat it, then each chair could serve four people in an hour if people looked for a chair after getting their food, but only two people per hour if people reserve a chair before getting on line.
The discussion of all this in the Singapore press is satisfyingly nuanced. After a demonstration against choping by some students (Wiping out bad habit of 'choping' seats with tissue pack), the Straits Times has a story (Is this rude?) that explains both points of view.
On the one hand:
"But many people reckon there is nothing rude about reserving one's spot with a packet of tissue paper. Indeed, Mr Wong, who arrived in Singapore last month, said: 'It is a practical and creative way to reserve seats instead of standing around with a tray of food turning cold.' "
On the other:
"Tissue 'choping' seems to be uniquely Singaporean. Housewife Ivy Ong-Wood, in her late 30s, a Malaysian now living in Hong Kong, told LifeStyle: 'At the tea cafes or cha chan tengs in Hong Kong, people queue outside and are told where to sit. In Malaysia, there is no problem getting seats at the food centres.' "
Whatever the truth of the matter, this will not be an easy equilibrium to displace. The story notes: "It is so pervasive that companies even have tissue packs specially made with the word 'chope' for marketing purposes. "
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Unraveling of NBA (and college) basketball
The NY Times Magazine writes about the Baylor freshman basketball player who is already an NBA draft prospect: Is it Dunk and Done for Perry Jones?
"In eighth grade, Jones was invited to attend a Baylor University basketball game on the campus in Waco, Tex. He was still a raw player, not widely known and in some ways perfect for the Baylor program, which was not attracting the best of the seasoned prospects.
...
"Jones declared on the ride home that he had found his school, and soon after, he committed to Baylor, meaning that the team’s coach, Scott Drew, offered him a scholarship and he accepted. It was only a verbal bond, one that could not be officially sealed until he reached his senior year of high school and signed an N.C.A.A. letter of intent, but he never wavered, even as coaches from more-traditional college-basketball powers, including Kansas and U.C.L.A., sent letters to his home.
...
"But just about everyone assumes that he will be a one-and-done player at Baylor, a pure rental who stays for a single season. That has become the norm for top college players. In fact, in some projections, as many as six of the top 10 picks in this spring’s N.B.A. draft are college freshmen."...
...(Players can no longer enter the N.B.A. straight out of high school, as Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and many others did.)
...
"You might assume that if Jones left school after just one season for the N.B.A., it would be a terrible disappointment to the coaches who recruited him when he was in his early teens — then had to keep in constant contact to make sure no one poached him. (Such vigilance is known as baby-sitting.) But that is not the case. If Jones leaves, it will further validate Baylor’s program and show everyone — the media, potential recruits, influential summer-league coaches who control players and sometimes broker them to colleges — that Baylor is a place that attracts top talent and produces N.B.A. millionaires. It will make it easier for Drew to recruit more players like Jones, who then, of course, also might also leave after one season. "
******
See my earlier posts Unraveling and uncertainty: The NBA draft, and Another step in the unraveling of the baskeball market about how the rule that players have to be 19 years old and a year out of high school before being drafted by the NBA has caused some players to play a year for European teams.
HT: Scott Cunningham
"In eighth grade, Jones was invited to attend a Baylor University basketball game on the campus in Waco, Tex. He was still a raw player, not widely known and in some ways perfect for the Baylor program, which was not attracting the best of the seasoned prospects.
...
"Jones declared on the ride home that he had found his school, and soon after, he committed to Baylor, meaning that the team’s coach, Scott Drew, offered him a scholarship and he accepted. It was only a verbal bond, one that could not be officially sealed until he reached his senior year of high school and signed an N.C.A.A. letter of intent, but he never wavered, even as coaches from more-traditional college-basketball powers, including Kansas and U.C.L.A., sent letters to his home.
...
"But just about everyone assumes that he will be a one-and-done player at Baylor, a pure rental who stays for a single season. That has become the norm for top college players. In fact, in some projections, as many as six of the top 10 picks in this spring’s N.B.A. draft are college freshmen."...
