Robert Shiller: Finance: The Best, Brightest, and Least Productive: Noted
Robert J. Shiller: The Best, Brightest, and Least Productive?:
In the United States, 7.4% of total compensation of employees in 2012 went to people working in the finance and insurance industries. Whether or not that percentage is too high, the real issue is that the share is even higher among the most educated and accomplished people, whose activities may be economically and socially useless, if not harmful…. Thomas Philippon and Ariell Reshef [note that] much of the increase in financial activity has taken place in the more speculative fields, at the expense of traditional finance… credit intermediation… declined relative to “other finance”… wages in “other finance” skyrocketed relative to those in credit intermediation.
