Kenneth Arrow Econ 490 fall 2019

Luckily most of my decisions about major and job thus far have been both effective in reducing income risk while also feeling like good decisions here and now. I was accepted to UIUC into the Pre Engineering track. I wanted to be a computer science major because I had enjoyed all of the programming classes I took in high school. After a disastrous and stressful first year, I embraced the idea of being an economics major. This decision definitely did decrease my right out of college future earning potential, but it was one that had to be made. Luckily I am happy with the choice, and I believe that it is low enough risk to not be very worried about the future. Now, as an Economics major, I have been involving myself in data science research and extracurricular activities. These are both a good decision looking forward because it is easier to sell myself to recruiters, but they also are good decisions now because I enjoy both the work and activities. I involve myself in a few other ex...

1. Common Post Themes: Each post is based on the most recent class topic, and each topic builds off the last. Transfer costs, for example, could be brought up in basically any prompt so far. In the Illinibucks hypothetical could be brought up in up in terms of how such a vast organizational change would certainly bring up some difficulties. They could have also been talked about in the description of an effective team one has worked on if the individual chose to write about how the team used to be less effective then changed. Another common theme is team organization. Beyond the blog post it is explicitly tied to, it could be related to the Illinibucks post in how an effective team could be organized to carry out the project. It could have also been a part of the transfer pricing blog post where the writer could have talked about how exactly the changing organization switched up its structure. Finally, team organization could have been brought up in opportunism by speaking of what s...

In our Illinibucks thought experiment I believe having a large amount of opportunities to spend them would lead to the best overall experience. The student opportunities on campus that I think would benefit from the ability to jump in line follow: 1. Single class registration I have had problems every semester so far getting into classes necessary for me to complete my academic plan. Most semesters this is only one or two classes. I believe that if there was a way for students to pay with Illinibucks for a single class this could reduce registration stress for many. 2. Dorm room picking Dorms are allocated based off school year then randomly amongst those of the same year. If someone could pay to pick a certain room I believe many would take the opportunity. 3. Mental health services The idea of this frankly disgusts me morally, but I will explain myself. There are two main routes for obtaining mental health through the University. The counseling center has Monday through ...

Over the previous summer, I interned at a company that manufactured paint dispensers called Fluid Management. I was a part of their software engineering team. The structure of this team was a mix of one boss and all-channel network. There was an overall boss of software engineering, and underneath him, the team was split into three functions. These functions were database management, high-level software development, and low-level software development. Each of these groups operated in an all-channel network formation. The groups were relatively few people, between 2 and 5, so they did not get very held up in decision making. The reason I say the team is a mix of one boss and all-channel rather than just one boss is that tasks were not always assigned through the boss. The project we were working on had a softly defined end goal, and many decisions were made amongst the groups on what tasks needed to be done in what order to best keep the project going. Some portions of the project hav...

Opportunism is defined as taking opportunities that are to your benefit without giving a thought to the ethical issues they may cause. In the workplace, this could be taking more credit than is due on team projects or consistently delegating too much of their own work to others. This can result in a meteoric rise in work rank, but many times the bridges they burn on the way up will not be there to catch them when they need help. Outside of work opportunism can much more easily go unpunished. There are no real long term effects to cutting someone off while driving or taking advantage of a store accidentally pricing its items too low. The only thing stopping most people from these acts is a code of personal ethics. In my life, I have had a multitude of times in which I could have acted opportunistically but did not. One example of this comes from online shopping a few years ago. I was on a boutique-type site that pretty obviously looked like it was not professionally made. There w...

I was a member of the band for my four years in high school. At the end of my junior year, the original band director retired after around 30 years of service. He was a very laid back guy. He didn't take marching band very seriously, rather putting more work into concert selections and the band's Europe trip. Most students liked his methods for running the band so many were ambivalent to the upcoming year. The new director was quite a bit different. The biggest source of ire for many was that he valued marching band greatly and wanted the school to take it much more seriously. He had a multi-year plan that involved ramping up the number of outside of school practices, building a color guard team, and doing more involved shows that involved props and dancing. Finally, he gave more power to the drum majors (a student leadership position) and opened the job up to sophomores and juniors. Reactions were mixed, top say the least. Many (myself included) were very unhappy about the...

Kenneth Arrow was born August 23, 1921. He got his bachelor's at City College in New York in Mathematics. He then went on to earn his master's in Mathematics from Columbia University. After this he shifted his focus to the study of Economics. He was an assistant professor at the Stanford for Economics and Statistics from 1949 until 1968. He then started working at Harvard as a professor of Economics until his retirement in 1991. Kenneth Arrow received the Nobel Prize in Economics (Jointly with Sir John Hicks) in 1972 for "pioneering contributions to general equilibrium theory and welfare theory". Arrow also did research into the inefficiency of government price controls, racial economics, and the role of production experience increasing efficiency for a company. His work forms some very important bases for modern economics. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1972/arrow/biographical/ https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Arrow.html I did no...