Link para um resumo sobre uma pesquisa grande na Alemanha sobre as consequências do aumento da expectativa da vida:
http://www.faz.net/s/RubC17179D529AB4E2BBEDB095D7C41F468/Doc~E76389E2A86C34E4AAA60BDEE66E827B2~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html
Para traduzir use: http://translate.google.com/
(copiar o texto da lingua estrangeira e pôr na janela)
quinta-feira, 30 de abril de 2009
A universidade em crise
O fracasso do modelo (Americano) universitário que é fortemente imitado no Brasil:
"GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans)...--
Leia mais:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3
"GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans)...--
Leia mais:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3
Vaga para doutorando em sociologia econômica
Noticia: Quem tem interesse doutorando no NPPCS em sociologia econômica? Contacto: antonymueller@gmail.com
Friedrich Engels - nova biografia
Review: "... He (Friedrich Engels) had always been an involuntary factory owner. Without agreeing to tend his German father’s business interests in Manchester he would have lacked the income for himself and Marx to live in the comfort they took as their right. The profligate Marx was constantly on the edge of penury. Engels counted his pennies (or rather his tens of thousands of pounds) more carefully but did not stint in his pleasures. He rode out regularly with the prestigious and costly Cheshire Hounds. He drank wine of quality and Pilsner beer in quantity. He treated himself to bevies of young women, including prostitutes. He dressed in fashion.Engels kept up bourgeois appearances by holding his capitalist and communist lives separate. The frock-coated German industrialist bought a second home in Manchester where he installed his fiery Irish mistress Mary Burns and welcomed his socialist comrades. Mary’s sister Lizzy took her place as his lover when she died. Northern industrialists knew he was a “red” but Engels was discreet about his political and sexual activity and avoided social ostracism. After 1869, when the Ermen brothers bought him out of the business, he moved to London and continued to flourish handsomely through judicious investments. He was one of those coupon-snipping rentiers that he and Marx subjected to withering contempt in their pamphlets..."
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article6154072.ece
segunda-feira, 27 de abril de 2009
Recursos da pesquisa: Schumpeter
Resources on Joseph Schumpeter
HET Pages: Growth After Marx, Business Cycle Theory
Bibliography of Schumpeter
International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society page.
Graz Schumpeter Lectures - in German, but many resources!
"Review of Schumpeter's Nature and Essence of Theoretical Economics", by George Ray Wicker, 1911, AER
"Review of Schumpeter's Theory of Economic Development", by John Bates Clark, 1912, AER
"Review of De Vecchi, Entrepreneurs, institutions and economic change: the economic thought of J.A. Schumpeter" by Spencer J. Pack, 2000, HOPE
Schumpeter Page at McMaster
Schumpeter Page at Akamac.
Schumpeter Page at Laura Forgette
Lecture on Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy at Macquarie Univ., Australia.
"Schumpter's Evolutionary Theory" by Esben Sloth Andersen
"Joseph Schumpeter et le rôle de l´entrepreneur", 2000, Le Monde
European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy
R. Langlois's "Schumpeter and the Obsolescence of the Entrepreneur"
J.A. Schumpeter Page by Edward J. Harpham at UT-Dallas.
Articles about Schumpeter by Harpham at UT-Dallas.
Schumpeter page in Germany
Schumpeter Page in Britannica.com
Another Schumpeter page in Germany
Something called the "Schumpeter Project" in Belgium.
Review of Schumpeter's 1942 CSD
Stolper's Book on Schumpeter
Shionoya's book on Schumpeter
The "Schumpeter Meeting Room" at ING Bank.
Graz Schumpeter Lectures
http://homepage.newschool.edu/het//profiles/schump.htm
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/MCCPRI.html?show=reviews
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5619.html
Creative destruction: http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/liu/english25/materials/schumpeter.html
Schumpeter prize:
http://www.iss-evec.de/schumpeter_prize.htm
Schumpeter Conference 2010:
http://schumpeter2010.dk/
HET Pages: Growth After Marx, Business Cycle Theory
Bibliography of Schumpeter
International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society page.
