I work at a place that follows such a strategy: It works. We don’t specialize too much in topics-although a bit, but we look at rookies from less fancy places, and will hire them if they are good enough intellectually. Though in my field, everyone argues that they try to hire hidden gems – but not really. The correlation in rookie offers is too high.

The last place I worked at did it too. The turnover there was really high, as people moved up the food chain. But the department is always intellectually interesting, even though only 20–40 percent of the good people stay. The department just keep finding good people to replace the ones leaving..

All that being said, none of these places are the very best: to achieve that, you need to hire the job market stars and the proven stars. Only the really rich schools can afford that.

I also think that much of what we do is learned on the job-so a successful moneyball strategy requires senior faculty who provide effective mentoring. Job market stars need less mentoring.