Results for “markets in everything”
1895 found

The economics of Lego (investment markets in everything)

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is one excerpt from a lengthy and data-intensive post, which likely offers more than you ever would wish to know:

The internet can be blamed for the size and scope of the secondary LEGO market. On the website, BrickLink, you can find almost any set that LEGO has ever produced. In addition, the site keeps records of trends in the market and value of individual pieces. This site is invaluable to a LEGO collector and has given many the ability to grow their collections. Before the advent of this site and sites like eBay, collecting LEGO required going to garage sales. There are now whole sites dedicated to buying LEGO as an investment, but that is a topic for another article.

This creation and expansion of the secondary market in conjunction with LEGO now marketing some of their products to an older audience has made the prices of some old sets increase exponentially.  On the extreme range, there is the UCS Millennium Falcon that is selling new for upwards of $2,000 (and close to $1,500 USED!). It sold for $500 new in 2007. Even non-licensed sets can run a premium, such as the Cafe Corner that was one of the original modular buildings. It was $150 new and now it can sell for over $1,000.

For pointers I thank Michael Rosenwald and Kevin Won.

Music markets in everything (the austerity opera)

by  Tyler Cowen in

A Twitter feud in June between the Estonian president and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman who questioned the impact of Estonia’s austerity measures, is being turned into an opera, US composer Eugene Birman told AFP on Wednesday.

“Our short opera will be first performed by Iris Oja and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra conducted by Risto Joost during Tallinn Music Week on April 7,” Birman, who moved from Riga to the US at age of six, told AFP.

The piece, in two movements, uses two voices, those of Krugman and Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, reflecting their exchanges on the Twitter social network.

“‘Nostra Culpa’ (Our Fault) is a short 16 minutes operatic piece which takes up the age-old economic disagreement of austerity vs. stimulus,” journalist Scott Diel, who wrote the opera’s libretto, told AFP.

Here is more and for the pointer I thank Peter Metrinko.  Major or minor key?  Here is some Eugene Birman music.  Here is Scott Diel, author of the libretto.

Hollywood markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

 The Quality Cafe doesn’t even function as a real diner anymore. It stopped serving meals in 2006, but it’s been doing pretty well for itself as a film location over the past few decades … So now you know: If you ever get the feeling that all the diners used in Hollywood movies look the same, that’s because they probably are.

There is more here.  And from elsewhere, here is a market in a feline lap surrogate.  And here is how to keep your kid’s gaming down.

Sentences about dead mouse prices (markets in everything)

by  Tyler Cowen in

At this time last year, the price of a frozen, euthanized mouse was 45 cents.

But now, that price has nearly doubled, said Diane Johnson, executive director of Operation WildLife Inc. And the 25-year-old animal rehabilitation clinic known as OWL is “struggling” as a result.

Here is more, and for the pointer I thank Matt F.

Signaling markets in everything: fashion braces

by  Tyler Cowen in

Many teens in Southeast Asia have been shelling out more than $100 for so-called black market braces, mouth gear that doesn’t serve any function other than fashion — and status. While being a brace-face stateside might be a drag, real braces cost close to $1,200 in places like Bangkok, putting dental care far out of reach for the average family. As a result, braces have become a surprising status symbol.

Here is more, via Daniel Lippman.  From Daniel, here are expensive parking spaces in Hong Kong.

Markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

Instead of long beards and robes, they wear track suits and T-shirts. Their tablets are electronic, not hewn of stone, and they hold smartphones, not staffs. They may not look the part, but this ragtag group of Israelis is training to become the next generation of prophets.

For just 200 shekels, about $53, and in only 40 short classes, the Cain and Abel School for Prophets says it will certify anyone as a modern-day Jewish soothsayer.

The school, which launched classes this month, has baffled critics, many of whom have dismissed it as a blasphemy or a fraud.

Here is more, and for the pointer I thank Asher Meir.  By the way, I found this to be an especially odd and ineffective response:

“There is no way to teach prophecy,” said Rachel Elior, a professor of Jewish thought at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. “It’s like opening a school for becoming Einstein or Mozart.”

I wonder what Bryan Caplan will think of this line:

Hapartzy can’t guarantee his course will give his students a direct line to God. But, he says, the syllabus provides the essential tools to bring out the prophet in anyone.

Here is another oddly incorrect statement:

 Roie Greenvald, a 27-year-old tennis instructor attending the classes, also showed some skepticism. While he expressed interest in the spiritual development the course offers, one crucial detail stands in the way of his religious elevation.

“I’m not going to become a prophet,” he said. “I don’t think it pays very well.”

The school takes on all comers and it is run by a Russian immigrant and software engineer.

Vending machine auction markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

…ecoATM, a firm based in San Diego…has devised and deployed in several American cities a series of ATM-like devices that will automatically analyse your mobile phone, MP3 player or phone charger, and then make you an offer for it. These machines will give you cash in hand or, if you prefer, send the money as a donation to the charity of your choice. The hope is that this hassle-free approach will appeal to people who can’t be bothered to recycle their old phone when buying a new one.