Graz Schumpeter Lectures - in German, but many resources!
"Review of Schumpeter's Nature and Essence of Theoretical Economics", by George Ray Wicker, 1911, AER
"Review of Schumpeter's Theory of Economic Development", by John Bates Clark, 1912, AER
"Review of De Vecchi, Entrepreneurs, institutions and economic change: the economic thought of J.A. Schumpeter" by Spencer J. Pack, 2000, HOPE
Schumpeter Page at McMaster
Schumpeter Page at Akamac.
Schumpeter Page at Laura Forgette
Lecture on Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy at Macquarie Univ., Australia.
"Schumpter's Evolutionary Theory" by Esben Sloth Andersen
"Joseph Schumpeter et le rôle de l´entrepreneur", 2000, Le Monde
European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy
R. Langlois's "Schumpeter and the Obsolescence of the Entrepreneur"
J.A. Schumpeter Page by Edward J. Harpham at UT-Dallas.
Articles about Schumpeter by Harpham at UT-Dallas.
Schumpeter page in Germany
Schumpeter Page in Britannica.com
Another Schumpeter page in Germany
Something called the "Schumpeter Project" in Belgium.
Review of Schumpeter's 1942 CSD
Stolper's Book on Schumpeter
Shionoya's book on Schumpeter
The "Schumpeter Meeting Room" at ING Bank.
Graz Schumpeter Lectures
http://homepage.newschool.edu/het//profiles/schump.htm
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/MCCPRI.html?show=reviews
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5619.html
Creative destruction: http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/liu/english25/materials/schumpeter.html
Schumpeter prize:
http://www.iss-evec.de/schumpeter_prize.htm
Schumpeter Conference 2010:
http://schumpeter2010.dk/
Taxas de risco e suceso de inovações e invenções
Invention Success Rates Odds of Inventor Success
What percent of inventor ideas are successful? What percent of inventions are commercialized?
"... 99.8% fail. Only 3,000 patents out of 1.5 million patents are commercially viable. “In truth, odds are stacked astronomically against inventors, and no marketing outfit can change them. ‘There are around 1.5 million patents in effect and in force in this country, and of those, maybe 3,000 are commercially viable,’ [Richard Maulsby, ... says. ‘It's a very small percentage of patents that actually turn into products that make money for people. On top of all that, to get ripped off for tens of thousands of dollars adds insult to injury.” Patent success rates. Patent odds of success. Percent of patents commercialized..."
Leia mais:
http://www.inventionstatistics.com/Innovation_Risk_Taking_Inventors.html
What percent of inventor ideas are successful? What percent of inventions are commercialized?
"... 99.8% fail. Only 3,000 patents out of 1.5 million patents are commercially viable. “In truth, odds are stacked astronomically against inventors, and no marketing outfit can change them. ‘There are around 1.5 million patents in effect and in force in this country, and of those, maybe 3,000 are commercially viable,’ [Richard Maulsby, ... says. ‘It's a very small percentage of patents that actually turn into products that make money for people. On top of all that, to get ripped off for tens of thousands of dollars adds insult to injury.” Patent success rates. Patent odds of success. Percent of patents commercialized..."
Leia mais:
http://www.inventionstatistics.com/Innovation_Risk_Taking_Inventors.html
domingo, 26 de abril de 2009
sexta-feira, 24 de abril de 2009
Falsos coletivos
Leia mais sobre falsos abstrações de coletividades e entende como remédio o individualismo metodológico: http://mises.org/story/3409
quarta-feira, 22 de abril de 2009
Schumpeter
"The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation—if I may use that biological term—that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in [Schumpeter’s emphasis]. CSD, 83.
Capitalism…is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. CSD, 82.
[Capitalism is]…the perennial gale of creative destruction. CSD, 84.
