Harnessing the Skills of Autistic Persons

A couple of days ago, i was arguing with a colleague whether the rise in the number of recorded cases for almost many non-communicable diseases was caused by better surveillance or a real epidemic at hand. As time went by, we both had to accept that it probably differs by the type of illness and that there is perhaps no single answer. Reading this article in the NYT has reminded me of that argument but on this occasion,  pleasantly so.

In short, the piece goes through the very creative way in which a danish parent deployed the photographic memory and mathematical abilities of an autistic child to establish a niche in business services. Forming a corporation that selects for the skills that autistic individuals have and thereby creating an significant advantage in using them in software and other businesses that develop high-end technology, is just very creative. as the story reveals, this is not only a considerable advantage but one that is sound business strategy. I tip my heart for Mr. Sonne.     

Policeman Helps Homeless Man

I am the first to admit the the internet is among the most interesting creations of the human mind. That notwithstanding, I am less sanguine about the fact that all that it contains is necessarily of value or worthy of review. And yet what that means is that individuals ought to be a lot more discrete about what we appreciate and try to circulate by any means that the internet allows. I am glad to flag and mention the photo that has been spread profusely on the internet because it captured a policeman in New York showing uncharacteristic kindness to an unshod and homeless man. the background to the picture is covered here by David Goodman of the NYT.

I fully understand the cynicism expressed by people who think that this possibly a plan for this young officer to gain personal fame and perhaps set himself up for other opportunities. To my mind, the guy helped beyond the strict call of his duty and in the most effective way for the person in need. So all the cynics should hold their breath and use it to preach some good. The young officer's kindness stands out in my view because it illustrates that there are people who face hard times even in the world's most prosperous county.

Being Patient With Coaches With Poor Record

I have written a few blog posts here about sports franchises but never ventured into trying to understand how teams and franchises determine who to hire as coach or manager. Just recently, Chelsea Football Club dismissed a coach before the end of his contract in a way that did not make sense to many dispassionate observers. It confirmed my hunch that many soccer clubs in Europe engage in a revolving door of appointment and dismissal of coaches with little for what they expect to change. In the case of the soccer club that I mentioned above, it is a sign of the fact that the owner of the club considers it a project for prestige and does not consider the severance pay that he has made in having appointed and parted ways with nine coaches over a similar number of years as perhaps wasteful.

While it is known that North American sports franchises tend to be more commercially savvy, this article suggests that a good number of them dismiss coaches just by reviewing the recent performance. together with the academic article that involves statistical analyses, it becomes clear that most of these changes make no sense because most of the replacements do not do much better and that these abrupt and frequent changes represent poor use of scarce resources     

Warren Buffet Reasons Income Tax Policy

To my mind, one of the most difficult matters in economic policy is the decision about setting tax rates for income by individuals and by corporations. It is also one area in which ideology can get intelligent people twisted in their"you know what". As  a libertarian, I start with the sensible view that taxes should be moderate not only to avoid the distortions that it creates in addition to giving people an incentive to work and keep a higher proportion of what is legally earned. Such a view seems sensible until people have to argue about whether a 20% tax on income is sufficient or not.

Warren Buffet pitches into the discussion that animated the US Presidential elections with firmly argued points. His most potent statement in this article is that those who are ideologically committed to lower taxes overstate their case by making the claim that investors are preoccupied with tax rates as a determinant of capital deployment. In the article, he makes a very solid case that both investment rates, growth and income levels in the United States have been substantially higher than they are today and therefore it is improper to state that any upward tax adjustments for wealthy people would harm economic growth. As he argues in , the lower tax burden has contributed to a redistribution of income from the middle class towards the wealthier Americans and thereby exacerbated inequality, while denying the public sector of revenue to meet existing obligations.

Towards the end of the article, he goes out to state that given the federal government's finances today and in the medium term, a minimum tax rate for high income earners should be set. Warren Buffet is correct because he argues that tax rates must respect context and are not n end unto itself. Clearly, every hard working entrepreneur wishes to keep most of his income but the decision for tax rates is about a political discussion. Which brings me back to the fact that I prefer lower tax rates but there is no rule that states that raising taxes is by itself good economic policy.    

