Note to recruiters

Note to recruiters: We are quite aware that recruiters, interviewers, VCs and other professionals generally perform a Google Search before they interview someone, take a pitch from someone, et cetera. Please keep in mind that not everything put on the Internet must align directly to one's future career and/or one's future product portfolio. Sometimes, people do put things on the Internet just because. Just because. It may be out of their personal interests, which may have nothing to do with their professional interests. Or it may be for some other reason. Recruiters seem to have this wrong-headed notion that if somebody is not signalling their interests in a certain area online, then that means that they are not interested in that area at all. It is worth pointing out that economics pretty much underlies the areas of marketing, strategy, operations and finance. And this blog is about economics. With metta, let us. by all means, be reflective about this whole business of business. Also, see our post on "The Multi-faceted Identity Problem".

Friday, February 14, 2014

TECHNOLOGY: Overstock.com sees new market in Bitcoins

Via Phys.org:
The $1 billion company is tapping into a new market of buyers who use the online currency, and other major retailers will lose market share if they don't follow suit and accept Bitcoins, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne said.

"I've been hearing from people all over the world—cult followers of Bitcoin—who say they are going to shift all of their shopping to Overstock.com," Byrne told CBS affiliate KUTV in Salt Lake City.

Bitcoin users buy digital money and load it onto a virtual wallet. They can buy things online without having to enter their credit-card information.

Unlike government-issued money, the value of Bitcoin fluctuates rapidly. To protect itself, Overstock uses a Bitcoin broker that immediately transfers the digital coin into dollars.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

ECONOMICS: Is economics a science?

My email to Raj Chetty earlier today.

-+-
Dear Prof. Chetty: 
         <stuff deleted> 
[The] claim that "economics is a science" is not really a valid one or even a correct one. It is more than a semantic difference regarding the word 'science'. The fact that is that one can postulate multiple versions of the future (universes U1, U2, ..., Un out of which universe U1 is the one predicted by any particular economic theory T1) in which the predictions of T1 hold only in U1 but not in U2, ..., Un. The difference between the sciences (say, physics) and economics is that the probability of -only- U1 and -not- U2, ..., Un is very high in the case of physics and not -provably- as high in economics. 
Furthermore, economics does not, in almost any scenario worth thinking about, operate in a 'closed system' as it were. 'Closed systems' experiments are possible in certain science experiments. 
With reference to your article: the 10-week extension in welfare payments result that you cite cannot be viewed as being part of a 'closed system'.
          Anand

-+-