Economies don’t grow, they evolve. The dictionary defines growth as an increase in quantity or size. If an economy were to literally grow, it would have more or bigger companies hiring more of the same kinds of workers and producing more of the same goods and services. Evolution, in contrast, is a process of continuous change, leading to a higher, more complex and better state. Capitalist economies evolve, and their evolution is endogenous, arising spontaneously from the ingredients of the capitalist economic system. The competition to innovate (so as to gain market share or simply survive) pushes living standards forever onward and upward like a perpetual-motion machine. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that progress will slow over time; indeed, it may even speed up as new technologies spill over into other areas, making whole new industries possible or economically feasible. Technology spillovers—unintended consequences—are the alchemy of the capitalist macroeconomic system. Doom-saying in the capitalist economy is a losing proposition. The essential point to grasp is that in dealing with capitalism we are dealing with an evolutionary process. CSD, 82.
Innovation is the outstanding fact in the economic history of capitalist society or in what is purely economic in that history, and also it is largely responsible for most of what we would at first sight attribute to other factors. BC, 86.
Surely, nothing can be more plain or even more trite common sense than the proposition that innovation…is at the center of practically all the phenomena, difficulties, and problems of economic life in capitalist society. BC, 87.
These revolutions periodically reshape the existing structure of industry by introducing new methods of production—the mechanized factory, the electrified factory, chemical synthesis and the like; new commodities, such as railroad service, motorcars, electrical appliances; new forms of organization. CSD, 68.
Those revolutions are not strictly incessant; they occur in discrete rushes which are separated from each other by spans of comparative quiet. The process as a whole works incessantly however, in the sense that there always is either revolution or absorption of the results of revolution, both together forming what are known as business cycles. CSD, 83, footnote 2.
Our model…does not give to prosperity and recession…the welfare connotations which public opinion [typically] attaches to them. Commonly, prosperity is associated with social well-being, and recession with a falling standard of life. In our picture they are not, and there is even an implication to the contrary. BC, 142.
Times of innovation…are times of effort and sacrifice, of work for the future, while the harvest comes after.…The harvest is gathered under recessive symptoms and with more anxiety than rejoicing.…[During] recession…much dead wood disappears. BC, 143.
If we glance at those long waves in economic activity, analysis…reveals the nature and mechanism of the capitalist process better than any-thing else. Each of them consists of an "industrial revolution" and the absorption of its effects. CSD, 67.
The Firm, Innovation and ProfitFirms—particularly new ones—are the means by which innovation enters the economy. Firms have a life cycle that begins with the introduction of a new, better or cheaper product and ends likewise (with a competitor’s introduction elsewhere). Firms tend to be the most profitable when young, before competitors have had the time to enter the market with a cheaper, better alternative. Economic development flows from innovation, and innovation requires anticipated profit, but profit sows the seeds of its own demise by beckoning other suppliers (even outright copiers). Patent laws, in this regard, can help to preserve profit and thus stimulate innovation. But over the long term, the law of the corporate jungle is clear: mutate or die.
Most new firms are founded with an idea and for a definite purpose. The life goes out of them when that idea or purpose has been fulfilled or has become obsolete or even if, without having become obsolete, it has ceased to be new. That is the fundamental reason why firms do not exist forever. Many of them are, of course, failures from the start. Like human beings, firms are constantly being born that cannot live. Others may meet…death from accident or illness. Still others die a "natural" death, as men die of old age. And the "natural" cause, in the case of firms, is precisely their inability to keep up the pace in innovating which they themselves had been instrumental in setting in the time of their vigor. BC, 94–95.
Without development there is no profit, without profit no development. TED, 154.
The carrying into effect of an innovation involves, not primarily an increase in existing factors of production, but the shifting of existing factors from old to new uses….If innovation is financed by credit creation, the shifting of the factors is effected not by the withdrawal of funds—"canceling the old order"—from the old firms, but by the reduction of the purchasing power of existing funds which are left with the old firms while newly created funds are put at the disposal of entrepreneurs: the new "order to the factors" comes, as it were, on top of the old one, which is not thereby canceled. BC, 111–12.
The capitalist process, not by coincidence but by virtue of its mechanism, progressively raises the standard of life of the masses. It does so through a sequence of vicissitudes, the severity of which is proportional to the speed of the advance. But it does so effectively. One problem after another of the supply of commodities to the masses has been successfully solved by being brought within the reach of the methods of capitalist production. CSD, 68.
