. The power of diversity isn’t just a social ideal. It’s a mathematical fact. The ‘Diversity Prediction Theorem’ shows that gathering people who think differently comes with a calculable performance bonus. Imagine yours truly fills a transparent jar with 1000 jellybeans and then asks a group of students for their estimates of how many jellybeans […]
economics
In the economics of information, Hayek’s ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’ (American Economic Review, 1945) and Grossman & Stiglitz’s ‘On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets’ (American Economic Review, 1980) are two classics. However, while Hayek’s article is often cited by economists influenced by the Neo-Austrian school, mainstream economists rarely have anything to say […]
För vår del vore det bästa om Sverige anslöt sig och införde euron under ordnade former och i linje med vad vi faktiskt förbundit oss. De ekonomiska argument som framfördes mot ett deltagande för ett kvartssekel sedan har försvagats och de politiska argumenten för ett svenskt deltagande i denna del av europasamarbetets kärna har förstärkts […]
Vad gäller frågan om jämlikhet inför den ekonomiska makten försöker jag alltså utveckla den här typen av för-slag. Det innebär inte att vinsterna ska fördelas fullständigt jämlikt: människor har olika planer för sitt liv och det finns ingen absolut jämlikhet, vare sig vad gäller det yrke man har eller inkomsten. Vilket slags inkomstskillnader vore rimliga […]
~by Sean Paul Kelley This post is meant to piggy-back on Ian’s recent post, “The Next Big Crash Is On Its Way.” There has been little coverage in the legacy media of the GENIUS Act. This recent legislation, passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by President Trump is about “regulating” the crypto-economy. The […]
Over the years, some of us have tried to teach our economics doctoral students a bit about the importance of questioning the common ergodicity assumption. This assumption, often left unstated, underpins most mainstream economic models concerning preferences and expected utility. One of the problems has been the lack of an accessible textbook on ergodicity economics. […]
. The Pólya urn — a deceptively elementary probabilistic construct — offers profound insights into the structural dynamics of many economic processes. The mechanism is straightforward. Following Scott Page’s example, we start with an urn containing one red and one blue ball. Each time a ball is drawn, it is returned to the urn along […]
. We will do decision theory by using mathematical models … The wealth process and the decision criterion may or may not remind you of the real world. We will not worry too much about the accuracy of these reminiscences. Instead we will ‘shut up and calculate’ — we will let the mathematical model create […]
. As the author of several books on the history of economic thought, yours truly cannot help but applaud Murphy’s plea for the importance of studying this field. In many works of doctrinal history, there is a tendency to read history backwards, focusing only on those theories and thinkers who appear to anticipate today’s established […]