http://elephantstrunk.net Worrying about the lions Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:05:59 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Emmanuel Derman will be relieved to know that I agree with him when he says of his favourite (Harry Kat I think) approach to hedge fund replication: But it requires so much statistics on such poor data that it's hard to swallow. But he doesn't get off the hook that easily, I ... http://elephantstrunk.net/2007/11/05/better-to-keep-quiet/ More aggressive but fatuous baiting of Dani Rodrik from Alex Tabarrok. I was going to point out that Tabarrok can't decide whether it is Pareto efficiency or creative destruction that makes markets good and that his example of the motor car opens the floodgates but Lee Arnold, Samson and Barkley Rosser ... http://elephantstrunk.net/2007/08/13/96/ Or more specifically, is lifting trade restrictions the most important thing a developing country can do? There's more heat (and inappropriately macho language) than light in the ringside seats for the econoblog death match between Dani Rodrik and Don Boudreaux. Dani Rodrik says that free trade may not be the best prescription ... http://elephantstrunk.net/2007/07/14/is-free-trade-the-best-route-to-development/ State pensions for the rich and private pensions for the poor is this season's pension panacea. Legal pressure on the government over Equitable Life, the Ombudsman's report, the FAS and PPF and renewed umbrage over Gordon Brown's removal of a tax break from still highly favoured pension investment all effectively demand ... http://elephantstrunk.net/2007/04/04/the-grass-is-always-greener/ Free Exchange asks: What madman would support expanded use of fixed-rate mortgages? and then descends into nonsense. Let's see: Economically, a preference for fixed-rate mortgages makes absolutely no sense. Let's say you're a mortgage lender considering lending out some money for the next thirty years. You have to be worried that ... http://elephantstrunk.net/2007/03/12/chewbacca-writes-for-the-economist/ Lefties worried about over zealous central bank rate setting often appear to be putting great faith in the solidity of the Phillips curve and therefore also appear naive. Listen to pundits talk about wage settlements when guessing what a central bank is going to do next and it becomes harder ... http://elephantstrunk.net/2007/02/17/theres-a-hole-in-my-basket/ A reason to read The Guardian The Economist on ethical food didn't go down well Microfinance puzzling http://elephantstrunk.net/2007/01/22/quickly/ From The Economist's blog: A LITTLE while back, Sir Partha Dasgupta, an economist well known for his work on development, caused a stir in the blogosphere by suggesting that the Stern report on global warming had been insufficiently attentive to the question of inequality in its selection of a discount rate ... http://elephantstrunk.net/2006/12/12/thats-sir-kingsley-to-you/ These must be the last days. First neo-con Pangloss Amity Shlaes declares that taxes don't affect behaviour all that much. Then today's Economist says: People who want to make the world a better place cannot do so by shifting their shopping habits: transforming the planet requires duller disciplines, like politics. The leader is almost ... http://elephantstrunk.net/2006/12/08/world-turned-upside-down/ A little while ago I wrote about Tyler Cowen and Jane Galt partly because they were uncritically triumphalist about the US economy. Today the news brings the following headlines: Eurozone unemployment falls to record low Dollar slides further on US manufacturing data Economic Storm Signals This doesn't prove anything much ... http://elephantstrunk.net/2006/12/02/denial-is-not-a-river-in-africa/