Category: Economics
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The global reach of Starbucks & McDonalds
Via Marginal Revolution is this neat map of Starbucks and McDonalds’ global reach.. The thing does raise a bit of a rant in me. The chart shows McDonalds as having global sales of $41 billion, which is compared to the GDP of Afghanistan ($21 billion). The message from this is meant to be ‘Wow, McDonalds…
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Second round effects – a primer
From the Los Angeles Times: Bird flu has killed 134 people around the world, sickened hundreds more and forced the culling of millions of poultry from Vietnam to Nigeria. Now it is smashing the world of badminton. Which, of course, is why it’s usually a fools errand to try and forecast these second round impacts…
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Is Stupid better for sales assistants?
Over at Marginal Revolution Tyler Cowen is suggesting that stupid sales assistants might be better for smart consumers: Customers cannot talk for so long to a stupid person. So if you know what you are doing, you might prefer that the sales people be stupider. Stupid people will spend more time, in percentage terms, helping…
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The Gapminder World 2006 beta –
Via Brad De Long, The Gapminder World 2006. Very, very cool data visualisation. (Not particularly ground breaking, but the user interface and animations are the best bits from my point of view). Now can someone please do something for the Australian economic data?