The capitalist engine is first and last an engine of mass production which unavoidably means also production for the masses. CSD, 67.
Electric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has money enough to buy a sufficient number of candles and to pay servants to attend them. It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improve-ments that would mean much to a rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort. CSD, 67.
Capitalism inevitably…educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest. CSD, 146.
One of the most important features of the later stages of capitalist civilization is the vigorous expansion of the educational apparatus and particularly of the facilities for higher education. CSD, 152.
The hostility of the intellectual group—amounting to moral disapproval of the capitalist order—is one thing, and the general hostile atmosphere which surrounds the capitalist engine is another thing. CSD, 153.
Capitalist evolution produces a labor movement which obviously is not the creation of the intellectual group. But it is not surprising that such an opportunity and the intellectual demiurge should find each other. Labor never craved intellectual leadership but intellectuals invaded labor politics. They had an important contribution to make: they verbalized the movement, supplied theories and slogans for it—class war is an excellent example—made it conscious of itself….They naturally radicalized it, eventually imparting a revolutionary bias to the most bourgeois trade-union practices….Having no genuine authority and feeling always in danger of being unceremoniously told to mind his own business,…[the intellectual] must flatter, promise and incite, nurse left wings…appeal to fringe ends.…Thus, though intellectuals have not created the labor movement, they have yet worked it up into something that differs substantially from what it would be without them….[This]…explains why public policy grows more and more hostile to capitalist interests. Intellectuals rarely enter professional politics and still more rarely conquer responsible office. But they staff political bureaus, write party pamphlets and speeches, act as secretaries and advisers, make the…politician’s…reputation….In doing these things they…impress their mentality on almost everything that is being done. CSD, 153–54.
Capitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets….The only success victorious defense can possibly produce is a change in the indictment. CSD, 144.
References
BC: Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1939), Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process (New York: McGraw-Hill).
CSD: ——— (1950), Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers), orig. pub. 1942.
HEA: ——— (1954), The History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press).
TED: ——— (1936), The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).
Fonte: http://www.dallasfed.org/research/ei/ei0103.html
Capitalism…is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. CSD, 82.
[Capitalism is]…the perennial gale of creative destruction. CSD, 84.
Economies don’t grow, they evolve. The dictionary defines growth as an increase in quantity or size. If an economy were to literally grow, it would have more or bigger companies hiring more of the same kinds of workers and producing more of the same goods and services. Evolution, in contrast, is a process of continuous change, leading to a higher, more complex and better state. Capitalist economies evolve, and their evolution is endogenous, arising spontaneously from the ingredients of the capitalist economic system. The competition to innovate (so as to gain market share or simply survive) pushes living standards forever onward and upward like a perpetual-motion machine. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that progress will slow over time; indeed, it may even speed up as new technologies spill over into other areas, making whole new industries possible or economically feasible. Technology spillovers—unintended consequences—are the alchemy of the capitalist macroeconomic system. Doom-saying in the capitalist economy is a losing proposition. The essential point to grasp is that in dealing with capitalism we are dealing with an evolutionary process. CSD, 82.
Innovation is the outstanding fact in the economic history of capitalist society or in what is purely economic in that history, and also it is largely responsible for most of what we would at first sight attribute to other factors. BC, 86.
Surely, nothing can be more plain or even more trite common sense than the proposition that innovation…is at the center of practically all the phenomena, difficulties, and problems of economic life in capitalist society. BC, 87.
These revolutions periodically reshape the existing structure of industry by introducing new methods of production—the mechanized factory, the electrified factory, chemical synthesis and the like; new commodities, such as railroad service, motorcars, electrical appliances; new forms of organization. CSD, 68.
Those revolutions are not strictly incessant; they occur in discrete rushes which are separated from each other by spans of comparative quiet. The process as a whole works incessantly however, in the sense that there always is either revolution or absorption of the results of revolution, both together forming what are known as business cycles. CSD, 83, footnote 2.
Our model…does not give to prosperity and recession…the welfare connotations which public opinion [typically] attaches to them. Commonly, prosperity is associated with social well-being, and recession with a falling standard of life. In our picture they are not, and there is even an implication to the contrary. BC, 142.
