Sep 18, 2008

Economists jokes

I was going through jokes on economists, starting from post on freakonomics blog. Following are few nice ones.
  • A top reason to be an economist - When you are in the unemployment line, at least you will know why you are there.
  • Microeconomists are people who are wrong about specific things; macroeconomists are people who are wrong about things in general.
  • I asked an economist for her phone number....and she gave me an estimate.
  • If you torture the data long enough, Nature will confess.
  • Eighty percent of rules of thumb only apply 20 percent of the time (including this one).
  • A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on an island, with nothing to eat. A can of soup washes ashore. The physicist says, "Lets smash the can open with a rock." The chemist says, "Lets build a fire and heat the can first." The economist says, "Lets assume that we have a can-opener..."
  • The First Law of Economists: For every economist, there exists an equal and opposite economist.The Second Law of Economists: They're both wrong.
  • Talk is cheap. Supply exceeds Demand.
Joke-telling is not complete without bulb jokes.
Q: How many economists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Eight. One to screw it in and seven to hold everything else constant.

But Chicago School economists are different.
Q: How many Chicago School economists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. If the light bulb needed changing the market would have already done it.

Finally, Bentley's second Law of Economics: The only thing more dangerous than an economist is an amateur economist!

You have been warned.

Aug 28, 2008

links

Found few good reads.

Mostly Economics Blog:
Specifically - Moral hazard story retold, Economics of Citation, Irrational Exuberance, Who will guard the guards?

On Greg Mankiw's blog: Does money undermine community and Does free trade always do good?

Economist: Will USA fall on the same trend as the lost decade in Japan?

S Anand: Resolving the prisoner's dilemma (specifically, the 4 good traits of behaviour arriving from pure logic.)

Ajay Shah's blog: What happened in global food prices?

Perot Charts: http://perotcharts.com/home/

Jun 26, 2008

Optimist India

Economist comes up with fascinating charts on the frontpage.

Today's chart plots major countries on suicide rate and happiness index axes. General trend is the negative corelation between the two. Obvious, no? India beats that trend, with low suicide rate as well as low happiness index.

Apart from religious reasons, India is that outlier which lives on hope of better tomorrow in spite of accepting that there is not much today to be happy about. Probably, hope is the (best) thing to be happy about.

May 15, 2008

Foreign policy is down

Trying to access Return of the idiot, this is what I got.

Foreign Policy is currently down for maintenance.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

So the idiot has returned and brought it down?

software piracy

from the economist article, Software piracy is prevalent in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Moldova, Zimbabwe (above 90% pirated software of total). BRIC countries are also not very far - With China over 80%, Russia and India about 70% and Brazil about 60%. Suddenly, bric sounds like crib. Hehe.

The title of the article is what makes me blog it - "A Free Ride". In IIMB lingo, a free-rider is a dreaded person who enjoys peaceful life at the expense of others in his/her group.

Welfare Economics

A friend said about my posts (1, 2, 3) on my personal blog that I have started writing on Welfare Economics, it seems!

Indeed, I am interested in social welfare, and I believe that we can do that best by responding to people's economic incentives. Though you can start trumpeting about free markets, I am fairly skeptic about self-regulation by the industry (mostly because of sub-prime crisis).

You may term this as a populist view, it possibly IS so, because social welfare (my initial interest) itself in a way is populist.

That's why I liked the term - Welfare Economics.

Update
Capitalism (or the term I used - free market) does not mean government's favouritism towards business - from the Zaxlebax problem. But I may sound cynical in saying that the current shade of capitalism as we call, has been corrupted by politicians, without the end in near sight.

The name

Game theory, tragedy of commons, and recently the book "Games Indians Play" are fascinating. The common thread is hence the name of this blog.