Joseph Stiglitz, live at the examination schools, part II

OK, all pretence of this being live will have to be abandoned. Not only am I writing about this a day later, I'm writing this having been to part III. Still here is part II, foundations of a new economics. No ambition here then...

The lecture started by covering a number of market imperfections and their consequences. Most of these related to credit and equity rationing. The point of credit is that it lets you draw down future consumption for present use, however as any undergraduate student will testify trying to draw down future (uncertain) income is really rather hard. Since banks often don't know who is credit worthy a market imperfection ensues. While you can argue this causes the price of debt to rise and is otherwise insignificant in fact it makes it hard for investment to be channeled into poorly performing economies, especially when balance sheet effects (see below) are taken into account.

Current Chicago macroeconomic theory assumes that neither credit nor equity rationing will apply if a firm can demonstrate that it is a good investment. In fact the empirical evidence suggests there's plenty of it.

Other imperfections stem from cash flow and balance sheet effects. In particular, when a country devalues its currency debts owed and owing change dramatically. Firms who owe in foreign currency find themselves hugely in debt and unable to invest. This often affects domestic banks and credit rationing ensues.

New monetary ideas
Most transactions now take place on credit, so the cost of holding money and demand for money in the usual sense are actually extremely low. What's important is the supply of credit in the economy which depends heavily on how well informed banks are and how strong their balance sheets are.

It seems my notes aren't as good as I thought, so some of this may be a little garbled. The conclusion however I've written down as follows

"Taken together these theories suggest that markets are not self sdjusting. Fiscal policy can be expansionary"

Work in progress

I'm a bit snowed at the moment, stuff I'll be posting in the next day or so includes the write up of the last two Stiglitz lectures. Joseph took it upon himself to expound what he hopes will be a new economic orthodoxy, so I need to make sure my writeup makes sense or I'll misrepresent him.

There was also a panel discussion on Biotech last night, which was useful because my project for Managing Technology Ventures is about biotech companies. So I've collected the business cards and am now hunting down interview subjects. It also taught me a hell of a lot about an industry of which I knew little. I've been to a couple of these panel discussions, which are primarily about careers, but I wish I'd been to more. Not because I want to work in each and every industry that's appeared, but because its very useful to get an insight into what these different sectors are up to.

More reasons to move to Scotland

Tom Watson, the blogging MP is mad about the introduction of PR in Scotland for local elections. (thats Proportional Representation). I'm on the fence about PR, but now it seems that we're going to get a trial of it in Scotland.

The list of things coming out of the deal reads like a list of good reasons to move to Scotland. Add the better legal system, licensing laws and pensions to that lot and it's clear that devolution is paying off in a country where socialism is not only acceptable, but accepted and practiced.

Three cool things

Cool thing one is the Starwars kid. Cool thing two is the Starwars kid remix. The coolest thing of all though is the bit torrent client you'll need to download to get the videos from this site. One of the niftiest concepts I've seen in ages. Peer to peer just keeps on getting better...

Swarming downloads. Just sounds sooo cool and science fiction doesn't it?

Face to face with Shell

Give them credit, Shell sent along two senior executives (well, one senior and one former senior) to our discussion on Shell's involvement in Nigeria, part of our Corporate Responsibility session. I've been tough on Shell in the past in this blog (murderous organisation, or words to that effect) so I was interested to see what came out. I nearly didn't make it though, since half the lecture clashed with Joseph Stiglitz at the exam schools. Fortunately it was the half about other stuff.

After a discussion of the case it was into a direct Q&A of the shell staff. One was a senior figure from the UK branch, the other a former senior manager from Nigeria. The big questions focused on two things. How can Shell defend its environmental record in the area, and how can they have justified their actions around the trial and execution of Ken Saro Wiwa. On both counts Shell seem to be genuinely contrite. The environmental record seems to be improving and their definition of what counts as political participation is much broader now than it was then. They probably are a much nicer organisation now than they were twenty or even five years ago.

On the case of Ken Saro Wiwa I asked how each of them felt personally when they heard about the death. The guy from the UK talked about the shock Shell employees felt at the following public revulsion. John Major called it judicial murder, people's kids were attacked in school on account of their parent's jobs, dinner party conversation probably got nasty. It seems to have been a genuine wake up call to the company at all levels.

More interesting was the guy from Nigeria. He felt, he said "shocked". Neither he nor anyone else believed that Abacha would carry out the executions without an appeal, or that having got a guilty verdict he'd commute the death sentence. I think the executions genuinely caught the company by surprise, they thought if they kept their mouths shut it would all blow over. Saro Wiwa would be jailed and the corporation forgotten about again.

Shell aren't going to ever be able to fully repair the environmental damage they did. Nigerias political problems go way beyond the activities of one man. I do think though that Shell is now a better company than it was then, primarily as the result of public pressure, outrage and the efforts of thousands of activists impacting on the thousands of individual decision makers within Shell.

As Chris Locke points out in Gonzo Marketing, to suggest that companies have principles or morals in erroneous. No company ever felt anything, no company ever fell in love. It's people that do all that stuff. Behind even the most faceless modern corporation lurk real people, and making a difference is about reaching them.

Something in these blogs

I've just heard about a candidate turning down a business school because of something they read in a blog, and before anyone gets all het up it wasn't this school they turned down and it wasn't because of my blog. Of course they felt the need to explain themselves to the blogger in question and did so in a way that made clear just how unpleasant some people can be.

So just in case the person in question is reading this stuff and recognises themselves, go apologise. There's rarely a good excuse for being unpleasant to strangers.

