Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Manhattan Inside the Grand Canyon

Gus Petro has an amazing artwork to illustrate what it would look like if you dropped Manhattan into the Grand Canyon (via Mark Byrnes). 

[image credit: Gus Petro]



[image credit: Gus Petro]


Petro has another amazing work putting London by the sea. You should check it out and consider this as a Christmas Gift for someone like me. #justsaying

[image credit: Gus Petro]

Monday, October 27, 2014

World population and human capital (webcast)

Heads up:

Prof. Wolfgang Lutz (IIASA / Wittgenstein Center) will deliver a public lecture on 'world population and human capital in the 21st century', next week (November 3, 2014 17:00 GMT). This event is also being live webcast on here. The event is organized by the the Oxford Martin School and will be followed by a panel discussion with other demography professors from Oxford.

Prof. Lutz and his team are in the forefront of incorporating educational attainment in population projections and have many influential papers in Nature, Science, PDR, etc.  Highly recommended event! 




[Image Credit: Lutz and KC, 2011]

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Which cities have least affordable housing?

A new report by McKinsey Global Inst. compares housing affordability across 100 cities. HT/ the Daily Charts team at The Economist, who came up with a nice interactive chart.



[image credit: The Economist]


Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Global Ph.D.s Gender Gap (2010)

Scientific American has recently published an interesting chart showing the gender gap in Ph.D.s across different countries. It's amazing how the distribution varies so much between different fields of study. You should check the interactive version here.


Spatial income inequality in Brazil, 1872–2000

Reis, E. (2014). Spatial income inequality in Brazil, 1872–2000Economia,15(2), 119-140. 

*Thanks Leo Monasterio for the tip.


Abstract:
The paper provides historical perspectives on spatial economic inequalities in Brazil making use of a database on Brazilian municipalities from 1872 to 2000. A suit of maps and graphs describe the geographic factors shaping the historical development of the Brazilian economy highlighting the role of transport costs and its consequences for the spatial dynamics of income per capita and labor productivity. The remaining of the paper estimates econometric models of growth convergence for municipal income per capita and labor productivity. From 1920 onwards analyses are refined, firstly, by disaggregating the models for urban and rural activities; secondly, by assuming spatial correlation among variables of the model; and, thirdly, by enlarging the model to take account of the long run determinants of spatial growth convergence. Empirical results endorse the historical preeminence of geographic factors – in particular accessibility and transport conditions – as opposed to institutional conditions. The conclusion summarizes the results and proposes research extensions.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

DeadLine, personal note

Always keep it in mind and you won't need to kill yourself for it.

[image credit: by Don Motta]




My working soundtrack:

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Urban Picture

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

[image credit: Antonello]


Soundtrack:

Saturday, October 4, 2014

São Paulo from above (and its parking reform)

If you're interested in parking policies and urban planning, check this post by Paul Barter on the parking reform that is going on in São Paulo.

Even if you're not interested in this topic, I'm sure you'll like this picture (which I saw in Paul's post).


[image credit: NASA/Paolo Nespoli]


Soundtrack for the weekend:

Brazilian Elections

Big day for Brazil tomorrow with the elections. It's hard to say we don't have a solid democracy.



Thursday, October 2, 2014

How to make your pie chart less terrible

The team at Darkhorse Analytics have already shared a nice tip for how to make tables less terrible. Now it is time to 'improve' your pie charts!