Times of innovation…are times of effort and sacrifice, of work for the future, while the harvest comes after.…The harvest is gathered under recessive symptoms and with more anxiety than rejoicing.…[During] recession…much dead wood disappears. BC, 143.
If we glance at those long waves in economic activity, analysis…reveals the nature and mechanism of the capitalist process better than any-thing else. Each of them consists of an "industrial revolution" and the absorption of its effects. CSD, 67.
The Firm, Innovation and ProfitFirms—particularly new ones—are the means by which innovation enters the economy. Firms have a life cycle that begins with the introduction of a new, better or cheaper product and ends likewise (with a competitor’s introduction elsewhere). Firms tend to be the most profitable when young, before competitors have had the time to enter the market with a cheaper, better alternative. Economic development flows from innovation, and innovation requires anticipated profit, but profit sows the seeds of its own demise by beckoning other suppliers (even outright copiers). Patent laws, in this regard, can help to preserve profit and thus stimulate innovation. But over the long term, the law of the corporate jungle is clear: mutate or die.
Most new firms are founded with an idea and for a definite purpose. The life goes out of them when that idea or purpose has been fulfilled or has become obsolete or even if, without having become obsolete, it has ceased to be new. That is the fundamental reason why firms do not exist forever. Many of them are, of course, failures from the start. Like human beings, firms are constantly being born that cannot live. Others may meet…death from accident or illness. Still others die a "natural" death, as men die of old age. And the "natural" cause, in the case of firms, is precisely their inability to keep up the pace in innovating which they themselves had been instrumental in setting in the time of their vigor. BC, 94–95.
Without development there is no profit, without profit no development. TED, 154.
The carrying into effect of an innovation involves, not primarily an increase in existing factors of production, but the shifting of existing factors from old to new uses….If innovation is financed by credit creation, the shifting of the factors is effected not by the withdrawal of funds—"canceling the old order"—from the old firms, but by the reduction of the purchasing power of existing funds which are left with the old firms while newly created funds are put at the disposal of entrepreneurs: the new "order to the factors" comes, as it were, on top of the old one, which is not thereby canceled. BC, 111–12.
The capitalist process, not by coincidence but by virtue of its mechanism, progressively raises the standard of life of the masses. It does so through a sequence of vicissitudes, the severity of which is proportional to the speed of the advance. But it does so effectively. One problem after another of the supply of commodities to the masses has been successfully solved by being brought within the reach of the methods of capitalist production. CSD, 68.
The capitalist engine is first and last an engine of mass production which unavoidably means also production for the masses. CSD, 67.
Electric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has money enough to buy a sufficient number of candles and to pay servants to attend them. It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improve-ments that would mean much to a rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort. CSD, 67.
Capitalism inevitably…educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest. CSD, 146.
One of the most important features of the later stages of capitalist civilization is the vigorous expansion of the educational apparatus and particularly of the facilities for higher education. CSD, 152.
The hostility of the intellectual group—amounting to moral disapproval of the capitalist order—is one thing, and the general hostile atmosphere which surrounds the capitalist engine is another thing. CSD, 153.
Capitalist evolution produces a labor movement which obviously is not the creation of the intellectual group. But it is not surprising that such an opportunity and the intellectual demiurge should find each other. Labor never craved intellectual leadership but intellectuals invaded labor politics. They had an important contribution to make: they verbalized the movement, supplied theories and slogans for it—class war is an excellent example—made it conscious of itself….They naturally radicalized it, eventually imparting a revolutionary bias to the most bourgeois trade-union practices….Having no genuine authority and feeling always in danger of being unceremoniously told to mind his own business,…[the intellectual] must flatter, promise and incite, nurse left wings…appeal to fringe ends.…Thus, though intellectuals have not created the labor movement, they have yet worked it up into something that differs substantially from what it would be without them….[This]…explains why public policy grows more and more hostile to capitalist interests. Intellectuals rarely enter professional politics and still more rarely conquer responsible office. But they staff political bureaus, write party pamphlets and speeches, act as secretaries and advisers, make the…politician’s…reputation….In doing these things they…impress their mentality on almost everything that is being done. CSD, 153–54.
Capitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets….The only success victorious defense can possibly produce is a change in the indictment. CSD, 144.
References
BC: Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1939), Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process (New York: McGraw-Hill).
CSD: ——— (1950), Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers), orig. pub. 1942.
HEA: ——— (1954), The History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press).
TED: ——— (1936), The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).
Fonte: http://www.dallasfed.org/research/ei/ei0103.html
A doença do analfabetismo estadístico
Os erros de médicos, journalistas e políticos na interpretação de estadísticas:
SUMMARY Many doctors, patients, journalists, and politicians
alike do not understand what health statistics mean
or draw wrong conclusions without noticing. Collective
statistical illiteracy refers to the widespread inability to
understand the meaning of numbers. For instance, many
citizens are unaware that higher survival rates with cancer
screening do not imply longer life, or that the statement
that mammography screening reduces the risk of dying
from breast cancer by 25% in fact means that 1 less woman
out of 1,000 will die of the disease. We provide evidence
that statistical illiteracy (a) is common to patients, journalists,
and physicians; (b) is created by nontransparent
framing of information that is sometimes an unintentional
result of lack of understanding but can also be a result of
intentional efforts to manipulate or persuade people; and
(c) can have serious consequences for health...--
Leia mais: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/pspi_8_2_article.pdf
SUMMARY Many doctors, patients, journalists, and politicians
alike do not understand what health statistics mean
or draw wrong conclusions without noticing. Collective
statistical illiteracy refers to the widespread inability to
understand the meaning of numbers. For instance, many
citizens are unaware that higher survival rates with cancer
screening do not imply longer life, or that the statement
that mammography screening reduces the risk of dying
from breast cancer by 25% in fact means that 1 less woman
out of 1,000 will die of the disease. We provide evidence
that statistical illiteracy (a) is common to patients, journalists,
and physicians; (b) is created by nontransparent
framing of information that is sometimes an unintentional
result of lack of understanding but can also be a result of
intentional efforts to manipulate or persuade people; and
(c) can have serious consequences for health...--
Leia mais: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/pspi_8_2_article.pdf
quarta-feira, 8 de abril de 2009
Como confrontar contingências
Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Published: April 7 2009 20:02 Last updated: April 7 2009 20:02
1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks – and hence the most fragile – become the biggest.
2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.
3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.
4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”. Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.
5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. Such systems survive thanks to slack and redundancy; adding debt produces wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for error. Capitalism cannot avoid fads and bubbles: equity bubbles (as in 2000) have proved to be mild; debt bubbles are vicious.
6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning . Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. Citizens must be protected from themselves, from bankers selling them “hedging” products, and from gullible regulators who listen to economic theorists.
7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. Cascading rumours are a product of complex systems. Governments cannot stop the rumours. Simply, we need to be in a position to shrug off rumours, be robust in the face of them.
8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains. Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab.
9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement. Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).
10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs. Finally, this crisis cannot be fixed with makeshift repairs, no more than a boat with a rotten hull can be fixed with ad-hoc patches. We need to rebuild the hull with new (stronger) materials; we will have to remake the system before it does so itself. Let us move voluntarily into Capitalism 2.0 by helping what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalising the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the “Nobel” in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties.
Then we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer ecology, no leverage. A world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born and die every day without making the news.
In other words, a place more resistant to black swans.
The writer is a veteran trader, a distinguished professor at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute and the author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
The Financial Times Limited 2009
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5d5aa24e-23a4-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Published: April 7 2009 20:02 Last updated: April 7 2009 20:02
1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks – and hence the most fragile – become the biggest.
2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.
3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.
4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”. Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.
5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. Such systems survive thanks to slack and redundancy; adding debt produces wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for error. Capitalism cannot avoid fads and bubbles: equity bubbles (as in 2000) have proved to be mild; debt bubbles are vicious.
6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning . Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. Citizens must be protected from themselves, from bankers selling them “hedging” products, and from gullible regulators who listen to economic theorists.
