Tag Archives: Notes

In a paper, Reto Föllmi and Isabel Martínez document trends in income and wealth inequality in Switzerland over the last 100 years. Daniel Hug reports in the NZZaS (figures below taken from NZZaS). Data (World Wealth and Income Database, based on tax records). Some findings: Income inequality has been rather stable and is modest … … although social mobility as reflected in educational attainment is low. Income inequality at the very top has increased. The top 1% of income recipients earn...

In Der Bund, Adrian Sulc comments on the Swiss National Bank’s perfectionism. Keine andere Schweizer Organisation kommuniziert so professionell wie die SNB, keine andere Organisation kann so gut dichthalten. Perfectionism is costly. Der Personalbestand ist in den letzten fünf Jahren um 18 Prozent auf 795 Vollzeitstellen gestiegen. … Die durchschnittlichen Lohnkosten pro Mitarbeiter betragen mittlerweile 155 000 Franken...

In Der Bund, Adrian Sulc comments on the Swiss National Bank’s perfectionism. Keine andere Schweizer Organisation kommuniziert so professionell wie die SNB, keine andere Organisation kann so gut dichthalten. Perfectionism is costly. Der Personalbestand ist in den letzten fünf Jahren um 18 Prozent auf 795 Vollzeitstellen gestiegen. … Die durchschnittlichen Lohnkosten pro Mitarbeiter betragen mittlerweile 155 000 Franken pro Jahr. Dies weil gemäss Nationalbank fast ausschliesslich...

In the FT, Jamie Smyth reports that the Australian Securities Exchange plans to introduce a blockchain based equity clearing and settlement system. ASX will operate the system on a secure private network with known participants. The participants must comply with regulation, according to the ASX, which said its system had nothing to do with blockchain technology deployed by cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

On VoxEU, Clemens Jobst and Helmut Stix argue that … cash balances for transactions comprise only a modest share of overall cash demand (a rough estimate of 15% might be a good guess across richer economies). … changes in currency in circulation are dominated by motives like hoarding. While transaction demand is reasonably well researched … still too little is known about non-transaction demand in general, and recent increases in particular.

Premiere: November 26, 1942 in New York.

It’s the time of the year when financial advisors feel obliged to produce forecasts for the coming year. This is often a waste of time, for the writers and the readers. In the Wall Street Journal, James Mackintosh writes that [f]orecasting is difficult, but this year showed exactly how pointless it can be: Markets performed opposite of virtually all predictions. Previous blog post.

In the New York Times, Susan Dynarski argues that students learn less when they use laptops, tablets and the like during lectures. … a growing body of evidence shows that over all, college students learn less when they use computers or tablets during lectures. They also tend to earn worse grades. The research is unequivocal: Laptops distract from learning, both for users and for those around them. It’s not much of a leap to expect that electronics also undermine learning in high school...

In The Guardian, Philip Oltermann speculates about a new romanticist era in Germany, exemplified by Simon Strauss’ “Sieben Nächte.” Caspar David Friedrich: Winter Landscape, 1811.