Get ready to change the way you think about economics. Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans―predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth―and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world. Read more...
Seriously, what is your biggest fear? That depends, of course, where you are in life. When I was a little kid, I would have dreams of falling. I would wake up in the middle of the night, shaking, damp from sweat, and indented in my bed about a foot deep as if I really did fall. Once, I swear I even felt a hand grasping my right forearm, but that’s a story for another book. As I grew older,...
The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already...
In his landmark bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant-in the blink of an eye-that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while...
By Jeremy Burke & Angela A. Hung There is substantial evidence that Americans tend to have low financial literacy (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2013) and are struggling with building sufficient wealth for a secure retirement (Helman et al., 2014). Financial advisers can play an important role by helping individuals make better financial decisions and improving their financial situations. However, there is limited and mixed evidence about the benefits to using a financial adviser. For example, as summarized in Burke et al....
By Ezra Sabiti Suruma In 1973, when I returned from a seven-year tour of study in the United States to take up a teaching job at Makerere University (Kampala, Uganda), General Idi Amin was the president of Uganda and political parties were banned. There was no opportunity for anyone, including a young academic returning from study abroad, to participate in shaping the country’s political economy. The economy was starting to fail, and fear was spreading among the population because of...
By Ezra Sabiti Suruma The first quarter century of Uganda’s independence from British colonial rule (1962–85) was characterized by internal conflicts, dictatorship, and economic disintegration. However, the subsequent years (1986–2012) were marked by relative political and economic stability as well as sustained economic growth. During this period of transition, Ezra Suruma held many high positions in the arena of Ugandan politics and economics and served with distinction as Uganda’s minister of finance and economic development from 2005 to 2009.Advancing the...
By Jack Quarter, Isla Carmichael & Sherida Ryan The concentrated nature of share ownership on the world’s capital markets means that large institutional investors – insurance companies, mutual funds, and pension funds – own the bulk of the world’s listed companies. In many countries, a significant portion of these shareholdings is held in workers’ retirement savings, pension funds, and other investment vehicles – workers’ capital. As beneficial owners of these deferred wages, workers are theindirectowners of a substantial portion of the...
By Ma Jun Full Content: J Stor
By Melissa L. Caldwell This simple inscription graces the elegant bronze sculpture of a dog, foot raised in the air to scratch his neck, that rests in the entrance to Moscow’s Mendeleevskaia metro station. The dog commemorated in the sculpture was a stray, or more specifically, one of Moscow’s metro dogs, a uniquely Russian breed of canine that travels the city on public transportation, often snoozing undisturbed on subway and bus seats, and surviving on the food and makeshift shelters...
