Dirk Niepelt

In the FT, looking back at ten years of The Long View, John Authers offers investment lessons that may be summarized in five points: Always worry about costs and don’t try to outsmart the market. That is, hold index funds. Rebalancing pays off. Since getting the timing right is very hard, being out of the market is as risky as being in it. To beat the market, buying at low prices is key. But know what you know and what you don’t. Public markets are efficient. Money isn’t everything; in...

In the FT, Elaine Moore reports that “[d]eveloping economies are on course to raise a record sum on global debt markets this year, as ultra-low rates in the developed world cheapen borrowing costs for countries from Asia to South America.” By the end of the year, hard currency debt sales by countries such as Mexico, Quatar, Saudi Arabia and Argentina are expected to reach USD 125 billion.

CEPR Discussion Paper 11482, August 2016, with Martin Gonzalez-Eiras. PDF. Also published as CESifo Working Paper 6062, Study Center Gerzensee Working Paper 16-05. PDF, PDF. We propose a theory of tax centralization and inter governmental grants in politico-economic equilibrium. The cost of taxation differs across levels of government because voters internalize general equilibrium effects at the central but not at the local level. This renders the degree of tax centralization and the tax...

Nevada offers lots of loneliness, including The Loneliest Road in America. Some other roads are even quieter.

The Economist reports about the political economy aspects of America’s semi-nationalized mortgage industry.

Enlargeable topographic map of the contiguous United States with hypsometric tints. Source: Wikipedia.

On a new website, Aleksander Berentsen rejects the Swiss Vollgeld initiative. As an alternative, he suggests the Swiss National Bank should offer transaction accounts for everybody, in line with proposals I have made earlier (see here (2016), here (2015), here (2015)). In the Handelszeitung (here and here), Simon Schmid reports.

Webinar about the potential impacts of the Swiss Vollgeldinitiative and other instances of the Chicago plan on banking and finance. Speakers are Prof. Dirk Niepelt (Uni Bern) in Zürich and Ron Rimkus CFA (CFA Institute) in the US. Copyright 2016, CFA Institute. Reproduced with permission from CFA Institute. All rights reserved.