In our previous post, we introduced EconLog readers to the possibility of using The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. This post continues that discussion.
As another important lesson in economics, the iconic team-up of siblings Evelyn and Jonathan Carnahan with Rick O’Connell illustrate the value of specialization and comparative advantage. Evelyn brings her scholarly knowledge as a librarian to the team and explains important information about the Book of the Dead and the Book of the Living, the mirrors that light underground caverns, and the sah-netjer mummification room. Rick brings a gunslinger adventurer skillset to the team, as well as key knowledge about the location of Hamunaptra (“Relax, I’m the map, it’s all up here”). Jonathan is, above all, a pickpocket, which is an important skill when unearthing treasure and fighting off mummies. Gains from trade are only possible if the parties work together through cooperative exchange.
The characters also demonstrate how the gains from cooperation can overcome conflict between groups, and how the failure to share knowledge leads to social losses. At first, during the race to Hamunaptra, the Americans compete with our iconic trio of Evy, Rick, and Jonathan to arrive first at Hamunaptra. The race ends with one guide trampled underfoot (a dangerous prospect with the camels’ top speed of nearly 40 miles per hour), and no health care in sight. Similarly, during the early days of the dig, the groups worked separately, and competition over resources, from dig locations to tools, continually threatens violence, including the Egyptian diggers working for the American team. However, after the Medjai’s first attack on the camp, including an ominous warning of additional danger, the two groups set aside their differences for the social gain of cooperative survival.
Specialized skills also help overcome incomplete transportation networks. Even Winston, the intoxicated Royal Air Corps pilot wishing to relive his glory days of the Great War, brings in specialized flight skills as Ardeth, Rick, and Jonathan race after the kidnapped Evelyn. Izzy, the dirigible pilot who repurposed a Royal Air Corps base into “Magic Carpet Airways” in The Mummy Returns, similarly fills an important gap in transportation markets.
As Adam Smith wrote in Book I, Chapter I of The Wealth of Nations,
The division of labour, however, so far as it can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportionable increase of the productive powers of labour. The separation of different trades and employments from one another, seems to have taken place in consequence of this advantage. This separation, too, is generally carried furthest in those countries which enjoy the highest degree of industry and improvement; what is the work of one man, in a rude state of society, being generally that of several in an improved one […] This great increase in the quantity of work, which, in consequence of the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and, lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.
In this way, we also see how the gains from specialization and trade expand in the story as people expand their networks. When the Medjai Ardeth Bay arrives to save the day with specialized knowledge about how to defeat the mummy Imhotep, the new team is able to fight Imhotep’s troops with a success none of the characters would have experienced alone.
Issues in Labor Markets
Initiation into the Bembridge scholars served as an academic status, a sort of right to title oneself with the distinction and the rights that come with it. This coveted, yet optional credential fails under scrutiny in The Mummy and its sequel. In both films, Evelyn discovers evidence that previous scholars had missed or even dismissed. She also corrects an important mistranslation in the first film, despite repeatedly not being admitted to the guild of Bembridge Scholars. The film thus demonstrates that credentialism is perhaps not the mark of quality it is often treated as. Whether she is barred from the Scholars because of gender-based discrimination – as evidenced by the Egyptologist – or anti-competitive exclusionary guild behavior, Evelyn’s expertise is what wins the day – not her credentials, or even her alleged lack of field experience. When she is finally a member in the second film, Hafez, who is the curator of the British Museum, also turns out to be working for the side of evil by resurrecting Imhotep once again. Perhaps The Mummy Returns posits that exclusionary guilds can breed corruption, especially as he faced a competitive threat. After all, the Bembridge Scholars had been “begging” Evelyn to run the British Museum at the start of The Mummy Returns. Presumably, saving the world from immortal monsters determined to end the world is better evidence of quality than a credential.
We can also explore the problem of asymmetric information in labor markets. In The Mummy, the Egyptian diggers working for the American team under the direction of the Egyptologist have little information about the dangers facing them at Hamunaptra, and the same could be said of the diggers in the sequel working under the direction of Hafez. In The Mummy, the Egyptologist warns the Americans against opening the base of the statue of Anubis themselves, in case of an ancient booby trap – but he gives no such warning to the diggers. Without clear recourse to courts or other legal protections, we may see how asymmetric information leads to moral hazard problems. In both films, the diggers are not told everything they need to know to perform their job safely. This provides an example of asymmetric information atypical to most economics textbooks that still illuminates an important economic concept.
Negative Externalities
Against the backdrop of these everyday institutional questions, the mummy Imhotep presents some scary economic ideas on his own. In particular, the Hom-Dai curse that the pharaoh’s soldiers place on him presents the classic problem of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs. Suffering the Hom-Dai over millennia is terrible, to be sure, but the benefits of the curse are concentrated to the pharaoh’s soldiers (and perhaps his daughter) who execute the curse in the name of justice. However, the dispersed costs of the Hom-Dai are enormous, first in imposing lifetime costs on three millennia of Medjai who must guard Hamunaptra, and later on the residents of Cairo – and theoretically the whole world. Setting curses must therefore have significant negative externalities, in which the social cost dwarfs the private cost, and the Hom-Dai in particular suggests inefficient intertemporal resource allocation by first stage players.
The economic damage from the Hom-Dai would have even long-run effects, as rebuilding Cairo and compensating victims would drain further resources. Perhaps the Medjai set aside an insurance or compensation fund for damages over the millennia, or perhaps there is a hidden tax buried in the tax code. In the real world, most contracts and insurance plans include clauses for deux ex machina to limit liability and to permit breach of contract in catastrophic unforeseen circumstances, as during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic or severe weather events.
We are left wondering just how the residents of Cairo rebuilt their city. Perhaps Evelyn used some of the treasure to fund repairs, since she was the one to re-awaken Imhotep. Donating some of the proceeds from the sale of the salvaged treasure could help rebuild Cairo Museum, damaged by the plague of raining fire in the movie. Whether this happened is questionable, however, as Rick and Evelyn have relocated to London by The Mummy Returns and much of the second movie refer to Evelyn’s status with the British Museum of Antiquities. That said, Evelyn’s actions throughout the first film bears all the hallmarks of unintended consequences. From knocking over every bookshelf in the library of the Cairo Museum to raising the dead through curious reading from the Book of the Dead, Evelyn reminds the us that unintended consequences can be frequent and costly, even from people with good intentions. And as economists know, intentions are not outcomes. With good institutions, perhaps, Evelyn would invest in a personal liability insurance plan to cover the costs from her catastrophes.
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