[downer95]

That's an interesting paper, but GOD why are people so motivated toward using absurdly dense jargon in their papers? What does one accomplish by couching their ideas in convoluted words?

For example:

  Labor hoarding is a widely believed empirical behavior of
  firms and a prominent explanation for procyclical labor 
  productivity. Conventional wisdom attributes labor 
  hoarding to labor adjustment costs. This paper argues that 
  the conventional wisdom is inadequate for understanding 
  labor hoarding because it ignores the role of inventories. 
  Since idle labor can be used to produce inventories, why 
  do firms hoard labor when inventory is an option?

The whole paper reads like that. Repurposed words dumped obliquely in the middle of sentances, and then abandonded.

Why not:

  Labor hoarding is defined as the retention of idle workers
  during periods of low economic activity or slow business,
  further reinforcing the impact of larger social trends.
  The common perception is that retaining valuable workers
  will prove less costly than rounds of lay offs, followed 
  by subsequent phases of recruiting and training new labor.
  Observations have proven that businesses will choose to 
  idle their workers during these periods, instead of
  producing finished manufactured goods and retaining an 
  expanded inventory of surplus product. This paper 
  questions the strategy of hoarding idle labor, and offers
  improved strategies as potential alternatives to the 
  tendency of hoarding.

What is it about academia, where people feel obligated to contort their writing into an intimidating architecture of opaque jargon and garish vocabulary? Is it some form of group think? Is it a defense mechanism designed to ward off criticism? Why must new ideas be presented in such stark, frustrating words?

[yetanotherphd]

For someone trained in the field, the original version is more concise and easier to understand. They key "jargon" terms are very common in economics, in particular "procyclical", "labor adjustment costs", "labor hoarding" and "inventories".

So really it's just a matter of using a common technical language that is less ambiguous than ordinary language.

Your rewrite adds a lot that isn't in the original article. E.g. the last sentence doesn't reflect their meaning. They are looking for explanations for why firms hoard, not trying to make suggestions to firms.

[count]

Theirs is half the length and more precise than yours. Maybe they had a word count limit? That, and they're writing for other people in the field - jargon is USEFUL as a time and space saver.

[wpietri]

You're really going to come on a technical site and complain about other people's jargon and opaque writing?

[marvin]

It's especially interesting when compared to the "but my code is self-documenting!" that a lot of technical people advocate.

[aliakbarkhan]

How stupidly self-centered are you? "All academic papers should be written in a way that I can understand no matter whether they would be comprehensible to the intended audience!" What a fucking egomaniac.