How did white become the main color for bridal outfits? (historical tale of economics and marketing)

Victoria Finkle has a nice piece on history of bridal outfits:

What’s Warren Buffett’s Secret to Great Writing?

Warren Buffet is obviously seen as the gold standard for the investment world. But there is something else he excels at as well – financial writing. His annual letters to shareholders are gold standard as well for financial and economics writers.

Lawrence Cunningham of George Washington University looks at the secret behind the other gold standard – financial writing. He looks at few of these letters and analyses how Buffet argues for Berkshire’s strategy using rhetoric, humor and wit.

In nut shell it is about loving your job which shows in words as well:

Advertisement

Emergence of right-wing intellectual class in India…

R Jaganntahan of Swarajya says unlike what most think , the right wing intellectual class is gradually rising in India. For many decades their voices were shunned but due to change in government they are getting a voice:

Conceptual challenges in international finance..

The mainstream things taught in economics textbooks are increasingly being questioned. Infact not just being questioned but proven wrong when checked against real time evidence.

Stefan Avdjiev, Robert McCauley and Hyun Song Shin point to similar problems with International Finance.

Keynes and Hayek in China’s Property Markets

An article titled like this surely gets its eyeballs and readership. Moreover, most economic policy debates can be divided as state vs markets or Keynes vs Hayek/Friedman.

Andrew Sheng and Xiao Geng show how Chinese housing policy is also around 2 schools:

Why study economics (and some lessons for Indian central bank?)

Stanley Fischer, Vice chair of FOMC gives a convocation speech at Howard University:

Struggles to open a bank in UK..

I had just posted on how an app based bank got a licence to open a limited bank in India. One might be tempted to think it is easier to open a bank in UK.

However, this is hardly the case. Kevin Dowd posts about struggles of Dave Fishwick to open a bank in the country:

An APMC tale: why market design matters

Nice piece by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha of Mint.

He says APMC were designed with the right intent but have eventually got caught up with similar troubles it was expected to address:

US policymakers worried about “unelected European bureaucrats” at the helm of Financial Services Board!

Talk about deep double standards. For a country which has pushed its own unelected bureaucrats in all kinds of institutions, it is worried that FSB is doing the same.

Financial Services Commitee held a hearing on FSB. Pot the hearing, its press release said:

Homestays in Karnataka: Case of markets vs regulation…

The Tourism Department of Karnataka has again asked the various homestays to register before 15 Nov 2016 or close down.

Homestays have emerged as an excellent alternative to explore nature and local food:

How Prize in Economics in memory of Nobel came out of a vanity project between Swedish Finmin and central bank…

Didn’t know this really. Avner Offer and Gabriel Söderberg have written this new book: The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy and the Market Turn.

Prof Avner Offer in this post provides a preview. The Prize was actually allowed by FM to settled the usual dispute between Govt and central banks – to go for growth or inflation:

Why econ professors are not feeling the economy’s pain – well their salaries have not declined!

This is some attack by Prof. Narayana Kocherlakota who recently went from Minneapolis Fed to academia.

He is surprised to see how little has changed in macro all this while. The same ideas which have failed continue to dominate the research even now. Why should this be?

Using Behavioral insights in monetary policy…

Mark Calabria of Cato has a nice short paper reviewing the literature on the topic.

How corporate greed and corruption has deep roots..

Prof Raman Mahadevan has a superb piece on Indian business history. It is really rare to read about Indian business history in regular media.

Prof Mahadevan says there is lot of discussion and criticism on rising corruption and greed in corporate India. But this is hardly anything new and the seeds were sown much earlier:

Cow dung capitalism: As babas turn to businesses, businesses turn to cows…

Lhendup Bhutia  of Open Magazine has a fascinating piece (HT: MR blog). It is old for today’s age as it came 10 days ago.

As Joan Robinson quipped  – each and its opposite is likely to be true in India. These golden words remain true all this while:

Chameleons: The misuse of theoretical models in finance and economics

Well Paul Romer’s paper scathing state of macro has been much talked about. Romer even defended the paper.

However, there are others as well who have been questioning state of economics who are not as well known. Here is a 2014 paper by Paul Pfleiderer of Stanford (what is it with Profs named Paul!?) who says we have a new problem. There are certain models which are full of assumptions yet are played at a policy/real world level. These models obviously don’s meet the filter of real world once assumptions are done away with. Still they remain the main ideas.

He calls such models as chameleons:

Making business research more relevant to business practitioners?

In this publish or perish world hitting all streams, research is becoming more and more irrelevant to the real/practitioner world.  I mean other disciplines can still excuse themselves from connecting to real world, but business research has no such choice.

Carmen Nobel of HBSWK looks at this paradox – to publish or to make research relevant:

New Zealand’s remarkable economic transformation – an unsung story

Daniel Mitchell has a post on the small open economy which is hardly in anybody’s focus. Being from Cato, Mitchell obviously makes it a more market less government story:

Why is Indian Finance Ministry worried over low ratings of credit rating agencies?

Such news developments are actually laughable.

It is one thing for “leading global rating agencies” to say India not doing enough so ratings not being revised upwards. It is completely another to see Finance Ministry officials of all people to be worried over the country ratings not being revised.

All these ratings have been thoroughly exposed in the ongoing crisis. Whatever they rated as AAA has come kaput and what they rated as BBB and lower etc is hardly as bad. So for all you know, by not revising the India ratings, the economy might be  doing well.

These agencies prism of country doing well is around such narrower domains – low inflation, low fiscal/current account deficit, disinvestment, privatization etc. They can never really appreciate anything more than these 3-4 variables. And ironically, India is doing well on all these 3-4 variables!!

Bank of Japan to control the Japanese yield curve!!

One is completely fed up of the tactics being deployed by central bankers worldwide to keep controlling and planning the financial economy. I did read news of yield curve control by Bank of Japan here and there in the morning, But somehow thought it must be some rumor or one of those crazy suggestions to keep hings going.

But it is true. Bank of Japan indeed is going to control the yield curve!: