ECONOMICS & FINANCE 101

Assuntos relacionados ao seu dinheiro.
Como Aplicar Seu Dimdim
Devo comprar dólar?

Postby mends » 06 Dec 2006, 13:50

(It’s like conservatives complaining that most university professors are liberal, while they control the government, corporations, and the military.)


Tecla SAP pro liberal: liberal, prum americano, é um esquerdista.

the minimum wage raises unemployment, is wrong


Não é errado, nem é certo: é uma tautologia, e faz sentido nos modelos básicos que explicam uma parte da realidade. Seria verdade caso o mercado de mão de obra fosse um mercado perfeito, que assume perfeita "substituibilidade" (ufa!) entre diferentes pessoas, acesso a todas as ofertas em todos os lugares E livre movimentação de pessoas, sem custos ou barreiras. Nessas condições - ou seja, nunca no mundo de hoje - a afirmação É verdadeira.

In the wake of Milton Friedmann’s death, folks have been re-arguing his contention that successful predictions from an economic model are more important than correct assumptions underlying it. I would hope that both are important


Falar isso é conhecer o Friedman jovem, mas não o ganhador do Nobel, que não acreditava no poder preditivo de modelos econométricos, como ele diz em seu discurso de aceitação do Nobel. Agora, a esperança do cara nunca se realizará em economia. Em modelos econômicos, as premissas são lançadas dentro de um pensamento "coeteris paribus" (tudo o mais constante),a artir das premissas se constróem as tautologias do modelo, e a partir daí ela passa a fazer previsões. Imagine que você queira construir um modelo econométrico simples, uma regressão linear múltipla, entre o preço do petróleo e algumas variáveis macroeconômicas. Primeiro que pode colocar 15 variáveis, em 1974 esse modelo vai ter um R^2 de 40%, aposto. E o R-square vai mudar muito ao longo do tempo – antes de 1974 o ouro certamente influenciaria, hoje não mais, assim como déficits em balança comercial blábláblá. Não existe A realidade econômica, ela é uma “ciência” AD HOC, muito boa pra análise do que ocorreu, péssima pra síntese.


Unfortunately — and to a signficant extent this is our own fault — it’s not always clear to the person on the street which ideas are speculative and which have come to be accepted, nor is it clear that we have good reasons even for the wildest speculations.


Como eu disse, economia é FERRAMENTA de análise do comportamento humano, através de alguns princípios (não pressupostos) básicos: vc tem o que vc paga pra ter (o output de uma atividade depende da recompensa que vc terá por ela), não existe almoço grátis (como os recursos, todos, são escassos, eles custam, e alguém paga por eles, mesmo que não seja vc), as pessoas maximizam a sua função utilidade , qualquer que seja ela e os retornos marginais de esforços marginais são decrescentes. Isso é verdade, e a partir disso montam-se modelos.
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")
User avatar
mends
Saidero MegaGoldMember
Saidero	MegaGoldMember
 
Posts: 5183
Joined: 15 Sep 2003, 18:45
Location: por aí

Postby mends » 07 Dec 2006, 18:01

Islamic finance

Calling the faithful

Dec 7th 2006
From The Economist print edition


Western investors tap an emerging market in sharia-compliant products

Camera Press






IT was one of the year's big political flash points: the takeover of Britain's P&O, an international ports operator, by DP World of Dubai caused a rumpus from Westminster to Washington, DC. Politicians may have shunned the bid but investors did not—even though it was financed with a sukuk, a bond-like product compliant with the principles of sharia, or Islamic law. Demand was so strong that the initial $2.8 billion issue was raised to $3.5 billion, and ultimately drew $11.4 billion in subscriptions, about half of them from international investors.

No wonder investment bankers—who needed terms like riba (interest) translated only a year ago—no longer scratch their heads at the wonders of Islamic finance. Next week a new $2.5 billion sukuk offered by Nakheel, a big Dubai developer, closes. It will be the world's second-largest such note—and could even surpass the one from Dubai Ports, Customs and Free-Zone Corporation (PCFC), the parent of DP World. In the most recent such issue (an $800m sukuk from Abu Dhabi Investment Bank that closed on December 4th) nearly 40% of the investors came from Europe.

Islamic finance, long considered in the West as more of an oddity than an opportunity, is going mainstream. Standard & Poor's, a rating agency, puts the market for Islamic financial products—banking, mortgages, equity funds, fixed income, insurance, project finance, private equity and even derivatives—at about $400 billion. It is estimated to have grown at some 15% annually in the past three years, and looks set to expand further as the petro-economies of the Gulf boom and Western investors become more comfortable with some of its cultural differences.

Once available only in mostly Muslim places like Malaysia and the Gulf (Bahrain was a pioneer), Islamic finance now appeals to some of the world's biggest financial institutions seeking to tap into emerging markets. Investment banks, hedge funds and even pension-fund managers are getting keener. “This is a new, parallel financial system,” says Sameer Abdi of Ernst & Young, a consultancy. “It's not something that can be ignored.”



No improprieties, no interest
To get the stamp of approval from Islamic scholars as sharia-compliant, a product should adhere to two principles: it must not pay interest, and wealth should not be generated from means considered improper; alcohol, gambling and tobacco, for example, are off-limits.

Although sharia-compliant products have been around for decades, there are several reasons why the market has taken off in the past few years. First is the sheer wealth in parts of the Middle East where oil—and petrodollars—gush (see article). Rich Muslims have long parked much of their money abroad, and continue to do so. Mr Abdi says about one-third of investors in countries where there is a Muslim majority are seeking sharia-compliant products; another 50-60% will use them if they are “commercially competitive”.

At the company level, Middle Eastern institutions no longer rely exclusively on private financing (if they need to borrow at all). They are now shifting to public vehicles that offer access to international markets. As they become more conspicuous, such companies are seeking to comply with the Islamic traditions in their countries. So, for instance, Islamic finance has been used in big infrastructure projects.

Meanwhile, foreign investors want to diversify across countries and asset types. “As a global investor, you need exposure to this region of the world,” says Arul Kandasamy, head of Islamic banking at Barclays Capital, which helped arrange both the PCFC and Nakheel sukuks. In the Middle East more than 80% of fixed-income products are Islamic. Malaysia also has a big concentration: about 60% of the $40 billion global sukuk market is there.

Investors who used to hang back from these notes due to worries about the lack of liquidity—there is virtually no secondary market for most of them—are emboldened by the recent, bigger offerings. Mr Kandasamy says the average volume of trading in the PCFC sukuk has been $10m a day since its launch.

Finally, for foreign institutions raising funds, “this is another pool of money” to tap, says Matthew Sapte, a London-based lawyer working on Islamic-finance deals. “A number of European corporates are looking at this very closely.”

No wonder then that international banks are offering sharia-compliant products of their own. Some have long experience. Citibank, for instance, has offered Islamic products since the 1990s. ABN AMRO, BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered, and Goldman Sachs are also involved.

As the market for Islamic products has become more crowded, yields have fallen. Today the returns on Islamic products in the Gulf are similar to those of comparable conventional instruments in the region, says Abdulkader Thomas, a financial consultant and founder of the American Journal of Islamic Finance. In Malaysia, he adds, sharia-compliant products have lower yields than conventional products, but they are also taxed at a lower rate.

For all the excitement being generated, Islamic finance is still just a sliver of the global financial market. And international investors still find aspects of it immature. For example, there is a dearth of credit ratings for Islamic products and institutions (which is also true of many conventional instruments in the Middle East).

