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We offer Local Delivery (Store To Door) within Nassau, Bahamas.
Worldwide shipping is available to more than 220 countries around the world through Fedex.
Fedex Domestic Shipping Is Available To Freeport. DHL Domestic Express (Bahamas) services are available to: Abaco, Bimini, Exuma (all settlements), Eleuthera (Rock Sound & Governor's Harbour), Harbour Island, Spanish Wells, Long Island and South Andros.
Online orders are processed between 1-3 Business Days. Shipping times are estimates and commence from the date of shipping, rather than the date of order, and can take longer than expected date due to invalid address, order verification, warehousing procedures or other causes.
We do not offer same-day delivery service or in-store pickups. All shipments are handled by third-party shipping companies. For issues related to your online order, please contact us by email.
1. Absolutely no cash refunds. You have 30 days to decide if an item is right for you for a return or exchange. For returns, store credits will be issued. If you would like to or exchange an item please contact us within 30 days of delivery.
2. The following items cannot be returned or exchanged: swimwear/bodysuits, jewelry, and accessories.
3. Returned items must be in their unused condition with the original packaging. We do not accept returned items that have been worn, damaged, washed, or altered in any way..
4. All sale/discounted items are final sale. We do not accept returns/exchanges for any item shipped outside of Nassau, Bahamas.

subset: commoncrawl


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Mikindani, Tanzania:
In the small village of Mikindani on the south-eastern coast of Tanzania, World Bank-funded roads sit alongside shattered coral from dynamite fishing and poor sewerage facilities.
John, 15, points to the four ships in the distance. "They're all here because of the oil and gas", he says. "Sometimes the wazungu [foreign staff] come in on helicopters. They're not allowed to meet us; there's a ten-mile exclusion zone around their compounds in case they get kidnapped."
Like millions of teenagers mired in poverty across East Africa, John harbours dreams of change; to escape from the under-developed, politically-marginalised area he calls home, and for a better life for himself and his family.
Others offering commentary are suspicious and resentful. An elder of the village tells Think Africa Press, "Unemployment is a massive problem, only 8-10% of us work, and we are desperate…our problem is the government is over 650 km away in Dar es Salaam – they have abandoned us, they have no interest. We are the forgotten child."
He continues: "When the jobs come with the gas, then they give the jobs to outsiders, either from other areas of the mainland, or to Zambians, to Kenyans. Not to us. The gas here they will export to other areas, and here we will still be left without the basics." For many of the inhabitants of Mikindani, word of oil and gas brings little but concern about corruption.
A blessing for whom?
After fifty years of exploration, many big players in the natural resource industry are now committed to East Africa. Drilling in the region, involving some 18 companies, is taking place in nearly 30 offshore coastal areas in southern Kenya, southern Tanzania, and northern Mozambique. With only 500 oil wells drilled so far (compared to West and North Africa's 35,000), the estimated volume of the gas reserves remaining is around 100 trillion cubic feet.
Understandably, East African media is buzzing with excited articles, some predicting industrialisation and imminent wealth.
As Rob Ahearne, lecturer in International Development studies at East London University, explained to Think Africa Press, there are some obvious benefits to drilling. Every extraction company working in Tanzania must donate $100,000 a year as a basic registration fee to central government, for example, and as a result of lessons learned from gold mining, the Tanzanian government is apparently asking for 60% of all gas revenues.
All international companies must also comply with corporate social responsibility standards, which exceed domestic standards in Tanzania. Petrobras, for example, trained 100 welders in the Mtwara region, and built a port there, as well as in Tanga and Lamu in Kenya, and Pemba in Mozambique.
The pipelines could also offer employment opportunities for local people, and Petrobas Managing Director Samuel Bastos de Miranda insists that Tanzania's economic and social sectors will be greatly transformed: "We will give employment opportunity to Tanzanians. To date, Petrobras has employed about 40 Tanzanians in fields of law, accounting, engineering, procurement and human resources."
Danger danger
With these new opportunities, however, also come dangers. While press releases have detailed contracts in depth, key questions over how residents and the environment will be affected by drilling, or how disempowered communities might benefit from major finds, are not being asked as readily. These issues need to be discussed and addressed, especially given that existing taxation and fiscal distribution systems in Tanzania, and information about government spending priorities, are murky at best.
Furthermore, with new opportunities for wealth, corruption is a concern. Rent-seeking behaviour and short-term thinking is endemic in Tanzania, and a recent anti-corruption report criticising the Tanzanian government's lethargy in tackling corruption and its lack of transparency does not bode well. Drilling could exacerbate these problems, and without effective monitoring as well as open debate in the public sphere, the potential for corruption is large.
There are also legitimate concerns over the lack of clarity surrounding explorations. Regulatory environmental and social frameworks, when they exist, are not always implemented, and rarely disseminated in regional media.
One consultant told Think Africa Press, "What we saw in Selous in Tanzania, the Albertine Rift and Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda, and Virunga National Park in Rwanda, is that none of the environmental assessments or management plans have been adhered to or implemented. They sit on shelves, unread. We need to dis-incentivise corruption, arrest people, sort out our judicial system, and make it unviable to undertake short-term corrupt behaviour."
Local activist Carolyn Wahlenburg explains, "There's no public information in the press. We want jobs, we want development, but we want more information, more joining up of the issues… it's not clear who's going to benefit at all."
Community care?
Much of the coastal offshore drilling in Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique is occurring in areas suffering from poor soil, low water tables and geographical isolation, and in regions in which many residents struggle to find employment. Whether discoveries of valuable natural resources will help or hinder these communities remains to be seen.
Indeed, as a consultant for USAID and the UN Development Programme explained, there are no baseline studies of the communities along the Tanzanian and Kenyan coasts, and if there has been any community consultation, it has gone undocumented.
The message, even from educated young Tanzanians, who may stand to benefit from high salaries and good jobs, is therefore understandably sceptical with regards to the benefits for local communities. One man, co-ordinating logistics for the oil companies in Dar es Salaam, told Think Africa Press, "Sure, personally, I benefit. It's wonderful, but I do wonder if the companies have really thought about the implications of exacerbating the inequalities, which are massive here. We're assuming the wealth will trickle down. It hasn't so far. Theft and carjacking are on the menu now in Dar; people are genuinely really angry at the wealth gap."
Taxing and distribution
The onus is on the East African governments to spend oil and gas revenues equitably, and place governance priorities at the fore. In East Africa, only companies registered with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission are required to submit financial reports. And, even if the legislature were to change, Tanzanian local ministers and judges could try to block the disclosure of documents as has happened in Uganda.
Rakesh Rajani, Executive Director of Twaweza, a grassroots citizen-centered initiative, commented: "Tanzania could do with some radical transparency. The window to set up a decent resource management regime is short and closing fast, probably no more than 18-24 months."
Without increased transparency and concern both for the environment and those communities most affected by oil and gas exploration, the coastal communities and perhaps ordinary East Africans may rue the day the precious resource was discovered. That is now the challenge for governments, companies, civil society groups and activists.
Thembi Mutch is a freelance journalist, who has been published by the Ecologist, Financial Times and Daily Telegraph among others. She has worked extensively with the BBC. She holds the Prince Rainier Award for Environmental journalism 2007. She is currently finishing a PHD on gossip and media and political participation in Zanzibar. Her areas of interest include human rights, mining, and human trafficking.


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4 chicken breasts, boneless & skinless
1/2 cup flour
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Dried oregano to taste
4 Tbsp oil
4 Tbsp butter or margarine
2 cups fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 cup Marsala wine
- Pound chicken breasts between sheets of plastic wrap (or in a plastic zipper bag) until about 1/4" thickness.
- Combine flour, salt, pepper and oregano in a mixing bowl. Dredge chicken pieces in the flour, shaking off any excess.
- Heat oil and butter in a skillet over medium heat.
- Cook chicken breasts on medium heat for about 2 minutes on the first side, until lightly browned.
- Turn breasts over to cook other side, then add mushrooms to skillet.
- Cook breasts about 2 more minutes, until both sides are lightly browned.
- Continue to stir mushrooms.
- Add Marsala wine around chicken pieces.
- Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes.
- Transfer to serving plate.
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cooking Time: 30 minutes


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About our Logo
Our logo is drawn from the idea of an inkblot! Of course as with any inkblot, different people see different things in our inkblot.
We see the logo as a tree that represents life contexts and forces. And the flying bird as positivity, development and growth beyond set boundaries. Hence our motto:
For Mental Health, Educational and Potential Realisation.
Promise is registered as a Charitable Trust and is recognised under Sections 12/A and 80G of the Income Tax Act and is registered under the FCRA with the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
The Promise Foundation is a charitable trust established in 1987 to apply the behavioural sciences to promote the educational, social and economic development of the individual.
The Promise Foundation comprises a core group of psychologists, social workers, special educators and teachers, and an international network of specialist consultants who provide services in the areas of mental health, education and potential realisation.
The behavioural and cognitive sciences, anthropology and history describe fascinating avenues for human development in a multitude of areas. Yet, these opportunities and resources are not easily available to the largest sections of our populations, the poor.
Broadly, we see our multiple programmes as focused on wellbeing and the two key issues of literacy and livelihood.
The Promise Foundation's vision is to draw upon multi-disciplinary findings to inform culture-resonant programmes for the realisation of personal potentials amongst children and youth from disadvantaged homes.
Practice informs Research
The complexities of why and how deprivations impact the child, the vexing nature of passive institutions and the challenges to social change, all need better understanding. We are committed to working closely with children and youth in their homes, neighbourhoods and schools to understand the barriers to development, and to learn from the resilience of those succeed.
Research for Application
We conduct research to test existing theories and models and apply the findings of our research to inform applications that could be relevant to the developmental needs of socio-culturally and economically disadvantaged children and adolescents.
This website is designed to share our work and experiences with professionals who work for children and youth from disadvantaged backgrounds.
It is our pleasure to network with you and we hope you find the information on these pages useful. We look forward to hearing from you and to being in touch.


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...making Linux just a little more fun! |
By Javier Malonda |
The Ecol comic strip is written for escomposlinux.org (ECOL), the web site that supports, es.comp.os.linux, the Spanish USENET newsgroup for Linux. The strips are drawn in Spanish and then translated to English by the author. Text commentary on this page is by LG Editor Iron. Your browser has shrunk the images to conform to the horizontal size limit for LG articles. For better picture quality, click on each cartoon to see it full size.
These cartoons are copyright Javier Malonda. They may be copied, linked or distributed by any means. However, you may not distribute modifications. If you link to a cartoon, please notify Javier, who would appreciate hearing from you.


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Free 50ml L'Occitane Verbena Shower Gel
I received an email in my inbox that the L'Occitane Singapore website is now live. What's great is they're providing this e-coupon to redeem freebies! The first is a 50ml L'Occitane Verbena Shower Gel which you can get for free at the Takashimaya roadshow which begins on 26 August till 8 September.
You can either print this e-coupon straight from my entry or you can download it from their website at www.loccitane.com.sg. Since it is free, it means stocks are limited to the first 500 customers. I can't remember if I've tried a sample of this before but Verbena has a lovely fragrance so I might try to retrieve it if I'm in town then.
In addition, if your purchase is S$160 and above including one new Aromachologies Hair Care, you are entitled to more freebies! Too bad L'Occitane doesn't excite me much now.
I can't wait for the roadshow
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Tyler Hubbard's Daughter Spotting 'Dada' on TV Is the Sweetest Thing You'll See Today
On Wednesday night (May 1), Tyler Hubbard was in Las Vegas with his wife Hayley, and his Florida Georgia Line bandmate Brian Kelley and his wife Brittney, for the 2019 Billboard Music Awards. The Hubbards' daughter Olivia, meanwhile, was watching the show on TV — and when she spotted her dad, her reaction was simply heart-melting.
Hayley Hubbard shared the sweet video on Instagram on Tuesday (May 2). Olivia, sitting in her high chair eating dinner, spots her famous father on TV, then points and says, "Dada!" She's smiling as she turns back to the television, her eyes glued to her dad until she returns to her food.
"Okay I'm crying," Hayley Hubbard captioned the video — and, yeah, she's got a point. Seeing Olivia's little face light up at the sight of her dad is absolutely adorable.
Florida Georgia Line walked away from the 2019 Billboard Music Awards as the winners of Best Country Song, for their collaboration with Bebe Rexha, "Meant to Be." The pair also presented an award during the ceremony.
Olivia — who will be two in December — will soon have a little brother to watch awards shows with: Hayley Hubbard is pregnant with the couple's second child, a boy. She is due on Aug. 19.
"Having one kid's amazing and I know having two is going to be just as amazing, as well — even better, I guess," Tyler Hubbard says. "But I think it's one of those things you don't really know how it's gonna play out until it's playing out."
May We Suggest Some of These Great Baby Names?


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March 1, 2024
(Previously called the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology EXPO)
The event brings together leading faculty and Bioinformatics graduate students at the University of California, San Diego to discuss and present their work in this exciting area of research. This annual one day symposium offers a unique opportunity for students in the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Program, as well as students interested in Bioinformatics, to get acquainted with the wide spectrum of research topics in the field.
The event features a poster session and invited talks from UC San Diego faculty and graduate students selected from submitted abstracts.
All UC San Diego students interested in bioinformatics are invited to submit an abstract. All students in the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Graduate Program at UC San Diego in their second year or above are required to submit an abstract about their current research topic; first year Bioinformatics and Systems Biology graduate students are encouraged to submit abstracts if they have started their research, but are not required to do so. The organizing committee will review all the abstracts; the best abstracts will be selected for short oral presentations, and the remaining abstracts will be presented as posters.


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Vision To create a world-class education today to shape tomorrow's leaders
Mission To provide a world-class education that challenges all students to achieve their maximum potential in academics, arts, and athletics and prepares them to succeed in a global society
VALUES Trust - Integrity - Commitment - Collaboration - Honesty - Accountability At Oxford Community Schools we are committed to creating lifelong inquirers who are caring, contributing members of a global society. Believing that every student is unique, we offer diverse opportunities in academics, athletics and the arts. Oxford Community Schools have a true passion for education and set high expectations for both our staff and our students. Together we can help students achieve their maximum potential.


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Diamond and Yellow Sapphire Band
SKU: R0337h
- Free shipping over $2,500
- 100% Secure checkout
- Convenient returns & exchanges
- Protective packaging & insured shipping
Alternating diamond and yellow sapphire band set in 18k white gold.
- Diamond 0.50 cts. total weight approximately, Yellow Sapphire 1.00 cts. total weight approximately.
- Size 6.25.
- Call to order in different ring sizes. Price and carat weight may vary based on finger size.
We offer insured shipping through our website within the United States only. To ensure secure deliveries, we do not currently deliver to post office boxes.
If you are interested in international shipping, please contact us directly for more information.
Insured Shipping:
We ship all items via UPS and all packages are fully insured during the delivery process. An adult signature is required on all deliveries. Once a package is signed for, the insurance is no longer valid.
Shipping Rates:
For items under $2,500 we charge a flat shipping rate of $75.
For items over $2,500 we are happy to offer complimentary shipping. Please note, sales tax does not count towards item total.
Shipping Time:
Once your order is received a member of our team will contact you to arrange delivery. We ship overnight and most packages are delivered before noon.
All purchases made during our Inventory Liquidation Sale are final sale.
We have a 14-day return policy on regular priced merchandise, which means you have 14 days after receiving your item to request a return.
To be eligible for a return, your item must be in the same condition that you received it, unworn or unused, with tags, and in its original packaging. You'll also need the receipt or proof of purchase.
To start a return, please contact us at email@example.com. If your return is accepted, we will send you a return shipping label, as well as instructions on how and where to send your package. Items sent back to us without first requesting a return will not be accepted.
You can always contact us for any return question at email@example.com.
Damages and issues
Please inspect your order upon reception and contact us immediately if the item is defective, damaged or if you receive the wrong item, so that we can evaluate the issue and make it right.
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The fastest way to ensure you get what you want is to return the item you have, and once the return is accepted, make a separate purchase for the new item.
We will notify you once we've received and inspected your return, and let you know if the refund was approved or not. If approved, you'll be automatically refunded on your original payment method. Please remember it can take some time for your bank or credit card company to process and post the refund too.


text: Welcome to Fake Cop - The smooth fake operators are at it again! This time we act as fake cops, ready to show these naive ladies the strong arm of the law. I mean COCK. Girls have always had a thing for men in uniforms and now they are going to experience the fuck of their lifetime. With ruthless cops.


