Monthly Archives: May 2008

Converting from Access to Oracle

A question from Askville: Can anyone provide any high level tasks, details etc. surrounding the steps that one would take to plan, execute and test a data conversion/move from a Microsoft Access database to an Oracle database? Access databases store … Continue reading

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Good product, strange sales department?

For a while now, I was following the happenings around Eee PC, an entry-level laptop computer designed by ASUS. The computer doesn’t have a hard drive, relying on solid-state storage instead. Obviously, there’s a trade-off here; solid-state storage is very … Continue reading

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Paul Krugman reminds me of me

Paul Krugman writes: The Oil Drum has this nice picture from the Sydney Morning Herald about the percentage of income Sydney area residents will spend on gas — er, petrol — if the price rises substantially. The outer suburbs are, … Continue reading

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Articles on real options

Copeland, Thomas E., and Philip T. Keenan, “Making real options real,” The McKinsey Quarterly, August 1998. Damodaran, Aswath, The Promise and Peril of Real Options (working paper). Fernández, Pablo, “Valuing Real Options: Frequently Made Errors” (working paper, June 26, 2001).

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TED spread going down

The TED spread shows signs of improvement:

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Martin Wolf on oil prices

Martin Wolf writes in Financial Times: The market sets high oil prices to tell us what to do By Martin Wolf Published: May 13 2008 19:09 | Last updated: May 13 2008 19:09 Oil at $200 a barrel: that was … Continue reading

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Enhancing the value of a multinational company

A question asked privately: What can a multinational company do to enhance its value? Mathematically, the value of equity P is determined by earnings E and the “fair” (in investors’ collective opinion) price-earnings multiple P/E: P = E * (P/E) … Continue reading

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Database normalization at MySQL DevZone

Note to self: MySQL Developer Zone has a good introduction to database normalization.

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Dani Rodrik live

Last month, Dani Rodrik gave a presentation at the annual meeting of the Turkish-American Scientists and Scholars Association (TASSA): The title of the talk: Why Do Some Countries Remain Poor While Others Grow Rich? The answer: I wish I knew.

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Keynes and international loanable funds

A question from Yahoo! Answers: How is the international loanable funds market a criticism of Keynes? Classics thought that supply of loanable funds is a function of interest rate. Keynes posited that it’s a function of disposable income; if everyone … Continue reading

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