Thursday 31 October 2019

Publications, October

Following last month's exciting change of lifestyle (I launched my freelancing business full-time  check it out!), October has been the first real month of trying my wings. So far, they seem to work.

Here are all the publications:

Notes On Liberty: (see all my posts here)
American Institute for Economic Research (all my pieces here)
  • [3] 'The Mythology of Cantillon Effects', a piece, long in the making. For a while, Austrians' emphasis on so-called "Cantillon effects" (= monetary redistribution) has bothered me a while. I finally found enough time to go through Cantillon's original writing. It turns out not only does every monetary system have Cantillon effects, but Cantillon himself was analyzing an increased money supply coming from gold mines  not money-printing central banks. 
  • [4] 'Gresham's Law Is Not the Reason for the Corruption of Democracy', where I discussed the actual origin of Gresham's Law and the real meaning (no, it doesn't mean anything 'bad' drives out anything 'good'). 
  • [5] 'Yield Curve Inversions Don't Improve Investment Outcomes', a piece that I could have audaciously named "Fama-French vs Harvey"  but then only literature-savvy financial economists would have gotten it. I reported the results that esteemed financial economists (one of which a Nobel Laureate) Eugene Fama and Kenneth French found while investigating the infamously scary inversions of the yield curve: negative relative returns, for 1-, 2-, 3- and 5-year across close to all strategies. In plain English: even if yield curve inversions predict recessions (questionable), switching from stocks to bonds earns you lower returns than simply staying invested in stocks. There is no outperformance by obeying yield curve inversions. 
  • [6] 'The Limits to Hostile Takeovers' So-called Hostile "take-overs" get a bad rap; greedy capitalist investors buy up a company and do all kinds of horrible things to it (like take it apart and sell its subdivisions!), somehow "obviously" destroying wealth in the process. If that's true, I always wondered, why would anybody ever sell? 
  • [7] 'The Rise of Edinburgh, Financial Empire', where I (rather favourably) reviewed Ray Perman's latest book, The Rise and Fall of the City of Money. How could I not like it, 336 pages filled with Scottish financial history?! Banks, insurance companies, financial crises, colourful characters and easy prose. Highly recommended for anyone wanted to get a fairly comprehensive outline of Scottish banks, the 1690s to the present.
Mises Institute (see all my pieces here)
On par with my July record of 9 publications in a month, October was as good as can be expected considering the time I spent on editing and proofreading. Next month is going to blow that record out of the water!

No comments:

Post a Comment