Baby models don't sell

I was sitting in a talk by a Stanford graduate and suddenly realized how true my adviser's comment on writing a simple model to explain puzzles was. That paper presented was extremely difficult to assimilate, not that his heavy accent helped. But no one in that room would think the guy was dumb.

Then the comment struck me. He said in a previous meeting, "Baby models don't sell." It is harder and harder to use a simple model to explain economics. Most of the baby models are already in principle and intermediate textbooks. It won't be easy to come up with one more popular baby model. Besides, you put yourself in a dangerous situation that real economists might think you are not up to difficult reasoning when you can only talk about simple stuff.

So my lesson is when you are talking to professionals, it is always better to be boring and incomprehensible than to be a see-through. You can talk about baby models any way you want when you are judged by no one.

(Picture: Elite Photography)