Entrepreneurial alertness alert: Grumpy Cat makes alert (now ex-waitress) owner $130m
09 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in cats, entrepreneurship Tags: cats, entrepreneurial alertness, grumpy
…internet sensation Grumpy Cat has proved that malevolence is really quite marketable after amassing a staggering $NZ129.5m (£64m) fortune for her American owner in just two short years.
With her contemptuous scowl, Grumpy Cat – real name Tardar Sauce – has inspired countless memes, best-selling books, a brand of iced coffee and even a TV film featuring Parks and Recreation star Aubrey Plaza.
via Internet star Grumpy Cat makes owner $130m | Stuff.co.nz.
Early Adoption of Technologies since 1750 till 2012
08 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economic growth, economic history, entrepreneurship Tags: 10-90 lag, international technology diffusion, technology diffusion, technology usage lags
Deigo Comin has been doing excellent work documenting both the length of 10-90 technology lags even for major technologies we now take for granted, and the contribution of these technology usage lags to international differences in living standards and post-war growth rates.
The East Asian Tigers all coincided with a catch-up in the range of technologies used with respect to industrialized countries. These development miracles all involved a substantial reduction of their technology adoption lags relative to (other) OECD countries
15 to 30 years is a common technology usage lag even within the United States for the 10-90 technology lag. The 10-90 lag is how long it takes between when 10% of industry is using a technology, and 90% of an industry is using that technology.
There is a plenty of research carried out about how important early adoption of technology is. I’ve recently skimmed a couple of researches on this topic. In my opinion there are two authors that made a better job than others. Their names are Diego Comin and Bart Hobijn.
They performed a cross-country analysis called Cross-country Historical Adoption of Technology (CHAT). This research dataset covers the diffusion of 104 technologies in 161 countries during the last 200 years. The data is available for download.
I just want to share with you the results of their report which could help better understand what’s happening in today’s world of innovations and entrepreneurship and what expect from future.
Finding # 1. “On average, countries adopted a new technology 45 years after its invention.”
Finding # 2. “Variation in adoption rates is larger than you might expect and accounts for 25% of differences…
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What are the rewards of investing in vice?
05 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in entrepreneurship, financial economics Tags: efficient markets hypothesis
What is the Vice Fund? It invests in a collection of sinful stocks. As its managers describe it:
Designed with the goal of delivering better risk-adjusted returns than the S&P 500 Index.
It invests primarily in stocks in the tobacco, alcohol, gaming and defense industries.
We believe these industries tend to thrive regardless of the economy as a whole.
via Investing in Vice.
M.A. Adelman on natural resource exhaustion
04 Dec 2014 1 Comment
in energy economics, entrepreneurship, environmental economics, resource economics Tags: entrepreneurship, M. A. Adelman, resource economics
Did which of the Great Enrichment and OSHA make the workplace safer?
01 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, health and safety, labour economics Tags: health and safety, labour economics, The Great Enrichment
Original source of graph: Viscusi, W. Kip, John M. Vernon, and Joseph E. Harrington, Jr. Economics of Regulation and Antitrust. 2nd ed. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1992, page 714.
HT: Art Diamond
Israel Kirzner on entrepreneurial alertness as the driving force of the market process
29 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
Deirdre McCloskey has a 55-page review essay on Piketty
21 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, human capital, labour economics, liberalism, poverty and inequality Tags: Deirdre McCloskey, Piketty
You will find it here (pdf), forthcoming in the Erasmus Journal of Philosophy and Economics.
via Deirdre McCloskey has a 55-page review essay on Piketty.
What if We’re Looking at Inequality the Wrong Way? – NYTimes.com
16 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, entrepreneurship, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, liberalism, Marxist economics, occupational choice, politics - USA, poverty and inequality, public economics, Rawls and Nozick, technological progress Tags: Piketty, poverty and inequality
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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