Centives

Franz Wild wrote about an app developed in South Africa to identify a potential mate’s “Lobola” –the gift that a man’s family offers a woman’s family in exchange for the woman’s hand in marriage, traditionally paid in cattle:

• The app takes into account the woman’s age, height, weight, waist, attractiveness, education, career, and marital history.
• It then calculates the number of cows that should be offered and can go onto convert that amount into dollars, pounds, and euros.
• The app has found that women in Lesotho and Swaziland have the highest average Lobola values with the typical woman being worth 12 cows.
• The lowest average value is in South Africa’s Northern Cape province with the typical woman being worth 5 cows.
• The app is meant to be playful, but some have suggested that it needs to take other factors into account such as cooking skills and alcohol intake.

Read about the developer who created the app, the exchange rate of cows to rand, and more over here.

Source: Bloomberg

Joe Pinsker wrote about the business of speculating on Super Bowl tickets:

• About two weeks before the Super Bowl, prices of tickets on the secondary market (through sites like StubHub) usually drop around $900.
• Thus for the past few years speculators have sold tickets that they didn’t own two weeks before the event when prices are at their peak.
• The speculators then bought tickets on the secondary market to fulfill their orders once prices began to drop.
• This year, however, prices dramatically shot up to more than double their normal level as the event drew closer.
• It’s unclear why – it’s possible that those who own tickets are colluding to reduce supply and drive up prices.
• Sites like StubHub, meanwhile, are making a killing since they make a 25% commission on each Super Bowl ticket sold.
• Estimates suggest that up to 15% of Super Bowl tickets are bought through StubHub so the company will have made tens of millions of dollars due to Super Bowl XLIX

See an excellent chart, and read more about the tactic of shorting and how it is best used over here.

Source: The Atlantic

Johnny Depp’s Mortdecai has flopped at the box office. Walt Hickey wrote that this wasn’t particularly surprising:

• Low turnout during the cold winter months and attention being drawn to the awards season mean that January and February are months with low movie turnout.
• This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy since studios release all the films they expect to do badly in these months…further driving down attendance.
• But the first two months of the year aren’t the worst months for movies. Those released in September usually do the worst.
• This is because by the time September rolls around, a movie is too late to be a blockbuster, but too early to be Oscar bait.

See some fascinating visualizations showing how movies perform across different months, and read more details here.

Source: FiveThirtyEight

We’ve previously covered the use of body language analysis in international diplomacy. The Economist had an article providing more details about how it worked:

• Body language experts say that when somebody is hiding something, the way they smoke, check their watch, and even the distance they stand away from shop windows, change.
• Analysts also look for “micro-expressions” – things that last just 1/25^th of a second but reveal concealed emotions.
• Context is important. One expert notes that the body language of a suicide bomber is similar to that of somebody who may have left their stove on at home.
• The analysis can be painstaking. 30 minutes of video requires 20 hours of analysis.
• It is also expensive. The Pentagon spends $300,000 a year analyzing the body language of world leaders.
• When it works, it’s worth it. In 1979 one expert determined that Saddam Hussein’s body language indicated that he hated Iran more than Israel. Less than a year later the Iraqi leader invaded Iran.

Read other insights, how Putin’s body language has changed in recent times, and more over here.

Source: The Economist

AP wanted to make sure you know that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner:

• The San Francisco Zoo is suggesting that spurned lovers adopt some of the less popular creatures in the name of their former significant others.
• Suggested animals include the Madagascar hissing cockroach, and a Giant Hairy Scorpion.
• For $50 the zoo will send a certificate of adoption to the person whose name it was adopted in.
• The zoo notes that the scorpion, for example, grabs “doomed creature with its pinchers and stings the prey”, just like your ex.

Read more here.

Source: AP

Mona Chalabi looked into the average age difference within couples:

• Males are 2.3 years older than the female in the average heterosexual coupling.
• In 23% of couples the female is older than the male.
• While there are no official statistics, data from Facebook indicates that in homosexual relationships the average age difference increases as the couples get older.
• This is true of heterosexual relationships as well, although the effect is not as big.
• For example, for a couple who has an average age of 20, the average age gap is three years for homosexual relationships, and two for heterosexual ones.
• By the time the average age of a couple hits 50, the age gap averages around seven for homosexual couples and five for heterosexual ones.

