prior probability

Or is it? See, for example, this explanation of Belgian artist René Magritte’s most famous painting, which is pictured below:

That is the title of this NBER working paper by three early-career academic researchers: Fernando E. Alvarez, David Argente, and Diana Van Patten. (And here is a summary of their research report.) Their paper is excellent, but I want to make three observations in reply:

1. El Salvador (population: 6.3 million) did not make bitcoin legal tender until September of 2021. Given this recency and small sample size, the findings by Alvarez, Argente, and Van Patten in their July 2022 report are premature at best.
2. Nevertheless, although I commend the government of El Salvador for giving bitcoin a try (experiments > armchairs), the fact that no other country in the world has yet to do so makes me update my anti-bitcoin Bayesian priors even further downward.
3. What about the larger question: is bitcoin a bubble? Check out the bitcoin-themed rap battle below:

This was my first visit to New Haven since March of 1998, when I attended a conference at Yale (see here), and my first with my wife Sydjia and our daughter Adys. Shout out to Avelo Airlines for their non-stop flights from Florida!

Visiting my alma mater this weekend brought back memories of this hit song by Juan Luis Guerra, which was super popular in Latin America and on Spanish radio stations in the US while I was attending law school.

Note: I will be blogging less frequently during the next few days as my schedule will be full, for I will be attending my tricennial law school reunion (Class of 1993) this weekend in the Elm City (good ol’ New Haven, Connecticut).

Fun fact: This year’s alumni weekend at my alma mater coincides with the decennial reunion of my fellow Yale Law School graduates Vivek Ramaswamy and J.D. Vance (Class of 2013) as well as with the semi-centennial reunion of Bill & Hillary Clinton (Class of 1973). I just hope I get to meet Vivek!

Personally, I prefer roundabouts over stop signs or traffic lights, but my few attempts to navigate them in my neck of the woods (such as this infamous one in Clearwater Beach) have always been frustrating at best, which begs the question, why do so many of my fellow Floridians become paralyzed with fear and indecision whenever they approach a traffic circle? Is it their novelty? That can’t be right: the Clearwater Beach roundabout has been around (pun intended!) for decades. Or is there some inherent flaw in their design? Again, that can’t be right either, since roundabouts work perfectly fine in every other country outside the USA.