On the plus side this is what MBA blogging is about, you give a flavour of the institution and people get to decide if they want to go.

Joseph Stiglitz, live from the examination schools (Part I)

OK, it's not live, they don't have network points at the examination schools. But here is what Stiglitz, nobel prize winning economist, former head of the World Bank and outspoken critic of the IMF had to say.

First Keynesianism has been unfairly overlooked in recent times, in favour of an economic orthodoxy based around the free market economics of the Chicago School. This is predicated on a number of ideas which he believes to be innacurate. These are the conceptions of business cycles, the efficiency of the free market and the undesirability of government intervention. I'll try and take each of these in turn, but I'm being brief here, so I guess you should read his books if you want to know more.

Business Cycles
No such thing says Stiglitz. Its important to realise that this isn't denying booms busts or recessions, just the idea that one is necessarily followed by the other. While neo-classical economists like to explain these as caused by the market adjusting itself toward an equilibrium Stiglitz sees them as caused by external shocks such as investment bubbles (internet stocks) or fiscal crises (Asian banking runs). When these things happen the market does not necessarily respond efficiently, often it exacerbates and locks in the problem, at which point some kind of external factor is needed to get things back on track.

Free market efficiency
The argument about the inefficiency of the free market chiefly comes down to information asymetries. Some of these are obvious - the accounting scandals make clear that markets often act on false information. Other evidence comes from the failure of even large corporations to fully exploit the tax system - if the market was efficient they wouldn't be leaving this money on the table. A slightly more complex point is that for most activities we don't know what an efficient use of resources is - how much effort should it take GM to make a car? GM might say they're at the efficient level now, comparison with Japanese factories suggests they're at 50%, and the Japanese think there's plenty of room for improvement.

The (un)desirablility of government intervention
While governments may well do stupid and damaging things from time to time this is largely because they're misguided (and he was quite ready to blame the IMF for providing the poor guidance). However they can intervene for good and because of points one and two above they should do so. This is in direct opposition to the view of the Chicago school which holds that government intervention is what causes market inefficiency in the first place.

There was plenty more of this, with a look at the disconnect in neo classical economics between micro and macro economic evidence, a discussion of price rigidity / flexibility and a look at what deflation does to economies. But there will be more on that tomorrow I'm told, so I guess I'll leave you waiting for it.

Yesterdays papers

Well, this site is now officially old news, but that doesn't seem to have deterred the traffic influx. While a fair chunk of this is due to the blog links I asked for and got yesterday there's been a big upsurge in people coming in from search engines. I guess this could be down to the newspaper coverage - don't recall seeing many people searching for my name before...

Dear Raed is back

Salaam Pax, who runs 'Dear Raed', the blog from Baghdad is back online. The good news is he seems to have come through the war OK and even though he didn't have web access he continued to write posts for release after the war.

You can buy a handgrenade in Baghdad for 25c, armed gangs fight over license plates and abandoned munitions, Fedayeen still snipe at Americans who retaliate by shelling residential areas (including Salaam's), dozens of political parties argue the toss and no one seems to have a good word to say about the USA.

Read about it all here

Coming attractions

While the weblogs versus the newspapers experiment plays itself out below I may as well mention some coming attractions on this blog. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize Winning Economist is lecturing at the Exam Schools on whether or not Keynes is Dead. I like Keynes, so I hope the answer is no. I'll be posting my thoughts on his lectures up here, assuming I can get in, I can see him being popular.

Funny thing. Until about a month ago I'd never heard of Stiglitz. Then I saw the lecture title and thought 'cool, I should go'. Then Zaeem read one of my rants about Milton Friedman and suggested Stiglitz as the antidote. Then my sister suggested I buy her a copy of his latest book for her birthday. (she's a much better read left winger than me...)

In other news, Labour may be divided, but when was the last time a tory resigned on principle?

Does anyone read the Times?

You can take a look at today's levels of traffic by going to

http://www.hitslink.com/account.asp

Username : mbaexperience
Password : open

So far there's been no spike in traffic at all. We're certainly within the realms of normal statistical deviation...

So here is your chance to see if you can generate more traffic than the Times. Link to this website and watch the results. I've reproduced the article in here since I can't find it on the Times website.

Update 12:48 and there's been a tiny spike, mostly due to other blogs linking in. However average number of pages per reader is up to 4, and since new readers read more stuff that's probably the folks from the Times.

Update Tad Holbie is now making a bid to deliver more traffic than the Times, 4 or 5 visitors from diverse domains so far...

Update! Since when did Tad become the top link on weblogs of note at blogger? Since midday he's passed me about 60 visitors, it helps that I'm the top link on his site. Meanwhile Doc Searls blogged me a couple of hours ago and has already weighed in with 20 visitors. It looks like the Times may have made a late contribution in the evening, so far I'd say the blogs and the newspaper are neck and neck.

Other links inbound from Lucky Goldstar and Bloggerheads

Hello to all the people from the Times

If you've come here after reading the article in the Times, hello and welcome. If you're not familiar with blogs (web logs) the thing you're reading now is a blog entry. A diary entry if you like. Entries are kept on the front page for seven days and then filed in the archives. On the left and above are links and navigation to other content on the site. Things you may be interested in...

The guide to applying for an MBA
The full blog entries quoted in the article are here about half way down the page
The Frequently Asked Questions

If you want to get in touch please make it easy for me to file my mail and write to times@mba-experience.com

OK : I've been trying to post the Times article but for some wierd reason blogger doesn't like it. Will try again later.