PhD position in Economics, Ghent Univ., Belgium

Ghent University
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Ghent University
Faculty of Economics and Business Administration
has a vacancy for
a MOTIVATED DOCTORAL RESEACHER (M/F)
In the field of Micro-Econometrics Applied to Labour Economics

Project title: “EVALUATING ACTIVE LABOUR MARKET POLICIES IN FLANDERS”
To start in January 2012

Job Description
• The candidate writes a doctoral thesis under the supervision of Prof. Bart Cockx on the research project entitled “Evaluating Active Labour Market Policies in Flanders”. This project will be realized within the Policy Research Centre Work and Social Economy (“Steunpunt Werk en Sociale Economie”) financed by the Flemish Government. The project consists in two main research topics:
(i) A Simple Monitoring Instrument for the Effectiveness of Active Labor Market Policies;
(ii) Public Procurement of Employment Services: Long-Run Effectiveness and the Role of the Service Provider.

The description of the research project can be downloaded fromhttp://users.ugent.be/~bcockx/PhDproject_Werk.pdf.
• The competencies and research interests of the promoter are described onhttp://users. ugent.be/~bcockx/.
• In addition to performing the tasks described in the research project, the PhD candidate will improve his/her research skills by completing a doctoral training programme. This includes advanced courses within the Belgian Graduate School in Economics, and attending and presenting research in seminars and international conferences. A description of the rules of the PhD programme are downloadable fromhttp://www.feb.ugent.be/en/Res/doctoraatsreglement_2011.pdf

Profile
• You are holder of a Master degree in Economics, which you should have completed with honours.
• You can work independently, accurately and systematically
• You have an interest in quantitative methods

Offer
• A doctoral research fellowship for up to 4 years.
• A dynamic research environment with interactions with other research centres, in particular with IRES at UCLouvain and also IZA and CESifo, research centres to which Bart Cockx is affiliated.

Interested?
Send a letter of motivation and your CV to prof. Bart Cockx bart.cockx@ugent. be as soon as possible and not later than December 15, 2011. Do not hesitate to send a mail for more info.

url: http://users.ugent.be/~bcockx/vacature2011.pdf

Because College Education is not the only way to Success

The Thiel Fellowship is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. The Fellowship brings together some of the world’s most creative and motivated young people, and helps them bring their most ambitious ideas and projects to life. Thiel Fellows are given a no-strings-attached grant of $100,000 to skip college and focus on their work, their research, and their self-education. They are mentored by our network of visionary thinkers, investors, scientists, and entrepreneurs, who provide guidance and business connections that can’t be replicated in any classroom. Rather than just studying, you’re doing.

“Every tech story is different. Every moment in history happens only once. All successful companies are successful in their own unique way. It’s your task to figure out what that future history will be.” – Peter Thiel

 

Fellowship: Two Years. $100,000. Some Ideas Just Can’t Wait.

2012 Applications are open: See the application.

From One Prohibition to Another (1933-2011)

On December 05, 1933 the Prohibition on the production and commercialization of Alcohol was finally over in the United States when Utah became the 36th U.S. state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution. Thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to enact the amendment (this overturned the 18th Amendment which had made the manufacturing, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States).

Since then, the alcohol industry (widely hated and considered evil before 1933) started developing into one of the most successful industries of the modern world.  The access to competition ignited an immense diversification of marketing, production and commercialization strategies that improved the quality, safety, additives and capabilities of the previous distilled liquors.

By 2010 The world’s five biggest alcohol companies by market cap had their hubs in Beligum Anheuser-Busch Inbev (BUD), Brazil (Companhia de Bebidas das Américas (AMBEV) (ABV); United Kingdom (Diageo plc (DEO), The Netherlands (Heineken (HINKY.PK) and France (Pernod-Ricard (PDRDF.PK).  And the industry gives provides with jobs to millions of workers around the globe.

Today, in 2011 we face a different but at the same time similar Prohibition of a product.  I refer to the research, production, industrialization and commercialization of controlled drugs (marihuana, cocaine, etc.) that has been condemned by world government with the same irrational argument once used with alcohol.

Because of this Prohibition on Drugs; the world is facing a Trillionaire war leaded by the United States politicians who profit from it. More so, millions of jobs are lost every day and in the countries in which it is produced and stored before reaching the final markets the chaos reigns (for just one story of how this chaos come into being check: The Drug War in Guatemala: A Conversation with Giancarlo Ibarguen).

Let us learn from history and save our children and future generations from committing the same mistakes.

A Plan to Collapse Iran’s Central Bank and its Origins

The foreign policy of the richest countries has always depended in controlling the world’s monetary systems. As a continuation of the postcolonial systems, they continue holding the power to grant credits to poorer countries, to rescue their economies in periods of crisis and in pushing for an increase in world “reserves” and international “liquidity.” The end result of this policies resulted in creating world inflation and enriching those central banks that controlled the dice of this international game (just as it had been done in the previous colonial period).

Colonialism may seem to many an ‘old history’ that was overcome with the modernization of the world and the decolonization processes after World War II.  Nonetheless, in the following postcolonial period many already institutionalized strategies continued working and are still present today.  The IMF, for example, was one of the institutions born as a result of the decolonization process. Its results (far distant from their founding vision) were to keep the postcolonial countries in monetary and economic dependency.

For long the world’s centralized banking and monetary authorities, headed primarily by the International Monetary Fund, collaborated to initiate a period of surveillance, aid, and guarantees for the world’s financial markets as  and  explained in the post “The IMF and Moral Hazard“. However, the long-term results of theses policies fostered the dependency of postcolonial economies and, as such, empowered the populist leaderships in the former colonies that pursued expansive social programs that couldn’t be supported without their foreign aid and long-term indebtment.

Video: The Plan To Collapse Iran’s Central Bank

Today, I saw a video titled “The Plan To Collapse Iran’s Central Bank” in which analysts in the U.S.A. are evaluating the possibilities of collapsing Iran’s economy and disenabling them to continue researching their nuclear programs. Strategies as these may seem as “bogus” to many; however, the long history of international monetary intervention of the economies in postcolonial countries is long and influential (see: Pastor, Manuel (1989). Latin America, the Debt Crisis, and the International Monetary Fund. Latin American Perspectives).  The results of any of these strategies always end up creating inflation and as  mentioned in his essay “End the IMF” in the year 1963 the only solution for and end to inflation (an as such for peace and economic recovery) is to eliminate the IMF and the interventionist international monetary system that has proved, in practice, a gigantic machine for world inflation.

File:50000 IRR obverse.jpg
50,000 Iranian rial

Occupy the Mind with Economics

Video: Occupy Wall Street & Capitalism: A Professor’s Response

Karl Marx was an intellectual radical.  What that means is that he sought to get at the root cause of social ills with his analysis.  Despite my extreme disagreement with Marx on his diagnosis, I have always been attracted to intellectual radicalism.  Not the fashionable radical chic of rock stars, etc., but the nerdy radicalism of scholars and public intellectuals.  Not a radicalism evident where the cool-kids party while skipping school, but a radicalism born in the library and in reading dusty old books and studying long and hard to try and figure things out.  Think hard, read widely, think even harder, then attempt to write clearly — that is the intellectual radicalism that I find exciting.”

Continue reading via: Occupy the Mind with Economics