If the industry is to avoid being “ghettoised”, argues Anouar Hassoune, an analyst at Standard & Poor's, it needs to shape up in several ways. First, it must become more standardised. Products considered sharia-compliant in relatively liberal Malaysia are off-limits in more conservative Saudi Arabia. Second, accounting standards and financial reporting must be better aligned. Third, he says, more innovation is needed, particularly in areas such as derivatives and structured finance. Fourth, there is a skills shortage, which is driving up salaries for anyone working in Islamic finance. Lastly, the industry needs to create new tools for assessing risk.

None of these challenges is insurmountable. This is an era of financial innovation where investors delight in exploring new areas of risk. Cultural barriers are there to be crossed.
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")
User avatar
mends
Saidero MegaGoldMember
Saidero	MegaGoldMember
 
Posts: 5183
Joined: 15 Sep 2003, 18:45
Location: por aí

Postby mends » 07 Dec 2006, 18:04

Palaeoeconomics

Mrs Adam Smith

Dec 7th 2006
From The Economist print edition


Modern humanity's battle with Neanderthals may have been won by the women who invented the division of labour

NEANDERTHAL man was a strong, large-brained, skilful big-game hunter who had survived for more than 200,000 years in the harsh European climates of the last Ice Age. But within a few thousand years of the arrival of modern humans in the continent, he was extinct. Why that happened is a matter of abiding interest to anthropologically inclined descendants of those interloping moderns. The extinction of Neanderthal man has been attributed variously to his having lower intelligence than modern humans, to worse language skills, to cruder tools, or even to the lack of a propensity for long-distance trade. The latest proposal, though, is that it is not so much Neanderthal man that was to blame, as modern woman.

In existing pre-agricultural societies there is, famously, a division of food-acquiring labour between men, who hunt, and women, who gather. And in a paper just published in Current Anthropology, Steven Kuhn and Mary Stiner of the University of Arizona propose that this division of labour happened early in the species' history, and that it is what enabled modern humans to expand their population at the expense of Neanderthals.

As Adam Smith noted, division of labour leads to greater productivity because it allows people to specialise and become very good at what they do. In the vast majority of cases among historically known and present-day foragers, men specialise in hunting big game, while women hunt smaller animals and collect plant food. In colder climes, where long winters make plant-gathering difficult or impossible for much of the year, women often specialise in making clothing and shelters.

The archaeological record, however, shows few signs of any specialisation among the Neanderthals from their appearance about 250,000 years ago to their disappearance 30,000 years ago. Instead, they did one thing almost to the exclusion of all else: they hunted big game. There are plenty of collections of bones from animals such as reindeer, horses, bison and mammoths that are associated with Neanderthals, but few remains of rabbits or tortoises. There is also little sign of preserved seeds and nuts, or of the specialised grinding stones that would have been needed to process them. And there are no bone awls or needles that would suggest that Neanderthals were skilled leather workers, despite the abundance of animal skins that their hunting would have provided.

Signs of division of labour come only with the arrival of modern humans into Europe around 40,000 years ago. That is when evidence appears of small animals being eaten routinely and plant foods being gathered. It is also when tools designed for sophisticated leather working emerge.

Dr Kuhn and Dr Stiner suggest that division of labour actually originated in a warmer part of the world—Africa seems most likely—where plant foods could be gathered profitably all year round. But as humans brought the idea of division of labour north, the female side of the bargain gave the species a significant advantage by providing fallback foods when big game was scarce and allowing more people to inhabit a given piece of land in times of plenty. Modern human populations grew, Neanderthal populations shrank, and the rest is prehistory.

Of course, the archaeological record cannot prove which sex was doing what, or even if specialisation was determined by sex at all. But almost all known groups of foragers divide men's and women's work the same way, which makes it likely that the same rule applied in the past, and for the same reasons—men tend to be stronger and faster, and women are more likely to be occupied with childcare.

That it was division of labour which gave modern humanity its edge over the Neanderthals is not a completely new idea. A study published last year by Jason Shogren of the University of Wyoming used a mathematical model to suggest it would work, particularly if combined with trade. But Dr Shogren's thesis was that wimpy, useless hunters were the ones who stayed at home and crafted objects, while the real men went out and killed things. Dr Kuhn and Dr Stiner, by contrast, assign to women the main role in establishing the antecedents of modern economics, and thus launching the process of growth that continues to this day.
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")
User avatar
mends
Saidero MegaGoldMember
Saidero	MegaGoldMember
 
Posts: 5183
Joined: 15 Sep 2003, 18:45
Location: por aí

Postby mends » 11 Dec 2006, 09:19

Five Macroeconomic Myths
By EDWARD C. PRESCOTT
December 11, 2006; Page A18

The sky is not falling. No need to panic and start playing around with all sorts of policy responses. Despite the impression created by some economic pundits, the U.S. economy is not a delicate little machine that needs to be fine-tuned with exact precision by benevolent policymakers to keep from breaking down. Rather, it is large and complex, with millions of people making billions of decisions every day to improve their lives, the lives of their families and the health of their businesses.

On the one hand, it's difficult to screw up all these well-intentioned people by crafting bad policy, but, on the other hand, it is of course entirely possible to do so. And once things are broken, they are much harder to fix. For example, all those doomsayers predicting a recession will get their wish if taxes are suddenly raised, new productivity-strangling regulations are enacted, the U.S. turns against free trade, or some combination thereof. Otherwise, we should expect 3% real growth, based on 2% increases in productivity and 1% population growth. This economy is fundamentally sound.


So we have to be careful that we don't believe everything we read in the papers. Things are never as bad as the last data that was released, nor are they as good. Likewise, policy should not be revised at every turn, nor rules changed by political whim. Meaning, we should be careful about accepting conventional wisdom as, well, being wise. One of the great disciplines of economics is that it challenges us to question status quo thinking. So let's take a look at five pillars of contemporary conventional wisdom that have current standing, and see how well they hold up.

Myth No. 1: Monetary policy causes booms and busts. Greg Mankiw, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, wrote the following in a 2002 paper: "No aspect of U.S. policy in the 1990s is more widely hailed as a success than monetary policy. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan is often viewed as a miracle worker." Or, as Mr. Mankiw later asks, was Mr. Greenspan just lucky?

One of the mysteries of the 1990s is how to explain the economic boom when the increase in capital investments -- as measured by the national accounts -- grew at a subdued pace. The numbers simply don't add up. However, it turns out that something special happened in the 1990s, and it wasn't monetary policy. In a recent paper, Minneapolis Fed senior economist Ellen McGrattan and I show that intangible capital investment -- including R&D, developing new markets, building new business organizations and clientele -- was above normal by 4% of GDP in the late 1990s.

This difference is key to understanding growth rates in the 1990s: Output, correctly measured, increased 8% relative to trend between 1991 and 1999, which is much bigger than the U.S. national accounts number of 4%. Associated with this boom in unmeasured investment is the huge amount of unmeasured savings that showed up in the wealth statistics as capital gains. This was the people's boom, the risk-takers' boom. We should hang gold medals around these entrepreneurs' necks. So indeed, it does seem that Mr. Greenspan was lucky in that a boom happened under his watch; but we can at least say that he did a pretty good job of keeping inflation in check. Here's hoping for the same performance from our current chairman.

What about busts? Let's begin with the assumption that tight monetary policy caused the recession of 1978-1982. This myth is so firmly entrenched that I could have called this downturn the "Volcker recession" and readers would have understood my reference. To accept the myth, you have to accept a consistent relationship between monetary policy and economic activity -- and as we've just seen, this relationship is simply not evident in the data.

Between 1975 and 1980, the inflation-corrected federal funds rate was low; at the same time, output trended upward until late 1978. So far, things look somewhat promising for the mythmakers. But looking closer at the data we see that output began its downward trend in late 1979 while monetary policy was still easy through most of 1980. Also, output continued its decline through 1982, when it began to climb at a time when monetary policy remained tight.

