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.

Statistically useless jobs

Here.
XKCD provides the perfect cartoon:

XKCD brillant as ever

Source.
Luis Fernando Verissimo, a Brazilian writer, once proposed "voodoopuncture". Instead of going to the acupuncturist, you would be treated without leaving home. The voodoopuncturist would stick acupunture needles in the voodoo dolls of you! I add that voodoopuncture could be outsourced to Haiti and/or China. It is a win-win-win situation!

Correlation and Causation

xkcd

Things that you learn at an Economics conference

One presenter closed his (excellent) presentation with this cartoon. Surely I am going to copy the idea.

Auctions are useful

Well... most of the time:

HT Urban Geography!

A semiologist may write a thesis on this graph

Theft risk by color of the vehicle.

The color of the bars represent the same color of the cars! Amazing!
The paper is here.

Saludos Amigos (2011)

"Rio" (2011)

"Saludos Amigos" (1942)

Sentences you will never read in a published paper

If I were sincere, I'd have written half of the sentences. HT NPTO

The funniest paper ever published in "American Economic Review"

In fact, only cliometricians (and their enemies) will laugh:

"Shatter and Filth (1975) consider "what if Fogel had never written his article" and projected that economic historians would have turned to cocaine use instead of counterfactuals."

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

Happy Eastern!

via Brad Delong.

Preference for diversity!

Photo credits: Me.

Pie chart

Via NPTO.

I love XKCD

Maybe I've been working to much with R, but I love this XKCD tribute:

Another interesting abstract

Wordy but it does the job.

GM, Ford , and Chrysler should not loose hope

Honda makes mistakes after all. (and/or Jeremy Clarkson is a comedy genius)
via Arts and Letters Daily

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.

Oliver Williamson, Transaction Costs and Dilbert

Markets in Everything ... maybe not

"Somewhere out there is a company that has actually figured out how to enlarge penises, and it is helpless to reach out potential consumers"

xkcd