[Link] How Signaling Ossifies Behavior

Jayson_Virissimo

Here is a new post at EconLog in which Bryan Caplan discusses how signalling contributes to the status quo bias.

The lesson: In the real world, signaling naturally tends to ossify behavior - to lock in whatever the status quo happens to be. If you're an optimist, you can protest, "It's only a tendency." But even an optimist should admit that this tendency leads to atypically slow and unreliable progress.

Here is a new post at EconLog in which Bryan Caplan discusses how signalling contributes to the status quo bias.

The lesson: In the real world, signaling naturally tends to ossify behavior - to lock in whatever the status quo happens to be. If you're an optimist, you can protest, "It's only a tendency." But even an optimist should admit that this tendency leads to atypically slow and unreliable progress.

References?

These weren't what I had in mind originally, but they look reasonably good:

Indeed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Income

Some researchers claim "in economic terms it appears that the IQ score measures something with decreasing marginal value. It is important to have enough of it, but having lots and lots does not buy you that much."[75][76]
Other studies show that ability and performance for jobs are linearly related, such that at all IQ levels, an increase in IQ translates into a concomitant increase in performance.[77] Charles Murray, coauthor of The Bell Curve, found that IQ has a substantial effe

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