When a friend sent me this paper the other day, I admit that I took a long hard look at myself and my economist friends. According to this study, economists, it seems, are worse than most when it comes to truth telling….
The heat of the moment is a powerful, dangerous thing. We all know this. If we’re happy, we may be overly generous. Maybe we leave a big tip, or buy a boat. If we’re irritated, we may snap. Maybe we rifle off…
Reflecting back on our recent economic history bring to my mind a two sad surprises. Even as a behavioral economist who generally believes in the prevalence of irrationality in our every day life, I place some stock in the main mechanism that…
One of the things that always amazed me about rational economists is that they don’t update their opinions. In economics there is a very clear way in which all people are supposed to observe new information and based on it update (what…
Before the financial crisis of 2008, it was rather difficult to convince people that we all might have irrational tendencies. For example, after I gave a presentation at a conference, a fellow I’ll call Mr. Logic (a composite of many people I…
A few weeks ago at TED I met John Hodgman, and he agreed to watch my version of his mac vs pc videos (he is the guy playing the PC on the apple ads). He approved. This is the last one in…
It’s hard to displace a global economic crisis from headlining the news, but the pigs did it. A n variant of the H1N1 flu virus, associated in our lore with the 1918 flu pandemic, has jumped species and infected humans. There are…
Adam Smith first coined the term “The Invisible Hand” in his important book “The Wealth of Nations.” With this term he was trying to capture the idea that the marketplace would be self-regulating. The basic principle of the invisible hand is that…
So many mistakes ….
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