Rigotnomics

We now blog at rigotnomics!

Facebook in Canada

I just saw in Foreign Policy that about a third of canadians were on facebook! This is the highest proportion in the world! Furthermore, if you count out all those above 50 (about 35% of population) and those below 10 (10% of pop), the proportion jumps to about 3 out of 5. If you meet a canadian who's between 10 and 50 years old, most chances are he is on facebook!

This may be good news as "net interaction stimulates and improves the brain" and also, employers might be able to select who they hire better as "they thrawl facebook for lues about character and behaviour of potential employees"!

But why are we number 1 for facebook? Maybe this is because we are less resistant to change than other cultures, but why were we so slow to adopt cell phones then? I guess technology adoption is based on specific demands or need for pr$oducts that are closely related to culture. In other words, I would think that canadians adopted facebook becuz they needed it and it fits with their culture, whereas cell phones do not!

The decreasing returns to travelling

Jackie Lee is a traveller. While in Europe for his master’s degree, he flew to all easyjet destinations from Geneva. When in Bergen, enjoying the view of the amazing fjord and the UNESCO World Heritage city, he noted: “I don’t get impressed anymore by these things that are supposed to be gorgeous. I travelled too much”.
There are indeed decreasing returns to travelling, at least for some of us. Here's a way to grow old and keep on having fun travelling. It's all about technological progress in the pleasure production function.

Corruption survey

Of the economics students that took the survey (39 of them):

• 21% would prefer to work in a bank than a development agency;
• 73% favour relatively high wages for public officials;
• 94% would work for an International Organization;
• 23% think we should accept corruption as a fact of life.

Not surprisingly, people who prefer banks to development agencies are completely against high salaries in government.

People with lower grades tend to prefer banking and are more likely to tolerate corruption as they also come from more corrupt countries (according to Transparency International).

Finally, people from corrupt countries seem to tolerate corruption more, being more likely to accept it as a part of life. Furthermore, they would rather work in development agencies.

None of these results are significant.

The winner of the free lunch is Tadashi Ito.

Economics Departments Rankings

I made a new ranking based on where prolific researchers did their PhD, not where they teach now, and based on citations, not publications. The methodology is explained here and the data can be found here. The top 10 is:

MIT
Harvard
Chicago
Princeton
Yale
Stanford
Minnesota
Carnegie Mellon
Berkeley
LSE

Unilateral trade liberalization

This guy is an incredible blogger. He has 6 blogs, 3 on politics and economics and 3 non-political (farming, travel, and rotary). And he’s from Manila. He gives me here another good argument for a country to liberalize unilaterally. Here’s my favourite part:

“One wonders how much money have been paid by taxpayers from the countries concerned, first to pay for the salaries, travels, and perks of their country trade negotiators, including their pool of consultants and secretariat support, in all those years”.

Interested in US politics?

Can someone explain to me why the Japanese are more interested in the US presidential than the Americans themselves???