Creative Class

I don’t often write about, or link to posts on, intellectual work, but Greg Mankiw hits the nail on the proverbial head here on research collaboration.

“Many econ grad students at Harvard, maybe most, are stronger in math
than I am. In recent years, some of my coauthors (such as Ricardo Reis
and Matthew Weinzierl) have been Harvard students with strong technical
skills. My comparative advantage in the coauthorial quid pro quo is
based on experience, intuition, writing skills, and a pretty good nose
for interesting questions.One of the nice things about being a
professor is that you can specialize in those things you are best at,
and you can find collaborators that compensate for your weaknesses. In
other words, being a professor is a lot easier than being a student.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Talent. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.