Economics Art

I was researching the European Stability Mechanism this morning for a paper on the evolution of the euro, and I ran across this gem of economics art on the ESM webpage.  

Put on your mechanical engineer hat for a moment. This is a set of gears that literally cannot turn. To say nothing of the wisdom of putting belts on gears. Perhaps this is a subtle cry for help? 

(The ESM is sort of europe's internal IMF that can lend money to strapped governments with conditions.) 
  

Christmas in Quarantine

 

 

A merry Christmas -- or whatever you celebrate this time of year -- in quarantine, from a favorite band. 

Contract enforcement with costly verification -- Van Halen edition

From the Wall Street Journal Obituary 

A legacy of the band includes its contract riders—requests set as criteria for performance at a venue—particularly power and stage-construction requirements. Van Halen required a bowl of M&M’s to be placed in the band’s dressing room, with the brown candies removed—a test to make sure the contract was honored.

Economists may not be rock stars, but some rock stars are economists!  

RIP

Art

Sally Fama Cochrane on Painting Allegories of the Body By Milene Fernandez, Epoch Times | May 5, 2016

Sally Fama Cochrane paints at Grand Central Atelier in New York on April 8, 2016. (Benjamin Chasteen/Epoch Times)

NEW YORK—When she paints, Sally Fama Cochrane dives into the chasm between invisible and visible worlds—between the inside and the outside of the body, between numbers and emotions, between cold analysis and comforting storytelling. While some old masters painted allegories of time, wisdom, faith, and themes imbued with Greek mythology or religious morals, Cochrane creates her own allegories inspired by a predominant paradigm of this century—science and medicine....

Painting by Sally Fama Cochrane, “The Organic Body,” oil on panel, 12 by 36 inches, 2015. (Courtesy of Sally Fama Cochrane)

The rest of the story (with pictures and paintings.)  Sally's web page with lots of her art. The exhibition (Grand Central Atelier, Long Island City). Sally and Devin's still life painting workshop.

Ok, this has nothing to do with economics, and it's blatant nepotism from a proud dad. But it's fun, you need something to avoid getting to work on a Monday morning,  and the art is really cool.

Phillips art

The Wall Street Journal gets a prize for Art in Economics for their Phillips curve article. Abstract expressionist division, not contemporary realism, alas.

Source: Wall Street Journal

(For the uninitiated: There is supposed to be a stable negatively sloped curve here by which higher inflation comes with lower unemployment. Beyond that correlation, most policy economists read it as cause and effect, higher unemployment begets lower inflation and vice versa. The point of the article is how little reality conforms to that bedrock belief.)

Favorite Book

My favorite book is back, via the University of Chicago press, in both electronic and print form. A consequence of digital technology, books that once were permanently out of print now can be found again. E-books and short-batch print are great innovations. (Most if it is also on Google Books, a great place to sample.)

I won't pretend objectivity -- or that this has much of anything to do with economics or finance.

What's so great about the book? The writing for one. Sit back and enjoy. Read between the lines too for the breathtaking primary-source scholarship.

This is a book about dead white men and their ideas in an unfashionable time -- the Medici as grand dukes, not the republic and early renaissance. Start right in on p.6-9 with the realities of why the republic did not work, in the circumstance of 16th century Florence. But if you didn't like unfashionable ideas, you wouldn't be here.

It's greatest lesson, to me at least, is empathy. It forces you to work hard to understand how people saw things, and not to fall prey to that common habit of reading our own values and judgments on historical characters. Decisions that make little sense from modern sensibilities become inevitable if you really understand the circumstances, knowledge and mindset of people at the time.

Friday Art Fun

Totally off topic. It's Friday, time to relax.

Source: Nina Katchadourian

15th Century Flemish Style Portraits Recreated In Airplane Lavatory Click the link for the full set.

From the artist:

While in the lavatory on a domestic flight in March 2010, I spontaneously put a tissue paper toilet cover seat cover over my head and took a picture in the mirror using my cellphone. The image evoked 15th-century Flemish portraiture. <…> I made several forays to the bathroom from my aisle seat, and by the time we landed I had a large group of new photographs entitled Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style

From the art critic (Sally Cochrane)

What no one's saying, though, is that she was hogging the bathroom while a line of antsy people held their bladders! 

In related art news, the street artist Banksy is prowling New York. A group of Brooklyn locals, seeing people coming in to photograph the stencil, promptly covered it with cardboard and starting charging $5 per shot. Entrepreneurship and property rights are still alive.

From Livestock to the Stock Exchange

From Livestock to the Stock Exchange. © Sally Cochrane All Rights Reserved

Artist's description: This is a brief visual history of trade, reading left to right. The first "money" was cattle, represented by the cheese. Ancient Mesopotamians kept track of their cattle exchanges on cuneiform tablets like receipts (we have some at the Oriental institute of Chicago!). The root of the word "pecuniary" comes from the root "pecu" meaning "cattle." Cowrie shells were another early form of currency for trade, and beaver fur, which was very valuable, was used in barter when Europeans discovered the New World. The coins and stock ticker tape represent the modern end of the history. July 2013. 8"x 16" oil on canvas.

Original here with many other sizes.

Sally says the beaver fur was inspired by a Russ Roberts EconTalk podcast, interviewing Timothy Brook on his book Vermeer's Hat. "Part of the book talked about how valuable beaver fur was for making hats that ended up in the Netherlands during Vermeer's lifetime." I don't know how many other artists listen to EconTalk while painting...

Happy Thanksgiving

By Eric Cochrane (who also drew the grumpy economist). More here

Mermaids

This has nothing to do with economics or finance, but it's way cooler...If you or your teenage children are into young-adult fiction.

My wife  Beth's young adult novel, Monstrous Beauty, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, will be released September 4.

Fierce, seductive mermaid Syrenka falls in love with Ezra, a young naturalist. When she abandons her life underwater for a chance at happiness on land, she is unaware that this decision comes with horrific and deadly consequences. Almost one hundred forty years later, seventeen-year-old Hester meets a mysterious stranger named Ezra and feels overwhelmingly, inexplicably drawn to him. For generations, love has resulted in death for the women in her family. Is it an undiagnosed genetic defect . . . or a curse? With Ezra’s help, Hester investigates her family’s strange, sad history. The answers she seeks are waiting in the graveyard, the crypt, and at the bottom of the ocean—but powerful forces will do anything to keep her from uncovering her connection to Syrenka and to the tragedy of so long ago.

There will be a launch party at 57th street books in Chicago, Tues. Sept. 4, at 6 PM. A second larger coming out will happen at the Plimoth Plantation, Plymouth MA (the book is set in Plymouth, and partly on the plantation) Sept. 7, at 5 pm, information here.

Then Beth will be off on Macmillan's Fierce Reads Tour with three other YA authors.

• September 18: Changing Hands Bookstore, Pheonix
• September 19: Tattered Cover, Denver
• September 20: Left Bank Books, St. Louis
• September 21: Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Cincinatti
• September 22: Next Chapter Bookshop, Milwaukee
• September 23: Malaprop’s Bookstore, Asheville 

For a taste of Beth's mermaid lore, try the extra short story "Men Who Wish to Drown" on tor.com, (cover art to the left).

Monstrous beauty at Amazon and the publisher's website 
 
Visit Beth at her blog and on Twitter

(My plot suggestion, "Syrenka, Libertarian Mermaid" went nowhere. I guess I'd better keep my day job!)