It has been 6 weeks withouth writing anything in my blog.  Thanks Heavens, today is Friday and I have finally finished everything many things that I had to do.

I finished teaching 2 weeks ago. Most of teaching hours were devoted to the second year class of the Geography undergrad. I also tood a study trip to Barcelona (that was the previous post, a draf I had form October).  I’m also supervising a group of visiting students from Hannover. They’re pretty smart.

Something about teaching I like to pass in the last class a questionnare to give me feedback. I’m quite glad because my average evaluation has improved from last year.  I think that the changes that I have introduced have been good, but I still have to refine many things for next semesters.

Last year was my first year teaching in Denmark. It’s fine teaching the vast majority in English, but of course it’s a problem because that’s my second language and the students one. But I think the main problem comes from cultural differences. I have been mostly educated in Spain, and I know how the systems works. Also I have totalled four semester in the U.S., and I was a teaching assistant at Georgia Tech, so I know they system well to. By the way, out of the 5 other T.A.’s that I consult, I think the students highly pleased with me. But Denmark… is the culture. I studied here for 2 semester during my masters, but still sometimes is hard, and perhaps here in Aalborg is more challenging. Oh, well. We all have to learn.

Playing around with the students in Montseny Park (me in the left)

In the first week of October I went with the third year students of Geography to Barcelona. On the second year they Geography students they travel somewhere in Denmark, and the third year they go abroad. In previous years they have gone to Germany or the Netherlands. This year they assigned me to go somewhere and they suggested Spain. I’m from Madrid, and perhaps I should have gone there, but I though it would be interesting to go there and students will enjoy it more during their free time. (I think they did enjoy having almost 30 degrees and go to the beach!). I also wanted to visit some people at the University there.

It was an interesting experience. I think overall they liked it. We learn many things regarding, planning, socioeconomic factors, environment, economic geography, and of course learning from a different culture (for them, and a little bit for me I think they were also very good students, not only in general, but during the trip.

I’m looking forward next year.

And I have had not time to write. But I will. First, Joe Pine was here at Aalborg University three weeks ago. It was a very good presentation. I’ll tell about it. Also 4 days ago, David Plouffe, the chief campaign manager for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and other interesting leaders, presented in in a business leader seminar. They told me it was outstanding, I missed so much I did not go.

Anyways I just want to put a video here about a new upcoming event in Frederikshavn. Perhaps it’s not that exciting as the other two, only perhaps. It’s about the yearly Blues Festival of Frederikshavn. They just put it online.

I have not written here as I have been busy teaching, writing and preparing my study abroad for Spring 2010.

Some days ago I opened a Twitter account. Everyone is talking about it, so I thought I’ll have to give a try. They say that everyone who does not have a Twitter account thinks that is just another way to waste time. I understand this, as this is what I though not long ago. I guess you can waste time, and this is not something I have too much now, with various serious deadlines and a newborn in the family. The reason to open it was to follow some authors I like that are in this software network. So my idea is not to write more than a couple lines a week, I just want it more to help me to get info I like.

There is an application where you can find who of your contacts are using Twitter, and out of 1300 contacts I have in Gmail, only 20 are subscribed and only 3 update it.

A couple of weeks ago I got via Google Alerts (Fox News), the release of the 2009 declaration of Pine and Gilmore. It’s actually Gilmore and Pine, but one has been to used to refer to them as in the first form.

It has the date of 4th of July, and it has the apperance of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

This declaration, can be found here at the website of their consulting company: http://www.strategichorizons.com/thinkaboutinvites/2009/EconomicSense.pdf 

I think this was done with the purpose of celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the book “The Experience Economy” and especifically to promote the conference they’re organizing in Philadelphia, next month. If it weren’t 2500USD$ to register I would not mind to cross the Atlantic.

The basic idea in this declaration is that we’re in this economic crisis because businesses (and the private) have not really focused on offering experiences. Then they came up with very good perpectives for the private sector. I have to say that I always enjoy reading these guys. They’re really innovative and they come up with cool things.

Unfortunately, as good conservative Americans, I think they have been too influenced in the current political debate. In the last paragraphs they condemn goverment support to healthcare and higher education. I still don’t understand this part of the declaration. I guess is my European perspective. They say that public support to education and healthcare hinder The Experience Economy, but they don’t say anything about other public spending in endless wars, bail outs to corporations, or evasion to tax havens. Maybe they’re right, but I think this is a debate they should not have got into. Maybe it’s me who I should not get into this debate…

My good friend Ana Luiza was talking today about the article “What went wrong with economics” published in the always interesting The Economist. She mentioned that it was a good analysis of the situation. She’s one of the best economists I know, so I listen to her.

