Morgan Kelly of UCD is one of the smartest economists I know. Unlike many academic economists, he has a great insight into the functioning or malfunctioning of the actual economy. Well before the Irish housing bust and financial crisis, he argued that there was going to be a huge correction (see here). He was right. Several days ago he spoke about the Irish economy to the UCD Economics Society. This is a brilliant talk on the past, present and future of the Irish economy.
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Amir Kermani, James Kwak and Todd Mitton have written a paper on whether firms connected to Timothy Geithner benefited from these connections. They do so by looking at how stocks of these firms reacted to the announcement that he was a nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008. They find that there were large abnormal returns for connected firms. Below is the paper's abstract and the full paper is available here . The announcement of Timothy Geithner as nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008 produced a cumulative abnormal return for financial firms with which he had a connection. This return was about 6% after the first full day of trading and about 12% after ten trading days. There were subsequently abnormal negative returns for connected firms when news broke that Geithner's confirmation might be derailed by tax issues. Excess returns for connected firms may reflect the perceived impact of relying on the advice of a small ne...