Blog Entries tagged 'Economics'

Books: Against the Gods

rsambandam@trchome.com — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein

Given what has been happening in the economy recently, this book (written ten years ago) provides an excellent foundation for understanding how we ended up here. In telling the story of risk, Bernstein focuses on how much people believe the past determines the future. The more we believe we understand the past, the more certain we are of what will happen in the future. Quantifying the past helps enormously in bringing [...]

Can Money Buy Happiness?

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0100

This question has been asked for millennia and before any research was done there were three possible answers: yes, no, maybe so. After some research was done in the 70's, we had what was called as the Easterlin paradox which seemed to show that money and happiness were not related. More recent research from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with data from many countries around the globe seems to indicate that people with more money are, in fact, happier.

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Insighter: Stephano DellaVigna

rsambandam@trchome.com — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Does movie violence increase crime? Does Fox News have an impact on voting? Do people pay not to go the gym? Are companies correct in expecting that investors pay less attention to information released on Friday? These and other interesting questions are asked and answered by Stefano DellaVigna, an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. To study movie violence, he and his colleagues looked at actual crime statistics surrounding movie releases, rath [...]

Tom Sawyer and the Two Market Theory

rsambandam@trchome.com — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 01:00:00 +0100

In Mark Twain's classic novel Tom Sawyer is white washing a fence because his aunt told him to do it. In other words, it's work. But Tom soon convinces his friends that whitewashing the fence is a privilege and even gets them to pay him for a chance to try their hand at it. Twain makes the larger point that whether something is work or not is based on whether one gets paid for it. In this case work becomes a privilege when the worker has to pay to take part, as opposed to being paid f [...]

Insighter: Emily Oster...and family

rsambandam@trchome.com — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Emily Oster is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the University of Chicago. Her research reaches outside the traditional boundaries of economics to larger health and policy questions. Her claim to fame is her disputing the Nobel winner Amartya Sen's contention from two decades ago that there were 100 million "missing" women, quite possibly because of misogynistic attitudes in developing countries.

She showed that prevalence of Hepatitis B accounted for half of t [...]