Tag Archives: Notes

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.

On Noahpinion.

In an interview with The Independent, Jean Tirole discusses monopolies, regulation, the role of the state, the “Nobel syndrome,” and much more.

On Bank Underground, Paul Schmelzing looks at real interest rates over the last 700 years and finds that … the past 30-odd years more than hold their own in the ranks of historically significant rate depressions. But the trend fall seen over this period is a but a part of a much longer ”millennial trend”. It is thus unlikely that current dynamics can be fully rationalized in a “secular stagnation framework”.

High rates of tax evasion are not necessarily a consequence of high tax rates. In an NBER working paper, Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen, and Gabriel Zucman provide estimates of countries’ wealth holdings in “tax havens.” Based on BIS statistics the authors find that: Wealth on the order of 10% of global GDP is held offshore. In Scandinavia, the number is much smaller. In continental Europe, it equals roughly 15%. In some Gulf and Latin American countries, almost 60%. In Russia, the...