Dan Ariely has replaced Milton Friedman as the inspiration for a fictional Sherlock Holmes-type crime solver

Remember Henry Spearman?  He's the hero of the Henry Spearman mystery novels by Marshall Jevons. He's a crime-solving Sherlock whose secret is neoclassical economics, and his physical description makes it seem that he's modeled on Milton Friedman.

He's been replaced by a  crime solver using behavioral economics…not in a novel but in a television series, and it seems that he's modeled on Dan Ariely.

The Irrational season 2  By Sarabeth Pollock
Jesse L. Martin returns as a brilliant professor with a knack for getting inside peoples' heads.
 

"Following the success of The Irrational season 1, NBC quickly ordered up another season of the crime drama that centers on Professor Alec Mercer (Jesse L. Martin), behavioral scientist and leading expert on human behavior based on the book Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. 

...

"through behavioral analysis, Mercer and his team are always able to provide key insight into the toughest of cases."

David Lodge (1935 – 2025), saw the funny side of academia (and academic conferences)

 David Lodge, whose wrote some of the greatest comic novels about academia, is now laughing at us from beyond the grave.  He was 90 years old (up to a rounding error).

 Here are those of his books I have at home...

Here's the NYT obit:

David Lodge, British Novelist Who Satirized Academic Life, Dies at 89  By John Cotter

"Mr. Lodge’s university novels took place not in the rarefied world of Oxford, Cambridge and the Ivy League but at middle-class schools, like the fictional Rummidge, a “grimy, provincial” place full of thwarted ambition and backbiting. Ingeniously plotted, his fiction teems with unlikely romance and strange coincidence.

"The first of these novels, “Changing Places” (1975), became famous for a game the character Philip Swallow invents called “Humiliation,” in which players try to name the most well-regarded book they haven’t read. In his first attempt, Howard Ringbaum, a pretentious English professor, keeps missing the point by listing obscure titles in attempts to impress his colleagues. Finally, desperately, he admits to never having read “Hamlet.” He wins the game but loses his job.

"In the trilogy’s second book, “Small World” (1984), Morris Zapp, a slick theoretician delivering a lecture at a conference, uses the striptease style supposedly popular in the all-nude go-go bars of Berkeley, Calif., as a metaphor for what continental theory has uncovered about language...

...

"(The third novel in the trilogy is “Nice Work,” published in 1988.)

"Graham Greene was an early admirer of Mr. Lodge’s fiction, going so far as to send Mr. Lodge’s third novel, “The British Museum Is Falling Down” (1965), which concerns the Roman Catholic Church’s antipathy toward contraception, to Cardinal John Heenan, then the church’s highest-ranking official in England."

Sessions that caught my eye in the ASSA program

Economics of Higher Education

Lightning Round Session

 Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025   8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (PST)

 Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Golden Gate 3

Hosted By: American Economic Association

• Chair: Caroline Hoxby, Stanford University

Cap-and-Apply: Unintended Consequences of College Application Policy in South Korea

Taekyu Eom

, 

SUNY-Buffalo

 

•  View Abstract

 

College Course Shutouts

Kevin Mumford

, 

Purdue University

Richard Patterson

, 

Brigham Young University

Anthony Yim

, 

Brigham Young University

 

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 3.27 MB)

Do Double Majors Face Less Risk? An Analysis of Human Capital Diversification

Andrew S. Hanks

, 

Ohio State University

Shengjun Jiang

, 

Wuhan University

Xuechao Qian

, 

Stanford University

 

Bo Wang

, 

Nankai University

Bruce A. Weinberg

, 

Ohio State University

•  View Abstract

 

Inequality-Aware Market Design

Paper Session

 Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025   10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (PST)

 Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Union Square 1 and 2

Hosted By: Econometric Society

• Chair: Piotr Dworczak, Northwestern University

Waiting or Paying for Healthcare: Evidence from the Veterans Health Administration

Anna Russo

, 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

•  View Abstract

Optimal Redistribution via Income Taxation and Market Design

Mohammad Akbarpour

, 

Stanford University

Pawel Doligalski

, 

University of Bristol

Piotr Dworczak

, 

Northwestern University

 

Scott Duke Kominers

, 

Harvard University

•  View Abstract

Should the Government Sell You Goods? Evidence from the Milk Market in Mexico

Diego Javier Jimenez Hernandez

, 

Chicago Federal Reserve

 

Enrique Seira

, 

Michigan State University

•  View Abstract

Taxing Externalities without Hurting the Poor

Mallesh M. Pai

, 

Rice University

Philipp Strack

, 

Yale University

 

•  View Abstract

Discussant(s)

Vasiliki Skreta

, 

University of Texas-Austin and University College London

Dmitry Taubinsky

, 

University of California-Berkeley

Mohammad Akbarpour

, 

Stanford University

Dan Waldinger

, 

New York University

 

 

Market Design in College Admissions

Paper Session

 Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025   10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (PST)

 Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Union Square 11

Hosted By: Econometric Society

• Chair: Evan Riehl, Cornell University

College Application Mistakes and the Design of Information Policies at Scale

Anaïs Fabre

, 

Toulouse School of Economics

Tomas Larroucau

, 

Arizona State University

Christopher Andrew Neilson

, 

Princeton University

Ignacio Rios

, 

University of Texas-Dallas

 

•  View Abstract

Inequity in Centralized College Admissions with Public and Private Universities: Evidence from Albania

Iris Vrioni

, 

University of Michigan

 

•  View Abstract

Stakes and Signals: An Empirical Investigation of Muddled Information in Standardized Testing

Germán Reyes

, 

Middlebury College

Evan Riehl

, 

Cornell University

 

Ruqing Xu

, 

Cornell University

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 1.12 MB)

 

Finance and Development

Paper Session

 Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025   1:00 PM - 3:00 PM (PST)

 Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Continental Ballroom 9

Hosted By: American Economic Association

• Chair: Martin Kanz, World Bank

Default Contagion in Microfinance

Natalia Rigol

, 

Harvard Business School

Ben Roth

, 

Harvard Business School

 

•  Hide Abstract

Abstract

Joint liability is one of the hallmarks of microfinance. Though it is intended to reduce non-payment, it has also been hypothesized to lead to default contagion, whereby non-payment by one borrower may reduce the likelihood of repayment by groupmates. Utilizing unexpected deaths, we document significant default contagion in one of Chile's largest microfinance institutions. We estimate that a single default causes an additional 0.8 borrowers to default, indicating that nearly half of observed default is due to contagion. 

Credit Contracts, Business Development, and Gender: Evidence from Uganda

Selim Gulesci

, 

Trinity College Dublin

 

Francesco Loiacono

, 

European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

Miri Stryjan

, 

Aalto University

Andreas Madestam

, 

Stockholm University

•  View Abstract

Discrimination Expectations in the Credit Market: Survey Evidence from India

Stefano Fiorin

, 

Bocconi University

Joseph Hall

, 

Stanford University

Martin Kanz

, 

World Bank

 

•  View Abstract

Discussant(s)

Simone Gabrielle Schaner

, 

University of Southern California

Anna Vitali

, 

New York University

Janis Skrastins

, 

Washington University-St. Louis