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The AeroTech Reloadable Motor System RMS is an aluminum cased reusable motor in kit form that is assembled by the user. You will need AeroTech RMS-29/40-120 motor hardware to build and complete the motor for many reliable flights. Motor hardware is available separately in a complete set, and also as individual parts. Important: Mid Power RMS reload kits are not compatible with High Power RMS products. This RMS motor reload utilizes RCSs exclusive Blue Thunder™ aerospace grade composite propellant formulation, which produces a gorgeous bright violet-blue flame with a minimum of exhaust smoke. Blue Thunder™ motors provide a higher level of thrust than White Lightning™ motors of the same total impulse and are perfect for high lift-off acceleration.
The AeroTech motor reload kit comes with 1 rocket motor reload. Reload kits include all internal motor components and FirstFire™ Initiators. This AeroTech motor is U.S. mailable with no hazmat fee! The sale of this high power motor to persons under 18 years of age is currently prohibited by federal law. Orders containing this item will not be shipped until proof of age (such as a copy of a driver's license) is received.
Certified by the Tripoli Rocketry Association (TRA), the National Association of Rocketry (NAR) and the Canadian Association of Rocketry (CAR).
Motor Diameter: 1.125 inches (29mm)
Casing Length: 4.875 inches (124mm)
Hardware Required: RMS-29/40-120
Total Impulse: 37 N-sec
Average Thrust: 22.5 newtons
Peak Thrust: 38.2 N-sec
Thrust Duration: 1.57 seconds
Delay Time: 8 seconds
Propellant Weight: 17.4 grams
Motor Weight: 103.9 grams
Maximum Liftoff Weight: Due to the variables involved, AeroTech/Quest currently does not list or post recommended maximum lift-off weights for their mid-power and high-power rocket motors. Instead, we recommend utilizing either the RockSim software available at www.apogeerockets.com or OpenRocket Simulator available at www.openrocket.info.


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As we've written before, the mysterious mass die-off of honey bees that pollinate $30 billion worth of crops in the US has so decimated America's apis mellifera population that one bad winter could leave fields fallow. Now, a new study has pinpointed some of the probable causes of bee deaths and the rather scary results show that averting beemageddon will be much more difficult than previously thought.
Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides, disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind study published today in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch's brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives.
The findings break new ground on why large numbers of bees are dying though they do not identify the specific cause of CCD, where an entire beehive dies at once.
When researchers collected pollen from hives on the east coast pollinating cranberry, watermelon and other crops and fed it to healthy bees, those bees showed a significant decline in their ability to resist infection by a parasite called Nosema ceranae. The parasite has been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder though scientists took pains to point out that their findings do not directly link the pesticides to CCD. The pollen was contaminated on average with nine different pesticides and fungicides though scientists discovered 21 agricultural chemicals in one sample. Scientists identified eight ag chemicals associated with increased risk of infection by the parasite.
Most disturbing, bees that ate pollen contaminated with fungicides were three times as likely to be infected by the parasite. Widely used, fungicides had been thought to be harmless for bees as they're designed to kill fungus, not insects, on crops like apples.
"There's growing evidence that fungicides may be affecting the bees on their own and I think what it highlights is a need to reassess how we label these agricultural chemicals," Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the study's lead author, claims.
Labels on pesticides warn farmers not to spray when pollinating bees are in the vicinity but such precautions have not applied to fungicides.
Bee populations are so low in the US that it now takes 60% of the country's surviving colonies just to pollinate one California crop, almonds. And that's not just a west coast problem—California supplies 80% of the world's almonds, a market worth $4 billion.
In recent years, a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids has been linked to bee deaths and in April regulators banned the use of the pesticide for two years in Europe where bee populations have also plummeted. But vanEngelsdorp, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland, says the new study shows that the interaction of multiple pesticides is affecting bee health.
"The pesticide issue in itself is much more complex than we have led to be believe," he says. "It's a lot more complicated than just one product, which means of course the solution does not lie in just banning one class of product."
The study found another complication in efforts to save the bees: US honey bees, which are descendants of European bees, do not bring home pollen from native North American crops but collect bee chow from nearby weeds and wildflowers. That pollen, however, was also contaminated with pesticides even though those plants were not the target of spraying.
"It's not clear whether the pesticides are drifting over to those plants but we need take a new look at agricultural spraying practices," says vanEngelsdorp.
Todd Woody/Quartz
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Disney Mom Scan For Payment Shirt Your everyday style essential. Made with soft, breathable fabrics for comfort all day long. Choose from a variety of designs and colors to showcase your personal style. Perfect for casual outings or layering with other pieces. Versatile, timeless, and a must-have in any wardrobe.
Disney Mom Scan For Payment Shirt
– Our Custom T-shirts are what you are looking for. Made with highly breathable and soft fabric, our T-shirts are made to cater to the child's active lifestyle.
Product details:
– Fabric: Jersey (95% polyester and 5% spandex)
– Regular fit
– Classic round neck
– Classic fit, unisex style ,Easily fit anyone and very versatile, suitable to wear in many styles and settings,at home, school, work, or the gym.
– Various sizes.REPLACEMENT/RETURN POLICY
– If you are not entirely satisfied with your purchase, we offer a replacement within 30 days at no additional cost if the item is defective, damaged, or if we made an error on our end. We strive to process replacements as quickly as possible.
– In the event that you are unsatisfied with your purchase for any reason, please contact us to discuss a solution. Providing us with a proof, such as an image, will make it easier for us to resolve your issue. If you have any questions, please send us a message. Thank you!
Disney Mom Scan For Payment Shirt
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Our shirts are made when ordered. Due to the time variability of on-demand manufacturing, we offer 2 options for how quickly you want to receive your order. You can select from the following choices in checkout.Standard Shipping ($4.99+)
- Orders using this option generally arrive 5-10 days (U.S. orders) and it takes 2 weeks for International orders after being manufactured and shipped. (See notes below)
- Manufacturing times for this option vary more around busier times of the year or during extreme circumstances such as covid-19 shutdowns.
Shipping and expedited manufacturing ($19.99+) (U.S. Only)
- Orders using this option jump to the front of the manufacturing queue which can generally save a couple days (or more during busier times of the year).
- It's highly recommended to use this option if you are ordering for a specific event or holiday.
- Orders using this option generally arrive 2-3 days after being manufactured and shipped. (U.S. only)
- Orders using expedited manufacturing will be printed when the next batch of orders are processed which can vary depending on seasonality and other factors.
Please Note:
- We do not guarantee shipping or arrival dates.
- Manufacturing during the majority of the year takes between 1-5 business days (Mon-Fri) however can take more than a week during the heaviest shopping times of the year. Extreme circumstances such as covid-19 may delay order manufacturing and/or shipping by an additional week or more.
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Since introducing the cutting, laminating, and bronzing machines to the global market, Kuntai Machinery has successfully developed many innovative machines that are recognized around the world. With several well-known machines already on the market, it seems extremely unlikely that a new company could simply distract customers like this firm. So far, it has managed to build up respectable clients despite entering the market not too long ago. With over 20 years of experience, this company has made leaps and bounds to become one of the leading machine suppliers worldwide. Introducing quality and long-lasting machines has been the company's motto since its inception, and to this day, they have managed to keep their maxims alive effectively. So far, more than 10,000 machines have been delivered. Despite several devices on the market, the company has managed to attract some attention in the machine world due to the impressive design and flawless performance of the products. Apart from the above products, the company has introduced exciting and refreshing machines that have astonished many.
As both the labor cost and the price of raw materials are increasing consistently, it is essential to have the Fabric Circle Cutting Machine to minimize the overall operating cost. This machine is made to optimize both workforce and material saving during manufacturing. This will aid manufacturing companies greatly in keeping up with the profitability levels. If the accuracy and quality of the product, which is packed to customers, is less, then the clients will raise a complaint. Most manufacturers are forced to use this machine to make high-quality products to keep away from this issue. If the quality and quantity are not adequate, this can negatively affect a company's success. Only here, this type of machine helps manufacturers to produce quality products.
Various machines are required to make the manufacturing process efficient and straightforward. Choosing Kuntai Machinery's Hot Melt Spraying Laminating Machine is one of them. This machine is currently used in various industries to make quality products to facilitate work and increase productivity. Energy-efficient, technically advanced, durable, easy to use, non-disruptive laminating, very simple and user-friendly user guidelines, easy maintenance, etc., are some of the extra features and services that come with this amazing machine that makes laminating so much easier. There is so much more connected to this incredible machine.
With so much competition in the market, quality and unique products are the two weapons for the leading players in the market. With the Car Seats Hydraulic Cutting Machine from this company, users can be assured of the quality of the car seats. The design and features of this machine give users the confidence that every car seat that leaves their manufacturing facility is quality and long-lasting. Although this machine is sometimes available in a broader price range, it offers customers superior products that will eventually help them grow their automotive business.
About Kuntai Machinery
Kuntai Machinery, one of the most popular companies, has brought innovative, stylish, and powerful cutting, laminating, and bronzing machines to the market for more than 15 years. It has long been supplying excellent devices to quench the thirst of many manufacturing companies. All the machines they provide are extremely well built and the best in terms of performance.
Media ContactCompany Name: Kuntai MachineryContact Person: Job LuEmail: Send EmailPhone: +86 18261228899Country: ChinaWebsite: http://www.kuntai-group.com