These facts do not square with conventional wisdom. Our obsession with monetary policy in the conduct of the real economy is misplaced.

One caveat: I am not saying that there are no real costs to inflation -- there certainly are. And if we get too much inflation we can exact high costs on an economy (witness Argentina as an example). However, I am talking here of the vast majority of industrialized countries who live in a low-inflation regime and who are in no danger of slipping into hyperinflation. It is simply impossible to make a grave mistake when we're talking about movements of 25 basis points.

Myth No. 2: GDP growth was extraordinary in the 1990s. Even though I referred to the expansion of the '90s as a boom, inasmuch as it was a period of above-trend growth, and I noted the strong gains due to unmeasured investment, we have to put things into historical context. So let's return to the data. GDP growth relative to trend in the early 1960s was 12%, and in the famous 1980s boom (from the end of 1982 to mid-1989) it was a very impressive 9.7%.

And how about the boom from the previous decade? From 1996 to 1999, GDP grew 3.8%, about in line with the 3.9% growth of the early 1970s and less than the 5.5% growth of the mid-1970s expansion. Even when we account for unmeasured investment and add four percentage points, the 1990s growth spurt -- fueled by rapid growth in tech industries -- still falls short of the 1980s boom and does not approach the 1960s, both of which were fueled by tax cuts.

So we have to be careful about mythologizing the 1990s and drawing misguided policy lessons; yes, it was a boom, and it was better than we think, but let's keep that boom in perspective.

Myth No. 3: Americans don't save. This is a persistent misconception owing to a misunderstanding of what it means to save. To get a complete picture of savings we need to investigate economic wealth relative to income. Our traditional measures of savings and investment, the national accounts, do not include savings associated with tangible investments made by businesses and funded by retained earning, government investments (like roads and schools) and business intangible investments.

If we want to know how much people are saving, we need to look at how much wealth they have. People invest themselves in many and varied ways beyond their traditional savings accounts. Viewing the full picture -- economic wealth -- Americans save as much as they always have; otherwise, their wealth relative to income would fall. We're saving the right amount.

Myth No. 4: The U.S. government debt is big. The key measure here is privately held interest-bearing federal government debt, which includes debt held by foreign central banks, and does not include debt held by the Fed or government debt held by the government. So let's turn to the historical data once again.

Privately held interest-bearing debt relative to income peaked during World War II, fell through the early 1970s, rose again through the early 1990s, and then fell again until 2003. Even though that number has been rising in recent years (except for the most recent one), it is still at levels similar to the early 1960s, and lower than levels in most of the 1980s and 1990s. This debt level was not alarming then, and it is not alarming now. From a historical perspective, the current U.S. government debt is not large.

Myth No. 5: Government debt is a burden on our grandchildren. There's no better way to get people worked up about something than to call on their sympathies for their beloved grandkids. The last thing that I want to do is to burden my own grandchildren with the sins of profligacy. But we should stop feeling guilty -- at least about government debt -- because we are in better shape than conventional wisdom suggests.

Theory and practice tell us that the optimal amount of public debt that maximizes the welfare of new generations of entrants into the workforce is two times gross national income, or GDP. This assumes 1% population growth, 2% productivity growth, 4% real after-tax return on investments, and that people work to age 63 and live to age 85. Currently, privately held public debt is about 0.3 times GDP, and if we include our Social Security obligations, it is 1.6 times GDP. In either case, we could argue that we have too little debt.

What's going on here? There are not enough productive assets -- tangible and intangible assets alike -- to meet the investment needs of our forthcoming retirees. The problem is that the rate of return on investment -- creating more productive assets -- decreases as the stock of these assets increases. An excessive stock of these productive assets leads to inefficiencies.

Total savings by everyone is equal to the sum of productive assets and government debt, and if there is an imbalance in this equation it does not mean we have too little or too many productive assets. The fix comes from getting the proper amount of government debt. When people did not enjoy long retirements and population growth was rapid, the optimal amount of government debt was zero. However, the world has changed, and we in fact require some government debt if we care about our grandchildren and their grandchildren.

If we should worry about our grandchildren, we shouldn't about the amount of debt we are leaving them. We may even have to increase that debt a bit to ensure that we are adequately prepared for our own retirements.

* * *
There are at least three lessons here. First: Context matters. Take what you read in the paper with a many grains of historical salt. Second: Current data often provide poor guidance for effective policy making. To make forward-looking policies you have to understand the past. Finally: Establish good rules, change them infrequently and judiciously, and turn the people loose upon the economy. Booms will follow.

Mr. Prescott is senior monetary adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and professor of economics at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. He is a co-recipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize in economics.
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")
User avatar
mends
Saidero MegaGoldMember
Saidero	MegaGoldMember
 
Posts: 5183
Joined: 15 Sep 2003, 18:45
Location: por aí

Postby mends » 19 Dec 2006, 07:54

Trading on Commodities
By NIALL FERGUSON
December 19, 2006; Page A16

In the Hollywood adaptation of Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not," Lauren Bacall offers Humphrey Bogart a justly famous explanation. "You know how to whistle, don't you Steve?" she asks. "You just put your lips together and blow."

Well, the past year has given commodity traders plenty to whistle about. Prices of nickel and zinc have more than doubled since January. Copper and lead are up roughly 50%. The other good news is that other commodities -- like sugar -- are down in price. Best of all, the world's most important -- oil -- has been both up and down. Volatility has been touching historic lows in bond and equity markets. Not in commodities. Correlation, meanwhile, has been touching record highs for most securities. Not for commodities.

Small wonder it's become modish to refer to commodities as a "new asset class." There has been a boom in commodity-linked financial instruments. Issuance of medium-term notes has soared. Collateralized commodity obligations are the new new thing.


The drivers of commodity price volatility are well known. On one side there is roaring Asian (especially Chinese) demand and the prospect of supply shortages. Between 2002 and 2005, according to the IMF, China accounted for literally all the global growth of zinc and lead consumption, and more than 80% of the increase in tin and nickel consumption. At the same time, lack of investment and increased political risk have combined to constrain the supply of many key commodities -- and not only oil. The market for coltan (a substance used in the manufacture of mobile phones) is also tight, to give just one example.

On the other hand, there are powerful forces working in the opposite direction: a slowdown in the growth of the U.S. economy; the prospect of increased government regulation, whether through resource nationalism or environmental concern; and the possibility of technological breakthroughs that might reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, like the development of ethanol-burning engines.

The real question to ask about commodities, however, is not whether prices will go up or down. The complex interplay of these variables means that prices will almost certainly go up and down. It is far more important to ask whether or not the uneven geographical distribution of key commodities is a potential source of conflict. Many commentators have argued that China is engaged in re-enacting the 19th-century "Scramble for Africa," securing vital sources of commodities in return for development aid and a blind eye to human rights abuses. The danger, South African leader Thabo Mbeki warned recently, was that Africa could end up in a "colonial relationship" with China.

Another potential source of trouble is Russia's dominance of the European natural gas market. Along with Iran and Venezuela, Russia has emerged as one of the world's new energy empires, treating its vast fossil-fuel reserves (which include more than a quarter of the world's proved reserves of natural gas) as a source of power as well as profit. In Georgia Mr. Putin has already earned the nickname "Gasputin," following recent attempts by Moscow to play politics with petrol.

The world's most advanced economies -- the United States, the European Union and Japan -- have good reason to worry about the geopolitics of commodities. Between them, they account for nearly two-thirds of global oil imports, but only 6% of exports. The Middle East and the former Soviet Union account for more than half of oil exports. Nearly half of all the natural gas imported by Europe comes from Russia.

