Tag: economics
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Google and ‘The Physics of Clicks’
Hal Varian is the Chief Economist at Google, engaged primarily in the design of the company’s ‘advertising auctions’; the auctions that happen every time a search takes place in order to determine the advertising that appears on the results page. After introducing us to this concept, Steven Levy looks at Google’s “across-the-board emphasis on engineering,…
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Ending Foreign Aid to Africa
Foreign aid to Africa has turned the continent into a ‘giant welfare state’ and is one of the direct causes for the rise in poverty rates from 11% to 66% in recent times. This is according to African author and economist Dambisa Moyo as she adds her voice to the growing group of learned economists…
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Financial Consequences of Winning the Lottery
For individuals and families facing financial ruin one would assume that a lottery win would be a perfect, if lucky, way out of hardship. Contrary to this, however, an analysis of a small, unique set of people—Floridian lottery winners linked to bankruptcy records—finds that lottery winners are more likely to claim bankruptcy than others who were…
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The Truth About Markets
My current read, The Truth About Markets/Culture and Prosperity (UK/US title respectively), is a thoroughly enjoyable—if occasionally dense and dry—introduction to economic theories and applications. Published in 2003, it’s aged fairly well. I felt the need to share this two-paragraph excerpt from a section discussing “large models purportedly descriptive of entire economic systems” (pp. 193-194): The…
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Economics Lectures
I was introduced to Stephen Kinsella—Junior Lecturer in Economics at Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick—through his beautiful looking economics presentations available on SlideShare. Of course, the problem with (the majority of) beautiful presentations is that they lack context and thus, without a voiceover, end up being a confusing set of beautiful pictures with scant text. Not…
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Creative Capitalism
‘Creative capitalism‘ is a term popularised by Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 2008. Here Gates delivered a speech saying that many of the world’s problems are “too big for philanthropy” and that the free-market capitalist system itself would have to solve them. Creative Capitalism: A Conversation has a transcript of Gates’ speech but it…
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Unlikely Events Influenced by Financial Incentives
With the UK’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, proposing that alcohol should cost a minimum of 50p per unit, many opposers are arguing that the increase would “punish ordinary drinkers without deterring the winos, brawlers and wife-beaters”. However, as Tim Harford notes, it may well work as the unlikeliest of events are influenced by…
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The Inefficiency of Christmas Gifts
A letter to Tim Harford (The Undercover Economist) asks, What’s the best Christmas present? Your letter obliges me to disinter the influential research of the economist Joel Waldfogel on the “deadweight loss of Christmas”. Fifteen years ago, Waldfogel published an academic article demonstrating that the recipients of gifts would not generally have been willing to…
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Transport and Development in West Africa
Tim Harford, the Undercover Economist, takes a look at the problems with the transportation network in west Africa and discusses how this is a major factor in the region’s stunted development. Pity the entrepreneur who wants to do business under such conditions. If goods travel at 75 miles a day […] it is almost impossible…
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A Capitalist Manifesto and Capitalist Values
“The financial crisis is not the crisis of capitalism. It is the crisis of a system that has distanced itself from the most fundamental values of capitalism, which betrayed the spirit of capitalism.” – Nicolas Sarkozy Two excellent articles on the future of capitalism: A Capitalist Manifesto, Judy Shelton for The Wall Street Journal What…