NE/RD

The head cold is still with me, but thanks to the fine folks at Vicks (makers of DayQuil), I'm able to live a little more productively than I was yesterday.

Robert J. Oxoby, an associate professor of economics at the University of Calgary, has published a short paper titled "On the Efficiency of AC/DC: Bon Scott versus Brian Johnson." Here's a bit more explanation, from the paper itself:

Among musicologists, researchers of popular culture, and rock and roll lovers of all ages there exists a common debate. That is, with respect to the rock band AC/DC, who is the better vocalist: Bon Scott or Brian Johnson? ... In this paper, we explore this issue. Since it is difficult to ascertain which vocalist was better given the heterogeneity of musical tastes, our analysis does not focus on the aural or sonic quality of the vocalists’ performances. Rather, using tools from the field of experimental economics, we consider which vocalist results in individuals arriving at more efficient outcomes in a simple bargaining game.

If you're desperate to know who won, you'll have to follow the link above. And if you're desperate to know whether Oxoby intends this at all seriously (obviously, there's a lot of humor in the notion), he seems to have a legitimate interest in the subject. On his personal web site, you learn he's also a bassist who's played on songs titled "Dragstrip Girl" and "Hot Rod of Love," as well as an album called Cavalcade of Perversions, which sounds, in fact, like an AC/DC album title filtered through an economics department.

(Via Metafilter)