Club Troppo

As a summer exercise I've been thinking about places where more lotteries might be a good idea. By lotteries, I mean a decision maker selecting an option randomly, albeit perhaps from a selected pool, rather than using flawed criteria. After all, in a complex and uncertain wor...

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White to play B Kovanova vs N Pogonina 22. ? See game for solution. about our puzzles But you can look up the game, and the computer analysis on chessbomb if you're curious.

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Being in holiday mode, my brain is deeply immersed in trivial thoughts, not least who the Australian selectors could sensibly pick to begin the process of rebuilding a competitive cricket team. However an even more burning question is this: why are there so many cooking progra...

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When debating policy and strategy within firms for instance, the debate takes place as if the discourse will get us to truth or falsity. In fact our decision making is riven with biases, so an alternative to this would be to look for one's biases and to try to counteract them...

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Computers are very clever beasties - at least most of the time. Sadly their matches against each other are deadly dull. The games virtually never have strong strategic lines of thinking - which is the main thing that makes chess absorbing (for me anyway - a battle is waged: a...

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Banks privatise the gains they make and in times of crisis initially socialise their losses (amongst the private providers - so that larger more solvent banks mop up after smaller less solvent ones), and failing that us customers get the bill as taxpayers. Back in the days bef...

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It's a pity we lost Troppoarmadillo, not the blog so much (for ClubTroppo lives on) as it's archives. Anyway, I had occasion to look up the post and comments below, and they are safely encoded at archive.org, even if we don't have any backup of the blog archive itself. I don't...

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As readers may have noticed, I'm much of a one for the panto morality in which political leaders are urged to be 'leaders' at the expense of their own political viability. Yes, acts of political heroism occur. Some of them are even worthwhile, though they're mostly of little c...

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Kasparov v Anand 1990. No prizes for guessing who won. And while I'm about it, here's how to get yourself into the mother of all zugswangs.

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Why am I not surprised? An interesting new article in the Nov 2010 QJE Stock-Based Compensation and CEO (Dis)Incentives Efraim Benmelech, Eugene Kandel, Pietro Veronesi The use of stock-based compensation as a solution to agency problems between shareholders and managers has i...

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From the conclusion of huge survey of courts around the world. We present an analysis of legal procedures triggered by re- solving two speci?c disputes—the eviction of a nonpaying tenant and the collection of a bounced check—in 109 countries. The data come from detailed descri...

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Meet Joel Waldfogel. Joel published a now much quoted article on the deadweight loss of gift giving, the basic idea being that if I buy you a present I have to guess what you want. Since you'd be better at doing that than me, there's a loss of consumer satisfaction. Fair enoug...

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The other day I bought a hat. I had been intending to buy a hat for a while, but I bought this one because I happened to walk past it in the shopping centre I went to. I don't usually go to shopping centres (I don't drive much and I find them inconvenient and sterile), but thi...

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From McKinsey's . It would be similar here presumably.

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Once upon a time, masterclasses were things that were put on by people who were obviously masters at their trade. A masterclass was put on by someone whose technique everyone admired even if there might be inevitable disagreements about taste and artistry. World renowned music...

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Here is an interesting Aust Parliamentary Library write up of the law of rape in Sweden (HT: Paul Barratt) with reference to the current legal peregrinations of one Julian Assange. My inexpert take on the law of rape is that the ordeal to which women were subjected before the...

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I'm hunting round for a Canberra gerontologist for my 88 year old Mum. Any suggestions and reasons for those suggestions would be gratefully received. Very gratefully received.

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I've asked this question of people who know lots more than me about telecommunications economics. And they say 'double marginalisation'. Anyway, David Levine is a clever fellow and he's had a crack at answering this. It's an outrage of course. And is so egregious the Gupment s...

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Here's a proposal for another one. The governance of financial regulation: reform lessons from the recent crisis Date: 2010-12 By: Ross Levine URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bis:biswps:329&r=reg There was a systemic failure of financial regulation: senior policymakers repea...

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By now you've probably heard about social media and how it's making celebrities out of mild mannered public servants and chirpy journalists who think in 140 character bursts . Maybe you're wondering whether a witty and intelligent person like yourself could also become an inte...

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