The articles starts powerfully “Of all the economic bubbles that have been pricked, few have burst more spectacularly than the reputation of economics itself.” Something worth it to put in the recently open my quotes page. I enjoyed reading the whole thing. The only thing that I didn’t really agree is when he says “Macroeconomists, especially within central banks, were too fixated on taming inflation and too cavalier about asset bubbles.” I think central banks in the U.S., Spain and many other did not care at all about real inflation. We have to remember that the housing prices (which many say that this is what brought us here) , which is by far the highest expenditure of the families was rising around a 15% yearly, I did not see the central banks really calling for an action on this issue, like for example a tax on an empty house/apartment to avoid speculation.

Anyways what I found interesting is the quote of my man Paul Krugman. Last month at the London School of Economics (!!) he argued that much of the past 30 years of macroeconomics was “spectacularly useless at best, and positively harmful at worst.”

A Professor teaching economics

I was never a fan of macroeconomics, so, obviously this assertion makes me feel really good. I remember in 1998, in my first year at the Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales (Economics and Business School at Universidad de Alcala, Spain), we were going over Mankiw’s textbook on micro and macro, and after a few classes we started questioning our Professor (sorry I can only remember his nickname). I remember raising my hand in a specific example about the labor maket and saying, “but, this does seem to happen in reality”, and he answered “well, you have to learn the theory, even if it does not happen in reality”. Later in class I wondered with friends why in the world we should learn something like the theories of flying pigs. Anyways I was happy to learn about it, but probably less hours on subjects like these would be good.

This non-sense long studies in the mainstream economics studies, among other reasons, was why I probably found Ana in the masters program at the Business Department of Aalborg University in 2005.

6 months ago I looked at how many times the term “economic crisis” and “økonomisk krise” were mentioned in the most popular newspapers of the USA (New York Times) and Denmark (Jyllands-Posten) respectively. I’m proud of this entry because it’s one of the most visited. So this summer I was kind of interested to see a comparison looking at the first 6 months of 2009.

It is important to notice that I have multiplied times 2, the corresponding figure for the first half of the year. So the 2009 “result” will actually be the final result, if they mentioned the term exactly the same times between and July and December, as they have done from January to the end of June.

So this is how it looks the agreement of both newspapers. Comparing it with the 1994-2008 graph You can draw your own conclussions.

Now I’m really busy, trying to write a paper for a journal before my wife gives birth in the next days, but whenever I need a break from the paper, I will add the consumer confidence chart.

From the U.S. we have some numbers and various interpretations.

reported unemployment figures for every month since begining of recesssion

Nouriel Roubini | Jul 2, 2009
U.S. Job Report Suggests that Green Shoots are Mostly Yellow Weeds
“The June employment report suggests that the alleged ‘green shoots’ are mostly yellow weeds that may eventually turn into brown manure…”
(I read this quote and I started laughing)

Anyways as I mentioned, and the same Paul Samuelson (Nobel Prize in Economics and key figure in neoclassical economics) admitted last year: “What we know about the global financial crisis is that we don’t know very much.”

In my last post I said I was going to the Festival of Tordenskjold. Here is a little more about who was this guy Tordenskiold. I have to say I had a great weekend. I found it very interesting because I have been following the preparation for several days. I have talked to over 40 people and learn many things about their networks and how they work. I aim at publishing the results if you’re interested.
I calculated myself in the three days and I think there were 35.000 visitors, but I don’t have the official data. But I know there were around 1000 volunteers, the majority of them dressed for the occasion in 18th century clothes.
Here is me and great Tordenskjold, I (and my wife, now shown in picture) were dressed as peasants.

Tordenskjold and me at the end of Friday's play

Here are more pictures of the festival. In photo doesn’t look that big, but the big boat a replica of the time, was really impressive. At least for a non-ocean guy like me.

Yesterday I spent the day doing some qualitative research in Frederikshavn. They’re preparing the Tordenskjold Festival. I think it’s going to be pretty cool. I will be there. I interviewed and talked to a dozen of people. People love this city project. It’s the whole community engaged. I might give you a summary next week. For this 12th edition, they expect 40.000 visitors.

Looking at other numbers, the picture does not look that good. We all know that tourism figures all around the world are doing bad. Here the thing seems to come in the worse moment. Since 2003 the tourists coming by ferry (most Norwegians and Swedish) has been declining from 3.545.000 to a around 2.000.000, with a steady yearly decrease. This year will probably be the worse.

A worker in a downtown restaurant was telling me that the last year they made, 35-40.000 dkk (5.000 €) a day. Now they’re down to 7.000 dkk a day. That’s quite a thumping. Needless to say, they’re quite excited about the Tordenskiold Festival starting tomorrow.