A Brave Army of Heretics -economicprincipals.com
For the last 125 years, however, ever since the views of Leon Walras and other theorists of general equilibrium became encoded in a famous textbook of Alfred Marshall (or, rather, partially encoded), technical economists have viewed the economy as a system in which individuals deal with one another only [...]
How Fairness Is Wired In The Brain -ScienceDaily.com
Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have discovered that reason struggles with emotion to find equitable solutions, and have pinpointed the region of the brain where this takes place. The concept of fairness, they found, is processed in the insular cortex, or insula, which is [...]
Wikipedia defines economic elasticity as follows:
In economics, elasticity is the ratio of the proportionate change in one variable with respect to proportional change in another variable, such as the responsiveness of the price of a commodity to changes in market demand or visa-versa. In terms of elasticity, a market or good can be described as [...]
Why CFOs Hate Fair Value
The theory of fair value is that a company’s financial statements are most useful to investors if the company’s assets and liabilities are constantly reported at market value. Traditionally, companies reported their assets and liabilities at historic cost—that is, what they paid for them.
NYSE Jumps on the Spac Bandwagon
SPACs, which raise money to buy a company that isn’t even identified yet, have become hugely popular, even as many traditional companies have decided to cancel or postpone their initial public offerings. In previous decades, an earlier version of Spacs known as blank checks were widely associated with fraud, but [...]
I happened on an article about black swans, as Nassim Taleb had recently been speaking at a CFA (Chartered Financial Androids) function and a reporter for the Financial Times was in attendance, blogging, not reporting, because as we all know the two are very different. I wondered with all the talk of recession, and [...]
5 Ways to Go Broke Getting Drunk
When does a shot of scotch cost $3,300? When the bottle’s going for $38,000 and hits $75,000 in a bidding war. Amazing Google capability: Enter ‘number of shots in a liter’ into Google Toolbar and before you hit enter AJAX serves up the answer of 22.5426817 shots, which [...]
Learning from our mistakes? Flies can do it. Lots of Animals Learn, but Smarter Isn’t Better
It takes just 15 generations under these conditions for the flies to become genetically programmed to learn better. At the beginning of the experiment, the flies take many hours to learn the difference between the normal and quinine-spiked [...]
Mortgage Delinquencies and Foreclosures
Conclusion The realtor’s mantra is "location, location, location," and, as I have discussed this evening, local variation in housing and mortgage markets is considerable. This variation is useful for understanding the sources of the increase in mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures, and it should be taken into account [...]
The more George Soros talks, the less people care what he thinks.
Cost of carry model to price forwards & futures
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
The actual study is locked up in the vaults of academia, but here’s a few links.
Testosterone Levels Predict City Traders’ Profitability – Science Daily Stock Market Winners Get Big Payoff–In Testosterone – Scientific American Study: Testosterone Fuels Stock-Market Success – Fox News
Since few reporters and bloggers have actually been [...]
Commentary: But where’d the hops go?
Ever since liquor stores started sticking notes on their coolers letting us know that the price of my beloved beer would have to go up due to the rising price hops, I’ve assumed it something to do with either the cost of fuel or the displacement of hops crops by corn being turned into [...]