Marc Deloof

Link to article: doi.org/10.1111/ehr.70…

New article in @EcHistSocReview: I show that Belgian financial elites were far more involved in companies operating in King Leopold’s Congo Free State than in other Belgian firms, challenging the view that these elites had little interest in the Congo Free State.

Nu mijn echtgenote een abonnement op De Standaard heeft genomen, valt mij op hoe gelijkaardig DS en De Morgen tegenwoordig zijn, terwijl dat vroeger heel verschillende kranten waren. Het enige significante verschil dat ik nog zie, is dat er in DS meer overlijdensberichten staan.

Never say "Studies show..." unless you can describe at least two studies in detail.

Some historical evidence that is unfortunately relevant today: in a paper forthcoming in Business History, @LMrtgt , Gertjan Verdickt and I find that the uncertainty created by war threat negatively affected entrepreneurship in Belgium before World War 1.

Quite remarkable: the U.S. government can now bar defense contractors from paying dividends or doing share buybacks if the defense secretary judges them insufficiently productive.

If you’re interested in the history of King Leopold’s Congo Free State, check out my interview on the Everything Economic History postcast. open.spotify.com/episode/6wEuUz…

Would Lenin have approved of the IMF? An indispensable organization branko2f7.substack.com/p/would-lenin-…

@siiiaaaaaaa @simongerman600 It may have something to do with this:

@curiousfinance @simongerman600 Only way it would go above 100%.

Lisbon is one of the famous examples of a city having been made unlivable for locals due to AirBnbs.

Interesting experiment found that an AI agent built around the obsolete GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 models beat experienced human venture capital analysts in predicting which early-stage startups would survive based on early screening (at much lower costs as well). sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

@HannoLustig Interesting, where is this from?

Governments like to shift the burden of wars and pandemics to bondholders, not taxpayers. Inflation helps them do just that. Returns on the government bond portfolio plotted below. Time 0 is start of the war/pandemic. Top panel UK. Bottom panel US. COVID and WW-I are on top of each other in the figure.

Tired: AI will eliminate jobs and cause mass unemployment Wired: In a post-scarcity economy, most jobs are partly or wholly fake. Outsourcing the real work to AI (and robotics) will make even more fake jobs possible. The 'unemployment rate' won't dip even one tick.

1/I'm very excited about the JMP of my PhD student Chris Kontz (Stanford GSB) who's on the academic job market this year. Chris’ job market paper analyzes the impact of the rise in passive investing on the real economy. More passive investing in a stock results in increased co-movement with other stocks, leading CFOs of these companies to set higher discount rates, as they were taught to do in business school, even when the fundamental riskiness of their business is unchanged. As a result, these companies cut back on investment. Chris provides compelling evidence that these investment distortions may help to account for part of the @ThomasPHI2 & Gutierrez missing investment puzzle in the US. christiankontz.com

I'm surprised to learn this week that French and British museums consider theft wrong

Did you know that if you join the Department of Accountancy and Finance at the @UAntwerpenFBE as an accounting professor, you’ll be working at the most beautiful university campus in Belgium? Application deadline 17 November. uantwerpen.be/en/jobs/vacanc…

“Mom how did we get so rich?” “Your dad charged 2 and 20 to underperform the S&P 500”

@cauwelaert @AntonJaegermm Wat mij bij dit stuk weer opvalt: het openbaar vervoer is blijkbaar het enige voorbeeld dat mensen nog kunnen geven van iets dat in Brussel redelijk werkt.

⁦@AntonJaegermm⁩ op de één van de internationale editie van The New York Times met uitstekend stuk over Brussel.