Milton Friedman Econ 490 fall 2017

Growing up as a kid baseball was my favorite sport.  Up until I was 10 years old I would play in a league in the park right across the street from my house and my father was the coach of my team every year.  After that I would play at larger parks and with different coaches, but my dad really enjoys watching me play and would show up to every game and be very involved.  He would continue to coach me, give me tips, and offer to help out the head coaches in any way they needed.  Once I started having coaches that were not my father, I would have a problem similar to the principal-agent triangle.  My coaches would try and coach me one way, but if I was struggling my dad would give me tips and try to coach me in his own way, which usually differed.  A lot of times in these situations it would be impossible to please both my coach and my father as they would have conflicting tips.  It would be impossible to take the advice of one and put it into practice without ignoring the other.  A lot

When thinking about conflict in the workplace I can not think of any personal experiences where I was involved in conflict or witnessed it.  One time during my internship two senior managers got into a shouting argument over whiteboard markers that left the work area around it in an awkward silence for a while.  However, I did not know if this was premeditated by personal conflict in the past, or if it was just one of the managers being frustrated that he could not find a marker to write with during a meeting with a colleague and the frustration of this happening multiple times boiled over.  I think the latter was the case, where it was a one time thing and they quickly worked out the conflict as it did not happen again at all during my time working there. When thinking about the topics discussed in the textbook about group dynamics I tried to tie them to the comedy show "The Office".  However, I know that this show is a comedy and does not represent real life accurately in

One example that I can think of that is at least similar to gift exchange is covering for shifts.  I am not completely informed about the specific example, as I am thinking of my aunt's experiences.  She has worked in the University of Wisconsin - Madison's hospital.  She works in a department involving blood, and I can remember her taking my and my brother there when she needed to work and she took our blood and we watched as she ran it through the machine to test it.  I am basing this example mostly from things that she says when I see her, which is usually around the holidays when we have family gatherings.  This would also be the time where I would assume there is an increase in people looking to find others to cover their shifts for them.  One thing she would complain about is the trouble she has finding coworkers to cover one of her shifts to be able to attend family gatherings.  I am viewing the covering of a shift for a coworker as a gift, however I realize that in so

The main reason for going to college should be to get a better, higher paying job once you finish compared to one you would be able to get without graduating from college. This has turned into sort of a gamble with how expensive college has become, as failing in college will leave you much worse off than if you had not gone, and it will also take many years working a higher paying job just to pay back the expenses incurred from college.  In the end, however, succeeding in college can play a major role in earning more money in the future.  Although I am attending college to learn skills that would be helpful for a future job I would enjoy, when choosing my major the types of jobs I could get out of college were not one of the main factors contributing to this decision.  Instead I thought about what kind of subjects I enjoyed most.  I have enjoyed math all my life and love to analyze and problem-solve, and Economics became my choice as it entails a lot of these things I enjoy.  Even th

I actually purposely thought about my different experiences in organizations before writing any of the blog posts.  I have also decided to write about three different organizations that I have been a part of as a way to force me to think about the intricacies of each one, and also to compare how all of them work and why they are successful or not based on what the organizations purpose is.  I am able to compare my blogs so far more with opportunism, organization structure, and management than I am with the pricing concepts we have been covering recently.  This is because the only organization I have talked about where I would be able to reflect on how pricing works is my internship experience at CME Group, which is also the organization I have had the least experience in.  Before writing about the organization structure of my baseball team I enjoyed comparing and contrasting my different organization experiences with each other using the textbooks examples of different structures and t

There are a few things on campus that could use an "Illinibucks" system.  The first that come to mind are registering for classes and campus housing.  Both registration of classes and housing are largely determined by a first come first serve basis.  However, I do not think Illinibucks would work as well for housing.  Many students only stay in campus housing for their first year.  When coming into campus, first year students are less informed on the benefits of different housing buildings, and would be less knowledgable about which dorms are better.  First year students would be less likely to use Illinibucks for housing as they would not know to what extent certain dorms are better, and so would be more willing to just let UIUC assign them their dorm from their preferences list.  The majority of Illinibucks for housing would be from second-year students here at UIUC that know more about each dorm, and would have a preference for which dorm to choose, and possibly Illinibuck