7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. Cascading rumours are a product of complex systems. Governments cannot stop the rumours. Simply, we need to be in a position to shrug off rumours, be robust in the face of them.
8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains. Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab.
9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement. Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).
10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs. Finally, this crisis cannot be fixed with makeshift repairs, no more than a boat with a rotten hull can be fixed with ad-hoc patches. We need to rebuild the hull with new (stronger) materials; we will have to remake the system before it does so itself. Let us move voluntarily into Capitalism 2.0 by helping what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalising the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the “Nobel” in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties.
Then we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer ecology, no leverage. A world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born and die every day without making the news.
In other words, a place more resistant to black swans.
The writer is a veteran trader, a distinguished professor at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute and the author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
The Financial Times Limited 2009
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5d5aa24e-23a4-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss
terça-feira, 7 de abril de 2009
Links para a revista "Tempo Social"
publicado no Brasil: Tempo Social
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_issues&pid=0103-2070&lng=en&nrm=iso
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_issues&pid=0103-2070&lng=en&nrm=iso
segunda-feira, 6 de abril de 2009
From "push" to "pull" - the big shift
Dicas para formular uma nova teoria sobre empresas e sociedade:
"... We're moving from a world of push to a world of pull. Push programs operate on one key assumption - that it is possible to forecast future demand. When demand can be forecast, we can efficiently push resources to where they will be needed when they will be needed. But what happens when our forecasting ability diminishes--as it surely has in these big shifting times? Push programs become bottlenecks preventing effective responses to unanticipated changes in demand. In the business world, the result is often large accumulations of inventories. The transition will be painful but the rewards will be significant. Push programs to mobilize resources have generated enormous prosperity over the past century. That approach is now unraveling. We are now in the early stages of defining and deploying an alternative approach based on pull platforms..."
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bigshift/
"... We're moving from a world of push to a world of pull. Push programs operate on one key assumption - that it is possible to forecast future demand. When demand can be forecast, we can efficiently push resources to where they will be needed when they will be needed. But what happens when our forecasting ability diminishes--as it surely has in these big shifting times? Push programs become bottlenecks preventing effective responses to unanticipated changes in demand. In the business world, the result is often large accumulations of inventories. The transition will be painful but the rewards will be significant. Push programs to mobilize resources have generated enormous prosperity over the past century. That approach is now unraveling. We are now in the early stages of defining and deploying an alternative approach based on pull platforms..."
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bigshift/
sexta-feira, 3 de abril de 2009
Internet hits
of 942,000 for "The Bailout Reader" (com dois artigos de Antony Mueller)
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv8-yie7&p=%22The%20Bailout%20Reader%22&type=
4,467 visitas Currency Arrangements in Europe. Are there Lessons for Latin America? Dr. Antony Mueller 29 de enero de 2004
3,922 visitas Safeguarding the Independence of the European Central Bank Dr. Antony Mueller 28 de enero de 2004
4,507 visitas Do Current Account Deficits Matter? Dr. Antony Mueller 27 de enero de 2004
6,679 visitas Financial Cycles, Business Activity and Asset Valuations Dr. Antony Mueller 26 de enero de 2004
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv8-yie7&p=%22The%20Bailout%20Reader%22&type=
4,467 visitas Currency Arrangements in Europe. Are there Lessons for Latin America? Dr. Antony Mueller 29 de enero de 2004
3,922 visitas Safeguarding the Independence of the European Central Bank Dr. Antony Mueller 28 de enero de 2004
4,507 visitas Do Current Account Deficits Matter? Dr. Antony Mueller 27 de enero de 2004
6,679 visitas Financial Cycles, Business Activity and Asset Valuations Dr. Antony Mueller 26 de enero de 2004
5,064 visitas Inflation and Deflation in a New Capital-Based Macroeconomic Antony Mueller 9 de febrero de 2006
Porque os probres ficam pobres
De The Economist:
"...THAT the children of the poor underachieve in later life, and thus remain poor themselves, is one of the enduring problems of society. Sociologists have studied and described it. Socialists have tried to abolish it by dictatorship and central planning. Liberals have preferred democracy and opportunity. But nobody has truly understood what causes it. Until, perhaps, now.
