Investment decisions need to consider different options, trade-offs and opportunity costs to ensure an efficient economy When you go into a supermarket, grab a trolley and shop around the store you have a lot to choose from. Which vegetables do I want? Shall we have steak tonight or is chicken more of a family favourite? Can I get away with spending our entire week's budget on chocolate or will my partner be mad? These types of questions are essential, as ultimately they help you leave the store with the basket of goods you want. You could have chosen different products, but you haven't. This ..read more

Having a baby changes everything - an economist's perspective on having kids I've been pretty lazy lately with posting on Byte Size since our son was born last year, but I am finally getting over that initial parenting hump and finding time to write. But as you would expect, this post is being written very quietly, in the dead of night, while he sleeps. The new father in me is blending with the economist in this post to consider the costs and benefits of having a baby. To be clear - cost-benefit analysis (CBA) by itself is not a good way to decide whether to have a baby. There are far more hum ..read more

Perhaps there is something to learn about markets from the price of avocados? It's been a long time since I posted, not since February. Nevertheless, if you are a follower of this site, I hope you appreciated the guest posts. This post is born out of a wander through the fruit and vege aisles of the supermarket. Don't get me wrong - we actually went to go shopping - it wasn't purely to find inspiration for this post. Economists can find inspiration in mundane things. Avocados were going for 80 cents each, or 3 for $4. That might be unremarkable, but rewind 5 years and they were more like $2 ea ..read more

A guest post by Avni Tripathi Work-life balance refers to the equilibrium that results when a person gives both their professional and personal obligations equal weight. Most of the time, work comes before anything else in our lives. We could be inclined to prioritize our career advancement over our personal happiness. In this article, we discuss some of the tips for better work-life balance to enjoy your life with constant work. However, finding a positive work-life balance is crucial if we want to improve both our professions and our physiological, emotional, and psychological health. Numero ..read more

A guest post by Clarence Wilkins Businesses today work in fast-changing environments which put forth numerous daily challenges. Overcoming these challenges requires quick decision-making and collaborative effort. Additionally, good employee collaboration leads to higher retention, increased productivity, and better utilization of resources. Today, to help your organization reap these benefits, this post explores four effective collaboration strategies to explore. Develop a culture of transparency Transparency is the bedrock of good collaboration, which requires an honest and timely flow of inf ..read more

A guest post by Vijay Sharma at The Thought Tree Many investors doubt if they might need to buy stocks. Before making an investment decision, it's important to have a firm understanding of stocks and trading rather than foolishly believing widely held ideas. Here are five stock market myths, along with the facts which confuse the investors the most. Myth 1: Stock market Investing is similar to gambling People avoid the stock market because of this. We must go over what it means to buy stocks to comprehend why stock trading is fundamentally distinct from gambling. A share of common stock repres ..read more

Guest post by Alan Cunningham The international political economy (IPE) is an incredibly sensitive system. It defines how international trade and commerce are conducted and significantly helps the long-term development of nation-states while also assisting in the growth of free trade. Encyclopedia Britannica defines International Political Economy as the study of “problems that arise from or are affected by the interaction of international politics, international economics, and different social systems (e.g., capitalism and socialism) and societal groups (e.g., farmers at the local level, diff ..read more

The 2008 Financial Collapse and Black Swan events Guest post by Alan Cunningham The phrase, “complex systems can contain the seeds of their own destruction,” is a phrase that appears in Ted Lewis’ 2006 book Critical Infrastructure Protection in Homeland Security: Defending a Networked Nation; with this phrase, Lewis means these systems are self-destructing, “due to nonlinearities that become apparent only when the system is under stress”. In my view, what Lewis is getting at is that there are systems and methods that are utilized by governments to secure their infrastructure and national ..read more

Was the West lulled into a false sense of security by the expansion of NATO and the EU in Europe post the fall of the Soviet Union? “A man who is used to acting in one way never changes; he must come to ruin when the times, in changing, no longer are in harmony with his ways” - Niccolo Machiavelli It goes without saying that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is an unjustified travesty, a breach of human rights and that Putin is a mad dictator. But this article isn’t about how bad/unjustified/reprehensible the war on Ukraine is - it's an analysis of the situation, and what may have prevented it, by ..read more

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