Surprised kitty video: Attention is money in the YouTube age

My second Examiner.com article, “Surprised kitty video: Attention is money in the YouTube age“.

My special gift to Ronald Coase for his 99th birthday

In some sense, my “gift” to Prof. Ronald Coase for his 99th birthday is “special”. More on this later.

For the last 20+ years of my life, many of my thinking has been shaped and influenced by Coase, and yet I have not met him in person. Of course, how much have I actually learned or understood remains a mystery. (big smile) Allow me to share two stories.

I remember some years ago during the first year of my MBA program, somehow the topic of lighthouse came up. And I, quite off-handedly, mentioned to my classmate (he majored in economics, and I majored in computer science) that lighthouse is usually given as an example of a public good but this categorization is actually wrong.

Well, to my surprise, my classmate insisted that, “No no no. Lighthouse is a public good and you cannot charge any money for the use of it.” After a minute or so of discussion, we got back to our schoolwork. To me, from that moment on, I realized I was lucky to have some special insights. I’ve learned Coase’s ideas, including those in “The Lighthouse in Economics” via Prof. Steven Cheung‘s articles in Chinese when I was attending high school in Hong Kong. I have learned the importance in asking questions. And try not to take things/”established facts” for granted.

In yet another MBA class, this time an ethics class. The professor asked a simple question, something like, “Why do we have ‘company’/'corporation’?” In hope to lead to some discussions about ethics (well, it was an ethics course after all). What my professor didn’t expect was me raising my hand and answered, “To reduce transaction cost.” :)

Now, without further delay, allow me to present my “special” and virtual gift to Prof. Coase. Wishing Prof. Coase a very happy 99th birthday (in advance) and good health for many more years to come.

My “special” “gift”

This gift is “special” because I think the best gift to give to someone like Prof. Coase, who has everything he needs in the world and likely every material thing he wants, is to “pay it forward“. Prof. Coase himself doesn’t really benefit from the gift itself, it is the people who may learn from Prof. Coase that are benefitting. So I am “paying it forward” or “gifting” forward.

As you may know, the wonderfully insightful (and often humorous) 2003 Coase Lecture was delivered by Prof. Coase himself. And the full lecture has been available online via Coase Institute for free download and viewing for some time now. Unfortunately, unless the person has an extremely fast internet connection and have patient to wait for an hour or two or more, downloading the 525MB quicktime video file (this is very big) can still be quite a challenge. And for those that have slower regular internet access, viewing the lecture is practically impossible.

So as a “special” gift to Prof. Coase for his 99th birthday, I have taken the initiative and spent most of the night (well, actually last night and now well into the wee hours) to compress and upload the video onto YouTube.

This “gift” is “special” also because I’ve bent quite a few rules. Since this is a gift for Prof. Coase’s 99th birthday, I hope the “deciders” don’t mind and will let me give this “gift”. :)

Hope you enjoy the 2003 Coase Lecture (in 6 parts).

2009 Coase Conference – Day 1 brief notes and photos

Thanks a lot to my friend Zhaofeng for allowing me to quote and use a brief summary of his personal notes (in Chinese) and photos of day one of the 2009 Coase Conference. I am hoping and looking forward to the Information Economy Project at George Mason University School of Law posting the videos for the 2009 Coase Conference very soon.

Here are some photos.

Calgary screened documentary lead to Canada bail law reform (2nd reading of Bill C-464 unanimously supported by House of Commons)

Have a look of my first Examiner.com news story, “Calgary screened documentary lead to Canada bail law reform“.

Just Watch Me

My 2008 “big read” was the epic 960 pages, 62 chapters + afterword Warren Buffett biography “The Snowball” (see review/”best of”) by Alice Schroeder. Wonderful read. Very enjoyable and highly recommended (see my “best of”).

My 2009 “big read” is going to be the recently published 832 pages “Just Watch Me – The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau: 1968-2000″ by John English. I feel it is time for me to read up on Mr. Trudeau and get an inside look of some Canadian history. The reviews of the book I’ve read are mostly positive and I hope this will be a fun read. Wish me lots of luck.

You can read an excerpt from the book, chapter one “Taking Power”. Check out a Wikipedia entry about the phrase “Just Watch Me” and a video clip from CBC archive ‘Just watch me’.

Jazz Hamsters

Cute Jazz Hamsters ad.

[via CR]

Bail reform bill C-464

Update: “Grandparents’ nightmares (murder in US & murder-suicide in Canada) lead to bail law reform” is my first Examiner.com article. And I’ve decided to write about bill C-464. ***

From CBC,

“Kate and David Bagby, who live in California, joined Avalon MP Scott Andrews in his riding just outside St. John’s Friday to bring attention to proposed Criminal Code changes.

The Bagby’s 13-month old grandson, Zachary Turner, was drowned by his mother in Conception Bay in 2003, shortly before she killed herself in a murder-suicide.“

I have the privilege to interview Kate and David when they visited Calgary in 2008, have a look of my video interview with them. You can also listen to an interview I had with Kurt who made a documentary about the case and was Andrew’s friend.

ACTA

Questions about ACTA in House of Commons today.

So far the opaque ACTA negotiation makes me nervous. I hope Ministers Tony Clement and James Moore knows they can’t consult us and then ignore our opinions. That will be very bad.

[via Michael Geist]

A Celebration of the Research of Ronald Coase

I am not a professional economist but I love to read and learn. Here are four of the Coase Conference papers that I’ve started to scan.

1. Harold Demsetz, R.H. Coase and the Neoclassical Model of the Economic System
2. Thomas W. Hazlett, David Porter, Vernon Smith, Radio Spectrum and the Disruptive Clarity of Ronald Coase
3. Richard A. Posner, Keynes and Coase
4. Zhimin Liao, Xiaofang Chen, Why the Entry Regulation of the China Mobile Phone Manufacturing Industry Collapsed:The Impact of Technological Innovation on Institutional Transformation.

See a longer list of downloadable conference papers here.

Here is an excerpt of a presentation by Prof. Ronald Coase “Use prices to determine radio frequency spectrum use” given in 2003.