According to economist Robert H Frank, economics students become more selfish as a result of spending years immersed in the study of economic theory that is based on the idea that people act selfishly (or “rationally”, as economists describe it.
What effect does living in a neo-liberal capitalist society that is based on exactly the same assumptions have on people?
I have done too much on Money Terms recently to list it all here, but a few high lights are worth mentioning. I learnt a lot writing the piece on the value effect: it needed a fair amount of research on the evidence for it. The same goes for the dumb money effect. This was less true for the size effect which I have been interested in for a while. Having looked at the evidence, I think now think the dumb money effect is the most interesting of these.
For begginers, I have added a few basic comments on year-on-year and sequential comparisons. Also fairly basic, but quite interesting to think about, was corporate social responsibility.
Since I read this post on countersignalling, I have been bothered by a feeling that there was a good example I could not bring to the front of my mind. I just realised what it was: ugly websites. Continue reading
The FSA has finally realised the Independent Financial Advisors (IFAs) are not independent, and it intends to do something about it.
The main change is that only those who charge clients a fee, rather than being paid a comission of selling products to their customers, will be allowed to call themselves “independent”. Amazing news, commision salesmen are not independent! Continue reading
After the ineptness apparently shown by BAE in directly transferring cash it appears that many people do not know how to pay bribes properly. Lot of companies with ethics committees and auditors, so, for the benefit of BAE and others who need to learn how to it properly, this is how you bribe foreign government officials: Continue reading
If the continual tightening of regulation in the financial sector good or bad? It depends.
It appears that subjecting Wall Street investment research to legal pressure to be more independent has made things better. The effect has been that sell side analysts are now reasonably willing to make sell recommendations. Continue reading
My biggest problem with Money Terms is the difficulty in thinking up new ideas.
I do not want to end up like some of the competition: defining
lots of terms not more than tenuously related to investment, or so obvious that an ordinary dictionary defines then more than adequately.
On the other hand, I do know that there are a lot of gaps, because every so often I identify one or two gaps, and any other new pieces follow on from them in a rush.
So, please, give me some ideas. Anything of interest to investors is within the scope of the site. Investment terminology and concepts, more general business, finance and economic terms, or sector specific things are all welcome. You can email me using the email address on this site or on Money Terms, or you can leave a comment on this post.
Another bunch of new pages on Money Terms.
Firstly I finished off last weeks insolvency related definitions with …err.. insolvent.
Once again news stories suggested some new pages: CLO, CBO and CDO, as well as mean reversion.
Living in Sri Lanka, it is hard to be unaware of window dressing or creative accounting.
Finally, historical cost and current cost accounting, as nuts-and-bolts pieces I had been delaying for too long.
I have finally found the time to do some long intended additions to Money Terms.
I have to thank Richard Beddard of Interactive Investor, for suggesting some topics related to insolvency. I have added liquidation, bankruptcy and receivership, and scheme of arrangement followed naturally from these. I will add insolvency and administration next week.
Once I could have done these off the top of my head. These days I have to strain my memory a bit and do some checking of my facts. I wish I had kept more old textbooks around.
Cov-lite and cockroach theory were suggested by recent news stories, while GOPPAR was fairly obvious given the existing entry on revpar. The Sarbanes-Oxley entry also fills a clear gap, although I never considered it urgent because the topic is more than adequately covered elsewhere on the net.
Finally understanding patent trolls, submarine patents and cross-licensing should give readers a better idea of how the “knowledge economy” works.