Armen Alchian Econ 490 fall 2019

I have experienced many teams in my life, some good, some not so good. At the end of the day, I have never been on a team as intense as Team Six. The teams I've been on simply haven't had the efficiency and the structure to take out Osama Bin Laden anytime soon. For this example, I wish to discuss a recreational sports team I was a part of last year, more specifically my fraternities basketball league. This, I would agree, is certainly an example of a team, although there are definite flaws within the system.  It works like this: we run a draft at the beginning of the semester with delegated captains. Usually, the captains are chosen based off their high skill level and knowledge for the game. After this happens, all the teammates are thrown into a group chat and discuss play times and sometimes, potential strategies. For reference, I usually go in round 5 or 6 of 10 rounds of drafting. Since we are talking about a basketball team, I believe this would be considered an a...

Opportunism My experience with lack of opportunism has been seen with occupations, as well as other student activities that would lead to success. More specifically, there are a couple of jobs on campus that I, as well as my friends, wanted, but didn't take the steps necessary to obtain the position. My sophomore year, I really wanted to work at a bar on campus. This is mostly due to the social benefits and connections that could be received from having such a job, as well as a consistent source of funds from busy nights. Getting this job requires you to reach out to friends that work there, and have them help you secure it. However, my sophomore year I waited far too long to reach out to my friend, and by the time I did, all the spots were gone. I would have to say I wasn't acting very opportunistically at this time. This year, I changed that. Another similar job opened up in which they were offering open interviews, and I went, and had a shift two days later. My budd...

My experience with organizations in the work force In the past, I've worked at various restaurants and retail stores, as well as multiple campus jobs. I think that there are many examples of transaction costs as well as communication strategies/flaws in the occupations I've had. In restaurants, many transaction costs exist. Obviously, the managers need to pay their workers, as well as buy food in bulk. Health inspections can help and hurt the company, as they can publicly release negative info about a company, but also offer changes to be made to better the business.  What is interesting is the pay structure in restaurants. I worked as a server, and we got payed around 5$ an hour, to accommodate for tips. In this way, the company was able to pay us less on their end, even though we had the ability to make much more than the minimum wage. This incentives the employees to not only want to show up, but also put in more effort. Jobs where employees earn commission, suc...

My alias is Armen Alchian. He is an American economist born in Fresno, California. Before I was assigned Alchian, I was not aware of who he was. He is known for a few important works, including his stance on managers having the ability to maximize profits, the learning curve, university economics, and property rights.  With that being said, his work will certainly be beneficial to this class as many of his topics deal with exchange and production, as well as costs and output.