George Stigler Econ 490 fall 2019

I have been in groups and teams that have been mildly successful, and some that have not been. By far, the most successful team that I was a part of was my high school Water Polo team, specifically my Junior and Senior year (2015 and 2016). What made the success even more meaningful was a period of under-performance during my Sophomore year, when we failed to reach the Sectional Final for the first time in a while (not sure on the exact year, must have been since at least 2008). For the next two, quite successful years, we had some added motivation due to previous “failure”. In 2015 we won the Sectional Championship against our rival school (who we had lost to three times earlier in the year). In 2016 we finished 3 rd in the state which at the time was the highest finish in school history. What I enjoyed about the structure of our team, specifically my senior year in 2016, was that we didn’t really have a single standout player or two, rather a larger group of good players to wo...

It does take a decent amount of discipline to not act opportunistically. It may seem rather easy to take advantage of circumstances without regarding any sort of principles or consequences. As the prompt states, being a good citizen, realizing the unethical implications, or having patience as a virtue can all be reasons why people don’t engage in opportunism. Opportunism is also driven by self-interest, so people who don’t hold others in high regard may be more susceptible to taking advantage of certain circumstances. When self-interest is involved, people may not even be thinking of others when taking advantage and acting opportunistically, but their actions inadvertently cause some scale of harm to other individuals. I will give two examples, because this first one does not need to be analyzed as much in detail, but is a simple example of opportunism (and lack thereof) in action. Driving back to school on I-57 south towards Champaign can result in some merging down into one lan...

During the summers of 2016 and 2017 I was a lifeguard at a small, private club in my hometown. This place has a pool, a clubhouse, a playground, a large field and nine tennis courts. The club had recently introduced a new Manager, parting ways with the guy who had been there for at least ten, or even twenty years (I can't exactly remember). The Assistant Manager, at the time, did not change, as she remained under the new manager for the next two summers (the assistant had also been there for around fifteen years). For this blog's sake I will call the new manager Mike and the assistant manager Katie. Mike and Katie had very differing personalities, and the fit was already a little awkward since she was working under someone who did not hire her. Mike is a very nice, outgoing, positive personality who is always putting the employees' needs first. The two summers that they worked together, there were always moments of friction when they didn't agree (which was more of ...

George Stigler graduated with a B.A. from Washington University in 1931 obtained his M.B.A. from Northwestern the following year. The climax of his studies were at the University of Chicago, where he obtained his Ph.D and initiated an extremely successful academic career. He taught at Iowa State College, Minnesota, and spent a year at Brown, while working the duration of WWII doing statistical research at Columbia University. His early career interests included price theory, linear programming, vertical integration, delivered price systems, and more. He was also on Staff at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he studied the service industries and the behavior of industrial prices. Although, arguably his most notable field of study was public regulation. He concluded that public regulation has little influence and is usually detrimental to consumer interests. He is also known for developing his Theory of Economic Regulation (sometimes called Stigler's theory). He wrote...