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Company currently beta testing rights management application ahead of April 30 live launch.
Paris-based film financier Backup Media has announced it will launch its dedicated film content and rights management software Movie Chainer on April 30, two weeks ahead of the Cannes Film Festival.
The innovative, cloud-based application — developed in-house by Backup in response to its own needs — enables audiovisual rights-holders to track contracts, generate exploitation and availability reports and calculate revenue splits and repayment schedules in a highly synthesised and visual manner.
All the user has to do is input the initial contract details. "That's the sort of job interns end up doing so we've made it as intern friendly and proof as possible," commented Backup's project developer Jean Roman.
Headaches over the allocation of receipts, he says, will become a thing of the past thanks to detailed distribution waterfall graphics enabling the user to project at which point and how much a film's various participants should be repaid at the click of a mouse.
"The App is somewhat revolutionary in that it makes invisible data a lot more visible. Anyone struggling with time and too much information can easily dig up and synthesise layers of information and transform that into real and viable intelligence," said Backup's Roman.
A handful of sales companies and producers are already beta testing the new software ahead of its launch in April.
The Cannes Marché's database and networking platform Cinando will host and support the April launch – enabling Cinando users to seamlessly transfer their data over to the Movie Chainer system.
The first live version of Movie Chainer will be available free-of-charge to all industry professionals for a maximum of three projects.
A demo version and presentation video of the software is available on www.moviechainer.com as of today (Feb 9).
"There are vital aspects in the life of media distribution that are completely out of reach of some people who don't have the infrastructure to help them manage the exploitation of their projects at full strength — with Movie Chainer we are offering an opportunity to avoid these situations," commented Backup co-founder Joel Thibout.


