Economist Special Reports
By Kevin
Water. Anyone?
The Economist have special reports frequently in their weekly issues and often they go in depth into topics that we'll get in touch with at some point of our lives. Most importantly, for academic, students and teachers, these reports are opportunity to get a clear picture of topics you've always wanted to read up more on and be updated on that field.
Very often you'd also find them cross-disciplinary, covering economics, geography, science and definitely General Paper. Take the recent report on Water for example. It raise natural water issues studied deeply in geography but also propose policy (economics) and technological (science) solutions. It is also great that nowadays these reports are available for download free because they are sponsored by some big company. This are materials that anyone can access, even those who are not subscribers of The Economist magazine.
The Economist is not always about economics and you just got to get in touch with the content they offer to understand how good it is. I'm glad they've came up with an economic solution to offer their content to a wider audience.
Been Out
By Kevin
Gone for a while
For some time I seem to be missing from ERPZ, though probably as much as Martin or Scherzo, or Yuan Jun for that matter. Work has been really busy and life in general after the 15 academic years of the past introduces new challenges. But it remains important to be optimistic about the future and things to come, while appreciating all that you're currently blessed with.
As one mature, you learn that things should be shared rather than fought over, and you have to wonder if you're really hurting others or yourself when you get into fights. One should appreciate the fact that collaboration and combining strengths can produce far more returns in long run than doing too much fighting though competition may sometimes bring greater benefits to everyone in aggregate. Cost and benefits of things have long been hard to balance and somewhat confusing to us. Maybe that is why, we need to be conscious.
Sometimes, it's important that we ponder about life, through current affairs.
Coercion of Free Markets
By Kevin
Trading Goods...
Inequality is a market failure. We do pick this up in A Levels but then there's little discourse on that. Not only do we dwell little on the solutions - which ranges from progressive taxation to welfare handouts - we ultimately ignore how inequality undermines the ultimate roles of markets, which is the efficient allocation of resources. I've always grasp the idea rather intuitively but then fail to deliver it in a philosophical and economics framework. I've pointed out the lack of philosophical musings in today's study of Economics when I introduced Michael Sandel's lecture on Markets and Morals.
I've always pose the question to my Economics student, if a person earns $1000 a month and another who earns $1 a month both needs a glass of water. The rich guy is willing to pay $10 for the water while the poor one is willing to pay $1. The market thus allocates the water to the rich man. We all know that this allocation is problematic and it doesn't seem efficient; how is it that, in terms of willingness to pay, a person who is only willing to part with 1% of his monthly income gets the good when another is willing to part with 100% of his monthly income for it? So what exactly is the problem of inequality?
Once again, Michael Sandel points this out in the second lecture presented in this video. You don't exactly have to watch the lecture in order to grasp the point but the idea is that when inequality (in terms of unequal distribution of income) exists, effective demand cannot properly reflect the ideal sort of demand signal transmission that would allow the market to allocate resources efficiently. In extreme cases, free markets becomes not entirely free. In other words, people are not transacting out of their free will but coerced by their own economic circumstances. We see this very often in the case of poor people in developing countries who are forced to sell organs, resort to prostitution, act as surrogate mothers, become a runner for crack.
Gary Becker is not wrong about the rationality of these people. They're making rational choices but it is often that their choices is very much limited. That unfeeling market processes coerce us into certain decisions is something close to the hearts of all of us. Often, however, we can't quite work out what is so unjust about that because we believe that to a large extent, we determine our riches. Somehow, deep in our hearts we know that some other decisions that we made caused us to be in the state we are in such that we are coerced into making that next decision. The fact that this argument comes back to us shows how each and every decision made in the marketplace by us are not independent. This makes for a determinism argument in a market setting where free will is supposed to reign.
There are much wider implications of all these arguments and I shall explore them if I get the chance.
Wrong Concoction
By Kevin
Same?
