David Galenson

Everyone is talking about the NYT article about University of Chicago economist, David Galenson. Kottke mentions it, and then points to this interesting new book by Galenson, Old Masters and Young Geniuses, which lays out his theories of the life-cycle of creativity and how it differs for different kinds of people.

I saw the NYT article in Starbucks the other day, but didn't read it, but wanted to read it - I just couldn't then because I didn't want to spend the one and some change bones on it. But, I've really been interested in Galenson for years, because in my Labor II class in grad school, we had to each pick two papers to present to the class, and one of mine that I got assigned was a paper by Galenson. The paper had to do with estimating the life-cycle of artists from two distinct schools: the abstract expressionists (eg, Pollack) and the pop art movement (eg, Warhol). Superficially similar as they are both "abstract," he shows how the artists working in those movements appear to be cut from different cloths based on auction price data on the paintings and the age of the artist when s/he made the piece. Basically, for the abstract expressionists, there's "returns to experience." The average age of the painters is older from that period, and painters appear to make their more valuable work later in life. This is because there is a set of accumulated skills in abstract expressionism that come with experience. The pop-art workers are different - they make huge breakthroughs at very early ages, and then peeter out. So, you see a mean age for these workers (based on the Sotheby auction prices) for the best works that is negative correlated with the prices of the paintings. Meaning, they do their best work when they're younger.

I've seen a paper somewhere trying to replicate this approach on economists. Many people break up economists into two camps: the theoretical economists, who are almost pure mathematicians, and the applied economists, who are usually more empirical. You see similar things as to what Galenson found, I seem to remember - the theoretical economists doing their breakthrough work at very young ages (Paul Samuelson's dissertation, for instance, changing the field), while others make their most significant contributions later in life (I want to say Jacob Viner was an example). I like to think I'm, obviously, in the latter camp, otherwise I'm in big trouble!