Economics

So this is the math that’s wreaked havoc on the global economy. Wired’s got a great story about David X. Li, the Chinese-born mathematician whose formula (above) was largely responsible for the financial meltdown — or at least the global misuse and abuse of this formula and its dangerous assumptions. From the piece: [In 2000,] Li wrote a model that used price rather than real-world default data as a shortcut (making an implicit assumption that financial markets in general, and…

PC World, February 20 2009: by Cyrus Farivar In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, recently enacted by Congress, many details regarding the allocation of funds for high-tech projects remain blurry. Nevertheless, the nation’s tech community appears to be encouraged by the $7.2 billion provision for broadband in the near $789 billion economic stimulus package signed into law by President Barack Obama earlier this week. Many observers believe that the allocation is a clear first step toward establishing…

Slate: So what happens when good fortune delivers vouchers (and hence computers) into the homes of Romanian youths? Obviously a lot more time logged on to a computer—about seven hours more per week for vouchered versus unvouchered kids. Much of this computer time came at the expense of television-watching: Children in families that received a voucher spent 3.5 fewer hours in front of the tube per week. But computer use also crowded out homework (2.3 hours less per week), reading,…

The most interesting thing that I learned from Karim‘s talk last week, which was also mentioned in Afshin Molavi’s The Soul of Iran , which I’m reading now, is the following: As opposed to other developing nations whose per capita incomes have always been low but have steadily increased, the majority of Iranians have experienced a marked decrease in their standard of living since the 1979 revolution; average Iranians’ real per capita income is about a quarter of what it…