Talk: Remco Heesen (LSE)

Title:

The Division of Cognitive Labour under Poisson Productivity

Abstract:

When a community of academics faces aresearch problem and multiple methodological approaches to solving it, how mucheffort should they devote to each approach to maximise their chances of solvingthe problem and minimise the time to a solution? This problem is known as thedivision of cognitive labour (DCL). More specifically, Philip Kitcher, MichaelStrevens, and Kevin Zollman have asked whether and to what extent academics’expectations of credit for solving the problem can act as an invisible hand toproduce an efficient DCL without a need for top-down planning. Here I revisitthis question using a modelling framework (key ingredient: academicproductivity follows a Poisson distribution) that has more empirical supportthan Kitcher’s, Strevens’, and Zollman’s, and is also more flexible in that itcan be used to address broader questions about credit incentives. The somewhatsurprising finding is that in this framework the DCL problem becomesessentially trivial. I’d like to discuss implications for how we think aboutthe model and/or the DCL problem.