Year: 2012
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The Swanson Effect
Swanson’s law, named after Richard Swanson, founder of a solar firm, suggests that cost of solar cells will reduce by 20% with each doubling of capacity. We all know the Moore’s law and how it defined the technology boom. It seems that Moore’law has run its course , with Intel itself moving to a different…
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India Grows at Night (by Gurucharan Das)
In this book, Gurucharan Das tried to capture the inherent contradiction in our country and how it explains the state of economy and democracy in today’s India. Contemporary India is puzzling to outsiders. How is it that a country with a vibrant democracy and a fastest growing economy seem to be so badly governed? The…
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Breakout Nations
Can India be a breakout nation? is an excellent article about the potential of a country to become a breakout nation, that is to grow at a much faster rate than its peers with similar per-capita income. The factors that the author listed down are not the usual ones that we see in the newspapers and…
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Theory of Development
The Big Mac Theory of Development from National Bureau of Economic Research argues that it is not the people but their location that decides their wealth, after adjusting for purchase power parity. An employee in McDonald in India earns 1/3 of Big Macs per hour compared to similarly skilled employee in US who earns 3…
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The Perfect Hedge
It has come as a shock to many in Wall Street that an innocent hedge, from a bank known for its ability to manage risk, could go so horribly wrong. Dig deeper and the story is a bit different. Many argue that a hedging position taken to offset a certain risk could in fact be…