* * *
Does history give us reason to fear a future clash of "haves" and "have-nots" (terms that were often used in the interwar period to characterize the international balance of power)? It's a question worth pondering.

Think of world history as falling into roughly four ages. In the first, prior to around 1500, the key commodities were grain, livestock, wood, stone and base metals. In the second, from around 1500 to 1800, the key commodities were silver, spices, silk, tea, coffee, sugar and tobacco. The third age of commodities was the industrial age from 1800 to 1900, when it was cotton, coal, iron, gold and diamonds. Our own fourth age was different again: an era dominated by the consumption of oil, natural gas and rarer metals like aluminum.

In each of these ages, there have been haves and have-nots. In the first age, when fertile territory was everything, the haves included Western Europeans and Eastern Chinese; the have-nots, nomads like the Mongols. In the second age, when commodities from the New World and Asia were at a premium, the haves (initially) were in Peru, Mexico, India and China. Back in 1500, the have-nots were Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, England and France.

By 1800, those have-nots had become haves thanks to conquest and colonization. The luck of the geological draw meant that Britain was also a have in terms of coal, the key fuel of the industrial age, as were Belgium, Germany, Russia and the U.S., which also grew plentiful cotton. Less well endowed with key industrial inputs were Austria-Hungary and Italy. Finally, our own age has seen a further reshuffle. In the hydrocarbon age, the biggest haves (in terms of oil production) are Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States. The vulnerable have-nots are most of Europe and Japan.

Yet it would be a gross caricature of the historical process to explain the great conflicts of those four ages primarily as clashes between commodity-rich and commodity-poor countries. First, there are numerous examples in each period of clashes between rival haves. World War I was fought between coal-rich countries, breaking out just as German coal production caught up with Britain and German iron production pulled ahead. The Cold War, too, was fought between the haves. Second, there is little evidence that tight markets for commodities -- as evidenced by high prices -- have been a trigger for conflict. Between 1873 and 1913, for example, the prices of most key industrial commodities fell, because production generally kept pace with demand.

In any case, commodity prices have for much of history been expressed in terms of one particular monetary commodity. The age of relatively abundant silver was succeeded by the age of relatively scarce gold; indeed, it was the restrictiveness of the gold standard that drove other commodity prices down so steeply in the 1880s. Only since the early 1970s have we entered the age of plentiful paper, a substance much easier to produce than precious metal. Much of the recent upward drift in commodity prices is in reality an expression of the excess supply of our monetary commodity.

Some German historians used to argue that it had been the decline of commodity prices before 1914 that had encouraged their country's ruling elites -- agrarian Junkers and heavy industrialists -- to gamble on war in the hope that it would shore up their crumbling economic and political position. But that theory has not stood the test of modern scholarship. Nor can it credibly be argued that Britain's real rationale for going to war in 1914 was to break up the Ottoman Empire and turn its oil-rich provinces into Iraq.

The only credible candidate for a major modern war sparked by commodity envy must be World War II. "The final solution lies in an extension of our living space," wrote Adolf Hitler in his 1936 Four Year Plan Memorandum, "and/or the sources of the raw materials and food supplies of our nation." Japan's military leaders made similar arguments about the need to establish a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." There was at least some logic behind such demands for increased "living space." Germany had abundant domestic supplies of coal and iron, but before the 1930s it needed to import all its rubber and oil. Japan relied on imports for 100% of its rubber, 55% of its steel and 45% of its iron. No less than 80% of Japan's oil came from the U.S.

Of course, "living space" was also about acquiring agricultural land which the leaders of the Axis powers dreamt of populating with their own master races. But from an economic and military point of view, it was the oil and rubber that really mattered.

Unfortunately for Hitler and Hirohito, their staggering military successes in the first phase of the war did not suffice to eliminate the differential between the haves and have-nots. Once the U.S. and the Soviet Union were fighting alongside the British Empire, the odds against the Axis lengthened disastrously. And it wasn't just a matter of oil. Between them, the three principal Allied powers dominated the global supply of chromium, cobalt, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, titanium, tungsten and vanadium -- commodities vital for the production of modern armaments. Only if they had been able to turn the empires they conquered between 1937 and 1942 into thriving centers of commodity extraction could the Axis powers have avoided defeat. They failed to, and paid the price.

The lesson of history is that commodities are not destiny. A booming global economy and rising commodity prices may in theory increase tensions between commodity exporters and importers. But haves and have-nots are not doomed to conflict; wars may equally break out between rival haves. At the same time, falling commodity prices may be as disruptive of international order as rising commodity prices. The fall of the Soviet Union, after all, can be plausibly explained as consequence of cheap oil in the 1980s.

It will be ironic indeed if the next big story in the commodity market is a price slump in the context of a global economic slowdown. For then the joke will be on the haves, and particularly the energy-exporting empires. And it will be the turn of the have-nots to put their lips together and blow.

Mr. Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch professor of history at Harvard University.
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")
User avatar
mends
Saidero MegaGoldMember
Saidero	MegaGoldMember
 
Posts: 5183
Joined: 15 Sep 2003, 18:45
Location: por aí

Postby mends » 03 Jan 2007, 09:55

Money Is Everywhere,
But for How Long?
January 3, 2007; Page A8
It may be time to put away the bubbly.

The New Year's forecasts are so unrelentingly sanguine that you have to wonder whether a tanker of strong, black coffee is in order. The U.S. economy will keep growing. The housing market will recover. The Federal Reserve will cut interest rates. And financial markets will soar.

The world, it seems, has become intoxicated by the steady flow of what my fellow financial writers call "liquidity." Money flows freely, like the vodka from Dennis Kozlowski's infamous ice-hewn David, filling every dark and desolate crevice of the financial world.

There is a steady stream of resources to the most perilous of emerging markets, the most hopeless of troubled companies and the most overextended of home buyers.

That's great fun while it lasts. But does anyone seriously think it will last forever?

TALKING BUSINESS


Forecasters are all expecting credit to continue to flow freely to whoever wants it. But will it last forever? Join the discussion. Alan Murray will read your thoughts and post replies.Let's start with private equity. Private-equity fund raising set a record last year, as did private-equity deal making. This year will be even bigger. Look for a precedent-breaking $50 billion deal to be announced before the big ball falls in Times Square again.

The private-equity geniuses would have you believe this is because they've discovered a superior form of running companies. Perhaps some of them have. But mostly, what they've discovered is an amazing gusher of money.

Take the Employee Retirement System of Texas, which runs $23 billion in pension-fund assets for state workers. Two weeks ago, the Texas fund announced that it was going to divert 7% to 8% of its funds to private-equity investments.

That's not because the Texans have a crystal ball telling them great private-equity investment opportunities lie ahead. Rather, it's because they see what they've already missed. Savvier pension funds and endowments that made private-equity bets five or 10 years ago have enjoyed huge returns, and everyone else is now scrambling, belatedly, to get in the game.

"It's important for us to keep in mind we're looking in the rearview mirror," Trustee Craig Hester told the Austin American-Statesman. Yes, indeed.

In the meantime, big public companies such as General Electric, whose plodding shareholder returns have put them out of favor with the pension-fund crowd, are selling off poorly performing businesses to -- who else? -- private equity. At his company's annual outlook meeting last month, GE Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt expressed wonder at his ability to sell off the company's dogs. "You know, there is just money everywhere today," he said. "So you've got a lot of options."

VIDEO REPORT



Alan Murray says financial markets and homeowners alike have come to depend too much on a steady flow of cheap money that's destined to dry up some day. He talks about the danger signs with Ed Crane.Does it make sense for pension funds to push GE to sell off weak businesses and then finance the private-equity funds that buy them? That game has worked well in recent years, largely because the privatized companies have been loaded up with cheap debt that ensures highly leveraged returns to their owners.