...(Players can no longer enter the N.B.A. straight out of high school, as Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and many others did.)
...
"You might assume that if Jones left school after just one season for the N.B.A., it would be a terrible disappointment to the coaches who recruited him when he was in his early teens — then had to keep in constant contact to make sure no one poached him. (Such vigilance is known as baby-sitting.) But that is not the case. If Jones leaves, it will further validate Baylor’s program and show everyone — the media, potential recruits, influential summer-league coaches who control players and sometimes broker them to colleges — that Baylor is a place that attracts top talent and produces N.B.A. millionaires. It will make it easier for Drew to recruit more players like Jones, who then, of course, also might also leave after one season. "
******
See my earlier posts Unraveling and uncertainty: The NBA draft, and Another step in the unraveling of the baskeball market about how the rule that players have to be 19 years old and a year out of high school before being drafted by the NBA has caused some players to play a year for European teams.
HT: Scott Cunningham
Monday, October 31, 2022
Unraveling of the market for new law professors
Kim Krawiec, a law professor who is among the most penetrating analysts of controversial markets and market practices, emails me about unraveling in the market for new law professors:
"prior to Covid, the AALS (American Association of Law Schools) ran a hiring process with a central meeting in Washington DC and nearly every law professor was hired through this process. During Covid, this of course stopped and has now been dropped (I think) permanently, so now schools are sort of making up their own schedules. Some schools are starting early and making exploding offers before other schools have even begun the process. The idea of exploding offers is not new — it happened before. Though some (mostly higher ranked schools) considered it bad form, other schools argued that they had to do it or would wind up hiring no one year after year as favored candidates accepted other jobs near the end of the season. But the physical meeting and control over the timing by the AALS at least posed a basic schedule. That now appears to be gone and people (both candidates and hiring committees) are up in arms. ... My guess (completely speculating) is that the interests of higher ranked and lower ranked schools are not aligned on this and that makes it harder to find a new equilibrium, but I don’t know."
*******
Law already 'enjoys' a number of unraveled markets, for law clerks, for associates (and summer associates) in law firms, and for articles in law reviews. So I have to admit the prospects for preventing wholesale unraveling of the law professor market looks bleak, unless law schools can start to think outside of the box, perhaps e.g. by preparing to give offers to students who have already accepted exploding offers, if necessary to start in the following academic year...
Maybe in that way the academic law community can start to come to some agreement on some time, midway between early and late, in which offers should be made and during which they should be left open.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Unraveling of presidential primary dates, continued
Labor markets aren't the only things that unravel: the competition to be influential in selecting presidential candidates continues to do so: Iowa Republicans Eye Jan. 3 for Caucuses
"DES MOINES – Iowa Republicans are tentatively eyeing Jan. 3 as the date for the state’s caucuses, the first stop in the party’s battle to select a nominee to challenge President Obama.
The date is the consensus of party officials, who are frantically working to keep the first votes of the 2012 campaign from creeping into December. But the date is not locked down and could change depending on when the New Hampshire primary is held.
“I think for the long-term stability of maintaining our role as the first-in-the-nation caucus state, it’s important for us to start this process in 2012,” Matt Strawn, chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa, told reporters here Friday. “Actually for the voters, for the candidates and for the entire process, we all would be best served by starting this in January.”
"The Republican primary calendar has fallen into disorder. A plan to start the balloting in February has fallen apart, with Florida and other states rushing to move up the dates of their primary contests. The biggest remaining question is when the New Hampshire secretary of state, William M. Gardner, intends to schedule the contest there.
"He has not ruled out a December primary, given the leapfrogging by other states. If that were to take place – a possibility that most party officials still believe is unlikely – the Iowa caucuses could also be adjusted."
***********
I'll be talking about unraveling and exploding offers in class on Friday, so expect a lot of unraveling posts this week (if I were cleverer, I would have posted them last week...)
