Baby Arbitrage?

N. G Mankiw posted a link to the following article in NY Times.
The gist of the story is, with a huge tax benefit for having the baby before the end of the calendar year, people are starting to strategically bringing some January babies early into the world. Another example how the discontinuity in tax code create discontinuous behavior! The best part of the story is, wealthier people who are more likely to have tax-advises from experts, give birth to more "year-end" babies. Woh, let's wait and see more Ivy kids with a date of birth in December, 18 years later!

Flickering Mind: Attention Shortage

When I was young, one of my favorite pass-time was dictionary reading, specially reading the "Dictionary of Idioms". It usually started from an innocent reference for a specific word. The "also see" function thus usually directs the reader to another word or idiom that are equally interesting. Thus, I often ended up hopping from word to word following the pointers and eventually forgot about what I was doing. The "serendipity" type of knowledge discovery constitute a rare diverge in the mind of a studious high schooler.

In the internet age, the similar type distraction becomes so big that it becomes a threat to productivity and sobriety. My firefox window is usually crowded with 20-30 tabs, each of them half read and waiting to be re-visited. Preview window usually has at least 20 pdf papers opened up. None of which is lucky enough to master my full attention.
Here's a peek of the thumbnails of my running program

Help!

Girls' fun in the kitchen

There is nothing more boring than cooking alone, there's nothing more exciting than cooking with your sister. With Lily visiting, I suddenly become a big fan of the oven.

With the mid-autumn festival coming, I got the idea of DIY moon cakes with Lily.
We got the red beans paste from the Young's and felt all ready for the cakes. Things went all well except that the cakes takes much longer to be done. Here's picture of the cakes after 1.5 hours in the oven



Ok, the moon cake adventure wasn't that great of a success, but we sisters aren't that easy to be defeated.

Today, a day before lily's birthday, we made another try with birthday cake.
Here's how the final product look like



That's what we call skill!

Sisterhood of the travelling pants

Finally, after 4 years living apart in different continents, Lily and I reunited in Pittsburgh. See how happy we are!

A site a day

Accidentally discovered that MSN has enabled academic search (academic live). Immediately liked it. The big draw? ----Bibtex function! However, the site is still beta,a little bit buggy.
But this is the direction to go! yo!

Sponge Find: Amazing New York Public Library Digital Gallery

Ok. I know I get distracted easily. I meant to blog for an exciting finding on the web, and then lost track when went to check the original website for correct spelling. Anyway, I mangaged to surf back.//grin.

"Yahoo Pick" mentioned this:


New York Public Library Digital Gallery
The screenshotNew York Public Library has digitized over 480,000 images in its collections just so you can save your airline ticket money and stay home. The collections contain maps, illuminated manuscripts, photographs, illustrations, and even menus. Standing in the center of a library full of treasures can bring out feelings of excitement and wonder—but also overwhelming paralysis. Where to start? Here's a list of seven things you shouldn't miss:

1. African American history
2. Early prints and photos of Asia and the Pacific Rim
3. Cigarette cards
4. New York City theater marquees
5. Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts
6. Cyanotypes of British algae
7. Uncle Walt's manuscripts

My favorate out of them all, old menus!
The american cuisine hasn't changed that much.

A week in Windsor, CT

Now that I'm out of the big Apple, life is quite and simple in this small city called Windsor in Connecticut. The city is 20 minutes' drive from Hartford. Ed has an apartment style hotel room for the month. I'm using the week to catch up with some sleep and reading.

Ed think that I must be bored to death staying in the hotel room all day. I welcome the pity, but also honestly told him that it's anything but boring:-)

Internet alone is eyeful!
Look at what I found,
www.econbrowser.com An interesting blog site owned by two economic professors.

Weekly Summary

I noticed that I'm coming back and write on a weekly basis. That's probably the largest difference between life as a graduate student and that of a professional. Weekend use to mean little when everyday feels like weekend and yet weekend feels like weekday. Graduate student aren't supposed to break their week down to working time and rest time. :-)

Every week in New York is full of changes and surprises. The biggest change this week--I moved from my luxurious 72 street apartment 50 block west to the current place near columbia (you do the math). New roomies are from TaiWan. They are as soft spoken as many other girls from TW. We had dinner together on the day of my arrival. We became friends after the meal.

Then there's the surprises during the week. I met the head of the muni strategy group and had great talk with him. I got in contact with Leanne, my SFI buddy now teaching at Queens. Then I saw Sriram and Anna at the MSCF cocktail party...

