Cyber Monday and Information Cascades
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cyber-monday-sales-projected-to-top-6-6-billion-up-from-last-year/ Brick and mortar is becoming the new obsolete as online sales are becoming more and more popular. Many years ago, Black Friday was the headliner on every news article around the holiday season. In recent years, however, Cyber-Monday has dominated the headlines with the projected sales of up to $6.6 billion dollars. This is […]
Cryptocurrencies as a Lemon Market
Article: https://medium.com/@avtarsehra/icos-and-economics-of-lemon-markets-96638e86b3b2 Cryptocurrencies are one of the hottest investments on the market right now. Just a year ago, Bitcoin was around $700. Now it’s almost $10,000, and investors are racing to find the next cryptocurrency that they believe will make them rich overnight. However, according to the article, the cryptocurrency market has necessary conditions for a […]
How Type of Technology and Society Affect its Spread in the Society
In “How Tight-Knit and Individualistic Communities Adopt New Technologies,” Dr. Bryony Reich’s research regarding the adoption of technology through different network structures is described. Her research on this topic was inspired anecdotally by the adoption of WhatsApp among her friend group, where she wondered how well her tight-knit friend group adopted technology compared to other […]
AN APPLE A DAY
Very few people in America, if not none, don’t know of Apple, one of the most valuable companies in the world, on its way to becoming the first company valued at $1 trillion. Apple employs numerous strategies in its marketing campaigns, which blend in together to ensure the company keeps up sales, with the release […]
The Rich Get Richer Process: Internet Routers
The rich get richer process is essentially the process in which nodes’ ability to gain connections is proportional to how many connections the respective nodes already have themselves. Essentially what this means is that there will be an increasing gap between two nodes with different amount of initial connections. This power law distribution can be […]
Fake News
Let us first start with the definition of an information cascade: An Information cascade is a situation where each person makes a decision/choice based on the observations or choices of others while ignoring his own personal information. Essentially, it results in ignoring the result you received or belief you have (it may be different, or […]
Friends or Foes?
As Cowden very rightfully puts it, “If natural selection is survival of the fittest, why isn’t everything a competition?” (Cowden). We’ve been taught in our history and science classes that since the beginning of humankind, when it came down to survival, it was all about who was the most fit — “Eat or be eaten,” […]
Asymmetric Information in Labor Markets
This academic paper on Asymmetric Information in Labor Markets discusses the application of asymmetric information in the labor market. As an ILR major, I found this application highly relevant for the hiring strategy of Human Resources Management behind any company. The candidate selection process is influenced by the fact that “efficiency requires all labor forces to […]
Applying Power Laws to Stock Markets
For at least 100 years, academics have applied physics to economics and the financial markets. The field, sometimes called econophysics, was first pioneered by Mandelbrot and Pareto. Using cotton prices, Mandelbrot found that the distributions of returns for different time intervals could be modeled using the same exponent. That is, returns measured by the month […]
Behavioral Analysis of Investors: A Look at Irrational Behavior in Finance
When it comes to economics and market analysis, there are a few schools of thought. The bulk of modern economic theory is based on the assumption that people generally behave rationally when making financial decisions. The Efficient Market Hypothesis relies on this assumption; it states that market prices are efficient, or always “correct”, thus making […]
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