If the bubbly stuff dries up, however, the game returns to basics. Do private-equity firms really do a better job running these companies than the likes of GE? That remains to be seen.

The swollen river of liquidity is also behind happy predictions that housing will recover later this year. Despite rising default rates, mortgages remain cheap and easy.

Lenders are still willing to let borrowers bury themselves in debt to buy a new home. The money gusher also helps explain why the federal government in Washington can keep spending away, without regard for projections of an exploding federal deficit. And why the dollar remains relatively strong, despite swelling trade deficits. Or why the Dow Jones Industrial Average has managed to go for more than 912 trading days without a 2% daily decline -- the longest such stretch in its history.

Perhaps this flood of money will continue through the new year. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has argued the money flows are the result of a "global savings glut." Newly enriched investors in the developing world need to put their money somewhere, and apparently, even the most risky assets will do.

But as long as the good times are rolling, don't expect Mr. Bernanke to cut interest rates. That's a tool he'll only use when the economy takes a serious turn for the worse. Those who predict otherwise haven't been listening to what he's been saying.

And don't be fooled into thinking that more drinking will ease the inevitable hangover. At some point, something -- a string of big defaults, a sharp decline in the dollar, or, God forbid, a major terror attack -- will cause the intoxicating stuff to stop flowing.

The world is still a risky place, and liquidity, at the end of the day, is just another name for confidence. Eventually, this confidence game will end.

• Forecasters are all expecting credit to continue to flow freely to whoever wants it. But will that last forever? Join the discussion. Alan Murray will read your thoughts and post replies. Or email: business@wsj.com.
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")
User avatar
mends
Saidero MegaGoldMember
Saidero	MegaGoldMember
 
Posts: 5183
Joined: 15 Sep 2003, 18:45
Location: por aí

Postby mends » 23 Jan 2007, 09:06

P=MV/Q
By ROBERT D. MCTEER
January 23, 2007; Page A19

The main question on financial TV lately has been whether the economy will continue to weaken and possibly slip into recession, but allow inflation to decelerate, or whether it will pick up and cause inflation to accelerate. More slack in the economy, or a larger output gap, would reduce inflation; more output, it is presumed, would make inflation worse. While a weaker economy might well reduce inflation, that isn't a necessary condition. Faster growth can also reduce inflation.

While inflation may respond to a reduction in aggregate demand, it would also logically respond to an increase in aggregate supply. In the simple equation of exchange, MV=PQ, so P=MV/Q. In other words, other things equal, prices respond positively to an increase in MV, or aggregate demand, and negatively to an increase in Q, or aggregate supply. This is not rocket science.

But it is a truism rarely articulated. The Phillips Curve is rarely mentioned anymore, but it still pervades the common view that inflation can be tamed only through a weaker economy. Disinflationary growth is not considered an option, probably because we think of output as responding only passively to changes in aggregate demand, so that they rise together or fall together.

That may be the usual case, but it doesn't have to be. Supply-side factors may stimulate output independent of aggregate demand, through shifts in investment, exports or shifts from imports to domestically produced goods. Or animal spirits.

Monetary policy is currently in pause mode as far as interest rates are concerned, but moderate increases in the monetary base must be considered anti-inflationary whether output remains weak, or strengthens, as I expect.

Supply-side economics is out of favor at universities that don't have good football teams. But that's largely because its bar for success has been raised too high. Tax-rate cuts may not fully pay for themselves at current rate levels, but they certainly have gone a long way in that direction, as the recent sharp decline in the budget deficit despite rapid spending growth clearly indicates. Tax-rate cuts that substantially pay for themselves in higher tax revenue are clearly a good thing.

Our economy is remarkably healthy. Inflation has crept above our comfort zone, but current policies are bringing it down without a recession. Monetary policy is just about right, and is being helped in its fight against inflation by other factors: the Internet, globalization, China, India and other new players. Let's not be afraid of growth.

Mr. McTeer is a distinguished fellow of the National Center for Policy Analysis and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")
User avatar
mends
Saidero MegaGoldMember
Saidero	MegaGoldMember
 
Posts: 5183
Joined: 15 Sep 2003, 18:45
Location: por aí

Postby mends » 24 Jan 2007, 10:08

Wealth of Nations
What Drives High Growth Rates?
By MICHAEL SPENCE
January 24, 2007; Page A13

With China and India growing at high rates, there has been a dramatic increase in the fraction of the world's population experiencing the benefits and challenges of rapid growth. There are a number of common ingredients in the cases of sustained high growth that have been observed: a functioning market system, high levels of saving, public and private sector investment, resource mobility and the capacity to accommodate rapid change at the microeconomic level without leaving people excessively exposed to the risks inherent in creative destruction.

But it is the resources of the global economy that stand out as driving forces in sustaining high growth. These come in three parts.


• Demand: In a relatively poor economy, demand is limited and its composition does not necessarily correspond to sectors of comparative advantage. The global economy is huge, in comparison; and at the right prices and costs, demand is, for practical purposes, unlimited.


So, once the challenge of identifying industries in which the country can invest in acquiring a comparative advantage is met, growth in exports will not be constrained by demand, and growth in the economy can occur at a rate determined by the savings and investment rates. Much of that investment in the early stages will go to the export sector, which can grow at rates high enough to pull the economy along. As we saw in Japan, Korea, Singapore and now China, the growth of exports can set in motion a process of sustained growth which is transmitted to the whole economy and could not be achieved by relying on domestic demand alone.

These are the dynamic equivalents of the gains from trade for developing countries. Developing economies are small in relation to global demand and hence they can grow and increase share without having the terms of trade turn against them (China being a possible exception because of its size). They are constrained primarily by their capacity to invest, once the growth process is started. They use underutilized or surplus resources, particularly labor, so that the growth in exports does not come at the expense of declines in other sectors. Advanced economies cannot grow at anything like these rates and the rapidly growing developing economies will eventually slow down.

• Technology: A second resource the global economy provides is know-how. This ranges from engineering and production technology to managerial expertise and knowledge of global markets -- and it does not have to be redeveloped domestically from scratch. And unlike most commodities, when knowledge is transferred from A to B, both have it.


One avenue for imported technology to travel is by foreign direct investment. But there are cases -- Japan and Korea -- in which there was significant technology absorption from the rest of the world and relatively little FDI. Here, foreign education and explicit programs aimed at learning played important roles.

• Investment: A third area in which the global economy supports higher than otherwise attainable growth is investment, or more precisely through investment beyond the capacity of the domestic economy to save. One component is FDI, typically not a large fraction of total investment (20% of overall investment would be typical). But its magnitude understates its importance, because of its role in bringing technology, know-how and access to external markets.


Beyond FDI, it is possible to invest at rates that are higher than domestic savings can provide. But this area is complex and controversial. Financial investments, unlike FDI, can be reversed easily; and if reversals are sudden, they can create exchange rate volatility, collapses in asset values, and failures in the banking system. This was observed in the currency crises of the late 1990s, and the understanding now is that imperfectly developed or informationally immature capital markets are vulnerable to volatility, and that complete openness and sudden shifts to complete convertibility of the currency may not be wise. Gradualism, experimentation and pragmatism are better guiding principles.

Substantial inbound capital in excess of savings may raise the value of the local currency and reduce the competitiveness of the nascent export sectors. An elevated level of the domestic currency or volatility will serve as a deterrent to domestic and foreign investment in export sectors.