The crucial breakthrough was made three years ago, when Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania showed that the working memories of children who have been raised in poverty have smaller capacities than those of middle-class children. Working memory is the ability to hold bits of information in the brain for current use—the digits of a phone number, for example. It is crucial for comprehending languages, for reading and for solving problems. Entry into the working memory is also a prerequisite for something to be learnt permanently as part of declarative memory—the stuff a person knows explicitly, like the dates of famous battles, rather than what he knows implicitly, like how to ride a bicycle.
Since Dr Farah’s discovery, Gary Evans and Michelle Schamberg of Cornell University have studied the phenomenon in more detail. As they report in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they have found that the reduced capacity of the memories of the poor is almost certainly the result of stress affecting the way that childish brains develop.
Dr Evans’s and Dr Schamberg’s volunteers were 195 participants in a long-term sociological and medical study that Dr Evans is carrying out in New York state. At the time, the participants were 17 years old. All are white, and the numbers of men and women are about equal.
Stress in the city
To measure the amount of stress an individual had suffered over the course of his life, the two researchers used an index known as allostatic load. This is a combination of the values of six variables: diastolic and systolic blood pressure; the concentrations of three stress-related hormones; and the body-mass index, a measure of obesity. For all six, a higher value indicates a more stressful life; and for all six, the values were higher, on average, in poor children than in those who were middle class. Moreover, because Dr Evans’s wider study had followed the participants from birth, the two researchers were able to estimate what proportion of each child’s life had been spent in poverty. That more precise figure, too, was correlated with the allostatic load.
The capacity of a 17-year-old’s working memory was also correlated with allostatic load. Those who had spent their whole lives in poverty could hold an average of 8.5 items in their memory at any time. Those brought up in a middle-class family could manage 9.4, and those whose economic and social experiences had been mixed were in the middle..."
http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13403177&source=hptextfeature
"...THAT the children of the poor underachieve in later life, and thus remain poor themselves, is one of the enduring problems of society. Sociologists have studied and described it. Socialists have tried to abolish it by dictatorship and central planning. Liberals have preferred democracy and opportunity. But nobody has truly understood what causes it. Until, perhaps, now.
The crucial breakthrough was made three years ago, when Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania showed that the working memories of children who have been raised in poverty have smaller capacities than those of middle-class children. Working memory is the ability to hold bits of information in the brain for current use—the digits of a phone number, for example. It is crucial for comprehending languages, for reading and for solving problems. Entry into the working memory is also a prerequisite for something to be learnt permanently as part of declarative memory—the stuff a person knows explicitly, like the dates of famous battles, rather than what he knows implicitly, like how to ride a bicycle.
Since Dr Farah’s discovery, Gary Evans and Michelle Schamberg of Cornell University have studied the phenomenon in more detail. As they report in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they have found that the reduced capacity of the memories of the poor is almost certainly the result of stress affecting the way that childish brains develop.
Dr Evans’s and Dr Schamberg’s volunteers were 195 participants in a long-term sociological and medical study that Dr Evans is carrying out in New York state. At the time, the participants were 17 years old. All are white, and the numbers of men and women are about equal.
Stress in the city
To measure the amount of stress an individual had suffered over the course of his life, the two researchers used an index known as allostatic load. This is a combination of the values of six variables: diastolic and systolic blood pressure; the concentrations of three stress-related hormones; and the body-mass index, a measure of obesity. For all six, a higher value indicates a more stressful life; and for all six, the values were higher, on average, in poor children than in those who were middle class. Moreover, because Dr Evans’s wider study had followed the participants from birth, the two researchers were able to estimate what proportion of each child’s life had been spent in poverty. That more precise figure, too, was correlated with the allostatic load.
The capacity of a 17-year-old’s working memory was also correlated with allostatic load. Those who had spent their whole lives in poverty could hold an average of 8.5 items in their memory at any time. Those brought up in a middle-class family could manage 9.4, and those whose economic and social experiences had been mixed were in the middle..."
http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13403177&source=hptextfeature
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