Why Brazil Won't Take Off

Today the FT has a story on Brazil's growth pains that starts with Corinthians, the second most popular Brazilian team, fielding a Chinese player to help it sales in China

The player in question, Chen Zhizhao, neatly summarizes why Brazil still has a long way to go if the country really wants to take off:

“In China, not much people [are] interested in football. The children are studying too much.”

Given the current state of Brazilian education, awful at all levels, there is no way the country can ever compete in human capital-intensive industries. All that is left is being good as a primary goods exporter. Even at that, we also need to get serious about infrastructure.

I wish I could be more optimistic about my own country...

Primer on Hedge Funds

I just saw this paper on SSRN, written UBS's alternative investments, that has a quick intro on what are hedge funds.

If you don't know what they are, here is a good introduction. Here is the link for download:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1773947

UBS - Hedge Fund Primer

MBA Rankings

I love rankings and this post here, by the guy who created the Busines Week one, analyzes the big MBA rankings out there. IESE makes #1 in the Economist ranking, but this seems to be the worst ranked of all.

To be honest, I think IESE has one of the best but not the best MBAs in the world. We have some top-notch departments and a few characteristics that makes us unique in the world.

That said, I believe that the writer has the usual U.S. bias in his analysis, downplaying European schools a bit.

My two cents on this is that the top 3 things are:

1. Salary 2-3 years after graduation (PPP-adjusted)
2. Student diversity (US schools could do better here, IMHO)
3. Faculty commitment (tough to measure but it makes a world of a difference to students)

Any opinions?