I read this morning in the WSJ that in addition to loans from the IMF and European governments to help bail out Greece, the Fed is pitching in with swap lines. After reading that I thought it would be useful to link to the Fed’s recent paper describing how swap lines work. The Federal Reserve’s [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Market Definitions'
Kids need their candy, banks need their money, countries need their debt
May 9th, 2010 · No Comments · Financial Markets, Market Definitions
Paddy Hirsch looks at the role of counter party risk and how it’s becoming a hot topic again due to the recent debt crisis in Europe. Counterparty risk from Marketplace on Vimeo. The compelling, perhaps scary point, is that what we see now happening in Europe is pretty much what happened in 2008 when (as [...]
Tags:
Explaining a simultaneous ascending auction
April 24th, 2010 · No Comments · Auction Markets, Market Definitions
Thursday’s WSJ has a nice article (subscription required) on how economists would improve the NFL draft, including an interactive graphic explaining how the auction method they propose would work. Nice stuff. One of those economists is Alvin Roth of Market Design, a blog we enjoy. ~alex
Tags:
A little story about the Fed, and two kids named Frannie and Freddie.
April 5th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Economics, Market Definitions
Tags:
CLOs Explained
March 18th, 2010 · No Comments · Financial Markets, Market Definitions
More geeky awesomeness from Marketplace’s Paddy Hirsch. This time he wrestles CLOs, or Collateralized Loan Obligations, into submission, making them understandable even to yours truly. And he gets extra credit for touching on the syndication of loans. CLOs from Marketplace on Vimeo. If video doesn’t float your boat, then you can always try Wikipedia’s take [...]
Tags:
Repo 105 Explained
March 13th, 2010 · No Comments · Market Definitions
Paddy Hirsch from Marketplace once again does a masterful job on the white board, this time explaining Repo 105, the latest financial shenanigan to hit the papers. Repo 105 from Marketplace on Vimeo. ~alex
Tags:
Nice, basic explainer of derivatives
October 17th, 2009 · No Comments · Market Definitions
As always, hat tip to Marketplace and Paddy Hirsch. Derivatives from Marketplace on Vimeo. ~alex
Tags:
Worthwhile reading: Wealth is a claim on future assets
October 11th, 2009 · No Comments · Market Definitions
The Economist has this nice explainer about the nature of wealth. From the article: Looked at in that way, financial assets are not “wealth” but a claim on real wealth. If those claims multiply or rise in price, that does not mean aggregate wealth has increased. If a pizza is cut into eight instead of [...]
Tags:
You, the experience good
September 13th, 2009 · No Comments · Fun, Market Definitions, Other Markets
I have written before about experience goods (as opposed to search goods) and the impact of these concepts on the ecommerce user experience, but quite frankly it never occurred to me to think of people as experience goods. But that has been corrected thanks to a new paper about online dating (Frost, Jeana H., Zoe [...]
Convenience fees equals “monopoly rent”
September 3rd, 2009 · No Comments · Economics, Market Definitions, Ticketing
I recently discovered NPR’s Planet Money and have been enjoying it enormously. This podcast in particular is quite good and discusses the economics of ticketing, something of interest to me. One very nice thing about the podcast is that they take the time to define basic economic concepts, like monopoly (or economic) rent. ~alex
Tags:
