6/5/21: 75 Top Economics Influencers to Follow 2020-2021

 

With some delay of a few months (tells you the range of my attention span, right?) - delighted to spot this list of 75 Top Economics Influencers to Follow via Focus Economics: https://www.focus-economics.com/blog/top-economics-influencers-to-follow for 2020-2021. 

Thanks, Focus Economics team! 

11/12/16: Legal Frameworks Relating to State-led Cyber Attacks

This is a blog about economics and finance, not politics. Alas, geopolitical risks do impact economic risks and they materially influence financial markets. I am trying to stay out of the political analysis and hence offer little in terms of my own thinking on the matter. But that does not mean I should not share with you other analysts' views that I find informative, interesting or thought-provoking. I do so on Twitter, without endorsing (via retweets or 'likes' or shares) any given position, so I shall be able to do the same here, on the blog.

So here is an interesting piece of analysis, from an insightful source, relating to the allegations of Russian State influencing the U.S. election 2016: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/kremlin-cyber-attacks-american-election-by-joseph-s--nye-2016-12?referrer=/xmGEziA4LU. In my opinion, this analysis is particularly valuable because it offers a calm assessment of the treaties and legal frameworks relating to cyber attacks.

Worth a read.


Update 12/12/16: Another take on the legal aspects of alleged intervention here: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-12/how-u-s-could-respond-to-russian-intervention-in-trump-election. 

31/5/2014: Twitter: Promoting Isolation, Ideological Segregation and All Things Good to Your Political Engagement

A very interesting study looking at comparatives of media and news use via twitter (social media) and traditional media (print, radio and TV). The paper, titled "Are Social Media more Social than Media? Measuring Ideological Homophily and Segregation on Twitter" (May 2014_ by YOSH HALBERSTAM and BRIAN KNIGHT is available here: http://bfi.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/research/Twitter_may232014.pdf

Some highlights:

Per authors, "Social media represent a rapidly growing source of information for citizens around the world. In this paper, we measure the degree of ideological homophily and segregation on social media."

The reason this is salient is that there has been a "tremendous rise in social media during the past decade, with 60 percent of American adults and over 20 percent of worldwide population currently using social networking sites (Rainie et al., 2012)…. Indeed, this phenomenal growth in social media engagement in the U.S. and around the world has transformed the nature of political discourse. Two thirds of American social media users—or 39 percent of all American adults—have engaged in some form of civic or political activity using social media, and 22 percent of registered U.S. voters used social media to let others know how they voted in the 2012 elections."

Per authors, "Three key features of social media distinguish it from other forms of media and social interactions." These are:

• "…social media allow users to not only consume information but also to produce information." It is worth noting that social media can also reproduce information produced on social media, as well as that produced by traditional media.
• "…the information to which users are exposed depends upon self-chosen links among users." In other words, social media produced and distributed information can be self-selection biased. The extent of this selection is more limited in the case of traditional media, where individual biases of consumers can be reinforced by selecting specific programmes/channels/publications, but beyond that, the content received by consumers is the one selected for them by someone else - journalists, editors.
• "…information on social media travels more rapidly and broadly than in other forms of social interactions. …[social media network model] leads to a substantially broader reach and more rapid spread of information than other forms of social interactions."

As authors put it: "Given these three distinguishing features, the rapid growth of social media has the potential to effect a structural change in the way individuals engage with one another and the degree to which such communications are segregated along ideological lines."


To examine this possibility, the authors construct "a network of links between politically-engaged Twitter users. For this purpose, we selected Twitter users who followed at least one Twitter account associated with a candidate for the U.S. House during the 2012 election period. Among this population of over 2.2 million users, we identify roughly 90 million links, which form the network." Based on political party followed, users were assigned ideological identifiers.

Two key findings of the paper are as follows:

1. "…we find that the network we constructed shares important features with face-to-face interactions. Most importantly, both settings tend to exhibit a significant degree of homophily, with links more likely to develop between individuals with similar ideological preferences." In other words, we do show strong selection biases in networks we form. Doh!..
2. "…when computing the degree of ideological segregation and comparing it to ideological segregation in other settings, we find that Twitter is much more segregated than traditional media, such as television and radio, and is more in-line with ideological segregation in face-to-face interactions, such as among friends and co-workers." Worse: we not only form biased networks, we also create selection-biased interactions and generate selection-biased chains and flows of content. Doh! Redux...

