Friday, May 23, 2008

Infinite Time Horizon and Guinness Beer

Sometimes the writers of the contract should read the fine print. Summarized by Wikipedia:
Arthur Guinness started brewing ales initially in Leixlip, then at the St. James's Gate Brewery, Dublin, Ireland from 1759. He signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.
Why 9,000 years? Why not 9 million? Weird. I bet £45 was a rip off for several years, but I don't know of an inflation calculator that goes that far back. Beer being one of the most important products in history, the industry has many different econ lessons for us.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

A somewhat related story about layoffs at the Guinness brewery:
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=111&sid=1401075

My favorite line:
"Government and business leaders welcomed Diageo's plans as a major new investment in Ireland. But union chiefs and opposition lawmakers said the company was greedy and taking Ireland's drinking public for granted."

'Ireland's drinking public' is the most redundant statement I think I've ever seen.

danarch said...

Perhaps this may not be the same in Irish law, but I don't think any court in the US would uphold such a provision.

Anonymous said...

On a sidenote, but certainly an important one to both economics and statistics, Guinness Brewery is also responsible for the t-distribution.

Read more in any elementary statistics book or at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_t

Canada Viagra said...

The important thing is that beer were discovered, can you imagine a world without alcohol....I cant.

muebles madrid said...

It cannot have effect in actual fact, that is exactly what I think.