A couple of interesting blog entries from Ray Fair. The Future of Macro, August 26, 2015 LA Times op ed on the 2016 election, May 27, 2015 In the first piece, Fair admits to presenting a macro modeling strategy just as…
Category: Economics
Seat license numbers
Interesting data here on seat license costs, as well as ticket prices. A variation on multi-part tariffs. The real Deflategate verdict? The NFL’s in trouble (MarketWatch)
Short-selling, tried & reported
The good, the bad, and the dangerous … of short selling. First is a piece that sounds like it was inspired by Planet Money’s two-part series. In Praise of Short Sellers (Surowiecki, TheNew Yorker) First, though: In another universe, a…
MLK pairing
After listening to this story Students Describe What King’s Legacy Means To Them (NPR), go ahead and have fun spending some time with this “playable post” The Parable of the Polygons (Nicky Case). It’s Schelling’s model, redone in a very attractive…
Data, people, and corporate culture
Stop Searching for That Elusive Data Scientist … the typical team was collectively less skilled and competent than a typical data scientist. But that collective team learned from each other and sent a message to the rest of the organization…
Firm size in Britain, under regulation
Retail locations are amazingly small in “world cities” like London, but they appeared to me even smaller there than most. It may be due to characteristics of the clientele or of the merchandise, but those shops appeared too small to…
Firm size effects and retail
Big Chains Pay Better An Mom & Pop Stores (Vox) “Those findings involve basic demographic controls, but there’s more to life than demographics. When the authors do more math, they find that a lot of this premium is due to…
Informal economy: effect not cause
Development and entrepreneurship: Business formal (The Economist) The article highlights several reasons to presume that high rates of informal economic activity do not power growth but rather are the result of factors that limit growth. We learn that “rich countries…
Accounting’s beginnings
Yes, the Gutenberg press had to to with this one, too. A Mathematician, The Last Supper, and the Birth of Accounting The book was apparently difficult to read, and was of interest to DaVinci.
William Lowe, Lafayette Class of 1962
The IBM PC has always been such an interesting innovation. To find out recently that a Lafayette Leopard oversaw its development was exciting. Unsurprisingly, there are many obituaries for William Lowe. What a great observation that this innovation radically changed…