On the family side, I got the unexpected msg from my old buddy when I was a girl that my parents caught flu and she saw them in the local hospital. Called right away and felt really bad that none of me and my sis was arround when they need us. On the other hand, the day after, when they couldn't reach me by IM or phone call or Ed, they went into panic and thought that I was kidnapped and wanted to call the NY police from their home in China! Such is the kind of love that is truely unconditional.

Ed and I went through some difficult times. Everytime, we revisited the holygrail of marriage blues. In the heat of any argument, we couldn't spare the harsh words to gain the upper wind of it. We have much to learn and adapt.

Ed is moving back to Hartford today. We had precious memories in the Brookville apartment that he is leaving. We felt like a real family when we lived there and do all those things that couples do together. I was cooking a lot and loved it. Ed took me for some most exotic trips in and around the town. We watched drive-in movie in the "moonlite" theater in our comfie SUV, and we went to see the philly predicting the winter. Those were sweet days.

I don't know what is ahead of us as the long distance continue. I know to a large entend I have to change to make it work. Will I achieve this?

Test Drive the Book

There are many reviews about the macbook now. This is my Windows convert's version after less than a day's experience.
The mac keyboard feels great. I had been long endulged by the acclaimed thinkpad keyboard, never knew that mac keyboard feels even better.
The laptop tend to over heat, not suitable for long hours lapsitting on a hot summer day. I have to move it arround a bit to spread the heat.
The display is unbelievable. Things looks prettier on this screen.
Installing software on a mac is not as hard as I thought, it's actually straightforward.
iSight definately make the whole video integration perfect.
Havn't figure out how to do voice conferencing over yahoo yet. Yahoo Messenger for Mac seems to look dumber. No tabs, huge fonts, and voice malfunction.
Some of the shortcut in windows actually have their twin brothers in Mac. Simply substitute ctrol to the apple key, you are ready to fly.
The mac is preloaded with python and emacs. How cool is that?
Havn't really tried the iphoto and iDvd yet. My RAR zipped file can not be extracted here without some effort. Still hunting for the correct package to do it now.
The battery life is noticably longer than my tablet.
The waken up process is amazing in a mac, and much painful on the tablet.
All in all, I'm super pleased with the self indulging spending....//grin.

iSplurrrrge

Yesterday I joined the "sex and the city" on location tour. It wasn't as exciting as the "Film and Movie New York City Tour" that I took with Ed. Partially because I was a lonely bird on the bus. The tidbits of behind the scene story was still interesting. Like Kim Cattrall was born in Canada and came to New York to study theater at the age of 16, Sara JP found out that she was pregnant when she played "Joy for two for one". The visit to the "pleasure chest" was a bit of a shocker. "The rabit" was at a special price for us from the "sex bus". I picked out a sexy postcard as a souvenir, its actually very cute. The tour itself was less than spectacular, that's why after getting off the bus on fifth and 59th, I was not in a hurry to find the subway and head back.

A huge building with an apple sign strike my attention right at the corner of fifth, opposite the Pulizer Fountain (for those of you not familiar with the fountain, its is the one behind the openining credit of Friends). Following the spiral staircase down the glassdoor of apple, I was amazed at the size and "cool" environment created there. This is the biggest apple store I have ever visited! (as it later turn out, it's brand new, opened only 6 weeks).

I had long contemplated the idea of trying my hand on an apple. Last time when I couldn't decide upon a "thinkpad tablet" or "macbook pro", fear of the unknown made Ed and I decided to get a tablet. I'm glad that we didn't get the "pro" at the time, as it turned out, the new "macbook" is much more affordable and just as sleek. The educational discount plus the nano printer sweetener make the deal almost irresistable. Knowing that I have a big of a thing for gadget, Ed didn't try to persuade me from such a splurge. Thus, on Jul 8th, I took home my first apple laptop, a macbook (white) with 2G processor. The 4th computer and 3rd laptop I now own.

Introducing, my sweet macbook.....

First day at Lehman

I'm writing this from my bed in the Manhatten apartment on the W. 72th street.
Here are the details of my first day at lehman, for my later reference.

Got up at 6:30am, Ed called at 6:25, gave me a few more minutes to stay on the bed. I happily accepted his suggestion. Nicole did not come back at night. Good, not one
to battle the bathroom with.

After all the morning drill, still lots of time left. Watching TV, eating apples, Checking email, found out that the meeting time is 15 minutes earlier than I thought! Jumped into the shoes and left in a hurry.

The orientation was on the 32nd floor. A big crowd of summer associates there already. As it later turned out, this is a class of 66 people! Most of the kids are columbia, warton, NYU. There are some MIT, Harvard, cornell, Duke, only 3 from CMU.

Welcoming address from an MD, an HR personel, an paycheck guy, a security manager, a compliance officer, and an behavioral advisor ( who specialize in sexual harrassment). Some good joke from the security guy and the sexual Hr talks.

