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#ThursdayThreads
Let's talk about Dividends.
Investors in the stock market earn returns in two main ways; Capital gains when the stock price goes up or through Dividend payments that are usually made annually based on company performance.
The amount of dividend to be paid out...
Let's talk about Dividends.
Investors in the stock market earn returns in two main ways; Capital gains when the stock price goes up or through Dividend payments that are usually made annually based on company performance.
The amount of dividend to be paid out...
...is usually defined by a listed company's dividend payment policy.
Public companies normally declare dividends when announcing their full year results.
However, in some instances where the financial performance for a given period (quarterly/or half year results) have exceeded
Public companies normally declare dividends when announcing their full year results.
However, in some instances where the financial performance for a given period (quarterly/or half year results) have exceeded
expectations, interim/special dividends can be declared and paid out.
Steady dividend payouts from a company create a sense of stability for investors due to regular and predictable income.
Steady dividend payouts from a company create a sense of stability for investors due to regular and predictable income.
With academic conferences all being cancelled, a few weeks ago a lot of people wondered why we need in-person conferences at all. Can't we just present over zoom?
One objection is that networking at these conferences matters. Does it? Here's a 🧵. #ThursdayThreads
One objection is that networking at these conferences matters. Does it? Here's a 🧵. #ThursdayThreads
One place to start is to ask people where they met their academic coauthors. That's what Freeman, @inaganguli, and @ravivmg (2015) do (among other things). Among coauthors not living in the same city, about 15% met at conferences. nber.org/chapters/c13040
Alternatively, you can try to measure the causal impact of attending a conference. Chai and Freeman (2019) look at the Gordon Research conferences of the early 1990s, a set of bio conferences where groups of 80-150 met for a week in a remote location. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10…
Are bigger populations more innovative? Let's look at a few papers emphasizing the distant past to see what they say. #ThursdayThreads
There are a few reasons to think they would be:
- more brains ➡️ more ideas
- more people ➡️ more specialization (?)
- more consumers ➡️more profit for innovating
- more brains ➡️ more ideas
- more people ➡️ more specialization (?)
- more consumers ➡️more profit for innovating
@JoHenrich even has a famous model arguing that you need big populations to prevent technological regress.
Suppose tech progress comes from random tinkering, plus retention of good modifications. To get progress, you need to transfer knowledge across generations.
Suppose tech progress comes from random tinkering, plus retention of good modifications. To get progress, you need to transfer knowledge across generations.
Remote collaboration in innovation is on the rise. The average distance between all the inventors listed on a patent has tripled between 1975 and 2015. #ThursdayThreads
Of course, the number of inventors on a patent has also risen. But we see the same thing if we restrict attention to patents with just two inventors. More of these 2-inventor patents belong to distant collaborators.
(Though note the share of 100-500km distant patents has dropped - I don't know why) (All data pulled from patentsview and sorted by patent application year) patentsview.org/web/#viz/locat…
In light of this recent article, here's a long thread about copyright (which I think is way too long). #ThursdayThreads nytimes.com/2020/01/06/art…
The economic argument for copyright is that there is insufficient incentive for artists to create because art can be cheaply copied. Granting a creator monopoly rights over their creation makes it profitable (or maybe less unprofitable) to make art.
Do artists actually benefit from copyright? Sure.
A 2013 survey of 5,000 musicians found the average share of revenues directly attributable to copyright was 12%, and significantly higher for composers and musicians in the top 1% of earnings. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
A 2013 survey of 5,000 musicians found the average share of revenues directly attributable to copyright was 12%, and significantly higher for composers and musicians in the top 1% of earnings. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Where do new ideas and technologies come from? One school of thought says they are born from novel combinations of pre-existing ideas. It’s an appealing notion, but does this perspective get us anywhere useful? #ThursdayThreads
Let’s look at a few papers.
One nice thing about the combinatorial perspective on innovation, is that if you know all the possible technological building blocks you can exhaustively enumerate all possible inventions, including ones that are never actually invented.
One nice thing about the combinatorial perspective on innovation, is that if you know all the possible technological building blocks you can exhaustively enumerate all possible inventions, including ones that are never actually invented.
For example, once components A, B, and C, exist, then the combination ABC is a possible invention. Then you can see what kinds of factors are correlated with possible inventions being realized.
Here’s an obvious thought: more scientists, more discoveries; fewer scientists, fewer discoveries. But is that true? Let’s take a look at a few papers studying two (traumatic) upheavals in the scientific labor force. #ThursdayThreads #ProgressStudies.
First; Nazi Germany's 1933/1940 dismissal of Jewish (and other) academics. Because the dismissals varied by university, this can be used as a (grim) experiment on the impact of rapidly reducing your scientific labor force.
Waldinger (2016) tracks the fallout on German chemistry, physics, and mathematics departments over the ensuing decades. He finds, no surprise, departments that dismissed more faculty had fewer publications and fewer citations in the ensuing decades.
True or false:
Science ==> Technological progress.
Here's a thread on recent research trying to answer that question. #ThursdayThreads #ProgressStudies
Science ==> Technological progress.
Here's a thread on recent research trying to answer that question. #ThursdayThreads #ProgressStudies
Many would say answer is obviously "true." But some think technological breakthroughs mostly come from tinkering, and aren't guided by science. Others say ivory tower academics are disconnected from the real world and focus on irrelevant problems.
How to approach the problem systematically? One way is to look to patents. Patents aren't perfect records of invention are still useful. They provide very detailed information on millions of inventions across all sectors of the economy.
