PUNCTUALITY PAYS.(The Talk of the Town)(Ecuador)

At high noon last October 1st, the citizens of Ecuador did something they'd never dreamed possible: they synchronized their watches. In doing so, they embarked on a Campana Contra la Impuntualidad, a national crusade against lateness. A group called Participacion Ciudadana had orchestrated the initiative in order to combat Ecuadorans' notoriously cavalier attitude toward time. The group enlisted the country's only Olympic gold medallist, the race-walker Jefferson Perez, as a spokesman, plastered cities and villages with posters ("Inject yourself each morning with a dose of responsibility, respect, and discipline"), and persuaded companies to bar tardy workers from meetings. Even President Lucio Gutierrez, infamously unpunctual, vowed to participate. His spokesman, going on television to announce this vow, arrived at the studio, needless to say, several minutes late.

Such a campaign may seem farcical--no more critical to a country's national interest than a crusade against poor spelling or bad breath--but it arose out of a basic economic fact: punctuality pays. According to one study, chronic lateness costs Ecuador $2.5 billion a year--hardly small change in a country with a gross domestic product of just twenty-four billion dollars. The fundamental challenge for a modern economy is to coordinate the actions of millions of independent people so that goods may be produced and services delivered as efficiently as possible. It's a lot easier to do this when people are where they're supposed to be when they're supposed to be there. This is especially true in light of recent innovations such as just-in-time manufacturing. Dell computer's suppliers have to be able to deliver parts to Dell's factories within ninety minutes. Under those conditions, "I'll get to it later" won't do.

The social psychologist Robert Levine, who has devoted decades to studying people's ideas about time, suggests that cultures can be divided into those which live on "event time," where events are allowed to dictate people's schedules, and those which live on "clock time," where people's schedules dictate events. Unsurprisingly, countries that live on clock time are more successful economically--if perhaps less fun at night--than those which do not. In part, that's because attitudes toward time tend to pervade nearly every aspect of a culture. In hyper-punctual countries like Japan, pedestrians walk fast, business transactions take place quickly, and bank clocks are always accurate. In less punctual places, such as Indonesia, pedestrians amble, workers dawdle, and bank clocks are usually wrong. In other words, Ecuadorans, who have been living on event time--known locally as Ecuadoran time--are trying to revolutionize the way they live and work.

Can they do it? There are obvious obstacles. Dawdling can be quite ...