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Saturday, March 22, 2014
A grand unified theory of behavioral economics?
Tim Harford has a great article about the backlash against behavioral economics. You should read it.
There are two main knocks against behavioral econ. These are:
1. There is no "grand unified theory" of behavioral econ; instead it's a bunch of specific little theories for different situations. What we want is a widely applicable, unified theory of economic behavior.
2. The behaviors produced in a psychology lab are extreme effects produced by extreme, coordinated manipulations; in the real world, lots of stuff is going on, and what we care about is the average.
I never really understood Critique #1, because maybe there just isn't a grand unified theory of economic behavior; maybe it really is just a bunch of little situational things. But #2 does indeed seem like a big problem, because if you don't have external validity, you're spinning your wheels.
Now a thought occurs to me. What if Critique #2 contains the secret to answering Critique #1?
Suppose that there are a whole ton of different behavioral biases, and that these vary across time, across people, and across situations so much that even with a billion lab experiments we couldn't find them all. Only once in a while will the forces be aligned to make one behavioral bias dominate; most of the time, the net effect of all the biases will be unpredictable by the outside observer. When you have an unpredictable mishmash like that, you have to model it as a stochastic process. In other words, if it's too complicated to explain deterministically, then you treat it as randomness.
So what if psychology usually just ends up injecting randomness into our decisions? What would that theory look like? I think it would look like a Random Utility Model.
For those who don't know, Random Utility discrete-choice models are one of economic theory's great success stories. They've been around for over forty years, they're widely used in the private sector, and they've already won a Nobel Prize for their creator, Dan McFadden (currently of UC Berkeley). In a legendary example of theoretical badassery, McFadden used the model to predict the number of people who would ride the new BART train in the San Francisco Bay Area. The government predicted that 15% of Bay Area commuters would use BART; McFadden's model predicted 6.3%. The actual number? 6.2%.
(Next time someone tells you that "economic theory can't predict anything", tell them about McFadden and the BART.)
A Random Utility model treats human decision-making as if it has two components - a predictable, deterministic component, and a random component. But if there are a huge jumble of behavioral effects going on, it seems to me that outside of the lab, that's usually just going to be observationally equivalent to randomness in the objective function. Which is exactly a Random Utility model.
So what if Random Utility models are the grand unified theory of behavioral economics? What if the upshot of all of these psychological effects is simply that the random component of utility is partially irreducible - that there must be a random component of utility in almost any theory if that theory is going to have a chance of predicting human behavior accurately? Maybe sometimes the randomness is so negligible that people act like homo economicus, and sometimes the random part dominated so much that their decisions are completely unpredictable with science?
In other words, maybe the Grand Unified Theory of Behavioral Economics was invented and validated more than 40 years ago, and we just didn't recognize it for what it was?
Anyway, I'm sure someone has thought of this idea long before me, and I'm sure it won't be long before a commenter provides me with a link. But old or new, it's still a really interesting idea, which I think has the potential to answer both of the main criticisms of behavioral economics.
47 comments:
1 It seems reasonable there is no grand theory, or at least no grand theory without much more of knowledge of the range of individual behaviors
2 Seems virtually irrelevant as the assumptions of economics are at least if not more far fetched than anything determined by these experiments
People are risk adverse, but at the same time are subject to framing errors that may neutralize that bias. That doesn't mean the bias doesn't exist or can't be exploited, only that it may be subject to fluctuation, and even if it can't be predicted, it may be measurable and countermeasures may be taken to guard against it. What it doesn't presume is that randomness always cancels, even if may in eternity.Indeed, Noah. I agree completely. And when the random utility framework is extended to an environment with strategic inter-depedence, you get the QRE.
One interpretation of QRE is bounded rationality. However, in their original paper, McKelvey and Palfrey (http://fisher.osu.edu/~schroeder.9/AMIS900/McKelvey1995.pdf) suggest a more general interpretation of a statistical model of choice, i.e., the game-theoretic analogue to McFadden. One may remain agnostic as to the cause of divergence from pure best-response
Perhaps QRE is a general model that captures all behavioral phenomena in environments with strategic interaction. It also presents a simple model of how heterogeneous decision-makers interact without falling into the swamps of despair (http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-swamp-of-dsge-despair.html). Even a small amount of noise at the individual level can aggregate up to a large divergence from Nash at the group level. One players noise affects the expected payoffs and, hence, the choice probabilities of every other player. This feeds back into the original person's payoff function and changes her choice probability again. All of this adds up to a fixed point, and the resulting divergence at the group-level can be significant. This is similar to Akerlof and Yellen's G.E. result for "near rationality" (http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic500592.files/akerlof%20yellen.pdf).
As you pointed out in a recent blog post, many of the current DSGE models aren't really "GE", as they involve Nash equilibria. Perhaps there is room for DSQRE? Could make for a really interesting behavioral New Keynesian model, with endogenous price-stickiness. If you want to write this paper with me, email me!- Anonymous5:25 PM
Neuroeconomists have been all over this for a while, and I think it's a great idea. Indeed, as far as I can tell, some of the top neuroeconomic research recently has gone into appropriately parameterizing random utility models and finding neural correlates. See for example, this literature review on neuroeconomics
or some of the work of Joshua Gold
There is even some work on dynamic decision making which suggests behavior approximately similar to stochastic dynamic programming: see
That said, most of this research is on rather simple situations, in which the choice set and environment are tightly controlled and so one might worry about external validity in this as well. The worry here is not that decisions outside of controlled environments will not be subject to randomness, which they certainly will be, but that in some cases one bias or another may predominate in a way which makes the results far from those which would be implied by something like rationality but with a noise term. The random distribution will then be centered not around a rational outcome but some other mode which one will need a separate theory to predict (maybe one of the popular behavioral theories from the existing 'bag of tricks,' maybe something new). This all gets even more complicated when people interact.
So while randomness may be helpful to allow us to deal with many small conflicting influences (such as those imposed in priming experiments, where you get predictable responses to absurdly specific environmental stimuli which in real life would likely be distributed somewhat randomly), it may not be sufficient in cases where biases appear stronger or more universal, as with time preferences in the hyperbolic discounting literature. Surely there will be some heterogeneity and randomness there, but my guess is that it will not be centered around predictions that would be made by an exponential discounting model. Noah,
Your discussion about McFadden is very interesting and opens up lots of possible avenues for research.
As for your complaint about the complaints about behavioral ec, I don't think you are being completely fair. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn pointed out that all scientific theories have anomalies. Indeed, it's the existence of anomalies that leads scientists to reject the existing paradigm and create a new theory. Consider, for example, the efficient markets hypothesis and the capital asset pricing model. These are theories that attempt to explain not all economic behavior, and certainly not a grand unified theory of economics, but one discrete phenomenon - the formation of securities prices on public markets. As it turns out, there are lots of anomalies in the real world data, variations from the results predicted by the theories. Studying these anomalies has been the key intellectual endeavor in finance for the past 30 years.
That brings us to behavioral economics. Where are the anomalies in the results predicted by behavioral economics? Forget about a grand unified theory. Let's just look at one corner of the world - securities prices. Does behavioral economics provide a compelling theory about the formation of securities prices that we can test against observable data? I think the answer, so far, is no. That's the complaint. Maybe McFadden provides the missing link, I don't know, that would then be a new paradigm, as Kuhn puts it. So far, though, behavioral economics has failed to do that.The "modular mind" contribution of evolutionary psychology suggests that our minds have many competing utilities at any given time. In a macroscopic view outside of a lab, this would present as some stochastic factor.
Robert Kurzban's book "Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite" discusses this theory.
Under an ABM framework, it would be possible to use the competing biases discovered in lab settings into individual agents behaviors. In the observation environment, this would appear as a single random process when in fact it is many little random processes. In the modular framework, this would allow us to model the macroscopic changes in agent behavior over time as they learn — say some part of them becomes "more rational," it would narrow the distributions in the modules modules which are affected by such type of rationality.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Everyone-Else-Hypocrite-Evolution/dp/0691154392Hmmm. As Editor-in-Chief of the new Review of Behavioral Economics I suppose I should put two cents in, or at least in the spirit of no grand unified theory, a bunch of scattered remarks.
