Links 4/28
New paper which scores 6,957 Organization Science submissions and 10,389 reviews with Pangram and find a 42% post-ChatGPT volume surge driven entirely by AI-flagged work, with editorial outcomes deteriorating sharply above a 30% Pangram threshold and the volume surge tracing to publication-count incentives at business schools. Fun fact: I know the last author (Lamar Pierce) from grad school and have a fun memory of him standing on one foot in a kitchen at a dinner party exclaiming “I’m really good at balancing.” More Versus Better: AI, Incentives, and the Emerging Crisis in Peer Review — Gartenberg, Hasan, Murray, Pierce
Dan Davies applies cybernetics and public choice to outsourced state functions and identifies “management capacity” — the ability to process information and respond to feedback — as the load-bearing missing quantity in modern bureaucracy. I’m a big fan of Davies’ work. Taming the unaccountability machine — Dan Davies
John Psmith’s review of F.W. Mote’s Imperial China: 900-1800 argues that barbarism and civilization aren’t a binary but a dial humans turn in response to incentives. Fun read, though I can’t remember why I saved this article a year ago… REVIEW: Imperial China, by F.W. Mote — John Psmith