WEALTH OF NATIONS


This concludes a two-part series.
See the first: Why China Grows So FastSome public sector borrowing to finance public sector investment makes sense if the developing country's fiscal system is sufficiently well structured to ensure the future capacity to repay the debt, and if its political system is such that commitments can be kept. The record, here, is not reassuring. The high-growth cases have not involved much investment financed by foreign savings. The current trend is the opposite: toward building up reserves (modest in some cases, and very large in China). This means running surpluses on the current account (goods and services) and deficits on the capital account. That is, domestic savings exceeds investment.

As the high-growth economies become richer, the relative importance of the domestic economy as a driver of growth increases. The critical role of exports remains, but is at its highest early in the process when the domestic economy is small. Take Japan: It lost its growth momentum in the '90s in part because at its advanced stage domestic consumption is a required engine of growth. Beyond the catch-up phase, growth cannot be sustained on a healthy export sector alone.

It is hard to argue with the diagnosis of sustained high growth in the past half-century. But people do question the future applicability to developing economies that are "starting late."

The argument is that for those countries that are not resource-rich, the principal resource that they have is abundant labor, inexpensive relative to its productive value, and that the natural territory for comparative advantage is in labor-intensive manufacturing or services. For these countries, the argument goes, it is impossible to compete with China and prospectively India. One reason is that the size of China and India, and a variety of advantages that go with scale, are insurmountable. Another is that the infrastructure investments make China hypercompetitive and difficult to match. The conclusion is that one needs to wait for China and India to grow, and that at some point their incomes will rise to the point that they are no longer in labor-intensive sectors.

This argument is unlikely to be right. While China and India are formidable competitors, exchange rates can adjust to increase the competitiveness of export sectors of new entrants. In addition, while we sometimes talk about labor intensive industry as if it were one big lump, in reality there are hundreds of niches. Further, multinationals are risk-averse and unlikely to source in their supply chains in just one or two countries. Finally, China and India together now account for close to one-fifth of the U.S. economy, and they are becoming an important source of demand for exports of developing countries -- so that newcomers have expanding markets in these two rapidly growing economies.

In short, the global economy remains a resource for generating and sustaining high growth in developing countries. China and India, accounting for 40% of the world's population, are in high-growth mode and are pulling much of Asia with them. There have also been recent increases in export and overall growth in Africa, though some of that is attributable to an upsurge in commodity prices. Latin America, with the notable exception of Chile, has been stalled at lower middle-income levels, but has the human resources and other assets to shift back onto high-growth trajectories.

The prospects for developing countries are, in fact, probably more favorable now than they have been since World War II. International trade is growing faster than global GDP. The benefits of decades of learning with respect to operating global supply chains are accessible. Information and technology continues to lower transactions costs and to be a powerful integrating force. But perhaps even more important, the key players in all this -- the leaders in emerging economies who have the responsibility for building policies that support private sector entrepreneurship and that lead to sustained inclusive growth -- have a wealth of experience to rely on. No one is in the dark.

Mr. Spence, a 2001 Nobel laureate in economics, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, professor emeritus of management in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, and chairman of the independent Commission on Growth in Developing Countries.
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")
User avatar
mends
Saidero MegaGoldMember
Saidero	MegaGoldMember
 
Posts: 5183
Joined: 15 Sep 2003, 18:45
Location: por aí

Postby mends » 10 Feb 2007, 12:23

ah, a beleza do mercado...

Environment
Pollution Credits Could Cut The Need for Foreign Aid

• FOREIGN POLICY February


If developing nations are offered a fair way to sell pollution credits to richer countries, the proceeds could be large enough to replace foreign aid -- while reducing global warming in the process, Alex Evans says.

The gap between richer and poorer nations is one of the main reasons the 1997 Kyoto climate-change treaty hasn't succeeded in slowing global warming. Developing countries rejected a blanket emissions cap that could put the brakes on their growth before they had an opportunity to catch up to industrialized countries, while the U.S. -- currently the world's biggest contributor of greenhouse gases -- feared immediate curbs would severely crimp its economy. Of the 157 nations that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, only the 38 industrialized participants are required to reduce their emissions. (The U.S. never ratified the treaty.)

Mr. Evans, a senior policy associate at New York University's Center on International Cooperation, notes that the U.S. has opposed setting limits on carbon emissions based on population, something the developing world has sought. But what if per-person limits were phased in over a period of decades rather than all at once? This would give poorer countries an opportunity to catch up economically, without forcing the U.S. and other developed countries to immediately make drastic cuts. Once developing countries sign on to the idea of caps, they can begin selling their unused pollution credits to other countries, creating a potential revenue windfall.

Global foreign aid, including debt relief, currently totals about $100 million, an amount that Mr. Evans says could quickly become dwarfed by income from emissions trading. What's more, he says, developing countries would have "every incentive to invest the proceeds of emission permit sales in renewable energy and clean technology," since it would keep their emissions down and allow them to continue selling permits.
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")
User avatar
mends
Saidero MegaGoldMember
Saidero	MegaGoldMember
 
Posts: 5183
Joined: 15 Sep 2003, 18:45
Location: por aí

Postby Rafael » 11 Feb 2007, 21:56

sim... acho isso bem bacana... principalmente de o "mercado" se virar...

Hoje em dia, já ouvi falar em empresas que divulgam se um Balanço de Carbono, por pressão de consumidores e sociedade, apesar de não ser necessário...

Mas o problema é que este modelo que obriga os créditos de carbono, aos caras compensarem etc etc e etc surgiu muito mais de uma pressão/imposição do governo, do que por pressão social, ou real necessidade... O pessoal topa pagar mais caro pra ter Coisas "Carbon Free"?

E pior... o que vai ter de fraude em país pobre, vendendo carbono...
User avatar
Rafael
Grão-Mestre Saidero
Grão-Mestre Saidero
 
Posts: 717
Joined: 10 Sep 2003, 21:30
Location: Sampa

Postby mends » 12 Feb 2007, 09:42

Não creio tanto em fraude do tipo passar projeto sem ter projeto, porque a certificação é muito rigorosa e chata. Lembro dos calhamaços de regras pra aprovação, mas certamente há margem pra certificar coisas que não “capturam” tanto carbono assim, como novas tecnologias de tratamento de lixo, que podem ser descobertas e gerar crédito sem que haja um nível de conforto quanto ao volume de equivalente carbono capturado na atmosfera.

A pressão foi do tal Protocolo de Kyoto, que o Bush Bóbi Filho é acusado de não assinar blábláblá. Acontece que ele sabe que, havendo mercado, EUA entrariam. Hoje, a maior bolsa de créditos do mundo é a CBOT, de Chigago.
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")
User avatar
mends
Saidero MegaGoldMember
Saidero	MegaGoldMember
 
Posts: 5183
Joined: 15 Sep 2003, 18:45
Location: por aí

Postby mends » 10 May 2007, 20:42

Are Deficits Unfair to Future Generations?

• ECONOMIST.COM -- MAY 8


Are government deficits immoral because they impose an unfair burden on future generations?

That all depends on what the deficits pay for, says Will Wilkinson, an analyst for the free-market think tank the Cato Institute. If they are paying for things such as retirees' health benefits -- as he thinks they are likely to -- then they are.

He was expanding on a complaint made last week by liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias: politicians often act as if all deficits leave our grandchildren paying for our bills. In fact, it's a technical question whether they do or not. Deficit spending might finance investments that boost economic growth. That growth could compensate for the cost to future generations when the debt comes due.

Mr. Wilkinson adds that the rising political clout of old people means that deficit spending is less likely to go to truly public projects, the kind everyone benefits from. Instead, deficits will probably pay for old people's lifestyles.

