A sideways look at economics
When preparing for my interview with Fathom, nearly two years ago now, I remember being both impressed and daunted by Thank Fathom it’s Friday. ‘How on earth’ I thought ‘would I (if I got the job) manage to come up with something interesting, well-written and economics-related at semi-regular intervals?!’. As it turns out this has gone reasonably well (at least up to now), not least because of the willingness of Tom, my partner to brainstorm TFiFs with me. However, dear readers, when I saw my initials on the research schedule this time I seemed to hit a wall, where no topic seemed sufficiently interesting, fun or economics related. But as I languished in the dreaded, becalmed waters of ‘no ideas’ this got me thinking about something, what does it actually mean to be unproductive?
Had we lived in different times I might have sat with this question for a while, perhaps linking ‘unproductive’ to its antonym, ‘productive’ and then thinking about how this links to ‘produce’ and ‘product’ and so on. Were my Latin up to scratch I might try and find a definition through the etymology, ‘pro’ meaning ‘forward’ and ‘duce’ meaning ‘to lead’. I might have, in this scenario, come up with a definition along the lines of ‘productive meaning to produce something’ or ‘productive meaning an activity leading forward towards something’, which I would probably find sufficiently imprecise to encourage me to open a dictionary flipping through the hundreds of thin pages, perhaps overshooting, before finally finding the ‘pro’s and running my finger down to the correct definition.
As we live in current times, my first port of call was a google search for ‘productive’, which quickly led me to Merriam Webster’s definitions: ‘having the quality or power of producing especially in abundance’, ‘effective in bringing about’ and ‘yielding results, benefits or profits’.[1] While perhaps faster than the first route this left little time for the type of deep thinking that often precedes ideas, and was therefore perhaps ultimately less ‘powerful of producing, especially in abundance’.
What I was trying to yield, the product if you will, was at least pretty clear, a TFiF sufficiently interesting, fun and economics-related to pass Fathom’s internal review, and my own standards. But as for my actions so far, they felt distinctly unproductive, several round-about conversations with Tom, which mainly consisted of me shooting down both his and my own ideas. A couple of non-starters where I thought I might have something, but quickly considered it overdone, too much work or too depressing and/or controversial for a TFiF. A few I’ll-just-have-a-quick-look-at-Instagram-breaks, at least two glasses of wine…
But just because I was feeling unproductive, did it mean that I was? If ‘unproductive’ means not ‘yielding results, benefits or profits’ then the time spent on discarded ideas, and certainly that spent on Instagram was unproductive with regards to this specific TFiF, but perhaps it was also a necessary step in the process? As long as I ended up with a TFiF at the end then some result would have been yielded. So maybe I wasn’t being unproductive, just feeling less productive than I have for other TFiFs, I was simply being less ‘effective in bringing about’.
But how much less effective? Well, this question at least seemed easier to answer, measuring things is what we economists (at least claim to) do, and the formula for measuring labour productivity is pretty straightforward: the output divided by hours worked (the input). But when was it correct to start measuring the hours from, all time vaguely spent on or thinking about the TFiF since seeing my name on the schedule, or just the time spent writing? What about all those non-starters, did they count, what if they turn into future TFiFs should they be counted then instead, meaning I’d need to revise my productivity estimate. And how about the time of others, input from Fathom’s excellent editors seems pretty straightforward to include, but should Tom’s participation also be counted? And are number of hours really a good measure of effort, after all I spent substantially more hours on a certain pirate-related TFiF than I ended up spending on this one, but in terms of perceived effort the former felt far easier to write.
The input it seems is not so easy to measure after all, and the output seems even more intangible. Are all TFiFs equal, and if they are what’s their value? If they’re not, should we measure them by number of words, number of readers, number of new readers so more people hear about Fathom or perhaps its fine to just approximate the value by taking some share of Fathom’s total revenue.
Accurately measuring my individual TFiF productivity is not so important, but as we aggregate up from TFiF level, to my overall productivity, to Fathom’s productivity and finally to UK productivity correctly measuring the inputs and outputs takes on a greater importance. At the macro level labour input is usually defined as either hours worked or number of employed, with that information coming from labour force surveys, but these suffer both from challenges of design and response rates. Meanwhile, the output is usually defined either by gross domestic product or gross value add — it could be a topic for a future TFiF where and in what ways these measures fall short of capturing true production. A classic example being the complete exemption of unpaid labour from economic statistics. With conventional measures of productivity in advanced economies having been on a steady decline over the past twenty years or so, perhaps a good starting point would be to revisit what we mean by productivity in the first place.
[1] I’ll also credit google with the Latin.
More by this Author