The Market of NBA Free Agency
The results of this past summer’s NBA Free Agency period were bizarre to say the least. With the NBA beginning a new television contract worth nearly double what it was previously, the salary cap for individual NBA teams skyrocketed. The fact that teams now could spend several million dollars more combined with the fact that […]
Mass Movements: Information Cascades
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/10/mass-movements http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0297.2010.02401.x/full Speculation and hearsay construct models and implicit platforms of information cascades that often determine or set socioeconomic outcomes within our societal structure. Within this new age of information technology and heavy dependence upon information for decision making, the concept of information cascades is applicable to the interactions held on all bilateral levels from […]
Voting with Adversaries: (Late) Analysis of Twitch Plays Pokemon
Voting situations, as discussed in chapter 23, can be roughly organized into situations where each participants goal can be distinct or shared. For instance, a jury in a criminal trial should all have the same goal, justice, whereas participants voting for which candidate they want to take a role in their government might have completely […]
Information Cascade and the 2008 Financial Crisis
In this article, the author discusses how information cascade helped cause the housing crisis in 2008. In order to understand how this happened, it is important we first understand what structure was in place that allowed the 2008 financial crisis to occur in the first place. An economically stable family wants to buy a house […]
Cascading Networks and the Chinese Tech Market
https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/28/can-foreign-tech-companies-win-in-china/ This article talks about the challenges that foreign tech companies have when trying to break into the Chinese tech market. Because of its emergence as the second largest economy in the world, China has become home to the largest share of internet users in the world. Yet, the companies that have been successful in […]
Explaining the Success of Platforms with Network Effects
It is well known that software has changed entrepreneurship. With Silicon Valley and other tech centers producing innovative and highly valued startups at incredible speeds, one has to ask what separates these standout startups that make the news from all the rest. This article postulates that most of the best tech startups are “platforms.” Platforms […]
Not My Space Anymore
In August of 2006, MySpace, widely regarded as the time’s leading social network, had its 100 millionth account created (http://seekingalpha.com/article/15237-rupert-murdoch-comments-on-fox-interactives-growth), and Facebook was still only available to people with valid harvard.edu email addresses. Within four years, MySpace was floundering as Facebook’s user base surpassed half a billion (http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390443635404578036164027386112?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10000872396390443635404578036164027386112.html). Why did this switch occur so quickly? Using the […]
The Electoral College and Majority Rule
In the United States, the Electoral College is often decried as a rigged, archaic system that undermines democracy. Especially after the 2016 election cycle, the Electoral College is under increased scrutiny once again. Is this uproar justified? An article from Sterling, Colorado’s Journal-Advocate suggests that those who clamor to crown the winner of the popular […]
Why the Flu Dies Out Every Season
Every winter, the flu circulates throughout the general population, getting many people sick. When it comes to diseases, R0 represents the reproduction number, or an average number new cases of an illness each case of an illness will cause. If it is below 1, each case causes less than one new case, meaning the disease will die […]
Information cascades and voter perception in the 2016 election
November 9th, 2:30am New York city, Clinton supporters are told by the campaign manager to head home and await the results since they won’t be clear for a while, a soft concession one might argue. Gloom spread through the crowd as people started realizing the inevitable, Trump was winning. To many of them, this came […]
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