When your paper gets a top 5 conditional accept... despite R3...

pilots. Over time, as the war dragged on, the awards diffused to lower-ranked (though still elite) pilots. This created a need for new 'carrots'. Incentives mattered because the business was inherently risky; more than 80% of pilots in our sample died.

We argue this follows the logic of fashion cycles (Pesendorfer 1995). Status goods are signals. Their value depends on the exclusivity of the group that possesses them. Our data show a clear "cheapening" effect: the earliest recipients of the Knight’s Cross were the most skilled

engineered a "rat race" that extracted significant additional effort from its best pilots. When pilots got close to the informal quota, their effort spiked; once they had the award, it slumped. New medals spelled more renewed efforts.

How do you motivate workers? Leo Bursztyn, Ewan Racliffe and I have a new paper. We look at highly skilled 'workers' whose effort was near-impossible to monitor -- German fighter pilots in WW2.

reminds me of the immortal essay by Stanley Fish "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos"...

The Harvard longitudinal study, tracking undergrads and Boston city residents since the 1940s, concluded that only close personal relationships matter for life satisfaction; this is not what we find.

What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of life? What would you remember as bringing satisfaction, meaning, and purpose to your life? These are the modest questions that David Lagakos, Stelios Michalopoulos and I try to answer by "interviewing" over 1,400 Americans.