So, on McFadden, interestingly he is currently studying health economics from what can only be called a behavioral approach. I think looking at his random utility and the QRE extensions by various folks might be a way of linking neoclassical and behavioral. Maybe. One sign of this may be that QRE can be viewed as s subset of bounded rationality, and that was the brainchild of the real father of behavioral econ, Herbert Simon, whose Nobel Prize in 78 got quite a few people upset, and he always maintained his distance from econ due to the dominance of orthodoxy. His PhD was in in public administration (many claim it was poli sci, but not quite), and at his death he was in four departments at Carngegie-Mellon, none of them econ: computer science (he was a father of AI), psychology, cognitive science, and management.
I do not know where you got your #2 point from. I do not see that in Harford's article. What I see there is him quoting various people on #1, and that would be Dan's point: where is the theory of securities prices? As it is, I do not see #2 as a problem at all in behavioral econ. Sure, there are some oddball experiments, but while psychologists do some odd ones, and also allow for lying to subjects, behavioral econ ones tend to be more garden variety, more economically oriented, and there is a ban on lying to subjects.
I might add one more point: there is more than just psych and econ in behavioral econ. It is already implicit in Kahneman's point that the BIT experiments are really social psychology, not behavioral econ. Sociology is in there, but remembering Simon, so is sociology, and so is computer science and even forms of math, harking back to Simon. I shall let this sit for now.
Barkley RosserRepliesI suppose I should put two cents in, or at least in the spirit of no grand unified theory, a bunch of scattered remarks.
I don't think the two are incompatible at all!
I do not know where you got your #2 point from. I do not see that in Harford's article.
I got it from the 2009 Levine paper that he links to. It's also something I've heard a ton.
As it is, I do not see #2 as a problem at all in behavioral econ.
I see it as a problem in applying it. I don't think understanding the psychological forces that influence decision-making is unimportant; I think it's very important. But if there are a whole lot of such forces and they vary widely from person to person and from situation to situation, then their ultimate effect will often (though not always) look like noise to observers...
So although I think it's fine if there's no grand unified theory that applies across a huge number of situations, my intuition says that random utility might be as close as we can possibly get to such a theory...Noah,
Thanks for the source, but I guess I find this an odd complaint. What are these "extreme" cases or examples that have people like Levine upset? (I did not link to his 2009 paper).
Probably a central source of the lack of unified theory is that psychology has long been known for lacking a unified theory, so even ignoring all the other stuff I pointed out as entering in, that alone is a major source of the lack of a clear unifed theory. However, I think it is probably an exaggeration to say that there is a GUT for standard neoclassical econ or for that matter to Dan, even for securities prices. Right, we have general equilibrium, which for macro turns into DSGE, with some sort of full rationality involved. But even in finance, Fama has abandoned CAPM for his three or four factor model, even if he continues to hang on to some version of EMH.
I would say that what behavioral econ is supposed to do is to explain human behavior in the economic realm, pure and simple. Now one way to go at it is indeed to start with the standard approach but then to come at things empirically looking for regularities in the deviations from that, although many are annoyed with the plethora of these. But there are some that seem to hold up pretty well, even if we do not have a GUT explanation for all of them and even if they do not hold up perfectly and may change over time.
This applies to hyperbolic discounting. It simply became irrefutable empirically, although there continues to be debate about the precise mathematical form that works best or most generally empirically, and I note that it was George Akerlof who resurrected research on this in his Ely lecture on "Procrastination and Obedience" from Strotz's founding of it in 1956, even if it is now Laibson everybody identifies it with.
Another such finding that seems to hold up pretty widely, even if there is not a GUT why it does, is the strong empirical tendency to the downward stickiness of nominal wages. I note that in fact policymakers have deeply adopted this, with this the foundation again for Akerlof with Dickens and Perry arguing by returning to standard econ for a the micro virtue of a macro 2% inflation target, which George's wife, you know who, sold to Greenspan in 1996, from whence it went global as a general central bankers' target, with even now when that wife is now the top of them all at her first press conference after chairing an FOMC meeting a central issue being how the Fed is viewing that target: is it a ceiling or a target that could be approached from above?- CA1:45 PM
"Another such finding that seems to hold up pretty widely, even if there is not a GUT why it does, is the strong empirical tendency to the downward stickiness of nominal wages."
I am not so sure how strong the empirical tendency is regarding nominal (as opposed to real) stickiness. Here is Roger Farmer's view:
http://rogerfarmerblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/keynes-and-sticky-pricestime-to-think.html FWIW, psychology will never have a "grand unified theory", and so neither will anything based on it (sociology, economics).
Why? Because psychology is biology. And biology has only one grand unifying theory, and that is evolutionary theory.
And the thing about evolutionary theory is that it predicts that you'll have a whole lot of idiosyncratic, random-looking jerry-rigged stuff.
Which is what we see in psychology.
- Anonymous11:46 PM
I think you misunderstand complaint #1. It's not that there's no grand unifying theory, it's that there's nothing tying behavioral together as a field. 'Labor' right now is a large umbrella, including work on education and crime. IO similarly now includes empirical work on auctions. Development is a real mish-mash. But they're united by shared methodological concerns. Behavioral, on the other hand, has nothing like this. The methodologies are all across the board, and the theory side of it is so weakly tied to the empirics (and kind of sparse itself) that it can't tie the field together either.
I get the feeling you might want to celebrate this, because it lends the field a sort of anything-goes characteristic that can be very appealing (and I'm not saying that's a uniformly bad thing!). But it also makes it extremely hard to police quality, because everyone's work is so far away from everyone else's. So you have a scenario where empty-carbs papers (say, measuring some bias and then calling it a day) can still end up in the AER. Of course, there's a lot of great behavioral work, and every field has it's weak points, but behavioral seems to have an unusually high tolerance for mediocre work that leads to this criticism.RepliesA.,
Behavioral is not a "field" in the sense that labor or IO or macro of finance. It is an approach to economics as a whole that applies across these many sub-fields, although perhaps not so much to theory or econometrics, which may be the issue about the lack of a GUT. So, we have behavioral labor, behavioral IO, behavioral macro, behavioral finance, etc.- Anonymous8:59 PM
Barkley, I agree that it isn't really a coherent field, that's partially what I meant to say. But, as you're aware of, there is a lot of behavioral work that isn't in a particular field like labor, macro, etc. (for example, say, Fehr's work on altruism), so I think saying that it's an 'approach' and not its own field isn't quite accurate, either. And there's a sort of revealed preference here in your case: As you've reminded us, you edit the Review of Behavioral Economics, for which there's some demand. My guess is that an approach-minded Review of Natural Experiments wouldn't garner the same level of demand, although that's just speculation...
As an aside, I'm pretty far away here from even talking about a 'grand unifying theory,' though--we can dismiss that as ridiculous criticism out-of-hand. I think that Noah is making a legitimate criticism of the push for behavioral work (the one that I'm noting here) look absurd by reducing it to "there's no grand unifying theory." A.,
I openly confess my perhaps not completely neutral interest based on my role with ROBE. However, I would also note that it has never been the case that behavioral economics and experimental economics were or are identical, although clearly there is a lot of overlap. Herb Simon never ran any experiments to the best of my knowledge, or at least not in the early years when he was first propounding bounded rationality. As it is, he published on the order of 1000 articles, so I do not know of all that he did. And, going the other way, there are definitely members of the Economic Science Association, the main organization for experimental economists, who would strongly deny that they are behavioral economists, contending accurately that the results of their own experiments support more conventional economic theories.- Anonymous2:50 AM
Barkley, I'm a little confused as to the point of that comment. I wasn't saying that people who use experimental methods are all in the behavioral camp?
Expanding on the last comment a bit, I interpreted your first reply as saying that 'behavioral economics' isn't really a strict field in the way that labor is, so one shouldn't expect the sort of field organization that we get with labor. My counter to that line of reasoning is that there's a lot of work that's purely 'behavioral,' and there's clearly some level of self-organization, so that's not a valid excuse for the lack of quality-policing. Tell me if I've misinterpreted your first reply, though. A.,
I am all for "quality-policing" if that is what is bothering you. I do not see that as being tied to whether or not behavioral econ is a "field" like labor econ or not.
(Next time someone tells you that "economic theory can't predict anything", tell them about McFadden and the BART.)
but what about the times when it didn't work?
But the problem with behavior economics is that the field is so broad and all encompassing it's hard to know what a theory is supposed to show and prove. For theoretical physics, for example, we know that a theory of everything is supposed to unify quantum effects with relativity. How would we know if a proposed unified theory of behavior finance is the right one if we can't describe the problem in the first place.Human behavior evolved on a tribal scale. The basic model of exchange of goods and services within tribes and between tribes is best understood. Behavior of individuals has some effect but it is always in the context of the social group. The individual is an inappropriate level to model human economic behavior.
