“You must have a lot of time on your hands” [Anonymous much loved friend].

So not true, ha! But the most creative things I do on a daily basis are cursing and cooking, so I guess writing dorky blog posts pushes me one step forward in the creativity world.

“What is this blog about?”

  • plotting some economics/finance graphs and making the background file available for users (say,  university-level instructors) to customize for their own teaching or light research; the data I use are free;
  • and also talk a bit about data, as in new data, rarely used data, problematic data, need for new data, missing data, etc.

“What I ask of you/users…”

If you use this material, please send me a message to let me know for which class or use. The e-mail address is contessi.silvio   gmail. I keep track of summary statistics and I generally like to have an idea about end-use.

Other useful information:

  • I will try to keep a bit of focus on Australia (my current host country and current love), China (because, well, we are in Australia and when China sneezes…), the U.S. (my former host country and lost love), and perhaps the EU (as I’m Italian after all, though – like most Italians -I have a love-hate relationship with the motherland).
  • Guest posts welcome! Shoot me a message if interested.
  • The original sub-heading for the blog name was “Prezzies for teaching.  Prezzies or pressies is Oz-English for presents. This seemed to generate some confusion and in addition I noticed that people are looking at these posts not just as teaching material, so I opted for a much blender Thinking about macrofinance with charts.
  • There will be typos. There will always be some with me…
  • And if you’re one of our Finance Ph.D. students, well, you won’t have any choice, because I’m making blog posts one of the assignments 🙂