Our new “Freakonomics” column, appearing in today’s New York Times Magazine, takes a look at NASCAR’s recent record of crashing and fatalities. Not surprisingly, the Times’s sports section is full of NASCAR articles, since today is the running of the 2006 Daytona 500 (which marks 5 years since the death of Dale Earnhardt).
One of these articles, by Viv Bernstein, is about the amazing record compiled over the past several years by Jack Roush’s team, which last year put five drivers in the Chase for the Nextel Cup, NASCAR’s version of a post-season playoff. An interesting point of this article is the response by the rival Hendrick Motorsports team. Team owner Rick Hendrick is offering a $1,248,525 bonus to his staffers if all four of his team’s drivers make the Chase this year.
The article doesn’t stipulate who, exactly, are the staffers who get the money, but $1.2 million split among a bunch of people who make pretty good money may not be the prime incentive here; rather, as is often the case with group incentives versus individual ones, the fear of being the guy who holds back the rest of the group is probably a stronger motivation than anything.
The economist Roland Fryer tested this idea not long ago among New York City schoolchildren. He was giving out rewards to kids who did well on their tests. In some classrooms, kids competed individually; in others, they competed as a group. Fryer found that the kids in the groups did better overall.
So keep an eye this year on Rick Hendrick’s four drivers — Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Busch, and Brian Vickers — to see if their staffs are capable of acting like a bunch of schoolkids.
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Good call, Stephen — looks like the winner was part of your short-list of 4!
Good call, Stephen — looks like the winner was part of your short-list of 4!
My contention at the time was that the Y2K thing would be no big deal. Rich countries (e.g., the US) could afford to take out insurance for it (system fixes, whatever) and poor countries were too little reliant on computers for it to be a big deal.
Whether that, or the over-hyping of the threat, is a correct description of the situation, it’s clear that nothing much happened.
My contention at the time was that the Y2K thing would be no big deal. Rich countries (e.g., the US) could afford to take out insurance for it (system fixes, whatever) and poor countries were too little reliant on computers for it to be a big deal.
Whether that, or the over-hyping of the threat, is a correct description of the situation, it’s clear that nothing much happened.
Good evening:
1. Pedestrian column with predictable pulling of punches, staid, pedestrian middle-of-the road conclusion and customary UChi refusal to say anything to offend Corporate America. At least they did not call for gambling on race car wrecks.
2. Of 37,000 auto wreck victims annually:
A. roughly 40% are due to drunk driving; B. roughly 50% are the result of defective auto design; and
C. roughly 1/7 (some 5000) are due to preventable truck wrecks, the sequelae of tired truck drivers and bad equipment and nonenforcement (desuetude) by U.S. DOT and DOL.
see generally http://www.patt.org http://www.trucksafety.org http://www.madd.org http://www.crashprevention.org http://www.truckingsolutions.com
3. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and consumer crusader Ralph Nader (Unsafe at Any Speed) wrote decades ago about how half of all the cars made in Detroit wound up with blood on them. http://www.publiccitizen.org
4. “Rogue,” yes. “Creative,” no.
5. Messrs Levitt and Dubner might wish to write less superficially than to endorse a narrow view of not investing in safety improvements — they’re dead wrong (again).
6. When are Messrs Levitt and Dubner ever going to answer my questions re: their cruelly unfair treatment of civil rights hero Stetson Kennedy? (Jan 8.)
With kindest regards, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Ed Slavin
The Collective Press
EASlavin@aol.com
http://www.collectivepress.org
Box 3084
St. Augustine, FL 32085-3084
904-471-7023
Good evening:
1. Pedestrian column with predictable pulling of punches, staid, pedestrian middle-of-the road conclusion and customary UChi refusal to say anything to offend Corporate America. At least they did not call for gambling on race car wrecks.
2. Of 37,000 auto wreck victims annually:
A. roughly 40% are due to drunk driving; B. roughly 50% are the result of defective auto design; and
C. roughly 1/7 (some 5000) are due to preventable truck wrecks, the sequelae of tired truck drivers and bad equipment and nonenforcement (desuetude) by U.S. DOT and DOL.
see generally http://www.patt.org http://www.trucksafety.org http://www.madd.org http://www.crashprevention.org http://www.truckingsolutions.com
3. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and consumer crusader Ralph Nader (Unsafe at Any Speed) wrote decades ago about how half of all the cars made in Detroit wound up with blood on them. http://www.publiccitizen.org
4. “Rogue,” yes. “Creative,” no.
5. Messrs Levitt and Dubner might wish to write less superficially than to endorse a narrow view of not investing in safety improvements — they’re dead wrong (again).
6. When are Messrs Levitt and Dubner ever going to answer my questions re: their cruelly unfair treatment of civil rights hero Stetson Kennedy? (Jan 8.)
With kindest regards, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Ed Slavin
The Collective Press
EASlavin@aol.com
http://www.collectivepress.org
Box 3084
St. Augustine, FL 32085-3084
904-471-7023
Do you have a reference for the Roland Fryer comment? I looked at his page but didn’t see a paper about that.
Do you have a reference for the Roland Fryer comment? I looked at his page but didn’t see a paper about that.