Moneyball, GMU and the Future of Law and Economics
My colleague Ilya Somin insightfully defends against allegations of the death of Moneyball in baseball and legal academia — largely making the point that larger institutions with larger payrolls imitating the successful elements of the strategy. There is more there, so go read the whole thing as well as an interesting comment thread. Ilya points out the following non-exhaustive list of GMU strategies on the hiring market aimed at acquiring undervalued assets: (1) L&E scholars, (2) conservative and libertarian academics; (3) academics with strong publication records but otherwise inferior traditional academic credentials. Ilya correctly notes that L&E scholars are no longer generally undervalued in legal academia (he also asserts that ideological discrimination and credential fetishization are less than ten years ago — a view that contradicts my own prior somewhat — but I want to focus on the L&E point).