Thursday 8 February 2007

A Little Morning Note

A short note from me this Thursday morning – thank you for all those who read my blog (I think I have a readership of 6 or less, but I am content :), and thank you for all the comments you have given me – the kind words and the encouragement to continue.


Also, I will be glad to receive, if any, topics and questions that you would want to discuss regarding anything economics (like silly NST front-page statistics, toll-hike, petrol prices, inflation and so on) on this blog, or maybe even topics beyond economics. I am always happy to share my opinions, and have healthy debates.


Lastly, some of you might notice that there is this Elanor’s Coffee Table section on side of this blog. I am a Google Reader user, and read loads of blogs and online articles daily. Some that I find particularly interesting, I will share them. Feel free to take them from my coffee table :)


Thank you,

Elanor

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

thanks Elanor for sharing your thoughts and research on the interesting topics you post on your blogg.

am grateful to you also for the many interesting articles directed via your Elanor's Coffee Table ( huge reading appetite needed here :)

i find reading these articles enhances my knowledge further on things i didn't know before :)

Anonymous said...

:)

i know it's not the same thing as economics, but are you interested in doing research on more corporate-y things?

i have in mind things along the line of corporate corruption, investigating companies or glc's and such that are involved in sketchy activities and the like..

just seems like there's a good need for that sorta thing out there..

keep up the good work! gotta check out this coffee table widget thing sometime... :P :)

Elanor said...

Hi Nat,

Definitely sound interesting, and given the dominance and monopolistic nature of the GLCs in Malaysia, some sort of objective ranking in terms of corruption and governance of those corps would definitely be useful.

But alas, such an exercise would prove to be very difficult to execute for a blogger with scant resources. I outline two reasons why:

1. Research of such nature would inevitably be very micro in nature, thus collating statistics and information on individual would be very resource-extensive in nature. But of course, non-statistically intensive but more subjective/historical review methodology could be employed, but to do it across dozens on GLCs would really be a task.

2. This is compounded by the fact that variables like corruption and governance are very elusive and clandestine in nature (duh!)- measurement is very difficult and to find out direct evidence of corruption would almost definitely change the research into a corporate lawsuit. Indirect measurement could be done, but disentangling the effect of corruption from inefficiency would be very difficult from indirect measures. Incompetence can easily be confused with abuse of power.

Actually, what you have mentioned seems more like work for accountants and lawyers.

Anyway, do look at this link: http://info.worldbank.org/etools/BSPAN/PresentationView.asp?PID=1971&EID=910, from the World Bank. They are the leading institution in the world on corruption and governance. You might find something useful from there.

Also, Jomo and Gomez wrote a couple of books and papers on this issue too. You might want to read them too.

Elanor :)

Anonymous said...

You can count me and my partner as 7, and 8. We like the 'intellectual' touch, rather than the increasingly emotional hysteria of other Malaysian Bloggers and Websites (and commentators).

Its a near daily visit for us now.