Facts From Mexico's Census

I have just encountered this dated article from the Economist website discussing the results of the official census in Mexico. Starting with the obvious, it assessed Mexico's population at 122 million people and reveals not only interesting changes in the demographic profile but also about household property ownership. A curious fact in the author's mind is the revelation that 93% of Mexican households own televisions while 82% own refrigerators. I am unsure what the ideal is but the point being made by the author that television shows in poor quality seems not to find support from households. To my mind, the goods are probably not substitutes and ownership may be related to price or the size of each household.

No census would be complete without a journalist pulling out data to contrast the ownership of mobile versus terrestrial lines. It emerges that in Mexico, the ratio is 66% to 25% in favour of mobile telephones. I find this even more interesting because in many countries, mobile telephones tend to be perfect substitutes for landlines that have historically been unavailable to low income people. Illiteracy among the youth is at less than 2% while it climbs to as much as one third for those above 75 years shows that the country has done well with expanding the reach of social programmes. Kudos too to corporations and governments for the fact that electricity connections are almost at the universal level.

Image from Wikipedia Commons

Fifa at The Crossroads

In general, I support private institutions that choose to organiza sporting activity based on agreed rules even if they attempt to consolidate across national boundaries. However, I have also come to the view that when a decision that could be reached through a market mechanism is reached by an alternative means, then it is difficult to preclude biases and corruption. Soccer fans have come to the stark realization that FIFA's methods have not only exposed its delegates and officials to possibility of inducement to corruption but that it is almost certain that its leadership at the regional and international level is corrupt.

Revelations here and here put it beyond doubt that the conspiracy has been blown and the evidence that this institution overlooked corruption is undeniable. No doubt FIFA will buy high-powered public relations  but that is looking at it the wrong way. This organization should take the simple mechanism of auctioning the rights to hosting events as a cleaner and more transparent method for assigning hosting rights for future World Cup tournaments.  

Dilemma of Diversity at Exclusive Colleges

David Leonhardt discusses the admission in the most exclusive colleges in the U.S. through the career of the outgoing president of Amherst college, Anthony Marx. In it, he makes the observation that capable students who come from lower income households are unable to make it into elite universities in the U.S. despite the claim by some colleges that the admissions processes are blind to financial capability of students.

One cannot disagree with Anthony Marx's approach to try and ensure that the admissions processes at Amherst capture a more diverse set of students based on their family income and circumstances. However, I think that many universities are altogether unable and unwilling to seek a wider body of students from low income families for the reasons that are obvious. For a private institution that thrives on endowments, it is clear that many would choose borderline students, provided their parents are capable of paying or have a legacy of attendance than a student who is probably the first to attend college from the family.

As a libertarian, I understand fully that some universities may trade away the idea of having a student body representative of the U.S. for the prize of a stable student set. It should be perfectly left to colleges to define the exclusive ideas that will drive their admissions. that Amherst has chosen to interpret its quest for diversity in a different way is its "niche". In my view, that colleges are beginning to define themselves in this way is altogether admirable and Amherst is commended for it.      

Brazilian Nannies Understand Supply and Demand

One of the most difficult and least convincing argument to make to laypeople is how markets determine who earns what income. And this is because for all the formal analysis that we can conduct using the tools of piece theory, it is difficult to explain it more clearly than the fact that scarcity is one of the reasons why ill-educated sportsmen earn more than some people with graduate degrees. A common response that one hears is that how come those who perform important tasks such as teachers, farmers in Africa and child carers are often not paid well in comparison to other people who perform "less essential" tasks .

Having read this article in the NYT, it occurred to me that the market is truly an amoral force and one that has little prejudice. My conclusion is that the situation illustrates how some of the nannies in Brazil are beginning to command proper middle-class wages. And this upward creep in the wages of specific nannies is on account of the additional skills that they have built which make them not only a scarce resource, but creates confidence that makes them able to successfully withdraw their labor and thereby determine its price. And in spite of the fear by a few of their clients that the services of nannies are becoming less affordable, I think that the new wage will lead to an influx of individuals seeking that improved wage. The result is that there will be an increase in supply that will moderate that wage. In my view, it is unlikely that the wages for the nannies making increased investment in their skills will rise as much as the market will be segmented with lower wages for those with the more abundant skills. In all, this is a modest illustration of markets at work.           

From Casual Muse to Podcast and An Invention

During my limited travel around a few countries, I have cursorily noted that a comparatively smaller proportion of the population in Africa and south Asia wear reading glasses. In the attempt to understand why, I consciously avoided the ready answer that limited incomes hinders the purchase of these gadgets in societies with a large number of poor people. My view was maintained by the fact that there is no reason to think that the same proportion of the population in every country should have problems with eyesight and thereby create a demand for reading glasses.

A couple of weeks ago, the Freakonomics Radio featured a show in which an argument was made that the scores of school children could be substantially raised by provision of reading glasses to children with poor eyesight. Still, I did not see that connection but I appreciated the fact that school performance could be raised through what is a non conventional approach. I have had to take back my thinking cap upon reading here of the invention by Prof. Josh Silver. As stated in the Guardian here, he has invented a cheaper and self-adjusting set of reading glasses that would be suitable for correcting eyesight in low income countries.

The simplicity of the gadget is clear and proves once again that one could improve the employment prospects and learning outcomes through the non conventional devices. And I find a perfect connection to my musing, a podcast and an invention So its really true that reading glasses make kids smarter.
  

