@rgumental @dvisor

The chorus of 'open' , 'neutral' and 'free'  tend to capture the imagination of social media quite quickly. Back during my school and college days, there was this enormous campaign for 'free software' , without realizing what was 'free' in that context. Likewise , over the last month, the Net-Neutrality campaign has caught up the attention everyone . Much of this is misunderstood  & misinterpreted by the media. The basic underlying question in this whole debate is - 'Can an internet service provider prioritize / de-prioritize certain content over the rest' ?  It is not easy to answer that unless you understand the underlying realities & implications. There is this concept called price discrimination in Economics. It is all about pricing different consumers differently for the same service. In airline world, there are a number of different fare classes for the same sector. So, it is quite likely that the passenger sitting ne...

Hardly did the aircraft touchdown, people started standing up and pulling down luggage from the overhead lockers, started ringing up their friends & relatives. ..Wow - I'm finally travelling in a sector just like my hometown Calicut where this happens on a regular basis. Welcome to Africa !!! . Finally I set my foot on the erstwhile dark continent & the  'untapped economic potential' of 21st century. The one hour taxi drive from Airport to Novotel hotel in central Cairo was so convincing that I don't think I'll ever dare to drive a car here . Driving here needs a different set of skills altogether. You zig-zag, you maneuver, yet you maintain the speed . The chaos in Cairo just reminded me of Mumbai. A city with an ever increasing influx of people, Everyone struggling to make ends meet .  The drive next morning to Giza was just like driving through a Mumbai suburb. The imposing pyramids took our breath away. The important thing about Egypt & Cai...

“You can get a car of any make done here. Half of the city drives a BMW”  - remarked our guide Ahmed, as he wriggled us through the narrow lanes outside Alexandria railway station. It was an exaggeration.. However, for those who wonder where the second-hand / third-hand vehicles of the developed world end-up, the answer is Africa.  An average car-workshop guy here should be much more skilled than a car-mechanic in the West. Here to succeed he needs to mix and match. Body of a Benz, engine of a Chevy, I guess you can find any combination here. We reached Alexandria after a three-hour train ride from Cairo. Though I did harbor expectations of capturing at-least fleeting images of the Nile Delta, those were quashed quickly. The feeling that you get while the train approaches ‘Misr’ station is exactly the same as that of train approaches to Mumbai or Delhi. Cramped & incomplete houses, people struggling to make ends meet, it is as good as any metro city in developing ...

A Swiss watch or vacation in Zurich is going to cost you much much more.. The more I read, more I feel like I should have taken a Swiss trip before the this  float decision Much has been written about this. For a good introductory read, you can check the  Mint article  . Most of the literature of this decision has focused on the macro underpinnings. While it is true that the macro factors forced SNB to take this decision, I think it is important to understand the micro-economic implications of currency pegging & its aftermath Switzerland is a country known for its political stability. It stood insulated from even the world-wars. Such a place , coupled with its banking laws naturally has an appeal for black & white money from risk averse people across the world. The currency pegging was introduced by SNB to protect the economy from the global financial crisis. For a country, preventing appreciation of currency is quite easy -- Just print more money. Th...

One of the electives that I took while in IIMK was this less fancied course - Complementary Products & Competitive Advantage  . The fundamental message in that course was in applying 'Platform Thinking' concept into a lot of situations . A platform could be thought of as an area where two or more types of consumers / producers join for their mutual benefit.  And the value of the platform grows as more and more consumers / producers join it.  Typical example of this is Card Payment networks - Visa & Mastercard.  So, if you are a card network provider,  merchants are forced to give that as a payment mechanism because consumers want that. And, more consumers joining the platform results in more merchants adopting it.  Like a domino / network effect. If executed well, it soon reaches a tipping point from where more consumers & merchants just adopt it. This concept could be extended to a lot of situations - Currency is a platform  ( explai...

To Hedge or Not to Hedge - That's the billion dollar question puzzling everyone from industry heads to govt policy makers in the wake of crude oil collapse . Before even attempting to answer that, it may be prudent to to look at the way indices work - and the economics behind it. What should a market index reflect ?  It should be a consistent & fair representation of the underlying supply & demand. Is that the case behind petro price indices ? Lets look at a few data points first. Globally, there are two main crude indices  - Brent & WTI . Brent crude index is computed as a mathematical function of spot & future prices of North Sea oil ( Click for details ) . Similarly, WTI or West Texas Intermediate is function of primary crude contracts settled in Cushing, Oklahoma . Both have different Sulphur content, density etc - which means there are different costs to refiners, though the end - market - Consumers is largely the same For most part of the last 5...

Like most of the fellow Indians, till 10-Oct-2014, I've never heard of his name.  Nobel prizes are not announced out of thin air. Extensive evaluations are done on the nominations. Even the fact that an Indian was on the shortlist should have made the news, but our media was so bankrupt on information about this personality so that some of them even quoted the wikipedia articles blindly. This day kind of made me aware how hollow the Indian media system is.  The so called grass-root journalism - even if it is done - rarely gets the deserved attention. To a public which enjoys gossips & cleavage talk much more than anything like this, Indian news channels spit out a continuous stream of that. All that even the well networked channels like NDTV could do is to trace couple of children saved by him - tell them to narrate their stories. I took a look at Satyarthi's Wikipedia page as well.  There are 13 'awards & honours' including the Nobel 2014 listed there. Bu...