After taking fingerprints and driving-licence details (to discourage crooks from using them to fence stolen goods), ecoATM’s kiosks employ a mixture of computer vision and electronic testing (they will automatically present users with the correct cable and connector) to perform a trick that even the most committed gadget fan might struggle with—telling apart each of the thousands of models of mobile phones, chargers and MP3 players that now exist. They can even make a reasonable guess about how well-used (or damaged) a device is, which can affect its resale value. Any mistakes the machine does make are logged and used to improve accuracy in future.

Once the device on offer has been identified, the kiosk then enters it into an electronic auction. Interested parties bid, and a price is struck in seconds. This auction is the key to ecoATM’s business model, because it means the firm is acting as a broker, rather than carrying a stock of second-hand equipment which it then has to sell. If the owner of the equipment accepts the offer, the kiosk swallows the device and spits out the money.

Really.  The article is here.

Markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

Very, very sad:

Our ballistic backpack provides built-in ballistic protection in a backpack that weighs just ounces more than a non-armored backpack. RynoHide carbon nanotube armor is lined in the back panel of the backpack. Sewn into the rear of the pack, you can always be confident that the armor hasn’t been accidentally left at home and that you or your child are protected in case of the unthinkable. The backpack can be quickly brought to the front as a shield or can serve as center of mass protection while fleeing the scene of the shooting.

Maybe it is some kind of sorry joke but still a sign of an especially bad year for mass shootings.  For the pointer I thank FM.

Addendum: These seem to be real, and also fairly popular.

Snitching markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

The prisoners in Atlanta’s hulking downtown jail had a problem. They wanted to snitch for federal agents, but they didn’t know anything worth telling.  Fellow prisoner Marcus Watkins, an armed robber, had the answer.

For a fee, Watkins and his associates on the outside sold them information about other criminals that they could turn around and offer up to federal agents in hopes of shaving years off their prison sentences.  They were paying for information, but what they were really trying to buy was freedom.  “I didn’t feel as though any laws were being broken,” Watkins wrote in a 2008 letter to prosecutors.  “I really thought I was helping out law enforcement.”

That pay-to-snitch enterprise — documented in thousands of pages of court records, interviews and a stack of Watkins’ own letters — remains almost entirely unknown outside Atlanta’s towering federal courthouse, where investigators are still trying to determine whether any criminal cases were compromised.  It offers a rare glimpse inside a vast and almost always secret part of the federal criminal justice system in which prosecutors routinely use the promise of reduced prison time to reward prisoners who help federal agents build cases against other criminals.

Snitching has become so commonplace that in the past five years at least 48,895 federal convicts — one of every eight — had their prison sentences reduced in exchange for helping government investigators, a USA TODAY examination of hundreds of thousands of court cases found.  The deals can chop a decade or more off of their sentences.

That is from USA Today, from this source.  Hat tip goes to @matt_levine.

Markets in everything, high-frequency trading opera edition

by  Tyler Cowen in

London, 7th December 2012, PRNewswire – Reality TV is an old concept which we’re all familiar with. However, Alexis Kirke, a leading composer at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research at Plymouth University , and Dr Greg B Davies, Head of Behavioural and Quantitative Finance at Barclays, have taken reality performances to another level by partnering with Barclays to produce a reality opera. The performance, which was held on the 15th November 2012 at Egyptian Hall, Mansion House, focused on the drama unfolding on an “open outcry” stock trading floor, the type of trading floor on which traditionally traders shout and use hand-signals.

To view the Multimedia News Release, please click:
http://www.multivu.com/mnr/58659-barclays-opera

Thanks to melodies carefully crafted with evolutionary computer algorithms, during the performance singers sang what they wanted, when they wanted, within certain rules, just like the freedom people have in reality TV programmes. However, like a traditional opera, music was used alongside singers to demonstrate the emotion of the story.

The concept was conceived by Alexis and the opera brought to life in collaboration with
Dr Greg B Davies, Head of Behavioural and Quantitative Finance at Barclays. Alexis created the music while Greg applied his behavioural finance expertise to create the market within which the singer-traders were responding, generating the ebb and flow of emotion and money on a trading floor. Furthermore, the performance was directed by Alessandro Talevi, former winner of the European Opera Directing Prize.

To enable the music to express the emotional activity on the trading floor, Kirke composed what he calls “trading phrases” such that when most singers were buying, the harmonies between them were pleasant, and when most are selling, the harmonies clashed. When two performers sang ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ melodies for the same asset, the two sounded in time and harmonious.

‘Open Outcry’ featured 12 singers and a cellist, Joseph Spooner. The audience sat at tables among the “traders” (in the trading pit), and the conductor rang a bell to signify the market opening. As the cellist played, large screens displayed stock information and the conductor guided some aspects of the permissible actions of the singers. The performers sang one musical phrase to buy each asset and another to sell. The prices were largely driven by random market movements generated by a computer model, though the conductor did have some power to influence stock prices, as did the effect of the “trading” between the singers themselves.

I believe that is the only press release I have ever covered on this blog.  In general you press release people, unless you have something as important as Markets in Everything High-Frequency Trading Opera Edition, I don’t give a damn about what you send me!  You all bore me!  Really.