Lunch I had salmon. Some guys had only a couple of greens on the plates, I wonder if they were too nervous or anorexic.

The training in the afternoon lasted 4 hours. The guy John did a great job in compressing profesional level material on equity and fixed income into 4 hours and engaging the crowd constantly.

I love his example on bad credit credit card. Solved my puzzle from the observation in Rite Aid, that there are American Express "credit card" type of cash card with denomination of 20 to 30 dollars on sale at the price of 23/34 dollars. Who is stupid enought to pay a premium of 10% to substitute cash with a card with the "american express" name on it? Now I know.

Name Clash

Ok, I confess that the "piled higher and deeper" idea wasn't mine. The comic book inspired me. The internet make publication possible without scrutinization, it also spur plagerism. Original idea is a scarce commodity in the crowded internet highway.

In an acidental, or vanity search of my own blog, I discovered the following blogs that ranks higher and "piled as deep"

Irish Eagle

Meltzner's blog

Ph.D Fan Blog

and many more that requires page flip..

The pros of a popular name:

You got to free ride the search traffic that belong to your more popular namesake
No lengthy explaination needed for the audience.

The cons:

If you rank past the first page of search result, god bless your clones.

Ebay,Craigslist for Municipal bond?

The success of craigslist makes me ponder the idea of establishing a listing service for selling seasonal municipal bond.

Munis are traded over-the-counter, i.e, buyers and sellers do not directly interact, but instead, they trade through a dealer. Dealer stand-by as a party ready to take the opposite side of the trade, and their role of an intermediator solved the problem of pair-wise matching. Munis are not traded on the exchange because dealers can better engineer the trade when the buy and sell part of the trade remain anonymous. The fact that bonds are mostly bought for income not speculation make them very illiquid, maintaining an illiquid market for over millions of bond on an exchange is very inefficient. Yet, OTC transaction has its drawback. The illiquidity and the anonymity gives the dealer enormous market power. This is reflected in the large spread they earn through each trade.

Internet based listing service seems to be the middle ground between an exchange and dealer mediated OTC market. Buyers and Sellers can directly match each other without incurring large search cost. Significant saving in dealer's spread is possible when buyers and sellers directly negotiate.

In my mind, an ideal municipal bond listing service should be inexpensive ( or free like craiglist), handles paperwork such as ownership transfer easily as paypal, and able to avoid fraud and default, much like a security clearing house. Owners of the bond should be verified through the bond registration database and transfer of money should be easy.

Will it occur one day that a hybrid of Craiglist, Eebay and stock exchange changed the landscape of financial transaction? Will the internet one day really step into the terrain of wall streeters?

Thoughs on Craigslist

Having spend 3 whole days scouring craigslist looking for a place to live in New York for 2 month, I have to say that it really really amazed me. As an rookie economist with keen interest in the buying and selling business of all kind, CL strikes me as a market place that is the best solution out there of pairwise searching-and-matching problem for real estate trades.

The goods under transaction are temporary usage of a room or house. Sellers want to transfer the right of usage for a specific time span in exchange for money. Buyers want to acquire such right of usage at a price lower than alternatives such as hotel. This type of two sided matching is historically inefficient since both the buyer and seller would have to incur large searching cost, which include advertising fee or time spent on scouring through classified column of relevant newspaper. This is even harder when buyers and sellers do not reside in the same states while news ad typically appears in local newspaper. A internet based poster overcame such barrier.

What is great about CL is its volume and liquidity. With an early lead in the classified business, CL is able to attract more and more visitors and became the dominant player in this field. As economist argued, “liquidity attracts liquidity”, knowing that most others (and potential matches) are using CL, one is more willing to put his property on CL for sell.

To give you an idea about the liquidity, from my observation of the specific category “ temporary sublease of rooms in New York City ( Manhattan area), it take only 3-5 minutes for a new post to appear, and the time frame from posting to final transaction is usually less than a day ( including private contact, showing the room and making the deal).

The mechanism of selling is “posted ask price”. This price is firm and non-negotiable most of the time. This is a result of the imbalance between supply and demand. Sellers who posted the price would rather wait a little bit for a next buyer who’s willing to buy at the ask price than striking a deal at a lower price with a negotiator buyer.

The asking price is usually a unit price ( eg, rent per month). However, the time span that buyer and seller have in mind may be different. For example, the seller will be away for 2 month, while the buyer only need a place for 1.5 month. In this case, the seller and buyer can negotiate on the length ( days/weeks of occupancy, or quantity) of the deal. As the unsold period (difference between transaction quantity and quantity available) is usually not used, and have no value, the seller has incentive to minimize it. Again, when the market is a seller market (supply smaller than demand), we usually see the buy side making the compromise in buying the whole period, which is longer than what they need.