Mr. Wilkinson points out old people have a self-interested reason in spending through debt rather than taxes: it's likely they won't be around when it's time to pay it off. For young people, on the other hand, there's little financial difference between paying for a project through taxes today or with higher taxes later on in life.

On top of their preference for deficit spending, as baby boomers retire and grow in political strength, Mr. Wilkinson is skeptical that they'll push for projects meant to boost future growth. Instead, "we should expect them to lobby for stuff they can consume before they die, like prescription-drug benefits, ever-more lavishly subsidized health care, and other 'quality of life' initiatives, like express lanes for Winnebagos." Such programs could even slow growth in the future.

Mr. Wilkinson urges policy makers to recognize this bias in the political system and seek to "to erect institutions, like balanced budget rules, that help mitigate the wrong."
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")
User avatar
mends
Saidero MegaGoldMember
Saidero	MegaGoldMember
 
Posts: 5183
Joined: 15 Sep 2003, 18:45
Location: por aí

Postby mends » 09 Jun 2007, 10:10

Economia
"Mais sexo, menos aids"

Essa é apenas uma das teses de Steven
Landsburg, o economista americano
especializado em desafiar o senso comum


Marcio Aith

Ilustrações Negreiros

O CUSTO DA CASTIDADE
A aids se propagaria mais lentamente se pessoas com hábitos sexuais restritivos aumentassem moderadamente sua freqüência sexual

"Se você sempre foi cuidadoso e seletivo, poderá elevar a qualidade média do conjunto de parceiros sexuais. Só por entrar no jogo você o torna mais puro. Graças a você, todos os que vão à caça hoje à noite têm uma chance melhor de encontrar alguém saudável."
Steven Landsburg



Equações e estatísticas se prestam a sustentar quaisquer teses e a resolver todos os problemas do mundo. Desde, é claro, que se ajeitem as variáveis direitinho, de forma a atingir o objetivo desejado. Steven Landsburg, professor de economia da Universidade de Rochester, no estado de Nova York, domina essa arte com mestria. Dotado de uma sólida formação matemática, ele se diverte construindo raciocínios lógicos para defender teses politicamente incorretas. Por exemplo: mais sexo pode retardar a contaminação pelo vírus do HIV. Ou: pornografia on-line reduz a ocorrência de estupros. Landsburg é colunista da revista on-line Slate e pioneiro no uso de métodos e ferramentas econômicas para contrariar convicções e desvendar os mistérios da vida cotidiana. O primeiro de seus três livros, The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life (O Economista de Poltrona: Economia e o Cotidiano), de 1993, serviu como referência a Steven Levitt, autor do best-seller Freakonomics e o mais notável entre a geração dos economistas pop. Ao contrário de Levitt, no entanto, Landsburg não só desafia o senso comum. Também o agride, com um humor lúgubre e com uma lógica nem sempre convincente, mas divertida e suficientemente hermética para não ser desmentida.


TRABALHEM, CRIANÇAS!
O trabalho infantil é a resposta natural do ser humano a determinados níveis de pobreza. A maioria dos pais só submete os filhos a tal experiência penosa diante de alternativas piores

"O Terceiro Mundo é pobre: tão pobre quanto os ingleses e americanos da metade do século XIX. Ser pobre significa tomar decisões difíceis, como trabalhar ou comer menos."
Steven Landsburg



As teses ousadas de Landsburg são baseadas em pesquisas econômicas inovadoras, geralmente elaboradas por outros acadêmicos. Sua proposição sobre sexo e aids, por exemplo, deriva de uma pesquisa de 1997 de Michael Kremer, professor de Harvard. Segundo Kremer, a transmissão do vírus HIV seria retardada caso as pessoas com menos de 2,25 parceiros sexuais por ano elevassem moderadamente esse índice. Tal conclusão restringe-se à Inglaterra e vem recheada de uma miríade de ressalvas. Além disso, Kremer também monta outras hipóteses estatísticas não tão róseas. Landsburg, no entanto, atém-se apenas a essa, a qual aplica indistintamente a todos os países e a todas as populações.

AVARO GENEROSO
Pães-duros fazem bem à sociedade ao poupar recursos naturais e bens de consumo

"É a lei da aritmética. Se Scrooge (personagem avaro criado pelo escritor inglês Charles Dickens) come menos, sobra mais para o resto das pessoas."
Steven Landsburg



Escreve Landsburg: "Imaginem Martin, um jovem cuidadoso e charmoso com uma história sexual limitada e que flerta com sua colega de trabalho Joan. Martin e Joan nutrem a esperança de ficar juntos na festa de fim de ano da empresa. Infelizmente, ao ir para o trabalho na manhã da festa, Martin lê no metrô um aviso do Ministério da Saúde que prega as virtudes da abstinência e decide faltar à festa. Joan, então, cai nas garras de Maxwell, igualmente charmoso, mas menos prudente. E Joan pega aids". Por ser mais cuidadoso, sustenta Landsburg, Martin teria o poder de tirar Joan da linha de perigo. Mas e se Martin for à festa e, em vez de ficar com Joan, cair ele mesmo nas graças de Maxwell? Responde Landsburg: "Martin nos prestaria um segundo favor, de natureza macabra: nesse caso, por ser mais recluso que Joan, Martin irá para casa, viverá solitário e, quando morrer, levará o vírus com ele". E se Maxwell, insaciável, contaminar Joan e Martin na mesma noite? Aí está o calcanhar-de-aquiles da teoria de Landsburg. Seu cálculo matemático – e o de Kremer, de certa maneira – pressupõe algo improvável: mais parceiros, mas um número fixo de relações sexuais. Uma variável esperta, destinada a atingir um objetivo específico. A teoria do sexo serve de título ao terceiro livro do colunista da Slate, More Sex Is Safer Sex (Mais Sexo É Sexo Mais Seguro), cujas principais teses são ilustradas nesta matéria. O segundo livro, Fair Play (Jogo Limpo), versa sobre como os filhos podem ensinar economia, valores e o significado da vida.


MULTIPLICAI-VOS
O bem-estar da humanidade sempre acompanhou o aumento da população. Quanto mais pessoas, melhor

"O motor da prosperidade é o progresso tecnológico, e o motor do progresso tecnológico são as pessoas. Idéias vêm de pessoas. Quanto mais pessoas, mais idéias."
Steven Landsburg



Landsburg deriva conclusões usando apenas a lógica econômica. Essa é sua força e também sua fraqueza. A vida humana não se comporta como as estatísticas. O autor reconhece isso e afirma que nem todo fenômeno estatístico tem relevância ou explicação. Como explicar, por exemplo, que na Califórnia gays e lésbicas têm 70% mais probabilidade de ser fumantes do que os moradores de orientação sexual hétero. Depois de se valer de vários fatores possíveis (ausência de filhos e coragem para enfrentar preconceitos, entre outros), Landsburg resignou-se: "Não há explicação. As pessoas têm suas próprias razões, sejam elas visíveis ou não". Em outro caso, conseguiu não só provar que a pornografia na internet pode desestimular estupros entre jovens como também mostrou que o mesmo não se aplica a homicídios e roubos. Além disso, propôs-se a consertar a política, o sistema judiciário e até a combater incêndios – nesses casos, com menos lógica e mais humor. É fácil discordar de Landsburg. O difícil é não se divertir com suas teses.


RINS À VENDA
Não há razão moral ou econômica para proibir a venda de rins. O corpo humano tem dois, e só um é necessário.

