In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Thinking Fast and Slow
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Meet the Economist- Columbia Professor Naidu
It was in Seattle that he first decided to go into economics. "You realized, 'There're not very many economists coming out of our political movement,' and so I thought I could be one of those," he explained.
He studied at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and then at Berkeley before arriving at Columbia, focusing on political economy, economics history and labor economics. His first research paper, which he wrote with Michael Reich and Arin Dube, showed that an increase in the minimum wage did not, as many economists assumed, necessarily lead to an rise in unemployment.
He grew up in Newfoundland, where, he says, dinner occasionally meant moose curry. His parents came from, in his words, "small villages in the middle of nowhere, India." He said his visits to those places made a lasting impression on him.
"You're a 6-year-old and you see your counterpart, who's another 6-year-old, having blond hair from malnutrition," he said. "That will stay with you."
A few days ago, Naidu reflected on his experiences in the anti-globalization movement that emerged from Seattle in 1999. "It was exciting and exhilarating -- and it felt like we were winning," he said. "I think for like two years we were winning -- and I think we did win. Now, as a professional economist, I look back on that and think, ‘Wow, that was a great thing we did -- changing the terms of the debate on free trade and exposing the politics that were underlying what was supposed to be win-win for everybody and in fact might not have been."
"Even now that I'm teaching economics," he continued, "so many of the people that I hang out with, that I associate with, are people that I hung out with in that period."
"And that is what I think will happen with the Occupieds," he said. "Even if the movement goes away, the social networks that have formed will hang around. People will be friends, even if they're no longer camping together in the camps, and when strangers meet in whatever venues, they'll be like, ‘You were there,’ and there will be an immediate rapport. In the long run that will have a big political impact."
Chile's Economic and Social Challenges
Panelists included:
- Guillermo Calvo, Professor of Economics, SIPA,
- John Dinges, Professor of Journalism, CJS
- Nelson Fraiman, Director, Program on Entrepreneurship & Competitiveness in Latin America
- Nara Milanich, Professor of History, Barnard College
- Miguel Urquiola, Associate Professor of Economics, SIPA
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Book Recommendation on Health Care Reform
I think Mitt Romney is the hero of this story. But I want to make clear that the way he’s portrayed in this book has nothing to do with his presidential campaign. Mitt Romney is the single person most responsible for health care reform in this country: Without his leadership we don’t get reform in Massachusetts, and without Massachusetts reform we don’t get national reform.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Winner of the Coolest Statistical Agency on web
The revamped ONS website is just great- congratulations.
Checkout their You-Tube Channel and the interactive charts
Movies about the Financial Crisis
There are three ways to make a living in this business. Be first, be smarter, or cheat.
India - Pakistan Relations Assorted
Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani on Indo-Pak relations
Pakistan, India, MFN: What are the implications? ;
For Discussion: Would the gravity model work when India is just too big for its neighbors unlike ASEAN?In the intuition of economists, there is a gravity model in the affairs of men. Proximity and low transactions costs are incredibly important. The natural opportunity for India to grow international integration on all dimensions (goods, services, people, ideas, capital) lies in our immediate neighbourhood. India's connections into the region are shockingly below those seen for all other large countries. Doing better on connections with Pakistan would be a nice step forward.
Related:
The Gravity Model
Gravity models are mathematical models based on an analogy with Newton s gravitational law and used to account for aggregate human behaviors related to spatial interaction such as migration and traffic flows. In regards to trade, the gravity model states that the volume of trade can be estimated as an increasing function of the national incomes of trading partners, and a decreasing function of the distance between them. Although the model’s ability to predict trade flows has been popular for several decades, it is often criticized for its lack of theoretical foundations. On August 6, 2002, Edward Balistreri presented his collaborative work with fellow International Trade Commission (ITC) economist, Russell Hillberry on an evaluation of the gravity model and its ability to replace traditional methods of welfare and policy analysis
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Book Recommendation
'In Capitalist Revolutionary, Backhouse and Bateman cut through the misinformation, the caricature, and maybe even the web memes, to give us an actually useful understanding of Keynes as a philosopher offering a moral critique of our capitalist system.
According to Backhouse and Bateman, Keynes was essentially a man who wanted to create a revolution in how we thought about economic problems'Peter Boettke highly recommends the book- 'the most informative and best read on Keynes that I have read recently'
The Economics of Good and Evil
Economics of Good and Evil-The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall StreetTomas Sedlacek
Think the quality of writing needs much improvement.
There’s a song that says that rules and laws are created by lawyers and poets. Poets (in the wider meaning of the term) give rules meaning and spirit; lawyers give them form and letter. Similarly, we may say that a great economist can be either an outstanding mathematician or an excellent philosopher. It appears to me that we have given lawyers and mathematicians too large a role at the expense of poets and philosophers. We have exchanged too much wisdom for exactness, too much humanity for mathematization.-Sedlacek, Tomas; Havel, Vaclav; Havel, Václav (2011-06-03). Economics of Good and Evil : The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street (Kindle Locations 5420-5422). Oxford University Press, USA. Kindle Edition.
Think the quality of writing needs much improvement.
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