See a chart showing the correlation, and read more details here.

Source: FiveThirtyEight

Back in the day the streets belonged to the people, writes Joseph Stromberg. Automakers then figured out a way to get pedestrians off the road and onto sidewalks in the United States:

• In the 1920s roads were places where pedestrians, push cart vendors, horses, and playing children jostled for space.
• It was the responsibility of everybody on the road – including cars – to make sure nobody got hurt.
• But as car use began to spread the number of deaths dramatically increased with the elderly and children frequent victims.
• There was a strong backlash against automobiles, made worse because people viewed them as frivolous play things for the rich – similar to how we see yachts today.
• People got organized and pushed for proposals to impose drastic speed limits on cars.
• The auto industry sprang into action, launching a counter-campaign to make roads the domain of automobiles.
• They were successful. Under new rules pedestrians could only be on the road when they were on a crosswalk.
• While there were new rules against jaywalking, they weren’t being enforced, so car makers launched a new campaign to shame people into following traffic laws.
• This included introducing the term “jay walking” – a jay back then was a term for a hick who didn’t know how to behave in the city.
• They also launched a wire service where journalists could send them details of car accidents, and the service would respond with a fully written article shifting the blame for the accident on the pedestrian.

The full article provides many more insights, has some excellent examples of the ads from the campaigns of the era. It also explains why automakers repeatedly hit a clown with a Model T. Read it here.

Source: Vox

In a delightful article from a chap who seems would make for extremely pleasant coffee break conversation, Andy Baio wrote about piracy of Oscar nominated films:

• Screeners are copies of films that are sent to the Academy members who vote to decide the winners of the Academy Awards.
• They frequently leak on the internet so that internet pirates can enjoy the movies at the same time as the screeners.
• The vast majority of screeners are sent to voters as DVDs.
• Yet pirates leaking movies online are increasingly able to use high definition sources.
• The number of screeners that were available on the internet peaked at 81% of Academy Award nominated movies in 2003.
• Today the number is closer to 36%.
• This isn’t a victory for anti-piracy efforts. Rather, it’s because nobody wants to watch them since pirates can download higher quality versions.

Read the full article with excellent charts, statistics, and more over here.

Source: Medium

In 1987 the American Supreme Court ruled that Native American tribes could not be stopped from building casinos on their land. This was expected to transform the economics of the community as those banned from gambling elsewhere could flock to reservations for a roll of the die. The gamblers came but the money generated didn’t always do much to benefit the community writes The Economist:

• Around half of all Native American tribes operate casinos and together they generated revenues of $28 billion in 2013.
• Tribes sometimes disperse these payments to their members through “per capita payments” that can range from a few hundred dollars to over $100,000 every year.
• Some members will even receive 18 years’ worth of payments in a lump sum once they turn 18.
• This has led to the rise of a successful business in car dealerships targeting those who just celebrated their 18^th birthday.
• Despite the windfall a study found that while between 2000 and 2010 casino revenues doubled, the overall poverty rate of the tribes increased from 25% to 29%.
• Tribes that make per capita payments are at higher risk of seeing poverty rates rise.
• In contrast, tribes that use their profits to invest in other businesses and help grow the overall economy have been more successful in combating poverty.
• The reason for this seems to be that generous per capita payments, while usually not enough to live on, help recipients fall into the trap of not working.

Read more about the intriguing study here.

Source: The Economist

Lily Kuo took a hard look at President Xi Jinping’s income:

• The Chinese government has announced large pay rises for civil servants.
• This is thought to be an effort to fight corruption, as the hope is that officials will no longer use bribes to supplement their income.
• Oddly, however, it has actually highlighted the extent of the corruption.
• President Xi Jinping’s base salary, for example, will now be about $21,960 a year.
• In comparison Barack Obama earns 24 times that amount – $545,000 a year.
• Yet the Chinese leader is able to afford to send his daughter to expensive international schools.
• Prior investigations have indicated that the President’s extended family, though not the President himself, has millions of dollars in investments stashed abroad.

Read more about why the numbers don’t add up here.

Source: Quartz