Historically, technological advancement combined with economics have helped to push civilization towards greater levels of achievements; yet too often, there are times when they are combined in the wrong ways that produces somewhat problematic results for the aggregate society. An example would be the problem of counterfeit products, which is recently featured in The Economist. Interestingly it has extended beyond just luxury goods, luxury consumer electronics to the more sophisticated stuff like cars, computer and machine parts. The chief argument against counterfeits is not so much that they are unsafe. As technology advance, counterfeits that are of low quality would naturally be abandon by the market anyways. The reason for the market's embrace is a result of their avoidance of taxes and the willingness to accept lower margins, which allows them to price way more competitively.
Another time when technological advancement is combined with skewed human intentions is the gender-based abortion that The Economist is hinting at. The distorted sex ratio have potentially disastrous consequences on society at large. Unfortunately the imbalance is already a fact and will take at least a generation to restore some balance so in the meantime we will probably have to put up with way lower rates of marriages (if rates sustain, it would only be because divorce rates have also been increasing; which implies re-marriages).
Well, more arguments for big governments, or if not, intrusive ones.
Search and Research
By Kevin
Looking Up the Web
It has been a long time since I wrote something about handling school work and such. I've been working on a couple of articles for some external parties and doing quite a lot of research and writing. The experience can be frustrating and tiring as I plow through loads of data, informative material and readings and then get lost in bits of thoughts here and there, never settling down to write. Such is research, you ask a few simple questions that you expect could be answered with a sentence or two but end up having loads of related answers and information that leads you to the fact that answers you're looking for is way more complex. Then you realise you have got to put together evidence for each of your claims and explanations. People were asking me how I manage all that stuff, I told them that you've got to work out a plan somehow.
So in this article, I'd be discussing my method of planning writing and research. It's by no means a definitive answer to managing your research or school projects but it might be an option you'd like to choose. I'm writing very generally about the kind of information research that leads to writing a paper/article; the sort that doesn't require you to don on a lab coat and hold up test-tubes.
Ultimate Tool
I recommend that before you start using Google, lay out some fundamental questions your paper/article would answer or specific information it will provide. It can be as general as an overview to a topic, or as specific as the number of petrol kiosk in a particular town. After listing them out, mark out the more specific questions and then hunt for the data first. These are usually the data sets you are going to use to introduce a particular claim or to support your theories. If there's no such data available then you can find other proxy indicators or try and switch the type of evidence. It is important that you start off checking for the availability of the data you need or whatever you're going to write would be groundless anyways.
After gathering the data you need, hunt for general articles on the topic that you are working on. These are the articles that refer to other more specific sources for information, or sites like Answers.com and Wikipedia. They serve as a directory for the topic and also to alert you or anything about the issue/topic that you might have overlooked. Often, these can also be blog entries that link up articles of related topic, much like the ones on ERPZ. When you're clear you have a general idea of the topic and know briefly the issues involved, start planning your writing, listing the arguments, the progression of arguments and the sequence you present information to make your case. Often, some information you will need to provide are things you are not necessarily aware of, perhaps the revenue of a particular firm, the market share in an industry, or the response of a CEO to a recent affair. These are the stuff you didn't initially set out to include but subsequently find rather significant.
Armed with the plan, start searching specifically for the information you need and formulate/sharpen your arguments according to these information. Unknowingly, you have actually slashed down the amount of content that you've read. By using general articles as signposts for your planning, you have drawn up the parameters of your research, something difficult when you've not read up anything or done any research. This explains the preliminary research into key and essential data you need as well as the general articles to get you started. The rest of your writing would build around these anchors that you've found in the beginning.
Then, follow through your plan as you write. This works for any volume of research, those that takes days to weeks and possibly months. For the ones where data sets have to be built from scratch either through ripping apart official statistics or carrying out your own surveys, the process would be placed between preliminary research and the ultimate planning. So happy searching and re-searching!
Blended Value
By Kevin
Into the Blender!
Just when people are lambasting financial institutions and entities like hedge funds, Jed Emerson who coined the concept of 'Blended Value', suggests that these financial entities can play a positive social role. Fast Company had an interview with him about this in 60 seconds.
As reported on Economist Online, Jed thinks that hedge funds which focuses on fundamentals mirrors sustainably investing, meaning that they would act to move capital to places where they are used properly and for good of the society.