Conclusion: "Taken together, our results suggest that social media may be a force for increasing isolation and ideological segregation in society."

Wait… so we act on the social media base to create networks that are closer to friends networks… and this leads to… isolation?.. Well, my eye, I would have thought this would be the opposite…

But top conclusion makes sense:  "The issue of ideological segregation is important when providing such information. Exposure to diverse viewpoints in a society helps to ensure that information is disseminated with little friction across a large number of people. When a community is polarized and is divided into factions, by contrast, information may spread unevenly and may miss intended targets. Our results suggest that social media are highly segregated along ideological lines and thus emphasize these potential problems associated with the flow of information in segregated networks."

The problem, of course is: Can the selection bias be ameliorated? Can people be 'incentivised' to engage with ideological opposites? In my view - yes. This can be achieved most likely by educating people about systems of thought, logic, structures of knowledge, information. The thing is: in social networks, such education is both more feasible (volume of information delivered and speed are both higher) and probably more productive (because there is inherent trust in one's own network that is stronger than in detached media networks. Peers generate stronger bonds than preachers...

The paper has some fascinating data illustration of media biases, though - worth looking at in the appendix.

5/9/2013: IBM: 64% of global CMOs want to approach customers as individuals

Since 2009, IBM Institute for Business Value has been surveying C-level executives around the world to  assess the development of digital economy.

Recently, IBM released some headline numbers for the forthcoming (October) survey for 2013:

• 64% of CMOs want to approach customers as individuals
• 71% of CIOs see communication moving towards more social/digital collaboration
• Majority (55%) of CHROs foresee increasing organisational openness
• Just 34% of organisations have an in-depth understanding of their customers
• But 78% expect their organisations to have an in-depth understanding of their customers by 2017
• Only 1 in 5 organisations has the capacity to use Big Data with just 40% intergating internal and external data sources, just 18% using Big Data to identify new products and services
• 77% of all CFOs support products and services innovation

Handy info graphic (you can click on it to enlarge):

7/6/2013: Weekend Reading Links Part 1

The weekly links page for weekend reading materials is now becoming a regular feature of this blog. Why? Because in my daily life I am privileged to come across a number of fascinating things - science and arts related - and these are simply worth sharing. Also because art and science are more important in value to humanity than economics (the bit of economics that is beyond science-art overlap, or, as I call it, applied economics). And finally, because it is often fun to tease out bits of my own thinking on the matters of art (and less so on the matters of science).

So here's this week's list in no particular order.


Since my days at IBM I came to appreciate the complex nature of data visualisation. Prior to my days at IBM I came to appreciate the value of visualisation in shaping our understanding of the world when information about the world is transmitted to us by means of data. Now, here's an article that added to my understanding of visualisation as a tool for shaping the long-term future of the world: http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/07/sparkon-releases-future-visualization-engine-to-help-kids-choose-a-career/ . Why is it important to me? Ok:

1. It contains direct links to human capital (sorry, err… I know, no economics)
2. If visualisation is about narrating the world, making it more comprehensible, then visualisation is also capable of altering the world around us by altering our understanding of it. That is second-order loop of causality: world causes data, which causes (via visualisation) our understanding which in turn causes us to interact with the world and thus cause data… If we take the visualisation as a tool for directly shaping human choice of careers, fields of study, inquiry etc, then the visualisation over time becomes the first order shaper of the world, right? Scary… You bet:
3. The entire idea of shaping (via any specifically designated tool) one's future, as in "Let’s say your strongest “career personality type” is artistic follows by enterprising, you are extroverted, and you are passionate about art and video games. Sparkon suggests a range of jobs that bring all these together, like video game designer or art director, and suggests majors and skill sets that are useful for these areas. The engine then suggests specific videos, like “careers in the video game industry,” computer programming, or graphic design. There are also more general videos about college and SAT preparation, communication and leadership etc… Students can create a Netflix-style queue with recommended videos, and parents can also get involved by monitoring their kids’ progress to see what they are exploring." Missing something? Oh, yes, Sparkon won't really suggest you become an artist, cause you know… "there's no money in that". Now, imagine the world where humans are discouraged from making any errors by constantly being steered / selected into a stream of activities and information determined by a machine?.. Here comes Sparkon generation of drones?

