Gyaan
Sodexo Coupons – Invalid. A Business Model explained
Short Summary: As of January 1st, 2012, all retail store chains in Bangalore (and across India) have stopped accepting Sodexo coupons in lieu of items purchased. Every firm hands out these Sodexo vouchers to its Employees (included in compensation package). Employees are now worried that these Sodexo coupons would be useless as they are not [...]
Theory of Outrageous Predictions
This is a theory which we can all use, with very limited or zero downside but unlimited upside. Let me explain. Make a prediction about anything. Just about anything. The trick lies in making an outrageous prediction and not just a normal prediction. For example, you can predict that Bangladesh is going to win this [...]
IPL 2011 Player Valuation and Analysis
The next auction of the IPL season is upon us. In fact, it is due tomorrow, Jan 8th 2011. I considered doing an extensive post on IPL player valuation including some mathematics, but then again, a combination of sleep, laziness and the Test series (Ind vs SA and Aus vs Eng) kept me away from [...]
Retrospective Determinism*
*Jargon alert. Loosely called ‘Hindsight bias’. How often have we looked at past events, somehow saw/derived a pattern from these connected events and concluded that the final eventuality had to happen? Many a time, we indulge in this process known as retrospective determinism. Let me explain. a) The US govt. looked at all the events [...]
Incentive Theory – A Primer
Incentive theory is primarily a psychological term, explaining the relation between motivation and behavior of the individual, as shaped by profitable intent. Let me explain. The heart of economics deals with incentives. Incentives shape the behavior of an individual. These incentives need not necessarily be monetary. They can be non-material forms like love and respect [...]
Signaling Theory – An Introduction
Signaling, as per Wiki, is defined as In economics, more precisely in contract theory, signaling is the idea that one party (termed the agent) conveys some meaningful information about itself to another party (the principal). (Advanced economics students might want to classify this under behavioral economics). Back in 1974, Nobel laureate Michael Spence introduced the notion of signaling in economic [...]
AIDA in Relationships
So…lately, I have been in an overdrive of thoughts. As I was walking down one of the aisles in Wal-Mart the other day, I noticed a wide range of cornflakes – some new brands placed alongside the older ones. This led me to think about the Marketing Management course that I had studied in my [...]
Quantum Relationships
I was talking to my friend the other day when he mentioned that he was in a ‘proxy relationship’. On enquiring further on this inter-galactic phrase, he explained that he didn’t know whether ‘he was in love’ or ‘he was just friends’ with this girl [which actually meant that he is interested but is shit [...]
Know-brainer : No-brainer – Series Part 3
This Guru-Shishya series started here. 1) Guruji, welcome back after a long time. I trust your vacation went very well. I had a few fundamental questions regarding inflation while you were out on vacation. You had mentioned in this post that inflation would go down to zero – and miraculously it did. And yet [...]
Preview – 2009
One phrase to sum it all – ‘Hold tight, brave the storm’ Now that we are done with the excitement and enthusiasm of ushering in the New Year and all that, let’s look at what 2009 has in store for us. With the hypothesis of ‘data doesn’t lie’, let’s look at some of the news [...]
