Wisdom of crowds, Facebook’s IPO and Iceland’s Currency

The Economist has an interesting article on crowd wisdom which talks about how people decide which direction to move to when they see someone coming from the opposite direction, and they say that in France people step to the right to avoid a collision, while in most parts of Asia – people step to the left to avoid a collision. This has nothing to do with which side you drive because people drive on the left in London but step on the right to avoid a collision when walking.

The answer has to do with behavior which is also the topic of the second link in another interesting article on the behavioral economics of gift giving. It turns out that cash is the best gift, but you may not want to give such an impersonal gift – so try something expensive and useless if picking a gift for a girl and a gadget if looking for a gift for a guy!

Facebook is expected to come up with an IPO next year, and this WSJ story has some interesting details about how they are preparing for the IPO and things they want to watch out for like bowing to the short term expectations of shareholders.

I was surprised to read this article that said one political party in Iceland is suggesting that they adopt the Canadian dollar. It doesn’t look like this will happen and while it sounds very odd at first, when you think about it some more – if you are going to adopt something like the Euro why not adopt something more stable instead, right?

News of downgrades have become very common these days, so it was refreshing to see Moody’s praise Poland for managing inflation and maintaining a flexible exchange rate which combined with other things leads Moody’s to believe that Poland will grow rather than contract in 2012.

Something a bit less dramatic – Ranjan writes about Metlife’s Met Smart Child.

Finally, in a bit of relief India’s food inflation dips to 4 year lows.

Enjoy your Christmas weekend!

Update: Corrected the error pointed out by Ashok in his comment.

2 thoughts on “Wisdom of crowds, Facebook’s IPO and Iceland’s Currency”

  1. Minor correction: Londoners drive on the left but (as per The Economist) article step towards the right. You have written the reverse.

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