adventure

I've been secretly longing to write a blog for a while now, but I feel like I need some sort of justification; that I am literate and have internet access doesn't really seem like enough.

Now I have found that justification: I'm spending two months in India, during which time my life will theoretically be more interesting than it is now. It will be an Adventure, and I will write all about it. Assuming that I can hook my camera to whatever computer I'm using in India, I will also post pictures.

The namesake of this blog is an international macroeconomic concept which explains how a country's trade balance is affected by a change in its exchange rate. This is the gist: If, say, the dollar depreciates (like it just did) we would expect this to make imports more expensive and exports cheaper, meaning that we import more and export less, and our trade balance improves (this is called the volume effect). In the very short-term, however, consumers, exporters, and importers don't immediately adjust their behavior. They keep buying just as many imports, but now the imports are more expensive, so the trade deficit actually gets worse (this is called the value effect). Eventually, patterns do change, and the trade balance improves as expected (theoretically, anyway). The movement of the trade balance over time, down then up, looks like a j, hence the name, j-curve.

The only reason I chose this particular economic concept for the title of my blog is that my name starts with a j.

Anyway, it's two weeks until I leave, but I wanted to get "warmed up". I will try not to fill the entire two weeks with explanations of economic terms.