"DES MOINES – Iowa Republicans are tentatively eyeing Jan. 3 as the date for the state’s caucuses, the first stop in the party’s battle to select a nominee to challenge President Obama.
The date is the consensus of party officials, who are frantically working to keep the first votes of the 2012 campaign from creeping into December. But the date is not locked down and could change depending on when the New Hampshire primary is held.
“I think for the long-term stability of maintaining our role as the first-in-the-nation caucus state, it’s important for us to start this process in 2012,” Matt Strawn, chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa, told reporters here Friday. “Actually for the voters, for the candidates and for the entire process, we all would be best served by starting this in January.”
"The Republican primary calendar has fallen into disorder. A plan to start the balloting in February has fallen apart, with Florida and other states rushing to move up the dates of their primary contests. The biggest remaining question is when the New Hampshire secretary of state, William M. Gardner, intends to schedule the contest there.
"He has not ruled out a December primary, given the leapfrogging by other states. If that were to take place – a possibility that most party officials still believe is unlikely – the Iowa caucuses could also be adjusted."
***********
I'll be talking about unraveling and exploding offers in class on Friday, so expect a lot of unraveling posts this week (if I were cleverer, I would have posted them last week...)
Friday, November 2, 2018
Private equity job offers to young investment bankers unravel earlier this year, while investment banks try to stem their own unraveling
Two stories from the WSJ about unraveling, at different parts of the financial industry.
1. The WSJ has publishes this year's unraveling story earlier than last year's...
No Experience? No Problem. Private Equity Lures Newbie Bankers With $300,000 Offers.
Annual recruitment drive starts earlier this year as firms try to get a jump on preferred candidates
"An industrywide scramble is under way this week to hire young investment bankers.
"The instigator was Thoma Bravo LLC, which extended its first job offers this past weekend, according to people familiar with the matter. Word spread quickly to rivals, and by Monday interviews were under way at nearly every big firm, including Blackstone Group LP, Apollo Global Management LLC, Carlyle Group LP and TPG.
"Welcome to private equity’s annual recruitment, the frenzied window of interviews and fast-expiring job offers that firms use to fill their junior ranks. The candidates graduated college as recently as last spring and landed at Wall Street investment-banking desks just weeks ago.
"Those lucky enough to get offers will finish their two-year bank analyst programs and start at private-equity firms in the summer of 2020...
...
"Recruiting used to take place during the summer, once applicants had at least a year of experience under their belts. But it has crept earlier as firms try to get a jump on preferred candidates. In 2014, interviews began in February. Last year, recruiting started before Christmas. Applicants describe a frantic period of interviews and “exploding” offers that can expire in 24 hours or less.
**********
2. The investment banks also hire very early in students' college careers, and here's a story about an attempt to resist that urge (good luck with that):
Goldman, JPMorgan Hit Pause on Intern Recruiting ‘Madness’
A push in recent years to move up application deadlines isn’t bringing in the kinds of candidates the banks need
"Two Wall Street investment banks are easing up in the race to hire their most junior employees.
"Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. won’t interview or extend summer internship offers to college sophomores this year and will go back to recruiting students in the fall of their junior year, executives said.
"It is a nod to a softer Wall Street, eager to cast off its sweatbox image to compete with perk-happy Silicon Valley. It is also an acknowledgment that a push in recent years to move up application deadlines isn’t bringing in the kinds of candidates banks need as they try to diversify their overwhelmingly white and male ranks.
“We were contributing to an environment that pressured students to choose rather than to explore,” said Dane Holmes, Goldman’s top human-resources executive. “I want people who want to be at Goldman Sachs, not people who felt they had to say yes to an offer.”
1. The WSJ has publishes this year's unraveling story earlier than last year's...
No Experience? No Problem. Private Equity Lures Newbie Bankers With $300,000 Offers.
