Today’s blog draws inspiration from Michael D. Smith’s perspective on higher education, as discussed in a recent episode of the podcast People I (Mostly) Admire, titled “Higher Education Is Broken. Can It Be Fixed?” . Btw, the podcast itself is part of the Freakonomics network, the academically inclined perspective is particularly sweetspot for an econ student. This episode elucidates the systemic flaws plaguing the U.S. higher education system. One pov involves diving into the market power of colleges....

I’m reading some papers about mechanism design on pricing of information, following up on this data trading reading session Bergemann et al. (AER 2018): The Design and Price of Information. Bergemann et al. (EC 2022): Is Selling Completely Information (Approximately) Optimal? Bergemann et al. (EC 2015): Selling Cookies. Hopefully, I’ll finish them within this week. I have a strong feeling that they will be immensely interesting. Before our discussion, a short notice: a review of numerous news posts and literature in econ-CS reveals a significant discrepancy between academic research on data trading in algorithmic game theory (AGT) and Econ-CS communities, and the evolving realities of the actual data trading market....

I’ve been researching on data trading. China established several state-owned data exchange centers (e.g. Shanghai Data Exchange) and they are gradually building momentum recently because of the generative-AI booming bubble. But it’s not a new thing. An early article ‘Data is giving rise to a new economy’ sort of predicted the prosperous market seven years ago (The Economist, May 6th 2017). Data are to this century what oil was to the last one: a driver of growth and change....

costume, escapism and narrative depth - a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ show to watch.

Sabrina Carpenter’s hit Nonsense is a great song, both artistically and commercially. The song gives a “I-DONT-GIVE-A-SHIT” (IDGAS) energy. The singer herself said in Genius VERIFIED interview “…we were hitting a lot of walls and we’re like, you know what, let’s just literally write nonsense, no joke. and that’s how the song happened.” “A lot of our justification for lyrics was well it’s nonsense. so it doesn’t have to make any sense at all and we just have fun....

I’ve got two amazing topics to write about. One is Sabrina Carpenter’s single Nonsense, the other is the final season of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. Cheers! Art for art’s sake. Stayed tuned before the holiday specials.

Who doesn’t love Messi? There is something mesmerising about his minimalism. He has stripped the game back to its essentials; his greatest gift has perhaps been his capacity to select the lowest-tariff option necessary in any given situation. There is an impish grace to everything he does on a pitch and yet his success is rooted in cold, unfussy calculation. But recently, something other than pure football is all over the news....

Following competition consequences I, part II about competition and repugnancy. A repugnant market refers to a market where certain goods or services are considered objectionable or morally unacceptable to buy and sell, despite there being potential buyers and sellers. Examples include markets for organs, surrogacy, and certain forms of labor. However, beyond moral objections, these markets raise additional concerns, as said in Al Roth’s Who Gets What and Why, it’s important to remember that:...

two market fokelores that have fascinated me for a while.

bridging concepts Recently, I’ve come to realize that there is a nuanced distinction between mechanism design and market design. Initially, I conflated the two, but a deeper dive into the subject matter—prompted by a friend’s bachelor thesis—has elucidated the critical differences. Mechanism design is inherently algorithmic, centered around eliciting information and strategically manipulating incentives through mathematical formulations. It’s a toolset for creating environments where desired outcomes can be achieved based on the information asymmetries and strategic interactions of participants....