"Num mundo sensato, rins seriam comprados e vendidos como carne de porco."
Steven Landsburg



UM ELEITOR, DOIS VOTOS
Todo eleitor deveria ter o direito de também votar em outro estado que não o seu. Só assim o clientelismo e a gastança podem ser combatidos

"Quando um senador de um estado consegue converter bilhões de dólares de impostos federais em políticas clientelistas, eu quero que ele saiba que o dono desse dinheiro poderá se vingar nas eleições seguintes."
Steven Landsburg
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")
User avatar
mends
Saidero MegaGoldMember
Saidero	MegaGoldMember
 
Posts: 5183
Joined: 15 Sep 2003, 18:45
Location: por aí

Postby junior » 06 Jul 2007, 21:07

http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/0 ... n-delaney/

A Q&A With Intrade’s John Delaney

john-d-picture.jpgPrediction markets. Are there any other two words that couple as nicely as those, at least to readers of this blog? The promise of a prediction market is simple and profound: if you ask a lot of people a question about politics or sports or Hollywood movies, and those people are motivated to answer it correctly, their collective judgment turns out to be fairly accurate. (James Surowiecki, Mr. Wisdom-of-the-Crowds himself, has a nice summary of the field in this week’s New Yorker.)

For many people, Intrade is the king of the prediction markets. (We have cited it several times on this blog.) It was co-founded in 1999 by John Delaney, an Irishman fond of cycling and mountain climbing, who had spent the previous decade in investment management. Intrade allows participants to trade on the likelihood of events ranging from national elections to global disasters, using actual money. The site now claims more than 50,000 users in 120 countries who submit hundreds of thousands of orders a day.

Delaney recently took the time to answer some questions for our blog. If you’ve got further questions for him, put them in the comments section, for Delaney has offered to submit to a second round of Q&A.

Q: Briefly, what is Intrade?

A: InTrade is a marketplace, just like eBay or the NYSE, that provides innovative markets to trade, and the best darn predictive information on uncertain future events bar none!

Q: How much money is traded on a daily/monthly/annual basis?

A: On an annual basis, hundreds of millions of US$.

Q: It’s easy to imagine that ambiguities in the wording of markets on your site could cause conflicts. Have there been disputes of this sort?

A: Yes, there have been disputes. We provide a public forum and when disputes arise they are often aired and can be fierce, something that is understandable where money is involved. But let’s put things in perspective. We list thousands of markets, over 50,000 markets in 2006, and in fewer than 5 occasions that I can recall have we ever had any significant disputes. We don’t always get things perfect, but we do try.

Let me give you an example. We listed a market on whether the U.S. Government would formally report that North Korea tested a missile in a certain manner. While the media reported that North Koreans did test a missile, it was not confirmed in an official U.S. Government release as was required in the market rules, so we settled the market according to the strict interpretation of the rules and not the understood intention of the market. This was understandably a real issue for some of our members and also for Intrade. It was a bad situation for everyone, really. We have learned from it.

Q. What has been the most surprising or unusual market you’ve listed?

A. I guess when we listed Saddam Hussein to be toppled back in 2002, it was what we consider a masterpiece market. While hundreds of other similar contracts have traded since, the “Saddam To Be Ousted” contract was a defining moment for our exchange and, we believe, the prediction market industry. Other interesting markets include the election of the Pope (the markets did not predict the winner) or Bin Laden being captured, which is currently trading.

Q. What’s the biggest profit that’s been made on a single market? What was the subject of the contract?

A. We don’t release specific figures but profits and losses can realistically exceed $1 million on some individual markets.

Q. Which markets are most popular? Do certain markets go in and out of fashion?

A. Political markets are most popular now thanks to the fascinating U.S. Presidential race. Our 2008 election markets are trading actively, while the issue of a North Korean despot causing a war or Israel attacking Iran is not as popular as it was previously. Interest in these contracts will resurge as related international events unfold. People trade or rely on market probabilities more when they are passionate about or focused on a particular issue. So there is a seasonal dynamic at play.

Q. In 2003, U.S. Admiral John Poindexter proposed that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) should initiate a prediction market as a forecasting tool for predicting geopolitical events in the Middle East. The idea was wildly unpopular in the U.S. press and elsewhere, viewed as a form of profiting from (or manipulating/initiating) terrorist acts. After a damaging Congressional audit of the DARPA Information Awareness Office, Poindexter retired. What are your thoughts on this?

A: We had a market on his departure, of course. His proposal was a great validation of prediction markets, but unfortunately poorly received. DARPA could have presented it better, but there were a number of folks with unclear motives, to me at least, that caused it to be shot down with no robust debate. That same mindset seems less prevalent today as more people use prediction markets; however, there is still a suspicion (or is it schizophrenia?) between various types of speculation.

Q. How does Intrade deal with insider trading?

A. Insider trading is one of the wicked problems, perhaps. Intrade is about providing the best predictive information. If insiders have information, then getting that information reflected in the market increases the quality of the information. I know this is not the conventional view concerning insider trading, and I am not arguing wholesale adoption or acceptance of insider trading. But we all know that, in the real world, insiders trade on inside information. We have even had markets on insider trading. Our view is to get the best information available into the market while we make sure there is some fair protection for outsiders.

Q: Is what you do legal in the countries from which you draw participants?

A: It’s very difficult for our legal folks to know the exact attitudes, laws, precedents etc. of every country, but they do try. This is a challenge for any global business, particularly one that supplies innovative services like Intrade.

Q: Where are you based?

A: Intrade is operated from Dublin, Ireland, where I am from, but I guess Intrade is based on the country-less Internet. Our prediction market operates under Irish and EU laws.

Q: Are you the sole owner of Intrade and its sister site Tradesports? Is the company currently private? If so, are there plans for an IPO?

A: Intrade is a private Irish company owned by its shareholders. We do not have any immediate plans for an IPO.
"Cosmologists are often in error, but never in doubt." - Lev Landau
User avatar
junior
Grão-Mestre Saidero
Grão-Mestre Saidero
 
Posts: 887
Joined: 13 Feb 2004, 11:55
Location: Sei lá... Em algum lugar com conexão a internet! :-)

Postby junior » 14 Jul 2007, 11:25

http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/07/13/th ... ting-ever/


Best Curve-Fitting Ever

From Mark Thoma, via Brad DeLong, comes what will henceforth be my absolutely favorite example of twisting data to fit your theories. Observe the following graph of corporate tax rates vs. revenue in units of GDP:

Image

Pretty straightforward, really. As you raise taxes, the government collects more revenue. Norway seems to collect more than its fair share, which might be interesting to dig into, but the trend seems clear. But there’s something nagging at the back of your mind — aren’t there people out there in the world who believe that raising taxes actually decreases revenue past some certain not-very-high tax rate? “Supply-side economists,” or something like that? People who exert a wildly disproportionate influence on U.S. tax policy? What would they make of such a graph?

Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as supply-side economics, and you can find its practitioners in such out-of-the way places as the American Enterprise Institute and the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. Here is how such people view these data:

Image

No, I am not being unfair. I did not draw the “Laffer Curve” on top of those data in order to embarrass the WSJ or AEI. They did it themselves; the second graph is how the plot was actually published by the Journal, while the first one was Mark Thoma’s subsequent reality-based-community version of the plot. As Kevin Drum says, it’s “like those people who find an outline of the Virgin Mary in a potato chip.”

Among other features, we note with amusement that the plotted curve implies that tax revenues hit zero at a corporate tax rate of about 33%, and become dramatically negative thereafter. As of this writing, it is unclear what advanced statistical software package was used to fit the Laffer Curve to the data; the smart money seems to be on MS Paint.
"Cosmologists are often in error, but never in doubt." - Lev Landau
User avatar
junior
Grão-Mestre Saidero
Grão-Mestre Saidero
 
Posts: 887
Joined: 13 Feb 2004, 11:55
Location: Sei lá... Em algum lugar com conexão a internet! :-)

PreviousNext

Return to Economia

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests

cron