Monthly Archives: August 2008

From a review of “The New Spirit of Capitalism”: Thatcherism was certainly shaped by the neo-liberal economics that displaced Keynesianism from the seventies onwards, but economics rarely provides the emotional, psychological or moral fuel for far-reaching political change. It was … Continue reading →

So there’s an economics paper floating out there called Race and Conspicuous Consumption: Using nationally representative data on consumption, we show that Blacks and Hispanics devote larger shares of their expenditure bundles to visible goods (clothing, jewelry, and cars) than … Continue reading →

Matthew Yglesias is killing it in a series of three posts (one, two, three) about the fact that McCain doesn’t know the number of houses he owns. I assumed McCain was just poorly dodging the question, but after reading Yglesias … Continue reading →

So someone in a previous comment mentioned being an arbitrageur in the 50s as being akin to the television show on AMC Mad Men. (It probably was in ways we can’t even imagine. Nowadays Asian math whizs on questionable visas … Continue reading →

I can’t believe I didn’t write this up before when I first heard about it, but as an aside google believes it will be a draw for all the financial engineers and quants out there. For decades, many of the … Continue reading →