Amazon's New Milestone

I have just seen this piece in the Daily Telegraph reporting that Amazon's e-book sales on the Kindle have surpassed printed titles. It is important not to stretch the meaning of this because it has just happened but it surely marks a new milestone. More importantly, publishers must now confront the new economics of digital books and preparation of marketing and pricing models are bound to change.

One also sees that the initiative is passing from the control of the publishers towards the book stores on the one hand and the readers. I am uncertain about what this interesting fact means for distribution but I am still upset that certain book titles are not released worldwide. Often the problem is that publishers have not worked out a way for universal release. It is difficult to imagine that with e-readers gaining widespread use, the printed books will regain dominance but one can still state the cliche that the printed book will still be here.   

NYT Tries to Nudge Readers

I am a member of a book club that reads books from which insights for business may be extracted. having been an active member for a full year now, one of the fascinating ideas is the degree to which the ideas that are used to run businesses are untested and sometimes completely wrong. In my view, many people who run successful businesses are also out of touch with the new ideas that are in the public domain such as Nudges, data-based experimentation and ideas such as predictive algorithms.

That said, I have just encountered an instance in which the NYT has used the idea of a Nudge in its new subscriber model for the paper. For close to two months now, the NYT has allowed readers a maximum of twenty free articles with the option of taking a subscription in order to continue to read. As a former subscriber to the early Time Select service which also tried a subscription model without success, I have been reluctant to sign up.

However, having had my access run out and found a warning, I noted that the notice suggest that I could take up an initial subscription of unlimited access for US$ 0.99, which would be followed by a subscription of US3.99 per week. One sees immediately that initial subscription is incredibly cheap and the price rises fourfold after the first month. Why? Its clear that the designers understand "Choice architecture" and the inertia that makes it unlikely that the subscription would be cancelled after the first four weeks. I would not call that genius but it shows an alertness that I find laudable.  

Schools and Education

I read Greg Mortenson's Stones to Schools less than a year ago and was impressed by the simple idea that building schools in remote parts of the world was a far effective development tool than many acknowledge. On my part, the theory offered by Greg that building schools in Afghanistan was a far more effective weapon for female child emancipation and longer term peace than the full-scale war that was the alternative, seemed plausible. I thought that while one cannot educate everyone to pacifism, this theory had some merit relative to available alternatives.

Annie Lowrie of the Slate Magazine has put forward this very incisive argument against that theory and one that goes beyond attacking the author. the argument goes that physical construction of schools is not the equivalent of providing an education and therefore the obsession with building schools is itself wrong-headed. The essence of this critique is that while donations are easier to marshal in the name of putting up structures, it is often the provision of education that is a far bigger challenge. Informed by randomized evaluations, the alternative seems to urge that construction should be replaced with payment of superior teachers, de-worming of school children and separating learners into classes that take account of ability.  

  

Competing Through Public Relations

In the quest to understand the nature of competition in technology markets, I have been following keenly a number of corporations including Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and a couple of others. I am not writing any apers on this but trying to see for myself how technology transform markets, which in turn transforms technology. My not very insightful hunch is that the mechanism for that transformation is through the instrument of competition. This is because while Google and Facebook started with a different view to the services they provided, there's been an unintended convergence on audiences and space that they are now rightly seen as one another's competitor.

Coming back to competition, I have to state that I have been completely unimpressed with the approach taken by Facebook as described by Josh Halliday in the Guardian. Its easy to sit back and say that competition does not need to take place in such ways but one cannot help but be concerned that even corporations run by very intelligent people cannot save their time and concentrate on what they do best. And I am thinking that the same PR firm being involved in this game shows something about the firm more than its clients. Unfettered competition is really a public good.

  

What Do Brand Value Lists Show?

I have recently developed suspicion about the idea of brand identity and how the marketing professionals claim that even individuals can be branded. Added to that is the tired idea of rendering phenomenon most into lists with the top people, item or ideas. In spite of that, I have just read through this article in the Guardian claiming that Apple has overtaken Google as the most valuable brand. I wonder whether a list such as this is really useful save as a mechanism for the research company producing it to troop its own colours by generating a list that is supposed to look as if it understands well enough what brands are about.

Putting aside both the methodology and value of that list, I am struck by the fact that in the top ten are 9 corporations from the US. The only exception is China Mobile which bears the distinction of the world's largest mobile phone company by subscription numbers. I am unsure that many people outside Asia would be able to recognize the trade marks of China Mobile if they saw it. In addition to that, it strikes me as noteworthy that the leading corporations in that list are corporations in the cutting edge of technology, software, fast food, sugared beverages and tobacco.     

Is US$ 25 Million Enough to Catch a Terrorist?

While it is demonstrably true that the significant prizes money often leads solutions for policy questions, it has never occurred to me to question whether that is also true for law enforcement action. And with my stated bias most recently stated here towards prizes as a form of outsourcing solutions to business and public policy problems, I begun to think about why this confessed terror boss was not apprehended sooner. Is it possible that a US$ 25 million prize was an insufficient incentive for someone to cooperate with the US state Department?

Writing in Slate Magazine here, Annie Lowrie argues with herself on the same issue too by asking whether the US State Department will be giving out that money for any person who may have provided some information that enabled the planning and execution of that daring raid. As she concludes, there is a dearth of data available for independent testing of the hypothesis and yet officials claim that offering a bounty for fugitives works. Absent some public data and analysis, I am unsure that the US$ 25 million was the right amount because perhaps a fraction or a multiple of that amount would have gotten the same effect much sooner. Maybe so, maybe not.