Applies to private market investing and M&A, too. If interest rates are high and inflation steady, people still invest or transact because they feel confident about where things are headed. If they are. uncertain around rates, inflation, and their overall budget, they tend to just not act.
I would be interested in your views with how this correlates with lottery spending - which is very high risk (expected returns below 0%) , but also far more common among poorer individuals (Below link suggesting poorest 1% of zip codes spend $600 (5% of paycheck) annually and the richest 1% spend $150 (0.15% of their paycheck))
Clearly it is a very different approach to "investing" - a 10% return on $600 is only $60 - perhaps the hope of life changing money is worth far more?
Yes, there is a well-known lottery bias. But I don’t think it has lots to do with risk vs. Uncertainty. I think it is more about the shape of the payoffs. If you are poor, winning the lottery will change your life (or at least you think so) but buying a ticket and losing doesn’t change all that much. So why not giving it a go.
There is the well-known argument that if you have your last $5 you should buy a lottery ticket. Because if you win, great. But if you lose you are going to die anyway because $5 is not enough to survive.
I struggle to find a better argument for Universal Basic Income (goes into hiding). In Europe, that is.
Not only would it be a path to rolling a gazillion of benefit payments (unemployment, housing benefits, and the like) and even pensions into one simple system that would unlock a lot of untapped potential in civil service.
Even more importantly, the resulting removal of ambiguity might just be what’s needed to get more people to say ‘hell yes, now I’ll take the risk’ and go freelance, become an entrepreneur, create new businesses from the ideas they have but don’t dare implement – and create much needed dynamics and economic growth in the process.
Let us see what happens to the US economy in the real world, under Trump's mercantilist economics.
Applies to private market investing and M&A, too. If interest rates are high and inflation steady, people still invest or transact because they feel confident about where things are headed. If they are. uncertain around rates, inflation, and their overall budget, they tend to just not act.
I would be interested in your views with how this correlates with lottery spending - which is very high risk (expected returns below 0%) , but also far more common among poorer individuals (Below link suggesting poorest 1% of zip codes spend $600 (5% of paycheck) annually and the richest 1% spend $150 (0.15% of their paycheck))
Clearly it is a very different approach to "investing" - a 10% return on $600 is only $60 - perhaps the hope of life changing money is worth far more?
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/04/02/the-economics-of-american-lotteries
Yes, there is a well-known lottery bias. But I don’t think it has lots to do with risk vs. Uncertainty. I think it is more about the shape of the payoffs. If you are poor, winning the lottery will change your life (or at least you think so) but buying a ticket and losing doesn’t change all that much. So why not giving it a go.
There is the well-known argument that if you have your last $5 you should buy a lottery ticket. Because if you win, great. But if you lose you are going to die anyway because $5 is not enough to survive.
I struggle to find a better argument for Universal Basic Income (goes into hiding). In Europe, that is.
Not only would it be a path to rolling a gazillion of benefit payments (unemployment, housing benefits, and the like) and even pensions into one simple system that would unlock a lot of untapped potential in civil service.
Even more importantly, the resulting removal of ambiguity might just be what’s needed to get more people to say ‘hell yes, now I’ll take the risk’ and go freelance, become an entrepreneur, create new businesses from the ideas they have but don’t dare implement – and create much needed dynamics and economic growth in the process.
I agree with you. Especially
With the rise of AI we need to start seriously thinking about UBI.