In Short

Peter Arkle

By Michael Blanding

Published Feb. 3, 2016

1 min read

As long as oil and gas are cheap, producers will have little incentive to switch to RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES, argues geosciences and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer. In a policy paper written with economist Gernot Wagner, the authors contend that fossil-fuel prices are kept artificially low by subsidies. The paper, published in Nature in September, recommends a carbon tax or cap and giving renewables greater access to the energy grid.

Is it better to stay unemployed while waiting for the right job or to take a lesser interim position? A study by economics professor Henry Farber has found that STOPGAP JOBS might hurt future employment prospects. Farber — along with UCLA’s Till von Wachter and Arizona State’s Dan Silverman — sent out 8,000 fake résumés for 2,400 administrative job openings, and found that those with stopgap jobs were called by employers 8.5 percent of the time, while those with no job at all were called 10 percent of the time. The study was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in November.

Published in the Feb. 3, 2016, Issue

1 Response

Norman R. Augustine ’57 *59

8 Years Ago

Research Challenge

While I am an engineer/businessperson and certainly not an ethicist, am I the only one troubled by the morality, even legality, of a professor sending out 8,000 fake résumés (Life of the Mind, Feb. 3) to corporations in the pursuit of his research? The results are certainly interesting, possibly even important, but assuming that only half of the résumés were even looked at, and those for only 10 minutes each, the cost to the recipient companies was about $70,000. Were those same companies to have sent out 8,000 fraudulent job offers or advertisements, I cannot imagine PAW publishing the results without at least questioning the ethical if not legal basis of such actions.

What am I missing?