Wednesday, April 09, 2003

An astute reader has pointed out that the set of beliefs that one holds about culture is really a set of memes.  This is probably a better model for culture than the way it is currently presented (and certainly better than what I said), because memes are transmitted across time, across people, and are often so ingrained that they are not even recognized as beliefs per se.  For my class tomorrow, I have to come up with two comments on American culture. 1. One myth about my country. That is, something that is widely believed about the country or its people but that is outdated, extremely rare, a distortion of the truth, or simply a falsehood. 2. One or two key insights into managing people or organizations in my country: something anyone who comes to work in my country must know. What do you think?   5:16:05 PM    comment []

Harald Hau's Quotes of the Day from Corporate Finance Today's class topic was CAPM, the Capital Asset Pricing Model.  Developed by William Sharpe with Merton Miller and Harry Markowitz, the CAPM helps explain the relationship between risk and reward in equity markets.  The discoverers of CAPM were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1990. [during the introduction] "For those of you who get lost on the way to the Nobel Prize, we will have a summary at the end." [background: this week is Australia Week at Insead, where we have lots of events celebrating Aussie culture.  All national weeks serve "ethnic" cuisine on Wednesdays.]  "If I jump up and down, it's not the kangaroo meat, I am simply very excited about this theory." [after quickly reviewing how to calculate the portfolio risk of N stocks]  "Are you ready to go for the Nobel Prize now?  All warmed up?  That's why we did some math already, N going to infinity and so on." [after deriving CAPM, returning to the real theme of finance]  "Another example of global coordination without global thinking."   4:35:02 PM    comment []