World Cup in Brazil - a simple proposal

The event will cost about USD 15 billion to Brazilian taxpayers. Proposal: transfer the World Cup to England. Half of the money saved would be shared among 100,000 winners of a national lottery. Each would receive USD 75,000 and would receive the patriotic mission of cheering for Brazil in Wembley.
The other half of the money would be spent in extravagant stuff, such as health and education.

The prices must be crazy

Badly written pricing algorithms can generate quite strange results: a $23,698,655.93 book. (via boingboing)

BS Convergence Axiom

In due time, different strands of BS will always meet.

"Don’t ask a Brazilian personal questions"

"Steer clear especially of such issues as age, salary, or marriage to someone from Brazil, Argentina’s fierce rival."
I do agree that age and salary are taboo issues. But, as far as I know, we have no problem with questions on marriage.

Strange world: industrial tourism

The last French trend. Amazon.fr has even a section on the subject. (But I'd rather visit the 300,000 workers Foxconn unit in Shenzen.

Avoid this if you enjoy the song "Stand by me"

Happy Eastern!

via Brad Delong.

North Korea, the worst place on Earth

• The former chief of the planning and finance department of the Workers' Party was executed;
• Reality X Fantasy.

(Via boingboing)

More on the chinese ghost town

Built in a breakneck five years, Kangbashi is a state-of-the-art city full of architectural marvels and sculpture gardens. There's just one thing missing: people. The city, built by the government and funded with coal money, its chief industries energy and carmaking, has been mostly vacant for as long as it has been complete, except for the massive municipal headquarters. It's a grand canyon of empty monoliths. In a paradox only possible in today's economic system, Kangbashi manages to be both a boom town and a ghost town at the same time.

Kangbashi represents a particularly destructive economic force at work in China today: an obsession with GDP that ignores all other metrics of progress or human capital.
...
Officials (...) say the population reached 50,000 last year, which seems improbable given that pedestrians on the street were outnumbered by street sweepers.

Chinese Amazon.com

Google toolbar in firefox allows you to browse Chinese Amazon . Take care. The "Flirting apparatus" section is NSFW.

Pyongyang Arts Studio

North-korean art in Beijing. What a wonderful world.

Hyperinflation in ZImbabwe

The Zimbabwean dollar has gone, but this picture depicts its inglorious end.

Via boingboing.
UPDATE: Thomas Kang is a trillionaire!

Unfair competition

When people say "unfair competition" they usually mean a) "I not understand comparative advantages"; b) "I have vested interest in protectionism. However in this situation "unfair competition" is an understatement.

É Carnaval!!!

There is an alternative if you can not do the samba. You may join the contest "Dance your PhD". The winners of 2009 are here. Take a look at "Cerebral activation patterns induced by inflection of regular and irregular verbs with positron emission tomography. A comparison between single subject and group analysis". It is a perfect substitute for the written thesis (I guess).

Fornicating with nuns in fifteenth-century Bologna

The amazing Economic History blog has called my attention to this paper. Check out:

The Order of Saint Mary Magdalen was founded in 1227 and provided shelter to repentant prostitutes and tried to marry them. It helped to blur the distinction between nunneries and brothels. Pimps commonly forced their former protégés to receive clients inside the convents (p.378).

Another evidence in favor of the thesis that the human appetite for sex and trade is unstoppable.

Breaking the Grouxo Marx Principle

There was only one club that I would like to join and would (hopefully) accept me: The Flat Earth Society. But I've just discovered another association that I support without reserves.

Columbus' business plan

Here.

(In fact this is the first laptop powerpoint presentation)

PS. This reminds me of the funniest economics paper ever published.

US Dollar lows and Gisele Bündchen

Here.

Day of the Dead and the Dismal Science

"Finados", a national holiday in Brazil, is not as entertaining as the Dia de los Muertos in Mexico. So, the post today will be quite morbid.
What is the monetary value of a death of a loved one? That is, what is the monetary value that would take you back to the same indifferent curve? Instead of asking people, this study used happiness studies to calculate it. The results are surprising:

Your partner has the highest value and it worths more than the sum of the your mother and father! Policy recommendation: take care of your partner. He/She is much more important for your happiness than you think.

This is so sad

The Nigerian Space Program.

Via wired.

Acemoglu and the Hawking's Value

If you have read any economic blog this week, you know that Daron Acemoglu's book is available on-line. I am sure that its 1,169 pages are excellent and that it will become the standard graduate textbook on economic growth.
However, I can't help thinking about its Hawking's Value (as I've decided to called it). HV goes like this:

HV=number of copies sold or downloaded*(a/b)

a=number of pages of the book;
b=average number of pages actually read and understood.

For instance, Hawking's Brief History of Time sold 10 million copies of 200 pages each, but the number of pages actually read were, say, around 1 (one). Therefore it has a HV= 2,000,000,000, the highest in history . Back to Acemoglu's book: how many pdf files will rest unopened/unread in our hard disks?