We are all better off than we think
Apple’s iPhone5 has already smashed sales records. The first day on which consumers could make purchases over the web, more than 2 million online orders were placed. Little wonder that JP Morgan has estimated that sales of the iPhone5 could add as much as 0.5 per cent to American GDP. These numbers have attracted criticism. […]
Who will rule the 21st Century?
This is a nice big question to ponder on the holiday beach or in the rented villa. A vast amount has already been written on the rise of China and whether the US will be replaced as the global superpower. And where exactly does Europe fit into all this? It is easy to make a […]
Why are markets so volatile?
Mainstream economic thinking has considerable difficulty in explaining the massive degree of volatility of financial markets over the past few months.Both shares and bonds exhibit large fluctuations on an almost daily basis. The problem is particularly acute for the concept which is fundamental to a great deal of modern macroeconomics, based on the so-called ‘representative […]
Hard problems in economics
This is a summary of a presentation I gave in Zurich earlier in June to FuturICT,one ofthe candidate flagship European Union research projects, each worth 1 billion Euros. 1.Financial markets is a very hard problem, issues of agent heterogeneity, networks, learning, financial innovation, regulation – all these and more are important. Mainstream economics has largely […]
extreme events, hill running and financial markets
I am currently in the Scottish Highlands for ten days or so, and my outings on the hills have made me reflect on extreme events. The fact that they lie so much outside the perceptions which people have about the world makes it very hard to appreciate that they occur at all. I’ve just finished […]