Next, back to Venice Biennale:
"When I got out I felt I had escaped from the suffocating embrace of a revenant worthy of De Chirico. But this remake is perfectly in tune with the market of today now that the fairs have given up on the fuchsia and chrome-yellows of Murakami and Koons and have taken to showing off the pauperish neutrals of the Seventies. It is a much more radical product than the efforts of the young neo-conceptualists, but highly fashionable at a time when collecting is wearing the hair-shirt of the most hypocritical of penitents."

What?! Ah, yes, yes… that's about current reconstruction of the 1969 exhibition http://www.veniceconnected.com/node/29046. The review of it - the source of the quote - is here: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/reviews/The-Prada-Biennale-show-Creative-Energy-turned-into-Dead-Fetishism/29836 . Comes August, I am looking forward to being as suffocated by the embrace of the exhibition as I was suffocated by the embrace of the review, just as I am certain to be suffocated by the Venice stuffed by the 30+ degrees sun heated bodies of tourists, who usually leave Biennale the last on the list of amusements worth attending…


The art of displaying dead art (point above) is different from the art of feeding dead art to a dead dictator… and the latter doesn't quite offer the promise of the excitement of the former. Except when the dead dictator is Kim Jong-Wong-Bi-Din-Dong-Il of North Korea. Fascinating and fantastic account of Kim's favourite sushi chef depicted in a lengthy interview in http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201306/kim-jong-il-sushi-chef-kenji-fujimoto-adam-johnson-2013?currentPage=1

My favourite rhetorical bit: "And guesthouse is code for a series of palaces decorated with cold marble, silver-braided bedspreads, ice purple paintings of kimilsungia blossoms, and ceilings airbrushed with the cran-apple mist of sunset, as if Liberace's jet had crashed into Lenin's tomb." My favourite human bit: Fujimoto's two abandoned families. It has to be a rare twist of fate in which one abandons his two daughters and a spouse to serve the dictator in exchange for having a family that he subsequently condemns to labour camps by escaping the dictator… and so on… do read!


Science or fiction? http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/06/06/take-that-nsa-scientists-hide-communications-using-a-hole-in-time/ So basic idea is there are holes in time (not only the ones that follow copious consumption of alcohol) and you can hide stuff in them (well, for now, no white elephants - ease off, politicians with any plans). My favourite quote: "In practice, this system isn’t perfect." No sh*t, Sherlocks…


New stuff on 'how planets are formed' http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/32967-astronomers-discover-comet/ Predictably, nothing new on why planets are formed… but that is a different topic.


On the way we know stuff, plus the way we communicate, a very interesting paper from Cornell University "Social Media and Information Overload: Survey Results" (http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0813) looks at information flows via user-generated media, "such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter' based on smallish sample of 587 participants in a UK survey. "Participants who experience information overload are those who engage less frequently with the media, rather than those who have fewer posts to read." Kind of obvious: less you engage, bigger is build up of unanswered communications. "Microbloggers complain of information overload to the greatest extent. Two thirds of Twitter-users have felt that they receive too many posts, and over half of Twitter-users have felt the need for a tool to filter out the irrelevant posts." I have no idea how I would have answered their survey… maybe because I feel that I am more surveys-overloaded than twitter-overloaded?


Much is written by humanity on the topic of happiness. So much so that even the Guardian (a miserably Lefty paper) has gotten to the topic, let alone the economists (the latter also more often than not read the Guardian, which is clearly correlated with both being unhappy on average more than non-economist and so on…) Read: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/31/secret-happiness-complicated-research?INTCMP=SRCH - it is somewhat 'all over the place' and not too deep, but is interesting nonetheless. And when you finished, read

•  http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2011/09/3092011-returns-to-beauty.html
•  http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/05/452013-higher-income-vs-higher.html
•  http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2009/02/european-v-american-model-labour-and.html
•  http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2009/07/interesting-research-happiness-on-venus.html
•  http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/05/3052013-more-on-wellbeing-v-income.html

And thereafter, come back to this page…


Last week, I posted links to several articles on the proof of the theorem that postulates that gaps between prime numbers are bounded (see: http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/05/2552013-saturday-reading-links.html). Here's a human story behind the proof author:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/twin-primes/ - worth a read.


In contrast, here's the design for much-awaited Lego House design: http://aboutus.lego.com/en-gb/news-room/2013/june/the-right-look-for-a-lego-house/ and, argue with me on this, but I think it is banal. Made even more banal by monochromatic white, which is so 'not Lego' and thus expected in the world of reverse psychology of asymmetric innovation - aka the world of on-line aesthetics.


Stay tuned for more reading links once the kids are put into their beds...