Monthly Archives: December 2007

Resolved

January Effect

One of the better anomalies is about to occur, the so-called January Effect in financial markets. Back in the day, stocks would jump in the first 3-4 days of January as the depressed prices from the end-of-year selloff would rebound. Of course, as people became savvy about it, the effect shifted a bit to December (the so-called Santa Claus rally), but still, it’s one of those funny plate tectonics where institutional effects (US tax law) meets individual psychology (optimistic January) meets collective social practice (being on vacation for the New Year holiday).

Happy January Effect.

Inter-disciplinary vs. Multi-disciplinary

This post riffs on a long-time discussion in my field of sociology, namely, How much should our disciplinary roots matter? It came up most recently as a side-light to a completely thoughtful, really interesting discussion of comments and research notes in journals. The issue of inter-disciplinarity is not new, or news, but I’d like to make my case for sociological chauvinism more explicitly.

Distemper

ye. gods.

Ouch

How do you know what stuff to get?

How to price cultural stuff

Tricky tricky Dr. Lena. In her discussion of the great Canadian post-Woodstock, train-tour extravaganza, she asks the question: how should we price cultural stuff?