Chinese Perfume Brands

I took this picture in a shopping mall in Wuhan (Hubei Province, China)

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100 trillion dollars (Zimbabwe)

These bills are worth more as a souvenir (5 USD) than when they were legal tender. Below are 10 and 5 billions.

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Strange and interesting places

Here

This place is not too far from Cafasse

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Back from China

Behind the great firewall there was no Blogger or Facebook. When I got got back, I read this great quote: Jesus probably didn't know much about macroeconomics, even though he was God.

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Restaurant prices

Prices of the buffet at Massaya (Here is the menu with prices):

• Adults: $33;
• Children between 15-10: $20;
• Children between 9-4: $15;
• Nannies: $20!!!

Micro 101 question: Why do nannies pay less?
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prices

Museums (economics and modern art)

Rigotnomics has a post about the economics museum in Mexico City. I know that the University of Buenos Aires has a museum dedicated to external debt crises but I've neve seen it. I will try to go when I go to LACEA this October.

Talking about muesums, last week I was in London and went to Tate Modern. It's amazing. I got goosebumps from this Cattelan piece.

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Development and business class

Chris Blattman has a post with great comments (read the second one by Bill Easterly and the two by April on WB compensation).   I don't think that moving to economy would greatly affect the budget, it's more a symbolic thing. 

My two cents: I used to care less about BC travel and always (or almost always) travel economy, but the older I get the more I give value to BC. I would try to avoid more missions if I had to travel economy (of course, this may still be optimal from society's point of view).   

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Syrian English

Jeep

Dream house

Good bye

VIP

Paint

No Parking

Thanks to Raja

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Very very strange buildings

Here and here.

Thanks to Sweta for the idea and dedicated to SiL Nadine, the architect

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Chris Blattman loves Colombia (and he's right)

Here and here.  I've been to Cartagena several times (it's wonderful, but careful with aguardiente) and I may go to Medellin in August, but I haven't yet visited to Bogota (I was so sorry to miss the Economia panel a couple of weeks ago).

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Facebook: Negative Externalities

I am in the BC lounge of Airfrance in Paris and had to wait 35 minutes to find an empty computer. They were all taken by people using Facebook. The demographic of FB seems to be changing very rapidly. It started with teenagers and people in their 20s, but all users here are in their 40s to 60s.
PS
It is iincredibly difficult to type with an AZERTY keboard
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Not for the faint-hearted

Naked germans
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Wow

Plane Crashes in Hudson; All Passengers Safe

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Cafes with professional pets

SiL Rori will love the idea. Check it out.
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Top travel destinations for 2009

According to the NYT (thanks to Nada for sending). I have been to 15 out of 44. Dainlaws will be happy to see that Beirut is Nr 1 (Beirut is indeed wonderful, but please don't go there for the farmers' market, SiL Nadine loves it but you would be disappointed).
However, I don't really trust this ranking. Too many places in the US (10 out of 44, including Dallas and Buffalo!!!), only two in Italy, and only one in France (and it's not Paris, which should be included in any travel list in any time of the year in every year of the last 3 centuries). So, you really think that a Penn farm is better than Paris, or that Buffalo (nr 37) is just a little bit less interesting than the whole of India (Nr 35). Or Dallas better than Rome and the Florida Keys better than Cuba (as if they were even comparable). Las Vegas better than almost anything else!!! Gimme a break!
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Where money is cheaper than TP

One more toilet post. In Zimbabwe, money is cheaper than toilet paper (but probably is not as soft).
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LACEA, lot's of good stuff but also some bad news

I am on my way back from LACEA. I had no time to enjoy Rio but I saw lots friends (and I was surprised to find out that many regularly read No Original Content) and the conference was really good. Great papers with high policy content, so far away from standard ivory tower stuff.

Because of my commitments with the Economia panel I lost many interesting sessions, but I did manage to listen to Abhijit Banerjee’s fantastic interpretation of India’s economic success (with a discussion of how, in his view, India and China are screwing all other countries at the same stage of the development process) and Ricardo Hausmann’s discussion of internal decoupling in Latin America (Ricardo could be asked to give talk about the standard deviation of the temperature inside his refrigerator and still manage to make it fascinating).

Of course, the fact that there were so many good papers is not so surprising. Given the policy-obsession of Latin American economists, LACEA is always a good conference. The most surprising thing was a very bad plenary (or semi-plenary) presentation. Probably the worse since I have been going to LACEA. I hope that my friends will not suffer too much.
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Off to LACEA

The conference is very good (the program is here), the journal is excellent (check out the editorial board) and the place, well, uh uh, how do you describe Rio? You can listen to this (in English with Stan Getz here) or read Tyler Cowen who concludes: "Might Brazil be the best place, period? " (the only problem is that the weather seems to be crappy right now)
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Amazing!

The Taj, not me (click picture to enlarge)

Blow horn

All indian trucks seem to want you to "blow horn". I have no clue why.

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