What is Prices and Values?

Hi, I'm Ravin Thambapillai and this is my blog, Prices and Values.

Prices and Values is of course a pun on a famous Oscar Wilde phrase - that cynics are the people that know the price of everything but the value of nothing. Prices and Values is an attempt to assess, realistically, developments in Economics, Politics and the Technology business world.

Sure, there are a lot of blogs out there on all these issues. And whilst I have some experience in all three (I read economics at Oxford, where I also founded the Oxford International Relations Society and I've also worked at Google for a year) I'm no Nobel Prize Laureate, Harvard Professor or World Famous journalist turned Venture Capitalist.

So why write a Blog?

There are three things I want to achieve with this blog:

1. Chronicle

2. Elucidate

3. Forecast

I want to Chronicle the developments in these fields, my thinking on these developments and where relevant, the academic discussion of the issues. Secondly I want to try to elucidate the developments - ie to interpret them through the lens of models. Interpreting events through a variety of different models means we can then test the validity of these models by making forecasts. This approach should, over time (if carefully maintained), help us determine which model of reality has the best fit. With any luck therefore, this blog should be an educative experience for me!

But obviously, any good blog has to be a discussion. Which means I'll be keen to get feedback, commentary, ideas, advice, criticism and even rebukes! So let the dialogue unfold! :-)