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- HOW BANKS PREPARED FOR A U.S. DEFAULT. (2)
- GREECE’S ADVANTAGE IN THE CHICKEN GAME. (2)
- Nick: That makes sense. It reminds me of the stories Pater Familias would tell me about how in Boston the person with...
- Dick Weisfelder: Greece seems to me to be playing a game that Karl Deutsch called “underdog.” While one...
- FOOTBALL PLAYERS DELIBERATELY CAUSING CONCUSSIONS? (3)
- Nick: It was my understanding that boxing gloves were to protect the puncher’s hands and not the...
- Dick Weisfelder: Remember the Roman arenas? Bare knuckled boxing? Such injuries were taken as natural and accepted in...
- Mary Jane Schaefer: This isn’t about football. Or even sportsmanship. Well, it is about sportsmanship. But what...
- A 25 % CHANCE OF A EURO DEFAULT? (1)
- Nick: The fact that this has gone on for so long is pretty perplexing. The Economist is referring back to articles it...
- DECIDING WHAT KIND OF PATIENT YOU ARE. (1)
- Dick Weisfelder: One can be very open to new technology, but also risk averse. The recent debates about how to...
- THE EUROZONE—A CHICKEN GAME WHERE EVERY MEMBER CAN BLOW IT UP? (1)
- Mary Jane Schaefer: This is not a matter of chicken. These are all turkeys.
- PLAYING WITH MATCHES NEAR A GASOLINE TANK. (1)
- Mary Jane Schaefer: Why would the French care? As long as they take down Britain?
- NORWAY’S CHRISTMAS BUTTER SHORTAGE. (1)
- Mary Jane Schaefer: Christmas with a butter cookie shortage–in Scandinavia. This isn’t even Scrooge. This...
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Monthly Archives: October 2008
NATURE RUNS SOME EXPERIMENTS.
NATURE RUNS SOME EXPERIMENTS. I have posted here and here on Professor John Meyer’s warning that “Nature does not run very good experiments.” That is, nature doesn’t make the right kinds of changes in variables to let us make a … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, History
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RECESSION PREDICTIONS.
RECESSION PREDICTIONS. I recorded my changing personal subjective probabilities for a recession here. I now have raised the probability of a recession in the United States to 100% because the recession in the United States is here. GDP in the … Continue reading
Posted in Economics
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FIVETHIRTYEIGHT (COMMENT).
FIVETHIRTYEIGHT (COMMENT). Molly in a comment refers to the FiveThirtyEight website which is bringing in the insights from sabermetrics to political statistics. Nate Silver, who is one of the two authors of the site, is a major figure in Baseball … Continue reading
GETTING HOLD OF THE BEANS BEFORE VALUING THEM.
GETTING HOLD OF THE BEANS BEFORE VALUING THEM. It has been observed that some of the mistakes that were made that led to the current crisis were intellectual mistakes made by brilliant people. In fact some of the mistakes occurred … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Shakespeare, Sports, Theater
4 Comments
THE EXCITING GAME WITHOUT ANY RULES.
THE EXCITING GAME WITHOUT ANY RULES. Baseball nearly had a disaster last night. Mark Harris wrote a baseball novel in which the players passed the time in hotel lobbies playing TEGWAR (“The Exciting Game Without Any Rules”). The joke was … Continue reading
PROBLEM: TWO CANDLE STORES IN A RICHMOND MALL.
PROBLEM: TWO CANDLE STORES IN A RICHMOND MALL. Kids, in economics, it’s helpful to start with a problem, as Paul Krugman did. Here is an economic problem that Annalisa raised. There are two stores that sell candles close together in … Continue reading
Posted in Economics
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PAUL KRUGMAN’S NOBEL PRIZE.
PAUL KRUGMAN’S NOBEL PRIZE. Kids, Paul Krugman has won the Nobel Prize for Economics, and you can understand some of the ideas for which he won. This article in the Economist has a good introduction to some of his models, … Continue reading
Posted in Economics
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HOW RARE ARE TWINS?
HOW RARE ARE TWINS? As an identical twin, I should have an idea of frequently one encounters twins, but I didn’t. My first reaction on looking at twins who are successful in sports was surprise at how few there were. … Continue reading
Posted in Sports
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ARE TWINS BETTER IN SOME SPORTS THAN IN OTHERS?
ARE TWINS BETTER IN SOME SPORTS THAN IN OTHERS? The NBA season is starting and the Lopez twins are joining the Collins twins, also identical twins, as NBA players. One of my correspondents suggested to me that twins seem to … Continue reading
Posted in Baseball, Basketball, Football, Sports
1 Comment
LEVERAGE–HOW BIG AN ISLAND WOULD YOU BUY?
LEVERAGE–HOW BIG AN ISLAND WOULD YOU BUY? John Lanchester is an award-winning novelist who has written for the London Review of Books two of the best articles about the current financial crisis. In the October 20 issue his article puts … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Literature
2 Comments