Tuesday 26 June 2012

Robbing Banks = Bad Idea?


UW Economics Society presents our take on robbing banks.

University students in Quebec are crying foul over tuition hikes, so one (or more) of them may be tempted to rob a bank.  In fact, you may also be tempted to rob a bank because as an economics student you know that bank bailouts resulted in a moral hazard problem for the big banks and want to get back.  Easy money, it's just sitting there waiting to be taken, right?  One bank heist will probably net enough to pay off tuition and have some left over for alcohol and we all know university students love alcohol.  Facebook proves this point multiple times a day.  What you and fellows of your persuasion would be overlooking would be this journal article published by dreaded economists.

Economics the dismal science strikes again!  Ars Technica published an article about the returns on bank robberies and had some pretty jarring news.  They estimate the expected value of each bank robbery to be half of what a minimum wage worker would make in a year.  It simply isn't worth your time to rob a bank for half a year's minimum wage salary.

Three of my favourite facts include:

(1) an additional person nets you £9000 ($14000 CAD) more all else being equal,
(2) bringing a gun nets you £10000 ($16000 CAD) more all else being equal and
(3) one third of all robberies fail entirely.

For the full details click through, Economists demonstrate exactly why bank robbery is a bad idea.

Sunday 24 June 2012

Twitter Feed

Another week another Twitter Feed brought to you by the UW Economics Society for all your economics needs.  I think subconsciously it was career-theme week in my mind.  I found some really great an interesting reads around town.  I did notice however that I get my information from too limited a source pool.  This coming week I will broaden our horizons and try to pull from different places!

Remember to follow us on Twitter even more goodness (@uWaterlooEcon)!


#careers
Finding your weaknesses via @Inc
Fending Off the Creeps: How to Avoid Sexual Harassment via @Inc
Power of Consistency: 5 Rules via @Inc
How to make the most of an imperfect job situation via @HarvardBiz
Do people really make a living doing what they love? via @Forbes
Don't Like Your Job? Change It (Without Quitting) via @HavardBiz
Turning Passion into Action via @the99percent
Embracing Risk in Career Decisions via @HarvardBiz


Wednesday 20 June 2012

Presentations

UW Economics Society presents a primer to making presentations!
View more presentations from Ethos3

I know what you Waterloo students are thinking, a presentation about presentations?  Who doesn't love a little meta?  It's betta with meta.  We are going to be curating a list of awesome links to help you strengthen your presentations and make life awesome.

Tips from Around the Web
Questions to Ask Yourself Before a Presentation
How to Format Your Data, Choose the Best Chart
10/20/30 Rule for Pitches to Venture Capitalists by Guy Kawasaki
Presentation Pizzazz: Keep Your Audience's Attention [VIDEO]

Presentation and Communication Blogs
Power Presentations
Decker Communications
Presentation Zen
SlideShare

We will be adding more articles and tips on how to make your presentation stand out as they come in!  Be sure to bookmark for updates.

Last updated August 22, 2012.

Monday 18 June 2012

Cost of Friendship

UW Economics Society presents some commentary because I know you Waterloo Economics students are eager for some Monday thought-provoking content!

Scrolling through my RSS Feed today and I came up with this little article via Freakonomics, The Cost of Friendship.  The working paper examines the venture capital industry, how friendship plays a role in who we choose to work with and the costs/benefits of such choices.  Economics is all about choices and this paper really highlights that fact!  The most interesting finding, "The likelihood of success drops by 22% if co-investors attended the same undergraduate school."

The study makes use of various dummy variables (zeros and ones) such as gender, educational background, ethnicity (minorities) as well as other variables to determine success of investments called performance variables.  They had a fairly large sample that included "3,510 venture capitalists that invested into 11,895 different portfolio companies from 1975 to 2003."  I know there is a good story somewhere about the Research Assistants that sorted through it all.  

The authors used "probit regressions to fit models with binary dependent variables."  Oh probit!  We don't learn too much about probit in ECON 321 or ECON 421 even.  It seems like a valuable tool to have in our toolkit, especially in marketing research!  However, you can take the initiative to learn it using ECON 422 and ECON 472.  Perhaps now taking those courses won't seem so abstract and theoretical if you can read about an interesting application.  If you are interested you can get the article FREE from our lovely university.  Head on over to our library and Connect from Home to access the NBER Working Papers.

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES
THE COST OF FRIENDSHIP
Paul Gompers
Vladimir Mukharlyamov
Yuhai Xuan

Saturday 16 June 2012

Twitter Feed

The UW Economics Society presents another week in Twitter (@uWaterlooEcon)!  I know you Waterloo University Students are hungering for something to read.  We have some pretty awesome links found throughout the week so if you are bored or procrastinating you might want to read some of them!  My personal favourites include how people are working too much at work via Harvard Business Review!

My least favourite one (shocker!) is by GOOD Magazine.  I believe it is a clear example of sampling bias but is still a good read nonetheless (pun intended, tehe).

More after the break!

#economics

Wednesday 13 June 2012

#uwgrad2012

Congrats to all the University of Waterloo new graduates today!  Shout out to those ones in economics (tehe).  This song reminds me of graduation because of the feeling it evokes.  It's the sense of new beginnings and excitement, very similar to starting at UW!

Anyways enjoy!  I posted the acoustic version to mix it up a bit.  I love Janelle MonĂ¡e.

Saturday 9 June 2012

Twitter Feed

Here's a rundown of all the interesting articles we found throughout the week!  For all the awesome links we share you can follow us on twitter @uWaterlooEcon!

My personal favourites are marked with a * be sure to check 'em out. haha.  -- Eric

#economics
Ghana and Financial Literacy via @Freakonomics
Taxes are BAD?!?  via Supply-Side Liberal
Pepsi and #Economics  via @mattyglesias
'Big Data' is calling your econometrics skills!  via @Inc

Click through for more!