• Chasing the Red Baron

    Published: 03-31-2017

    史努比

    You can’t eat relative returns is an old aphorism. 这听起来像是出自《yabo亚博网站登录首页》(本杰明富兰克林), and I’m not really sure of its origin, 但这意味着我们(投资者)应该关注我们资金的绝对增长, not on its growth relative to some benchmark or peers. 当我们购买食品杂货(或发放助学金、颁发奖学金或削减养老金支票)时，, we spend (“eat”) actual dollars, not an amount relative to our performance against an index. 太频繁, 我们落入了试图复制高绩效同伴的策略的陷阱, 并且不可避免地达不到(有多少投资者采用了“捐赠模式”，希望复制耶鲁的表现), only to fall well short?).
    Still, we can’t help but compare ourselves to others; it’s in our nature. 当被问及是否愿意赚80美元时,000/year or $60,000, virtually everyone chooses the former. But when re-phrased as would you rather earn $80,000 knowing that your neighbors earned $100,000, or earn $60,000 when your neighbors made $50,000, studies showed a very strong preference for the latter. 如果我们能比我们的邻居过得更好，我们就会选择变得更穷. I hope we understand that this is a sub-optimal choice.
    Still, it is in our nature to crave recognition. Adam Smith, in Theory of Moral Sentiments, noted the human desire “to be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy…and approbation.几千年来，我们人为地创造了一些稀缺的奖项(“年度最佳运动员”)。, Congressional Medal of Honor, “年度最佳经理”)，希望能促使员工努力和精力朝着理想的目标前进. 鼓励这样的行为可能会激发一些人取得优异的成绩, 但这也可能导致其他人承担超出他们承受能力的风险. Studies have shown that the neighbors (!)的彩票中奖者在汽车上花费更多(炫耀性消费)，破产率也更高. As Winston Churchill (who is endlessly quotable) noted, a “medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow.”
    最近一篇yabo亚博网站登录首页航空的论文引起了我的注意(因为它是yabo亚博网站登录首页航空的)。. The authors, three distinguished professors from universities of Denmark, Zurich and Chicago, examined the records of more than 5,000 German 飞行员 from the Second World War. 在常用用法中，“王牌”是指有五次或更多空中胜利的飞行员. This has become a rare achievement: in the Vietnam War, for example, only two US 飞行员, 空军的史蒂夫·里奇和海军的坎宁安公爵, were aces (with five victories each). No American pilot has achieved that status since.
    第一次世界大战中最成功的飞行员是曼弗雷德·冯·里希特霍芬, with 80 victories, forever immortalized as the Red Baron, Snoopy’s nemesis. 但二战期间，一些飞行员达到了非凡的高度(双关语). 在那场战争中，409名飞行员取得了40次以上的胜利，其中绝大多数(379人)是德国人. 有三个因素可以解释德国的这种优势. First was that at the start of the war, 德国飞行员是唯一有实战经验的, gained during the Spanish Civil War. 格尔尼卡, the title of Picasso’s most famous painting, 这是历史上第一个被空中摧毁的平民城镇吗, carried out by the Luftwaffe. 其次, most victories came against the Soviet Union, 谁的飞机和飞行员的素质都很差. 最后, the Germans had a rule, “fly till you die,不像美国机组人员在25架次后就轮换离开, German 飞行员 only stopped flying when they were shot down. This led to some impressive individual accomplishments. 汉斯-约阿希姆·马赛在一天内取得17场胜利(1942年9月1日), Emil Lang had 68 victories in one month (October 1943), 埃里希·哈特曼保持着352次空中胜利的历史记录(除了7次对苏联). Hartmann’s last occurred hours before the war ended. 由于到1944年5月, a full year before the end of the war, the Germans were losing 25% of their 飞行员 each month.
    这些成就在每日武装部队公报(Wehrmachtbericht). This was considered a rare honor, reserved for spectacular accomplishments, 因为它每天都被广播到各地的所有部队, the honor was widely and instantaneously noted. To examine the impact these accolades had on other 飞行员, 研究人员查看了之前与这位荣誉飞行员在同一中队的飞行员的记录, 假设与该飞行员之前的个人接触或关系可能会激发其他飞行员更大的动力. It turns out that it did.
    研究人员进一步根据他们以前的记录对其他飞行员进行了分组, 前20%被称为“王牌”，其余的被称为“非王牌”.下面的图1显示了在前飞行同事(“同伴”)提到一项特殊成就后这两个类别的结果。. 在听到前任的成就后，排名靠前的那一组的胜利显著增加, from an average of 1.9 victories per month to 3.0 victories. The other 80% saw only a modest rise in victories, from 0.23 to 0.35 per month.
    记住，德国飞行员退出军衔的唯一方法就是被击落. Interestingly, 在一名前同事获得荣誉后，排名靠前的一组员工的“离职”率较基线有所下降. For the very best 飞行员 then, 对前任战友的尊敬增加了他们随后的胜利，减少了他们的伤亡. These highly skilled 飞行员 were motivated to, and indeed did, 当看到他们认识的同事的赞扬时，他们会表现得更好. The less-skilled 飞行员 were equally motivated, but lacking the skills of the best, did not fare as well. While their victory rate increased fractionally, their casualty, 或退出, rates spiked (bottom panel). 他们更大的努力主要导致了更高的死亡率.

     

    飞行员

    相对于同伴的表现是一种强大的动力. 有一件轶事发生在1940年夏天非常关键的不列颠战役中, when the outcome very much hung in the balance, the top two German aces in that battle, Adolf Galland and Werner Mölders, were tied in victories when Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, called Mölders to Berlin for consultation. Mölders protested that he would fall behind Galland, 只有Göring同意让加兰禁足三天Mölders才会同意. 令人惊讶的是, at that critical moment in battle, Göring同意让他的两名顶级飞行员停飞三天.

    So peer competition is a strong motivation. 但是，执着于与同伴相比的表现可能会阻碍我们实现自己目标的能力, and lead us to take unacceptable risks. 对于少数技术高超的投资者来说，竞争可能会激励我们实现更大的目标. For everyone else, 冒更大的风险更有可能不会带来更多的胜利, but only to greater casualties.

     

    *Philipp Ager, Leonardo Bursztyn, Hans-Joachim Voth, 杀人动机:第二次世界大战期间的地位竞争和飞行员表现, NBER Working Paper No. 22992, December 2016.

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