Alex Epstein champions fossil fuels at the Senate
24 May 2016 Leave a comment
in development economics, economics, economics of religion, energy economics, entrepreneurship, environmental economics Tags: The Great Enrichment
% of top incomes from wages, salaries and pensions
23 May 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economic history, entrepreneurship, human capital, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality, survivor principle Tags: entrepreneurial alertness, envy, superstar wages, superstars, top 1%, top incomes
Everybody from the top 10% to the top 0.01% have to work for their living these days with much of their income coming from wages.
Source: The World Wealth and Income Database.
Patents, Prizes, and Subsidies
20 May 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, law and economics, property rights Tags: patents and copyright
Dr Mark Pennington – ‘Robust Political Economy’
20 May 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economics of media and culture, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, environmental economics, industrial organisation, liberalism Tags: offsetting behaviour, The fatal conceit, The pretence to knowledge
Rockefeller: The Richest American Who Ever Lived
16 May 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economic history, entrepreneurship Tags: superstars
What If There Were No Prices? Railroad Thought Experiment
15 May 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, entrepreneurship Tags: market process
Is the Cost of Living Really Rising?
10 May 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of media and culture, entrepreneurship Tags: living standards, The Great Enrichment
Profits Are Progressive
10 May 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of media and culture, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, survivor principle, theory of the firm Tags: anti-market bias, entrepreneurial alertness, profit and loss, rational irrationality, superstars
Number of procedures required to start a business in high income countries
10 May 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, law and economics, property rights Tags: barriers to entry, doing business
John Sculley on the ‘myth’ of home computer market “it doesn’t exist”
08 May 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, survivor principle Tags: creative destruction, pessimism bias
Johan Norberg on Tax Havens
07 May 2016 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, entrepreneurship, public economics Tags: bribery and corruption, tax havens
How much do you get paid if you can pick winners? @JulieAnneGenter @simonjbridges
05 May 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, entrepreneurship, fisheries economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: entrepreneurial alertness, hedge fund managers, industry policy, picking winners, superstar wages, superstars
Electric cars have joined the long list of mendicant mendicant businesses that have been backed by the New Zealand government of late. Picking winners again.
The payrolls of entire government departments in New Zealand are not enough to hire a single successful hedge fund manager to pick winners for their political masters. To get on the list of the top 25 hedge fund managers, you need to earn at least $300 million a year.
The 25 highest-earning hedge fund managers and traders made a combined $12 billion in 2015, slightly less than the $12.5 billion the 25 top-earning hedge fund managers together made in 2014.
Why do investment advisors sell and often give away their sage advice? If their insights were any good, they could trade on the share market before others caught on and make a killing!
I will give a personal example based on the skills of bureaucracies in picking winners. The test of my hypothesis is based on the transferability of human capital across jobs.
My graduate school professors in Japan included many retired bureaucrats from the Ministry of Finance and MITI. These agencies were heralded by Joe Stiglitz and others for picking winners and guiding Japanese companies to choose the right technologies and what to export.
The skills that my graduate school professors learned at picking winners over their careers with the Ministry of Finance and MITI in the high-growth years in the 1970s would now be available to them in their retirements to trade on their own account.
Page 32 of "An Illustrated Guide to Income" more economic #dataviz at: bit.ly/12SEI9p http://t.co/HYm0II2UNI—
Catherine Mulbrandon (@VisualEcon) May 08, 2013
My graduate school professors should quickly become very rich after retiring because of the skills they learned in picking winners while at the Ministry of Finance and MITI, which should cross over into their private share portfolios. The rich lists world-wide should be full of retired industry and finance ministry bureaucrats.
Instead, my graduate school professors took the train and bus to work and their families lived off their salaries in standard sized Japanese government apartments. All looked forward to their annual bonus of 5.15 months salary.
If governments are any good at picking winners, people should be willing to pay big time to get jobs at ministries of finance and ministries of international trade and industry to get access to their unique and highly secret skills they learn therein on how to pick winners.
I am still waiting for that tell-all book by an insider on these skills. Why is there no Picking Winners for Dummies on Amazon kindle as yet?
Does ethical investing pay? Barrier Fund and Ave Maria Catholic Values Fund head to head
04 May 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, economics of religion, entrepreneurship, financial economics Tags: efficient markets hypothesis, entrepreneurial alertness, ethical investing
Virtue is not its own reward if you invest in the Ave Maria Catholic Values Fund which is AVEMX in the head-to-head comparison with the Barriers Fund, formerly the Vice Fund. The Ave Maria Catholic Values Fund return since inception was 5.63% as compared to the 9.95% return of the Barrier Fund.
Source: VICEX – USA Mutuals Barrier Fund Investor Class Shares Mutual Fund Quote – CNNMoney.com
The S&P index grew by 8 .34% since the inception of the then Vice Fund, now the Barrier Fund. Such is the price of risking of going to hell if you lose Pascal’s wager by investing in tobacco, alcoholic beverage, gaming and defence/aerospace industries.
All of the equity investments (which include common stocks, preferred stocks and securities convertible into common stock) and at least 80% of the net assets of the Ave Maria Catholic Values Fund is invested in companies meeting its religious criteria as the fund manager explains
Morally Responsible Investing (MRI) is a subset of socially responsible investing, which often screens out companies engaged in environmental issues, tobacco products, alcohol, nuclear power, defense, oil and “unfair” labor practices. MRI is different in that it screens out companies engaged in activities that are not pro-life or pro-family…
All investments are screened to eliminate any company engaged in abortion, pornography, embryonic stem cell research, or those that make corporate contributions to Planned Parenthood
Traditional ethical funds use negative screens (to eliminate arms manufacturers and other frowned upon activities) and positive screens (to favour businesses with a good record on corporate social responsibility or that are involved in low-carbon industries etc).
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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