GSB Mennonite

Showalter/Schowalter History

I found this website on the Showalter name history while doing some research. Also, my uncle mentioned some distant cousins, one that runs a winery in Germany. Perhaps I'll be able to visit this summer. :)

Finals Week

Plugging away on final projects, papers, and prepping for finals...along with catching up on relaxing too. :)

Keith asked about the economic policy stuff that I've been working on (2005 Tax Proposal, specifically mortgage interest tax deduction), so I figured I'd post a couple graphs - output analysis from 2001 tax data.

This chart shows the average subsidy received by itemizing homeowners (valued at the marginal tax rates).

This chart shows the universe of homeowners showing the subset that actually receives tax subsidies (those that itemize) versus those that do not because they do not itemize or because they have no debt.

Source: Office of Tax Statistics, American Housing Survey 2001, Individual Analysis

Economic Policy Presentation

Our team presented our analysis on the 2005 Tax Proposal, specifically the mortgage interest deduction recommendations, to the class and had some good (i.e. tough) questions from Professor Murphy and Professor Becker. In some ways it was a odd feeling presenting to a Nobel Prize winner and Murphy (who's had a number of other awards). It certainly felt a little different than presenting MBTI information to first-years. :)

Origami News

3/9/06 has arrived (a while ago at CeBit) and the official news and pictures of the ultramobile pcs are out. Here is the official press release. And the official website is up with a number of pictures and details. And this appears to be an indepedent site (OrigamiPortal) with a number of articles and pictures...

Finally, the official community site...

One thing I think is interesting is that most rumors said this would not be a product launch, which it's not, however products will be launched by Samsung as early as next month and ASUS soon after. Pretty cool!

Economic Policy

I'm up tonight working on the final project for Economic Policy: the 2005 Tax Reform Policy, specifically the changes to mortgage interest deductions. It's been really interesting to see the owner/renter, income, itemization data, etc through this project. :)

Myron Scholes

Myron Scholes spoke on campus yesterday. While he gave an interesting talk on risk and liquidity and the need for markets for risk transfer, it was a fairly narrow talk. I guess I expected a little bit broader topic for a broad audience. He did confess a number of times that he's "an options guy."

The one point I thought was intriguing was an idea around teams and chaos.

"With more uncertainty the value of human capital increases. Teams are more valuable in chaotic environments."

I guess it makes sense as the team (i.e. human capital) is inherently more flexible than fixed assets, plant, equipment, or even financial capital (that's the throwing money at a problem doesn't always fix it principle). It seems then that in a chaotic environment value is attributed to the most flexible resource.

And tying this back to Myron Scholes and his contribution to the Black-Scholes option model, it makes sense: increased volatility means higher option values => increased chaos means higher value for flexibility.