The advent of agriculture only 10,000 years ago changed the scale of economics by adding an empire level atop the tribal level. Behavior at this level is not biologically evolved but culturally evolved. There are multiple cultural solutions to problems and cultures are flexible and faster at adaptation. Trying to understand behaviors at this level is more problematic because it often depends of the whims of elites.RepliesWe did not get empires until 5,000 years after the invention of agriculture. It was the appearance of the Bronze Age that was associated with the rise of the great agro-hydraulic civilizations in monsoon regions on great river systems such as the Tigris-Eurphrates, the Nile, the Indus, and the Hwang Ho that allowed for the appearance of cities dependent on long distance trade with many people not directly involved in agriculture, cities with temples, palaces, and granaries, with the palaces holding go-king-emperors who oversaw the great infrastructures systems of dams and irrigation canals that lay at the base of these systems, from which since we have had continuously recorded history.
DeleteAgriculture spawned the first social units that were larger than tribal units. As you point out, it took over 5000 years for units to increase to the size of what we would call a modern empire. Before 10,000 years ago, there were no units larger than a tribe. The number and size of the units began to increase from about 10,000 years ago. My point is that humans evolved for a social structure much smaller than our modern cities. Biological evolution and behavior evolution have had insufficient time to catch up. Much of the basic human behavior is best understood at the tribal level with a coating of cultural knowledge on top. Economics is far more than the sum of individual behaviors. Individual behavior is influenced by the dynamics of the social groups and further altered by cultural norms.
This may involve what I call, for lack of a better term, a second level self-referential problem. 1st order - the classic 'All Cretans are Liars', and the 2nd order, bet on the winner of the beauty contest, not by who is most beautiful, but who the judges will vote is most beautiful.
Any behavioral economics that makes investment or other predictions will be used by other players to gain an advantage. They will do so by guessing how other players will use the system.
Behavioral economics would be useful, but a general theory would have to incorporate how other players would use the theory. Hence the conundrum.- Anonymous12:37 PM
What if or arrogance precludes us from grasping that behavior simply cannot be modeled? For example, imagine a child who is programmed by parents and culture to hold racist views. The child moves away, becomes educated and enlightened, and rejects the earlier programming. Yet, under stress, does that programming ever really go away completely? Or will there always be internal conflict which, in turn, drives behavior unpredictably? We are a species full of internal conflicts and inconsistency. How can any of this possibly be modeled?
ReplyDelete Your link:
Has a lot of overlap with this:
In fact, the equation
Pj = exp(v_j)/(sum_k exp(v_k))
is exactly the partition function
Ps = exp(-e_s/kT)/Z
This analogy with thermodynamics (via information theory) is exactly what I have been looking at; see for example:
Entropy and microfoundations
How money transfers informationI think behavioral finance has done its job (unmasking the ideology of financial markets superpower efficiency), but there's much to do about BE in other areas.
By the way, I would very much appreciate some feedback on this idea: "the EMH as it is interpreted today faces a conflict to refute simultaneously two of the most relevant concepts in the behaviorist literature: the excess volatility (Shiller 1981) and the limits of arbitrage (Shleifer and Vishny 1997)."
Thks!On the matter of behavioral fin I shall spout some stuff that I have heard from high level quants with power that is not published and will only get published once indeed it has stopped being used, indeed this has to some extent already happened and I think there have been some articles on this in the pop press here and there.
So, one thing is the idea that many investment funds look at three time horizons. One is the high frequency one, within a day, with the relevant time scales far shorter than that, even down to nanoseconds. This is the world of econophysics, algorithms with essentially no theory but that have been found to work on bid-ask-spread-volume relations and other such things.
The next is the intermediate time horizon, which might extend up to a year or even somewhat longer, but may be at its most important at about six months or so. This is the real focus for behavioral finance in the sense of focusing on anomalies. They dominate at this time horizon.
In the long run, when we are all dead, it is neoclassical city a la Fame, EMH, random walk, la de da.
A sideshow on this is how funds do behavioral anomalies. So, those that do this will in effect have a trading algorithm at any particular time that is a weighted combination of behavioral anomalies that have been found by the people/computers in the firm, with the weights being a combination of how recently the anomaly was found, with that decreasing as time passes, and how strong the anomaly appears. So, the algorithm is constantly changing as new anomalies are found and then gradually decline in importance for the algorithm until they disappear from it. My understanding is that in recent years there has been essentially a massive war of data crunching by firms competing to find the latest usable anomalies to stuff into their behavioral algrorithms. I stand to be corrected if this has now completely disappeared, as this is not the most recent information, although not exactly ancient and indeed from very knowledgeable and credible sources who will remain anonymous, although some of them are people many reading this would have heard of.Replies- charles Monneron2:08 PM
I heard the same b***t years ago from "high level quants" that where arguing that their more sophisticated valuation models for derivatives enabled them to arbitrage the market, whereas it was in fact a way to take big carry positions while keeping risk indicators low (and reap big bonuses while the music played…).
When the dust settles, one will usually find that :
HFT = sophisticated obfuscation of front running
intermediate time horizon = sophisticated obfuscation of insider trading The long run is not the domain of neoclassical economics. Believing in that crap will lose you money over the 5-year time horizon, let along the actual long run.
The long run is the domain of technological prediction and social prediction. Figure out what technologies are going to take over, figure out who's competent at making and marketing them, that's one of the two bases of long run investing. There's also "figure out who's going to set up a monoopoly", which I think is probably even more effective.
Charles is also correct on one point. HFT is front-running. It's illegal but nobody's enforcing the law.Oh, and the medium run? The medium run is all about exploiting other people's ignorance. In a sense, so is the long run, but it's different ignorance. Medium-run ignorance is people who haven't looked up the internal stats for company X, long-run ignorance is people who haven't researched peak oil.
- Anonymous6:38 AM
What always amuses me, as someone trained in experimental economics, is how other economists make assertions about the results of experimental economics which try to explain these results away. They often fail to realise that these assertions: a) are testable and b) usually have already been tested.
Random utility is old hat- a multitude of tests have been done of decision theory using more general models and RU, like its deterministic counterpart, is probably false:
Example: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0335.00147/abstract
Everyone here seems to love QRE. At first glance, one can see why- it seems to account for everything. Unfortunately this is because, at least in iits original form, it has no testable implications.
c.f. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/aea/aer/2008/00000098/00000001/art00007 - Anonymous11:30 AM
It is possibly to show using Agent Based Models (ABM) that choosing randomly (preference for variety) is the rational choice. You could probably do the same using some classic old school mathematics. The reasons are the person has preference for variety or the persons optimal choice depends on the choices of other persons. The El Farol bar problem is probably the most known example of this.
ReplyDelete Noah, I am not sure that what you are looking is a unified theory. It seems to me that you are thinking of aggregation: a utility function that can summarize the behavior of heterogeneous individuals with different cognitive biases. But perhaps the message of behavioral economics is that this is not kosher, and that instead we should rely on agent-based models in which individuals are satisficing (rather than optimizing). I believe this was Herbert Simon's view. The role of behavioral economics is then to help us endogenize the individual aspiration levels.
ReplyDeleteBefore this post completely expires, it's already about 70 in blog years, I just want to add my big point -- It's more just pure huge ignorance and inexpertise in a supercomplicated world than fancy evolutionary behavioral theories, but ignorance and inexpertise are rarely ever offered as big explanations or factors because they aren't fancy enough. You can't embarrass yourself, and guarantee no pub, offering an explanation that's not intellectual sounding, relating to the evolutionary and psychology theories of Harvard and Princeton professors. Just to say hey, hello? hello? survey after survey, massive ignorance and inexpertise, anybody there? You guarantee no pubs, no tenure, hello Southwest Montana State!
For more on this see:
http://richardhserlin.blogspot.com/2014/02/important-points-that-are-rarely-made_2.htmlNote that a few recent papers are taking up the "grand theory" aspect of behavioral economics:
1) Axiomatics: http://restud.oxfordjournals.org/content/79/4/1591.abstract?sid=d5419d96-194a-4e43-b84f-b9e014f85cb6
2) General equilibrium: http://restud.oxfordjournals.org/content/78/2/613.abstract?sid=3736b4c8-2111-4671-88dd-3d83f2ebce36I think if you want a GUT this is it. I think there may be improvements based on information transfer through networks and how people learn. I think in reality most people just look at what other people do and copy it because they don't have the intellectual resources to devote to most of their decisions. This is why branding works. But overall I think it is likely gilding the lily if all you want is a simple universal model of utility.
ReplyDelete- Anonymous6:52 PM
Good to see interest in RUT finally and sorry am late to the party. The truth is people make choices with error on some occasions and not others and that is often where RUT has been "disproved". Major advances in the pipeline now - ABM has been mentioned but also rrsponse time models. The latter are the ONLY model that has gone successfully all the way from looking at rat brains all the way up to humans in real choice situations - it provides the first rovust neurological validarion that RUT (essentially descriptive) is actually what people do in their heads. I'm a co author on two in press papers on this - see http://scholar.google.com.au/citations?hl=en&user=8S4HqYoAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&pagesize=100 and terryflynn.net


