Archive

When you flip a coin, you expect heads and tails to show up with a 50% chance each. But what if all you knew was that heads and tails each have a chance of at least 25%? That’s how Scott Condie captures Knightian uncertainty in asset markets.

As part of the tremendous promotion campaign for the 8th edition of his textbook Economics, Samuelson was devoted a feature in the New York Times (February 5, 1970, p. 41).

Paul Samuelson was notorious for many things, but also, like Marshall, for spending most of his academic life in the same institution.

Did you know that, around 1920, Cleveland, Ohio, had a technological cutting edge not unlike Silicon Valley today? You probably didn’t. Margaret Levenstein tells the story.

Alchemy or Banking?

Economists aren’t born, they’re made. Irwin Collier digs into archives to find out how Paul Samuelson and his generation were made.

Two FT pieces by Tracy Alloway caught my eye this week: this article from Tuesday’s print edition, and this post on Alphaville today.

Two things seem to be taken for granted in the current debt-ceiling debate: 1. The parties will come to an agreement on the debt ceiling because 2. These United States have never defaulted and will not start now.

Mention the government and the market and all academic reflection and civilized discussion dissolves into heated monologues. Politicians are an extreme case.

INET and CIGI Award Spring 2011 Grants: The grants offer a diversity of approaches and global perspectives that target critical issues that have been neglected by conventional economic analysis.

What challenges will China have to surmount in order to make its currency a true international currency?

A Monetary Rorschach Test

If you want to understand how fund managers choose a portfolio, why not ask them?

Last time, I looked at the Chinese property market. The last link in that chain of financial interlinkages is the People’s Bank of China, the Chinese central bank.

You would have thought that to be a “jazz economist” was a good thing. I first imagined a “cool cat” that would entrance the hearts and minds of the populace. Not so.