Annual recruitment drive starts earlier this year as firms try to get a jump on preferred candidates
"An industrywide scramble is under way this week to hire young investment bankers.
"The instigator was Thoma Bravo LLC, which extended its first job offers this past weekend, according to people familiar with the matter. Word spread quickly to rivals, and by Monday interviews were under way at nearly every big firm, including Blackstone Group LP, Apollo Global Management LLC, Carlyle Group LP and TPG.
"Welcome to private equity’s annual recruitment, the frenzied window of interviews and fast-expiring job offers that firms use to fill their junior ranks. The candidates graduated college as recently as last spring and landed at Wall Street investment-banking desks just weeks ago.
"Those lucky enough to get offers will finish their two-year bank analyst programs and start at private-equity firms in the summer of 2020...
...
"Recruiting used to take place during the summer, once applicants had at least a year of experience under their belts. But it has crept earlier as firms try to get a jump on preferred candidates. In 2014, interviews began in February. Last year, recruiting started before Christmas. Applicants describe a frantic period of interviews and “exploding” offers that can expire in 24 hours or less.
**********
2. The investment banks also hire very early in students' college careers, and here's a story about an attempt to resist that urge (good luck with that):
Goldman, JPMorgan Hit Pause on Intern Recruiting ‘Madness’
A push in recent years to move up application deadlines isn’t bringing in the kinds of candidates the banks need
"Two Wall Street investment banks are easing up in the race to hire their most junior employees.
"Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. won’t interview or extend summer internship offers to college sophomores this year and will go back to recruiting students in the fall of their junior year, executives said.
"It is a nod to a softer Wall Street, eager to cast off its sweatbox image to compete with perk-happy Silicon Valley. It is also an acknowledgment that a push in recent years to move up application deadlines isn’t bringing in the kinds of candidates banks need as they try to diversify their overwhelmingly white and male ranks.
“We were contributing to an environment that pressured students to choose rather than to explore,” said Dane Holmes, Goldman’s top human-resources executive. “I want people who want to be at Goldman Sachs, not people who felt they had to say yes to an offer.”
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Unraveling in the market for chefs?
It turns out that good restaurants need good cooks, and they are hard to find and keep in the growing market for fancy restaurants: Talent Shortage: Why New York’s Chefs Can’t Find Enough Good Cooks
Stephanie Hurder points out to me that the article hints at possible unraveling of the market:
"Another move is judging final exams at culinary schools like the International Culinary Center. If a chef sees a student whose work impresses them, they can offer the student a trailing gig — like an extended interview in the kitchen — on the spot."
Stephanie Hurder points out to me that the article hints at possible unraveling of the market:
"Another move is judging final exams at culinary schools like the International Culinary Center. If a chef sees a student whose work impresses them, they can offer the student a trailing gig — like an extended interview in the kitchen — on the spot."
Saturday, September 3, 2022
Further unraveling of law firm offers to (first year) law students, and offers to new (first week) bankers from private equity
Eric Budish writes with a pointer to a Business Insider story on the current unraveling of the market for new lawyers and big law firms.
"this year, some legal-industry professionals say the competition has gotten out of control.
"Latham & Watkins, which hires about 300 students a year for its 10-week summer program, has told law schools that it has made 2023 summer-job offers to so many students ahead of the traditional period for on-campus interviews, or OCI, that it expects to conduct fewer OCI interviews this year, three people familiar with the firm's strategy said.
"Other elite firms — including Weil, Skadden, and Davis Polk — have also been making large numbers of early offers. At Simpson Thacher, a partner said, "We probably did half our interviewing before the formal OCI process."
"Working at a law firm after a student's second year, or 2L, has long been a rite of passage for students bound for Big Law. "Summer associates" are paid about $4,000 a week at top firms and get the chance to do legal research, eat nice meals on the company's dime, and meet the people they'll likely be working with after graduation — because upwards of 90% of them get an offer to return full time.
...