text:
16 Things You Don't Know About Polio
1. A pesticide common in the 1800's was called Paris Green. A green liquid because it was a combination of copper and arsenic or lead and arsenic. Some of the most toxic substances known to humankind. This super toxin was also used as a dye, in many items, including wall paper and paint. It was the sole focus of murder mystery novels at the time, as arsenic was known to be a very efficient way to stage a murder "for unknown reasons", as arsenic kills but is hard to detect after the victim succumbs to the poison. http://bit.ly/2urZvqu and http://bit.ly/2wL5tPT
2. This pesticide worked by causing neurological damage in the bugs, causing organ failure.
3. Polio consists of symptoms synonymous with neurological damage, causing organ failure.
4. Heavy metal poisoning from lead, mercury and other similar heavy metals manifest lesions on neurological tissues, meaning the toxin destroys the nerve/communication pathways connecting the brain to the organs in the body. http://bit.ly/1OLcFgG
5. Polio victims present lesions on neurological tissue, that cause the organs to malfunction all around the body. (lungs, heart, nerves that control walking etc)
6. Polio outbreaks hit throughout the summer, only during pesticide spraying times. (not the sunless and damp winter/spring seasons regarding other disease outbreaks)
7. Polio had and has NO ability to spread from infected victims to the uninfected. Polio infected clusters of people in the exact same areas, suddenly and swiftly. http://bit.ly/1P6zShV
8. Parents report finding their children paralyzed in and around apple orchards. One of the most heavily pesticide sprayed crops of the time (with lead arsenate or copper arsenate) were apple orchards. http://bit.ly/2wL5tPT
9. President Roosevelt became paralyzed over night while at a summer retreat, which contained many crops, including apple orchards. He also swam the day prior in a bay that was heavily polluted by industrial agricultural run off. Summer again is when these paralysis based outbreaks would occur, as spraying of crops with extremely toxic chemicals would intensify as the crops hit a fully mature state. The pesticides we're talking about were DESIGNED to terminate nervous system function in the bugs, which is "polio"……..which is and always has been complicit poisoning of the population by industry, government, science and medicine. Anyone who doesn't understand the perpetual historical record of the ruling 1% poisoning and exterminating the "lesser halves" need to investigate the documented science of eugenics, which can be started by clicking here to watch a very well made video on the subject.
10. Dr. Ralph Scobey and Dr. Mortind Biskind testified in front of the U.S Congress in 1951 that the paralysis around the country known as polio was being caused by industrial poisons and that a virus theory was purposely fabricated by the chemical industry and the government to deflect litigation away from both parties. http://bit.ly/1DKDb3v
11. At this added link (click here) we have the actual testimony of Dr. Ralph Scobey to Congress, explaining how the government, chemical companies and the media were trying to steer the public astray as to the causes and the treatment of the paralysis falsely blamed on a virus that didn't cause paralysis. The chemical companies were poisoning the American people and some people from academia were making accusations that this was being done purposely to increase the power of a corrupt government, over the resulting dysfunctional and toxic masses.
12. In 1956 the AMA (The American Medical Association) instructed each licensed medical doctor that they could no longer classify polio as polio, or their license to practice would be terminated. Any paralysis was now to be diagnosed as AFP (acute flaccid paralysis) MS, MD, Bell's Palsy, cerebral palsy, ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), Guillian-Barre, meningitis etc etc. http://bit.ly/1Ml3rpX This was orchestrated purposely to make the public believe polio was eradicated by the polio vaccine campaign but because the polio vaccine contained toxic ingredients directly linked to paralysis, polio cases (not identified as polio) were skyrocketing…but only in vaccinated areas. http://bit.ly/1WEHYzR Today most vaccine inserts declare paralysis as a potential side effect but "reframe it" as Guillian Barre or simply "paralysis". This is purposely designed to obfuscate the public's understanding of what causes paralysis, which is heavy metal poisoning plus vaccine induced autoimmunity……that ends with the body attacking and destroying its' own nervous system pathways, in an rabid attempt to clean itself of the injected toxins. Guillian Barre and paralysis, as listed vaccine side effects, are also a way to get the public running east looking for a sunset, keeping them as far away as possible from connecting the dots around this medical polio obfuscation. Aluminum and mercury are ingredients in most (if not all) vaccines today and both are proven to cause paralysis and motor neuron destruction………..known as many different names, depending on just how much the science/medical authority figure in the room wants to lead you astray that day. http://bit.ly/2kga3CL
13. The first polio vaccine was worked on by Dr. Jonas Salk and human experiments using this vaccine were conducted purposely on orphans in government/church run institutions because they were vulnerable and didn't require any parental consent signatures, as they had no parents. The vaccine was "declared safe" by "medicine" (as they always are even though that vaccine was killing and paralyzing monkeys in test trials) and that vaccine gave 40,000 orphans polio, permanently paralyzed hundreds and killed at least 10 children. All injuries and deaths under reported of course by the same authorities who orchestrated the atrocity. This was called The Cutter Incident. A focused attack on defenseless children, by people charged with their care. A poisoning of innocent children and then the excuses and apologies, regarding how it won't happen again. Is this pattern still occurring today? The answer is obvious. In this attached link regarding the Cutter Incident where vulnerable children were purposely targeted, the killing of the children is advertised as "a great help to science" in better understanding the disease. http://1.usa.gov/1mEozNJ
14. The next "improved" polio vaccine, given to hundreds of millions, carried both the SV 40 cancer virus as well as the AIDS virus. Every step of the way, medicine declaring they know for sure, that this time, they have everything straightened out. Same story then, same story now. The only thing larger than the pile of broken medical and government promises regarding polio, vaccines and disease eradication…..is the pile of broken and dead bodies that rockets skywards as medicine, science and government continually apply failed healing protocols to a heavily indoctrinated and bewildered public. http://bit.ly/1HfHR7W Cancerous tumors, still being pulled out of people today, are riddled with SV40 cancer viruses from the government's "safe and effective" and "approved" polio vaccine. http://bit.ly/1jGvysV
15. In the book Virus Mania, top scientists in the field declare that polio doesn't and has never qualified as a viral disease because it fails to spread from person to person or animal to animal. If it's not a viral disease, then what is it? The answer is heavy metal and other forms of toxic poisoning that causes partial or full paralysis. (destruction of the nervous system). Connect the dots. http://bit.ly/2ht7Lgd
16. The polio con job, ranked as 1 of the top 10 medical con jobs of all time, is clearly described in this selected chapter of the book "Dissolving Illusions" by leading medical doctor, Dr. Suzanne Humphries. The reason so much effort is placed into medical con jobs like this is to continually infuse the public with false fear regarding viruses that don't exist, and also to provide false hope and blind faith belief in toxic vaccines and poisonous medications, which only worsen a population's overall health status. Why would anyone do this? Again, this is when a confused citizen needs to investigate EUGENICS and the history (and families) behind that movement. The end result is the same, regardless of medical ambush. The elite groups who organize such fraud based operations increase tyrannical control over a diseased, die-empowered, depressed, dis-satisfied, dis-oriented and dumbed down population. Such a population is easier to control, steal from, manipulate and govern. It's not really about polio or viruses, it's about poisoning the population into a chemical lobotomized state that ends with increased elite domination and iron fist control. How did 80% of North Americans come to become extremely unhealthy in our most technologically advanced era? The answer is……because this has always been the design of the system. The ruling of 8 billion people by an extremely small group of 50,000 can only be achieved when that 8 billion operate in perpetual chaos…….physically, economically, mentally and spiritually. http://bit.ly/2jeQpUa
When someone talks of any disease, in this day and age, they're often just repeating what they were told by the government, media, science or medicine. If you're willing to repeat without any confirming research or resistance, this pre qualifies you to rocket up the pyramid of control, gaining promotion after promotion along the way. When someone today repeats anything about polio and polio elimination based on vaccination, they're repeating known lies, told by known liars. Repeating what you're told and intelligence aren't the same thing. Repeating or intelligence? The choice is yours. Repeaters are FIRM IN THEIR BELIEFS yet have NEVER researched beyond what they were told to believe. Such firm belief, with ZERO RESEARCH, is illogical and irrational. Research the hidden history of polio, the disease that never was. http://bit.ly/1DKDb3v
Click here to see over 100 medical doctors and PhD scientists explaining with statistics and research that 1) vaccines aren't safe 2) vaccines aren't effective 3) vaccines don't improve immunity or resistance to disease and 4) vaccines injure, permanently cripple or kill each and every person they're injected into. The darkness and deceit around the polio vaccine doesn't just stop there. The entire history of vaccination, from inception to this very day, is rampant with corruption, eugenics, stealth euthanasia and for lack of a better phrase……evil intent.
Further research regarding the polio deception can be found in… 1. This book by Dr. Russell Blaylock – amzn.to/1PTIq73 2. This book by Dr. Suzanne Humphries – amzn.to/1TBIaR0 3. This book by Liam Scheff – amzn.to/1TBIpLN
4 This book on Janine Roberts – http://bit.ly/2gsC1s8
This portion has been added from Kate William………….
My ears practically perked up when I read that one Dr. HC Emerson, investigating a 'polio' outbreak in 1907, discovered that a) no polio cases in exclusively breastfed infants b) the eating of fresh fruits and vegetables preceded the onset of 'poliomyelitis' in many others.
Barber (1939) reported four cases of 'polio' that occurred the same day as strawberries were eaten, in a boarding school house.
Chenault (1941) noted the parallels between 'polio' outbreaks and the appearance of fresh fruit and vegetables.
Draper (1935) reported a case series of 'polio' which he theorized originated from a Greek fruiterer.
Naturally, I had to do some digging on this…and discovered…
Before DDT spraying, there was ARSENIC spraying!
In 1929, almost 30 million pounds of lead arsenate or calcium arsenate were sprayed in the fields and orchards of America. In fact, the government was so enthusiastic about the use of arsenic, that in 1935, an FDA-hosted radio program suggested the old nursery rhyme "A is for Apple" should be changed to: "A is for arsenate, Lead if you please, protector of apples against arch-enemies."
In 1919, Boston Health Department was forced to destroy arsenic-coated apples because people were getting sick.
Scientists say the earth is still tainted with the residue, and believe lands once used to raise cotton, is now responsible for arsenic found in rice. Arsenate pesticides were officially banned in the US, in the 1980's, but "modifed arsenates" are still used on cotton crops today. China, meanwhile, kept using arsenate sprays beyond 2000, and it is suspected they are still using them illegally.
Note the symptoms of acute arsenic poisoning = fever, vomiting and nausea, headache, sore throat etc. Chronic poisoning = polyneuritis and paralysis, especially in the extremities.
Sound familiar?
Also note that Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was crippled by 'polio' in 1921, at age 39 years, also owned an apple orchard where the family used to spend their summers, and he used to swim regularly in the pond nearby…At the time, mostly children were affected, and it was considered rare for adults to have 'polio'. Author Jason Christoff www.Jchristoff.com
Jason started Physical Limits Fitness in 1994 at the age of 24. He has written over 1000 health articles, with hundreds appearing in many newspapers across Canada. Jason has been interviewed recently by several US radio stations regarding his principles on healthy living. Jason was also invited to speak on health topics on The CBS Morning Show and also appeared briefly on the Dr. Phil Show featuring fitness trainers from across North America. Jason is currently writing a book tabulating the steps that he used to lead a healthy and addiction free life. Jason specializes in exercise coaching, functional stretching, self sabotage, healthy living principles, overcoming addiction, weight loss, healing while facing a health crisis and small business start up consulting. Jason believes that health is about developing habits based in self love and self respect, as a way to propel one through life in a successful way.


text:
Book: Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life's Greatest Challenges
YaleNews features works recently or soon to be published by members of the University community. Descriptions are based on material provided by the publishers. Authors of new books may forward publishers' book descriptions to us by email.
Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life's Greatest Challenges
Dr. Steven M. Southwick, professor of psychiatry, and Dr. Dennis S. Charney
(Cambridge University Press)
This book identifies 10 key ways to weather and recover from stress and trauma. Incorporating the latest scientific research and dozens of interviews with trauma survivors, it provides a practical guide to building emotional, mental, and physical resilience.
Resilience, the authors contend, is not necessarily an inborn trait; it can be learned. They share what they have discovered about resilience from their own research in neuroscience, the latest scientific literature, and their interviews with hundreds of stress-resilient individuals including Special Forces instructors, prisoners of war, 9/11 survivors, and civilians from all walks of life. They found 10 common resilience factors — skills that the trauma survivors they interviewed used to beat the odds and thrive. By developing these skills we can improve our decision-making and performance during high stress situations, improve our overall health, and prevent stress-related medical and psychiatric illnesses.
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