Trading according to rigorous fundamental research can often mirror sustainable investing, which seeks to profit by taking into account social and environmental factors, he says. Fundamental hedge funds are far more likely than other investors to try to identify a firm’s off-balance-sheet exposures, of which a growing proportion may be “environmental or social liabilities present in a market or company but not explicitly accounted for in traditional numeric valuation or mainstream investor analysis”.
He makes an important point about 'Shorting', which The Economist goes on to discuss. As a matter of fact, the market is kind of biased towards growth and that should be the case since the economy is usually growing but then if people are not rational enough to sell, then there has to be short-sellers who are rational enough to sell but don't have the shares in the first place. This way, buying and selling would reflect a more fundamental value. This is of course, an ideal - prices hardly reflect any reality in moments. But at least we know that the bulls and the bears are almost right the same number of times (half of the time each; which reflects dynamism of the market). And so there's no way we should have anything against them.
Con-nect-working
By Kevin
Start the Chatter
Social networks have been rising for some time now. And while they initially started out as mere toys for youngsters, there have been talks of higher degrees of commercialization, how these networks will change the lifestyle of people, and so on. Now that the change has taken place somewhat, it makes sense for The Economist to tabulate some of the impacts these networks have brought in.
To begin, these networks have definitely became an important way people communicate; however mundane or skimpy each little piece of content may be, they are viewed by many people within your network and it broadcasts bits of information about you that couldn't have been captured in the yesteryears. This is true for the comments you cast, the status messages you post, the photos and videos you uploaded and all the social games that you play. Although online social networks remain essentially much like a bulletin board (except viewership ability of contents are more strictly controlled and with richer content) and thus does little to enrich people's ability to do real networking, it does a wonderful job at augmenting our real relationships.
This strong link with the real world is a great strength for online social networks. Websites are viewed as corporate facades that give little information about the reality of the companies. On the other hand, the pages for these firms on social networking sites are viewed as better avenues for firms to communicates with their customers. Likewise, a corporate site announcement of a promotion the company is offering does less to boost sales compared to a tweet which might have much more followers.
That is the free advertising service that sites like Twitter and Facebook might offer, which brings us to the question of how money is being made on such networks. A peach of an opportunity, an article in The Economist special report on social networks gives us an idea what are the businesses that taps into the plumbing of social network connections and thriving. For all the talk about connecting with friends, being entertained by your online pets, or having a good laugh from the video your friend has shared, businesses might be the greatest benefactor of this trend.
Culture & Phones
By Kevin
Indian Torch
Trapped on our little island of Singapore, we hardly wonder what our handphones are capable of; here in Singapore we typically use it to text, call, surf, as a phone book to retrieve contact details of people, a personal organizer and even a camera. Singaporeans makes extensive use of their phones and our preferences are varied, a reflection of our melting pot of diversity. And as the briefing in the latest issue of The Economist shows, mobile phones are indeed a great reflection of the culture of the people using them.
The article mentioned a couple of interesting quirks about people using mobile phones around the world:
Japanese use their phones to text and surf intensively because using phones to make or receive calls on board trains and some other public places are thought to be extremely rude.
Spaniards reject voicemail because they think it's rude not to receive calls from others when they call, even when the receiver is busy with matters.
Chinese will interrupt conversations to receive calls because they are afraid to that they'd miss a business deal; at the same time they use knock-offs handphones that often have extensive functions, even capable of using two SIM cards.
Americans are willing to endure limited cellular coverage; perhaps fearing the hassle involved in changing operators.
Italians, Greeks and Finns would switch operators if they find their coverage limited and yet are fearful of the effects of electro-magnetic radiation, which probably is more ubiquitous than in America.
Indians use mobile phones as torchlights.
Africans usually use 'beeping' (ie. give the person a ring) to contact people and signal them to call back when they're low on pre-paid credits.
Indeed, mobile phones are changing everyone's lives everywhere; one just needs to know the name given to these devices in different societies and cultures to understand their importance. In fact, Iraqis thought more highly of the proliferation of mobile phones as a result of the American invasion than their supposed liberation.