0/ A holiday economic theory reading list. Some of my favorite pieces on theory that can be read with minimal sweat, but with the maximal intellectual reward. In no particular order:

1/ Myerson 1999. "Nash equilibrium & history of economic theory." JEL. Written with characteristic Myersonian elegance. "how a few short papers by a young mathematician achieved one of the great watershed breakthroughs in the history of social science."
https://t.co/XqDtKBcrAD
2/ Blackwell & DeGroot 1986. “A conversation with David Blackwell.” Stat Science. After his PhD at 21, "There were 105 black colleges at that time & I wrote 105 letters of application." Beautiful discussion on a gamut of ideas & his intellectual life. https://t.co/vfjbPpf21B
3/ Geanakoplos 1992. “Common Knowledge.” JEP. Zuper piece, lucidly written. Lots of interesting puzzles, great for teaching. When Moriarty says "All I have to say has already crossed your mind," Holmes retorts "then possibly my answer has crossed yours." https://t.co/JQOUsPipDn
4/ Morris 1995. "The common prior assumption in economic theory.” E&P. This beauty was Stephen's first chap of PhD thesis! Does rationality imply CP? Does relaxing CP make theorizing uninteresting? Is failure of CP a failure of information processing?
https://t.co/RnCg0JIl07.
5/ Aumann & Hart 2005. “An interview with Robert Aumann." Macro Dyn. To be savored with a steaming cup of chai (or whisky on rocks). Brimming with deep moments. Aumann's view on the folk theorem, how agree to disagree came about, religion, much more.
https://t.co/xO2BnIYlhw?
6/ Rubinstein 2006. “Dilemmas of an economic theorist.” Ecmta. What are we all trying to do writing models? Rubinstein at his insightful (and provocative) best. "I do think we are simply the tellers of fables, but is that not wonderful?"
https://t.co/bYPAsWbJ8G
7/ Gilboa, Postlewaite & Schmeidler 2008. "Probability & uncertainty in economic modeling." JEP. Beautiful overview of subjective probabilities, Savage's theory of choice, limits of the sure thing principle, Ellsberg paradox, and multiple priors approach. https://t.co/HPi5pFrwf4
7/ cont See also a valiantly argued and thoughtful critique of the ambiguity/MP approach by Al-Najjar & Weinstein.
https://t.co/3jDTnzdt3c
8/ Ostrom 1999 "Coping with the tragedy of commons." Ann Rev Pol Sc. Hardin's idea arguably one of greatest insights of recent times. Ostrom elegantly & persuasively recasts the question in view of evidence from the field and the lab. Research ideas here! https://t.co/r2WEl6cUpg
9/ Rabin 1998. “Psychology and economics" JEL. A fantastic documentation of the "first wave" of behavioral economics. Heuristics, biases and their impact of decision making, and the broader quest to incorporate more psychology into economic theory.
https://t.co/OtwEP9pyks
10/ Read everything by/on Joan Robinson. Remarkable economic theorist of 20th cntry. Found a beautiful essay by her in Cambridge library "Economics is a serious subject (1932)" hard to find copy. Here is NYT on her in 1972 & thread by @Undercoverhist https://t.co/kPdnBnnH6n
11/ Haile 2020, “Structural vs. reduced form: Language, confusion, and models in empirical economics." working slides. Superb deck to understand (amongst other things) role of models in empirical work. Hope @PhilHaile can do a Zoom lecture on this soon!
https://t.co/uVTHNnTAMc
12/ Extra credit! The Economist's "School briefs". Lucidly written summaries of some great ideas of modern economics. https://t.co/Ep9PAHXCS2. And, "A mathematician's apology (1940)" by GH Hardy-- on the value of abstraction beyond immediate applications
https://t.co/PRpTdpURDM
13(end)/ Here is hoping we all continue to theorize as we end this painful year for mankind. In addition to the putting that critical structure on data, it may provide us "narratives that make us look at reality differently" (David Pearce). A promise for our polarized times.

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What do a Tory Peer, Selwyn Gummer (Lord Chadlington), David Sumner ( Sumner Group Holdings) and the Sanchez Perez family (drugs money, laundered through Gold mines) have in common?

It’s another company-saving a £50 million PPE contract shaggy dog story

Connections, connections


What a start to the story

“A bulletproof truck trundled down the road in downtown Lima, guarded by 18 policeman
They were wearing body armour & wielding high velocity rifles

No-one was taking any chances
This was a Special delivery for Peruvian Prosecutor for an anti drug trial


That was in 2011, the same year that Lord Chadlington’s daughter got married in Chadlington to Henry Allsopp.

Who was there?
Yes Kirstie Allsopp of Location, location, location and all this Covid nonsense fame) is his sister

Camilla, his Godmother

Jeremy Hunt

Cameron


Well. Come on. Lord Chadlington had been chair of the local Witney Conservative Association. It’s only fair.

Hang on. Julian Wheatland, Director of SCL Group/ Cambridge Analytica had also been chair of Witney Conservative Association...and campaigned for his mate Cameron

Are we sure Julian Wheatland and his side kick Alexander Nix were not there too @JolyonMaugham ?

I mean. They move in the same North Oxford circles.
Let's discuss how little you actually understand about economics and energy.

The first thing to understand is that energy is not globally fungible. Electricity decays as it leaves its point of origin; it’s expensive to transport. There is a huge excess (hydro) in many areas.


In other words, it can also be variable. It's estimated that in Sichuan there is twice as much electricity produced as is needed during the rainy season. Indeed, there is seasonality to how Bitcoin mining works. You can see here:

Bitcoin EXPORTS energy in this scenario. Fun fact, most industrial nations would steer this excess capacity towards refining aluminum by melting bauxite ore, which is very energy intensive.

You wouldn't argue that we are producing *too much* electricity from renewables, right?

"But what about the carbon footprint! ITS HUGE!"

Many previous estimates have quite faulty methods and don't take into account the actual energy sources. Is it fair to put a GHG equivalent on hydro or solar power? That would seem a bit disingenuous, no?

Well that's exactly what some have done.

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In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.

In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.

This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.

In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.