Articles

Excerpts from “Retrospect and Prospect,” the concluding remarks Bob Coats presented at (or maybe wrote after) the History of Economics conference held in 1972 at Bellagio to commemorate and reassess the 1870s “marginal revolution” (full proceedings here).

How must the European institutional structure be modified to fortify the euro zone?

In Friday’s FT, former Morgan Stanley trader Douglas Keenan traces banks’ LIBOR manipulations back to 1991, when he observed, from the futures desk, LIBOR fixings come in at levels different from where he new the market to be.

“We choose this stochastic structure for computational reasons. This reduces the dimension of the variables. With (such and such) alternative, the computational burden would have dramatically increased.”

A poem seems to be an almost perfect metaphor for the modern corporate world.

Steven Shapin is visiting the UK. For those unfamiliar with the history and sociology of science, he is one of the giants of the field.

My attempt at a double riddle. “I find familiar faces only in unfamiliar places. Who am I? And whom are the faces?” The answer to the first is, I am an academic, to the second, my conference buddies.

Paper revised for the Institute’s Plenary Conference in Berlin

The text below is the comment I offered on Mr. Soros’ opening speech at INET’s Berlin Conference April 12, 2012. The text of Mr. Soros’ own speech is here. Video of the entire session is below—my bit starts at 55:00.

A suprisingly large number of talks refer to the issue of human decision making.