Archive for January 3rd, 2018

Thaler has more slides thanking collaborators/friends than the Prize lecture…

January 3, 2018

Though it has been nearly a month since Prof Thaler gave the 2017 Prize lecture. I just revisited the lecture slides which are so unlike any lecture in economics one can ever get.

But then what was more interesting was Prof Thaler putting a slideshow of collaborators/friends on the website. It has about 50 slides whereas his Prize lecture is about 43 slides.

I have seen this for the first time and is a great gesture by Prof Thaler. It is in a way tribute to his own philosophy where he shows humans are overconfident while assessing themselves. He shows his award is due to support/discussions with several friends and collaborators.

 

Posted in Behavior Eco/Fin | 2 Comments »

Why is there an urge to play the cricket ball outside the off-stump? The two contradictory forces at work…

January 3, 2018

There is huge hype around the upcoming India tour to South Africa. The media is trying to cash in with continuous stream of advertisements. The Sony Six is trying to invoke nationalistic feelings resulting in an advertisement which is really bad in taste. I mean just treat it as a game.

Anyways, came across this nice interview of Sachin Tendulkar. He gives many insights from his long career.  For instance, he explains how the urge to play the ball outside the off-stump is two forces at work:

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Posted in Cricket | Leave a Comment »

Why we (should) read dead economists?

January 3, 2018

Joakim Book has a piece:

One of many accusations of the economics discipline is that it spends too much time on the ideas of rich white men, long since buried. In our world ruled by moral and intellectual relativism and group identities, such an accusation is serious indeed. We can ridicule such positions all we want, and Mises does an excellent job of it in chapter 3 of Human Action, but there may be still some merit to the accusation. Beyond relativism, how serious is the charge: are we reading too many dead economists?

So why care? Well it is all about seperating the sound economics ideas from unsound ones:

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Posted in Discussion, Economics - macro, micro etc, Economist | Leave a Comment »

Should UPI (Unified Payments Interface) take lessons from Syndicate Bank’s pigmy deposit scheme?

January 3, 2018

I came across this article (thanks to  Sumita Kale for the pointer).

The article is around how UPI (Unified Payments Interface) could help in digital financial inclusion.

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Posted in Discussion, Indian Economy/Financial Markets | Leave a Comment »

Larin: The currency which facilitated trade between India and Middle East in 16th century…

January 3, 2018

Fascinating history by Krutika Haraniya. The article takes us to 16th century when the Safavid ruler Shah Tamhasp minted a currency called Larin to facilitate trade with India.

The currency eventually disappeared from circulation around middle of 18th century. And as expected, there is very little research on reasons for the disappearance.

There is so much to learn and figure. Numismatics should move from museums to curriculum on monetary economics..

Posted in Central Banks / Monetary Policy, Discussion | Leave a Comment »

Monetary policy’s cryptocurrency challenge: Several thought experiments at play..

January 3, 2018

Niranjan Rajadhyaksha as always comes up with this insightful piece on how cryptocurrencies could alter the monetary policy nad banking game. This is a followup to his earlier piece which argued about the speculative nature of the bitcoin. The first piece compared bitcoin features to other types of moneys and the second one is more around how it will impact monetary and banking systems.

How will it impact monetary policy? We moved from targeting money supply to targeting interest rates. We could be back to targeting money supply again:

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Posted in Central Banks / Monetary Policy, Discussion | Leave a Comment »

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