Sellers usually get multiple inquiries immediately after posting, and buyers typically inquire about multiple posts at the same time. Seller has the right to discriminate buyers by not responding to the inquiry (the anonymity of the listing service make it easy to do). As there is a cost in showing the room and responding to email or phone calls, dealers carefully discriminate buyers by their seriousness and financial stability. One signal of seriousness is making a phone call instead of email response. The action of the buyer dialing up the number reveals more identity about him than email reply. Phone call also make is possible for the seller to observe more about the buyer through spontaneous conversation. This helps reduce the risk of default.

When phone number is not provided in the ads, then it is less obvious how seller discriminate across all email inquiries. Time precedence certainly plays a bigger role. Yet, interestingly, from my personal experience as being a buyer and seller at the same time ( I was also posting as a seller to sublet my apartment in Pittsburgh for the period when I will be in New York), it is better to ask less questions in such inquiry, especially nothing that will require effort from the buyer in replying. Taboo list:
Asking for pictures (they are not their because they do not have them easily available)
Asking to negotiate the price in the first inquiring letter
Asking vague questions such as “can you tell me a little more…” ( don’t give him a hard time)

Finally, suggestions for all desperate buyers (apartment seekers), act quickly and act decisively, use Craigslist.

Sealed in a Kiss

Kiss

We are now official.

Bride and Groom

One of our favorite pictures taken by Ed's brother Phil. You can see the "double happiness" window decoration. We both have our "Bride " and "Groom" Chinese tags on. My mom send them to me!

A wonderful celebration: Ed and Dan's Wedding

There is a reason that across all ethnicities, weddings are done elaborately.
If a couple can endure all the ups and downs, million crazy things that come with the preparation of a wedding celebration, they are strong enough to overcome anything else hand in hand.

On May. 27th. Berkeley Bay. Ed and I got married and celebrated it our unique way.
We sailed the bay with 60 guests on the hornblower boat, and had a spectacular time.

Everything went as planned, yet everything feels so freshingly different when it actually happened. When the boat gradually stopped and after bidding farewell to our guests, I know that the real good days are just starting for Ed and I. :-)


Picture from post wedding dinner at fisherman's wharf, with the sea lions behind us singing love songs for us.

First Post Wedding Trip: Honeymoon in Amish Town, PA

June. 3rd. Exactly a week after getting married in San Francisco.

Ed and I took a short trip to Smicksburgh, the biggest Amish settlement in western Pensylvania. We want to see if we can live a simple life, but obviously not. The idea of no TV, no internet sounds heavy.

It's a sunny day. Weather cleared up after the morning rain.
We took pictures of Amish carriage. I splurged on buying cute "kitchen witch" doll,
and Ed got his turtle stool. That kept us happy the whole day :-)

Ed and Dan join the Parade

St. Patrick walking like Steven Chow! Haha.. 

St. Patrick's Day Parade

Irish flag in Steeler's Nation! 

Live from Punxy, Phil speaks!

Groundhog day in Punxsutawney!



Where else to spend the chilly morning of Feb. 2 than Punsutawney, where goundhog Phil predict the weather for this winter?

Yes, Ed and I joined the crowd in the small rural town to see Phil cast his shadow.
This year, Phil dress up with "terrible towel". Yeah, right, keep warm as 6 more weeks winter is ahead.

Phil, Phil, can you tell me when can I graduate?

Jackie's AT@T Finale

With Jackie leaving on Tuesday, this is the last AT@T that Jackie did for us.
Look, Jackie is wearing black & gold necklace.
We will miss you!

Goldilious!

Super Bread in Strip District. 1.28,2006

"Terrible Towl " Price Index

What are the folks behind Ed doing?
They are waiting in line to get into the store for steeler merchandise!
The hottest products?
"Terrible Towel" (price shoot up from $5 to $7-$10 in a week!)







click on the towel for the story of its origin.

Steelers Madness

What is the best fasion in Pittsburgh now?
Anything Black and Gold!

With the Steelers heading to the SuperBowl, one can hardly not notice the craziness in the steel city( here for Fan Photos Galery).

This is the SUPER BALL in my local grocery store--Giant Eagle. Shoot on Saturday,1.28,2006

Tieing the Knot in Pittsburgh

Dec. 10th, 2005, Ed and I tied the knot in a private ceremony in Pittsburgh. It was a touching ceremony with beatiful vows. The only witness besides our officant is a Brazilian Chiwawa. The "eternity" candle Ed got lit up the room! We are blessfully happy.