Author name: Mohammed Abrar Asif

A Rant On NFTs

By / March 22, 2021

Over the last few weeks I’ve written extensively on very core and often boring economic concepts so this time I sat down with the thought of writing something that’s happening in the immediate present and something my audience should definitely know. So I follow a community of artists on social media, and some of the artists there whom I respect, like Mario Klingemann and Jason Bailey, embraced and advocated for crypto art. Within the past few months, activity and prices seemed to snowball.

Private Data: Who should own it and how to value it?

By / March 8, 2021

In 2017, roughly half the people in the U.S. had their name, date of birth, and Social Security number stolen from Equifax. The New York Times reported that the private company Cambridge Analytica had harvested information from more than 50 million Facebook users without their permission and provided it to the 2016 Trump campaign. Congress drags Mark Zuckerberg to Washington, D.C., for two long days of very public, often uncomfortable questioning. These data breaches, among others, have vaulted concerns again and again over consumer data protection to the front of legislative dockets. Laws have been passed and are being written right now with respect to data use and property rights in US, in Europe, and all over the world. The question is How do we value our data?

Piketty! Picking it?

By / February 22, 2021

Thomas Piketty’s books has received enormous attention and lavish praise from academics and policy-makers alike, including Central Bankers across the world. I recently picked up his Capital in the Twenty First Century At first, I found this hard to understand. The book has more than 500 pages and is often repetitive, as well as being full of formulas and graphs which for a non-economist would be off-putting.
However, I soon found that the perseverance required was extremely worthwhile. This is a truly path-breaking book offering a hard-hitting and well-founded critique of capitalism in the twenty-first century. Piketty is concerned with the dynamics of income and wealth since the eighteenth century to draw lessons for the century ahead.

The Evolution of Manufacturing: Who Will bag the Red Dragon’s orders?

By / February 8, 2021

There has been rising evidence on changing global specialization in labor-intensive exporting. Production of apparel, footwear, furniture, and related products are how many low income countries first enter export manufacturing. Just as China’s rise as a powerhouse in these goods supplanted a role previously occupied by the East Asian Tigers, the world may again be on the cusp of significant change in where labor-intensive goods are produced.

Cracks in Europe: The Euro Dilemma

By / January 11, 2021

In 2010, the 2008 global financial crisis morphed into the “eurocrisis.” It has not abated.

The 19 countries of Europe that share the euro currency—the eurozone—have been rocked by economic stagnation and debt crises.

Some countries have been in depression for years while the governing powers of the eurozone have careened from emergency to emergency, most notably in Greece.

Hailed by its architects as a lever that would bring Europe together and promote prosperity, the euro has done the opposite.

Europe’s stagnation and bleak outlook are a direct result of the fundamental challenges in having a diverse group of countries share a common currency—the euro was flawed at birth, with economic integration outpacing political integration.

The current structure promotes divergence rather than convergence. The question then is: Can the euro be saved?

Read our Bi-weekly newsletter titled Cracks in Europe: The Euro Dilemma to know more

Vaccinonomics: Should you get paid to take a shot?

By / December 28, 2020

Should we pay people a bribe to be healthy? Is it the Government’s job to force everybody to take the vaccine? What do the most Influential people in the Public Policy space think about paying people to take a jab?

Read our Bi-weekly newsletter titled Vaccinonomics: Should you get paid to take a shot? to know more

The Economics of Innovation

By / December 14, 2020

Have you ever wondered how much innovation has impacted our economies across the world. How has technology advanced over decades? Is necessity really the mother of all invention?

Read this Biweekly newsletter from The Financial Pandora to understand The Economics of Innovation

Modern Monetary Theory – Cop or Drop?

By / November 30, 2020

In 2019, A textbook titled Macroeconomics, written by three MMT proponents: William Mitchell and Martin Watts (both of University of Newcastle, Australia) and L. Randall Wray (Bard College) was published by the Red Globe Press.

This Newsletter is being written with the aim to dive into the MMT policy and make our readers understand and think for themselves if they subscribe to this theory. As I studied MMT from various textbooks and sources and spoke to Economists at UBS and Goldman Sachs, I was often puzzled about what precisely was being asserted.

Over the past year or so, much media attention has focused on a new approach to macroeconomics, dubbed Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) by its proponents.

The rise of MMT occurred in a rather unusual way. From its name, one might guess that it was at top universities that this theory was worked on, as prominent scholars debated the fine points of macroeconomic theory.

But that is not the case.

Aswath Damodaran

By / November 27, 2020

Aswath Damodaran holds the Kerschner Family Chair in Finance Education and is Professor of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business. Before coming to Stern, he also lectured in Finance at the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Damodaran received a B.A. in Accounting from Madras University and a M.S. in Management from the Indian Institute of Management. He earned an M.B.A. (1981) and then Ph.D. (1985), both in Finance, from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Professor Damodaran’s contributions to the field of Finance have been recognized many times over. He has been the recipient of Giblin, Glucksman, and Heyman Fellowships, a David Margolis Teaching Excellence Fellowship, and the Richard L. Rosenthal Award for Innovation in Investment Management and Corporate Finance.

His skill and enthusiasm in the classroom garnered him the Schools of Business Excellence in Teaching Award in 1988, and the Distinguished Teaching award from NYU in 1990. His student accolades are no less impressive: he has been voted “Professor of the Year” by the graduating M.B.A. class five times during his career at NYU.

Read on to know more about the man who is popularly known as ‘The Dean of Valuation’

Politics, Economics and Newton??

By / November 16, 2020

The visible hand of politics has controlled the invisible hand of the markets for centuries now. Instead of pursuing timeless laws and models, we try to study events in their time-bound context.