Writing in a Working Paper for the Institute for New Economic Thinking Servaas Storm from the Delft University of Technology explains how and why the U.S. is inflating an AI-bubble, and concludes this will end badly. The paper makes three main points: For most this (below) may be the most apposite section i.e. the one […]

[An aside: I went to a presentation at the Hong Kong Society of Financial Analysts recently to hear about ‘Agentic AI’. The talk was given by a Microsoft representative who was, naturally, praising ‘Copilot’. The audience via their questions could barely suppress their frustration with both AI and their experience with the Copilot. To remind, […]

Writing in an Asian Development Bank Working Paper (#812) Shu Cai, a Professor at Jinan University (et al.) takes a look at a specific example of microfinance in the PRC. This study is important as in recent years the effectiveness of microfinance has been questioned. Studies elsewhere have shown either limited, insignificant or no effects […]

[Me, I’m big on law and order. Not so much the punishment bit as it’s practiced in most of the world. That doesn’t seem to work well in terms of stamping out the problem and is very expensive. Prevention is my preferred route so I was very interested in the findings of the work highlighted […]

[As a useful companion to the paper highlighted today I’d recommend the new(-ish) book ‘Apple in China’ by Patrick McGee. It’s the most useful ‘China Book’ I’ve read in a long while. The book sheds light on how Apple has used China to its advantage but in the process transferred know-how to an ecosystem that […]

Writing in an HKU Business School paper (HKU Jockey Club Enterprise Sustainability Global Research Institute Paper Series) Marcin T. Kacperczyk of Imperial College London (et al.) set out test whether or not extemporaneous live streaming interviews of fund managers make any difference in terms of assets subsequently flowing into their funds. There’s a large body […]

In a Harvard Business School Working Paper Sean Cao, Charles C. Y. Wang and Yi Xiang from the universities of Maryland, Harvard and The Hong Kong Polytechnic uncover a strange bias in AI-generated financial predictions. We know from prior research investors tend to favour and be more optimistic about companies in their home markets. We […]

Francisco Arizala, Tomohide Mineyama, and Hugo Tuesta, researchers at the IMF writing in a Working Paper have taken a closer look at how Mexico’s import/export dynamic changed in the period 2017~2023. The chart they start the paper with is a corker. Did you know, I didn’t, that Mexico now sends more ‘stuff’ to the U.S. […]

There are a few quality-of-character checks I perform when looking at a company. One of these is a close squint at the biographies of Directors, especially the Independent Non-Executive ones (the INEDs). Red flags include suspiciously young Directors (often family being groomed), suspiciously well paid non-Executive Directors (often family collecting stipends) and INEDs with more […]

In a blog post from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System researchers Sina T. Ates and Sharon Jeon look more closely at China’s innovative capacity. It’s a short piece but the conclusion is unequivocal: “The particular metrics highlighted in this note suggest that China has built tremendous innovative capacity that bodes well […]

The work highlighted today is a ‘Working Paper’ from the IMF. The authors: Daniel Garcia-Macia, Siddharth Kothari, Yifen Tao and Yutong Li have tried to fix a bead on just how Industrial Policy (IP, i.e. subsidies) in China ends up being a net disbenifit. The IMF have urged China to give up this kind of […]

Dr. Samuel Johnson noted in 1775 that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”. The justification then, for some of the harder to understand policies of the current U.S. administration should surprise none when they come flag-wrapped as necessary for the promotion of ‘National Security’. There’s a long historical precedent for this kind of […]

Liwei Si (et al.) from the Dalian Ocean University wondered what the environmental impact of offshore wind farms might be? Nobody likes the onshore variety, much. They’re ugly, noisy and kill birds. Offshore facilities seem like a much better idea as they can be built bigger and a long way from people (and many birds). […]

Tongxuan Gao, Virginia Hernanz Martín and Suárez Gálvez Cristina, researchers at the Department of Economics of the Universidad de Alcalá, Spain highlight depressing trends in female employment in China. In 2016 it became possible for all women in China to have a second child (ethnic minorities were already excluded from the one child policy and […]

Jialing Zhao (corresponding author, et al.), from the School of Economics at the Lanzhou University takes a fresh look at ‘Stock Price Crash Risk’ i.e. the likelihood a stock will unexpectedly collapse (nearly always) in response to bad-data hoarding by the company’s owners and/or managers. The ‘fresh look’ here is to see if a company’s […]

I’d have put the conclusion from this work another way. One with more resonance for regular investors than researchers Xiyuan Jing and Mangfei Liu of the Victoria University of Wellington and the Shaanxi Normal University have chosen to. Their summary notes a negative correlation between Employee Stock Ownership Schemes (ESOPs) and stock price crash risk […]