"Some law students are now entering recruiting talks in the spring of their 1L year. School administrators say it's often the students who get the ball rolling by submitting résumés via a firm's website after meeting a partner at a school meet and greet.
...
"Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania still ban pre-OCI recruiting, their websites said. Other schools require pre-OCI offers to stay open until OCI, so a student can compare firms. But not all firms respect the rules, and students sometimes are afraid to invoke them, said David Diamond, an assistant dean at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law.
"We've seen situations where a student receives an offer, and the offer deadline follows our policy, but the offer is accompanied by a diversity scholarship, and the diversity scholarship expires before or during" OCI, Diamond said.
...
"Some people trace the boom in early recruiting to a 2019 decision by the NALP to scrap rules that limited firms from courting first-semester law students. The rules were replaced by nonbinding guidelines."
**********
And even more frenzied are the job offers that new bankers (in their first week(s) on the job) are getting from private equity firms:
Wall Street just kicked off an annual Hunger Games-style recruiting ritual for junior talent that has young bankers interviewing till 2 a.m. for jobs that don’t start until 2024. https://advance.lexis.com/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:668V-4FD1-DXY7-W4MT-00000-00&context=1516831
"As Insider reported on Tuesday, the frenzied process appears to have kicked off on Monday evening when recruiters for a handful of firms sent out blast emails to select junior bankers suggesting meetings ASAP — before the window of opportunity closes.
"The emails forced these young bankers — many of whom have just started their first Wall Street jobs at places like Goldman Sachs and Citi — to figure out ways to quietly leave their desks to interview for jobs that won't start until the fall of 2024.
...
"In recent years, the PE recruiting process has moved earlier and earlier, from October to September, but never to late August, as it has done now. It's forcing firms to figure out how to interview candidates with no real job experience. "
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Unraveling of law firm recruiting
The WSJ reports on the continuing unraveling of recruiting by large law firms, which reports how much of the critical hiring for positions beginning in September, 2013 is going on right now: Law Schools Push Recruiters
"Thousands of interviews for jobs at law firms are taking place now as top law schools, under mounting pressure to help indebted students snag jobs, increasingly push major law firms to recruit in August, months earlier than in previous years.
...
"Law firms follow an unusual tradition of recruiting the lawyers they eventually plan to hire two years in advance. For example, they are interviewing second-year law students now for summer associate positions that start in May or June 2012. At the end of the 2012 summer, the firms expect, they will then invite almost all the summer hires to work full-time as junior lawyers, likely starting in September 2013.
...
"By forcing the big firms to recruit in August, rather than as late as the end of October, as in previous years, law schools are hoping to give their students an edge in the competition. "There was a race to the front of the line by law schools," said Keith Wetmore, whose title is chair of Morrison & Foerster LLP, which is sending partners to 28 campuses this month to recruit students for its 2012 summer associate class.
"In 2000, for instance, seven law schools held their interviewing weeks in August. By 2009, the number had increased to more than 70, and this year, the figure will top 100, according to Mark Weber, assistant dean for career services at Harvard Law School.
"During the market crash of 2008, both Harvard and Yale law schools "went essentially last" in the recruiting season, with their interview weeks in September and October. "Their students did get hurt, and got fewer offers," said James G. Leipold, executive director of NALP. "Our students still had great jobs, but you do even better when you're at the beginning of the [recruiting] process than the end," Harvard's Mr. Weber said. A spokeswoman for Yale Law School said she couldn't comment.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Unraveling of primary elections
Further unraveling, that is.
NH Seeks to Stay No. 1 in Presidential Primaries
"New Hampshire lawmakers hope to erase any doubt that the state intends to continue holding the nation's first presidential primary election by making a small but important change to state law.
The House is set to vote Wednesday to give the secretary of state wider latitude in setting the primary's date to protect the state's tradition of being first. The Senate votes on the measure next if it passes the House, and it is widely expected to become law."
...