Arsenal Football Club's Sponsorship

Arsenal soccer Club is among the leading clubs in England. This entry in the Club's website provides information about a a five year endorsement deal signed with the Emirates, a leading middle eastern airline. As the statement makes clear, the Club has renewed a deal for placing the sponsor's logo on the training and playing shirts for the club. I have no immediate data source to check this out but it is probably true that this deal is quite lucrative and ranks among the leading endorsement contracts in the game.

It is clear that club executives have an idea about concluding such deals but I am still wondering whether they would perform better if the rights were auctioned outright. This is especially interesting because the Arsenal Soccer club play very grans soccer but have not won a trophy in seven years. Noting that companionship status matters to both sponsors and the club, an auction would reveals the relative prices of a single win.    

Post-Elections Analysis 2012

A number of columns and purported analyses have been written already about what determined the outcome of the US presidential elections which president B. Obama handily won. Again, I am not a US Citizens but I had some understanding of the race by following more closely the various contentions between the two candidates. The outcome of the race confirms to me that as stated before, most political, like economic commentators and pundits do not know what they speak about. Not only was the conventional wisdom that the race was a statistical dead heat untrue, but many people opted to go for the pundits on TV with known ideological and party biases, while ignoring both Intrade and Nate Silver's blog which both suggested that Romney had made gains in the last month but was still an underdog late in the game. 

To my own disappointment too, many libertarians and market friendly commentators stuck to a very ignorant mantra that Romney had a momentum after the first debate and would win. Their reasoning was that the endorsement of the Tea Party on one side and the stellar record in corporate reengineering was enough. Sorry, it was not purely because the president was not really as weak as it was thought. And it was only a single comment in the Samizdata blog where there was the caution that the celebrations were unjustified because the information markets still firmly predicted an Obama win. 

Looking now at the result, it is clear that there will be many books and tracts trying to explain the manner of Obama's win. Starting with this piece in the NYT, there is emerging evidence that president  Obama's campaign team worked with a "Dream team" of academics on the cutting edge of research, but also employed sophisticated data analysis that informed both media buying and face to face outreach. Noting also that both campaigns had professionals advising them, it is essential to compare one set against the other in order to determine how one side bested the other.  

Quoting Steven Pinker

"By the late 20th Century, the idea that parents can harm their children by abusing and neglecting them (which is true) grew into the idea that parents can mold their children's intelligence, personalities, social skills, and mental disorders (which is not)."  Steven Pinker, in, The Better Angels of Our Nature: the Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes. p. 443.  

My 100 Page Rule

A couple of weeks ago, I met in person, an individual who is close to attaining one million miles of travel on one the frequent flier programmes of one American Airline. While aware that some people travel too often and that these miles must have been accumulated over a considerable period, one cannot fail to nbe impressed. That incident got me thinking about how arbitrary numbers suddenly find meaning in lives because why would the airline make the decision that reaching that milestone entitles one to lifelong privileged travel on that carrier. No doubt, it involves a marketing gimmick that such as the one I blogged about here a while back.

Being conscious that I have not accumulated a million units of anything of value, I am compelled to mention my one hundred page rule. This arbitrary rule is one that apply to books that I read in printed form. To my mind, whenever I am able to read up to 100 pages of a book in a single day or in one sitting after first starting to read it, then I tend to consider it not only worthy of recommending to others but I conclude often that the subject and writing style is well done. And Yet, I am sure that this is a very rough way to judge the quality of books and the value of the content addressed by the author(s). Equally important is that one hundred pages of a book is arbitrary because the amount that one reads for every one hundred pages depends on the font and layout of the book.

That notwithstanding, the One Hundred Page Rule refers to this, this, this and this book, among a few others. For obvious reasons, i do not apply this rule to digital versions of books.    

Pankaj Ghemawat on Globaloney

I am a member of a book club which nominated Pankaj Ghemawat's book, World 3.0 as the business and Economics book of last year. For the book club, it was a profound demonstration about how misinformation and hype about globalization exceeds the reality. In the blog post here soon after that reading, I stated that popular books have pushed ahead the idea that the world has attained such a high level of globalization that borders cease to matter. Well, the people who claim this only state this because they genuinely believe it but have not placed evidence to support that claim.

The TEd talk embedded to this page is the author's explanation of the lack of evidence for the "No borders effect". It is worthy of viewing again and again as part of alerting people that both those who are opposed to globalization and its cheerleaders are wrong about the facts. This demonstrates again that for all the benefits provided by the accessibility of information, there is still a great deal of conventional wisdom that will not stand scrutiny.