By Patricia Cohen of The NY Times.
Here is what Wikipedia says about signalling it:
"In contract theory, signalling (or signaling; see spelling differences) is the idea that one party (termed the agent) credibly conveys some information about itself to another party (the principal). For example, in Michael Spence's job-market signalling model, (potential) employees send a signal about their ability level to the employer by acquiring education credentials. The informational value of the credential comes from the fact that the employer believes the credential is positively correlated with having greater ability and difficult for low ability employees to obtain. Thus the credential enables the employer to reliably distinguish low ability workers from high ability workers."
Excerpts from the Times article:
"in Uganda, one of the poorest nations, where nearly half the people eat fewer calories than they need each day, excess fat is often a sign of wealth and can help get a bank loan, according to a forthcoming article in The American Economic Review.
It’s not surprising that in places where food is scarce, obesity serves as a significant marker of wealth. But what the new study points out is that in poor countries, information is also scarce. And in those situations, loan officers use whatever bits of evidence they can find to help make critical economic decisions.
“Given the scarcity of readily available hard information in poor countries, wealth signals, including obesity, play a crucial role in economic interactions where individuals seek to evaluate someone’s wealth,” said Elisa Macchi, an assistant professor of economics at Brown University.
As part of her research, Ms. Macchi conducted tests with 238 loan officers at 146 financial institutions in the capital city, Kampala. She asked them to review applications from fictionalized potential borrowers whose accompanying photographs were manipulated so they appeared thin or fat.
It is not uncommon in Uganda for people to include a photo of themselves when submitting a loan application, and it can be one nugget of information that a loan officer uses to decide whether to even grant an applicant a first interview, Ms. Macchi said.
She discovered that loan officers were more likely to rate the applicants as more creditworthy and more financially sound when the obese version of the photograph was attached.
“The obesity premium is large, equivalent to the effect of a 60 percent increase in borrower self-reported income in the experiment,” or an additional asset like ownership of a car, the study concluded."
"in the case of loan officers in Uganda, facts ultimately trumped perception. When more solid information was provided — like the loan applicant’s income, collateral and occupation — lenders used it, and the so-called obesity premium fell."
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How to Spot Fake Reviews and Shady Ratings on Amazon (2022)
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Why would men bring fake cell phones to bars? (2021)
Are sellers paying Amazon customers to delete negative reviews? (2021)
Fake Reviews and Inflated Ratings Are Still a Problem for Amazon (2021)
The Myth of Authenticity Or The Story Behind Products (2010)
Fake Authenticity (2011)
Students: Make a mistake on purpose, its good for you! (2007)
A fake job reference can be just a few clicks away (2015)
Fake Economist Fools Portugal (2013)
Slave Redemption in Sudan (2007) (Fake slaves are sold to those who buy slaves and then give them their freedom)
Can A Product Work Just Because It's Expensive? (2008) (fake medicine)
If It Pays To Have Friends, Can You Pay To Have Friends? (2013) (you can hire fake boyfriends)
Study: Half of American Doctors Give Patients Placebos Without Telling Them (2008)
Saudis grapple with fake street sweepers (2017)
Rent a White Guy: Confessions of a fake businessman from Beijing (2010) (by Mitch Moxley in The Atlantic Monthly, excerpts below)
Can adding a phantom third story to their homes help families find a wife for their son? (2018)
Why do employers pay extra money to people who study a bunch of subjects in college that they don’t actually need you to know? Signaling (2018)
Mexicans buy fake cellphones to hand over in muggings (2019)
Conspicuous Consumption, Conspicuous Virtue, Thorstein Veblen (and Adam Smith, too!) (2007)
How does a company selling used luxury goods spot fakes? (signalling and conspicuous consumption) (2019).
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What if companies can't afford real models for their ads? Use AI generated fake pictures (2020)
Excerpts from "Rent a White Guy"
"Not long ago I was offered work as a quality-control expert with an American company in China I’d never heard of. No experience necessary—which was good, because I had none. I’d be paid $1,000 for a week, put up in a fancy hotel, and wined and dined in Dongying, an industrial city in Shandong province I’d also never heard of. The only requirements were a fair complexion and a suit.
“I call these things ‘White Guy in a Tie’ events,” a Canadian friend of a friend named Jake told me during the recruitment pitch he gave me in Beijing, where I live. “Basically, you put on a suit, shake some hands, and make some money. We’ll be in ‘quality control,’ but nobody’s gonna be doing any quality control. You in?”
I was.
And so I became a fake businessman in China, an often lucrative gig for underworked expatriates here. One friend, an American who works in film, was paid to represent a Canadian company and give a speech espousing a low-carbon future. Another was flown to Shanghai to act as a seasonal-gifts buyer. Recruiting fake businessmen is one way to create the image—particularly, the image of connection—that Chinese companies crave. My Chinese-language tutor, at first aghast about how much we were getting paid, put it this way: “Having foreigners in nice suits gives the company face.”
Six of us met at the Beijing airport, where Jake briefed us on the details. We were supposedly representing a California-based company that was building a facility in Dongying. Our responsibilities would include making daily trips to the construction site, attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and hobnobbing. During the ceremony, one of us would have to give a speech as the company’s director. That duty fell to my friend Ernie, who, in his late 30s, was the oldest of our group. His business cards had already been made."
"For the next few days, we sat in the office swatting flies and reading magazines, purportedly high-level employees of a U.S. company that, I later discovered, didn’t really exist."
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