Like father, like son

It’s surprising, and sometimes scary, to realize how much Oliver picks up from watching me. A little while ago, Kay gave Oliver a haircut with the electric clippers. After she finished, she let Oliver look at the clippers. He picked them up and began to rub the clippers over his cheeks. I guess that he has watched me shave in the morning more than I realized! I hadn’t thought of it before, but the clippers do sound quite similar to my razor.

Last weekend, Kay gave Oliver another haircut. Later that day he was watching as I shaved. He kept reaching for my razor, so when I finished I handed it to him. I expected him to mimic me shaving; instead, Oliver took the razor and started rubbing it over his hair! Life sure is confusing when you’re 15 months old.

Saturday Fun

Gravelly Point Park

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens

So maybe I don’t need grad school anyway

Since yesterday Bloomberg News printed an article calling me an economist. Boy, that was easier than grad school! Okay, so admittedly this is blatant self aggrandizement, but publicity like this doesn’t come every day. (Well, unless you’re my Dad!) So, the report summarizes the findings of our paper on investments by Sovereign Wealth Funds. To quote from the article, the companies receiving such investments

outperformed an index adjusted for market value and risk by 2.1 percent in the two days surrounding the announcement date, according to the report by Fed economists Jason Kotter and Ugur Lel published today. Read the full article

If you want to check out the full paper, it is available from the Federal Reserve.

We’re hopeful that a top academic journal will publish the paper. I’ll let you know how it goes.

It’s a girl!

Our new baby

So, it looks like the majority voted correctly in our poll . . . according to the doctor, Oliver is getting a baby sister! And with a profile like that, it looks like she will be every bit as cute as her mother. Kay and I are so excited; if only January 3rd were already here.

Are you still using Internet Explorer?

I thought it might be prudent to include a disclaimer about our site. Although I have done my best to design this site to be cross-browser compatible, Internet Explorer is notoriously difficult to program for. Consequently, there are some things that just don’t look right when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. (I can’t say for sure about IE 7, since I don’t have access to test it, but I suspect the problems remain) I suppose that some of you have probably experienced this already. For the best viewing experience, I recommend you use a Mozilla based browser (such as Firefox) or Apple’s Safari. You’ll be able to enjoy the full design of our site; and besides, the world will be better off with one fewer Internet Explorer user!

One other note: we sent invitations to all of the email addresses that had signed up for our old website newsletter. Some of you may want a separate account for other members of your family (so, e.g., you can both comment with separate user names). If this is the case, just send us an email and we will send you a link to create an additional account. Note: Each account must have an unique email address.

If there are other friends or family that you think would like to view our site, please refer them to family.kaykotter.com where they can contact us to request an account.