How intelligent should leaders be?

Although I think there is more to the story, quite insightful thoughts from Richard Posner and Gary Becker on the relationship between intelligence and leadership. A few potential caveats I’d point out very rapidly:
  • the examples considered are clearly selected to fit the theory advanced (though it is far from clear that if one considered, say, all -succesful and unsuccesful – political leaders within the last century, from all over the world, not just the USA, the correlation between intelligence and leadership would turn positive)
  • “leadership failure” is far from easy to define.
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On why you need Maths for Economics and in general

Some young but very ambitious students (yeah, yeah, some of you are reading this post on my blog right now :-)) have been asking me why would they need to know Maths if they want to become economists (in industry or academia) and what Maths courses are most suitable for them and how much Maths would they actually use in practice anyway…

These are very interesting and very pertinent questions and obviously they were asked and answered before.
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