"State law currently requires the primary to be held seven days or more before any similar contest. The bill would attach the secretary of state's rights to that law and notes that its purpose is to protect the tradition of New Hampshire being first....The bill would give the secretary of state the flexibility ''to interpret other elections such as caucuses or conventions the way he determines is necessary to protect our primary status,'' Splaine said."
...
"The first contests in Iowa and New Hampshire bring those states enormous attention from presidential candidates and the media. New Hampshire steadfastly guards its role, pointing to its engaged electorate as evidence that its voters do a good job at winnowing the field.
Candidates know that winning New Hampshire's primary can propel their campaigns. Sen. John McCain and then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reignited their campaigns after winning the New Hampshire primary in 2008.
Jealous of all the attention, other states contend they better represent the nation than Iowa and New Hampshire, which have fewer people and less racial or ethnic diversity. They even challenged New Hampshire's tradition in the 2008 presidential primaries.
That led to the Iowa caucus being held on Jan. 3, 2008, and the New Hampshire primary five days later, on Jan. 8.
Secretary of State William Gardner waited until Nov. 21, 2007, to set the Jan. 8 primary date to make sure it would come before nominating contests in Nevada and South Carolina. Those states and six others broke national party rules by scheduling their contests before Feb. 5.
Democrats penalized Florida and Michigan delegates to the national party convention by counting only half their votes, while Republicans stripped votes from those states and three others, including New Hampshire.
The national Democratic calendar had called for the primary to be held Jan. 22 that year. After the New Hampshire secretary of state set the Jan. 8 date, state party leaders sought and got a waiver from the national party to have its delegates seated at the national convention.
Even if New Hampshire is stripped of delegates next time around, by holding the first primary it will retain its influence in selecting the next president, Splaine said."
NH Seeks to Stay No. 1 in Presidential Primaries
"New Hampshire lawmakers hope to erase any doubt that the state intends to continue holding the nation's first presidential primary election by making a small but important change to state law.
The House is set to vote Wednesday to give the secretary of state wider latitude in setting the primary's date to protect the state's tradition of being first. The Senate votes on the measure next if it passes the House, and it is widely expected to become law."
...
"State law currently requires the primary to be held seven days or more before any similar contest. The bill would attach the secretary of state's rights to that law and notes that its purpose is to protect the tradition of New Hampshire being first....The bill would give the secretary of state the flexibility ''to interpret other elections such as caucuses or conventions the way he determines is necessary to protect our primary status,'' Splaine said."
...
"The first contests in Iowa and New Hampshire bring those states enormous attention from presidential candidates and the media. New Hampshire steadfastly guards its role, pointing to its engaged electorate as evidence that its voters do a good job at winnowing the field.
Candidates know that winning New Hampshire's primary can propel their campaigns. Sen. John McCain and then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reignited their campaigns after winning the New Hampshire primary in 2008.
Jealous of all the attention, other states contend they better represent the nation than Iowa and New Hampshire, which have fewer people and less racial or ethnic diversity. They even challenged New Hampshire's tradition in the 2008 presidential primaries.
That led to the Iowa caucus being held on Jan. 3, 2008, and the New Hampshire primary five days later, on Jan. 8.
Secretary of State William Gardner waited until Nov. 21, 2007, to set the Jan. 8 primary date to make sure it would come before nominating contests in Nevada and South Carolina. Those states and six others broke national party rules by scheduling their contests before Feb. 5.
Democrats penalized Florida and Michigan delegates to the national party convention by counting only half their votes, while Republicans stripped votes from those states and three others, including New Hampshire.
The national Democratic calendar had called for the primary to be held Jan. 22 that year. After the New Hampshire secretary of state set the Jan. 8 date, state party leaders sought and got a waiver from the national party to have its delegates seated at the national convention.
Even if New Hampshire is stripped of delegates next time around, by holding the first primary it will retain its influence in selecting the next president, Splaine said."
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