Announcing your goals – a common commitment device – may actually make you less likely to accomplish them, according to a new TED talk from music entrepreneur Derek Sivers.
A new study analyzed the effects of buying four basic prescription drugs in “low- and middle-income countries,” and the results aren’t pretty.
The first chapter of SuperFreakonomics, and a recent Q&A, addressed the pervasive male-female wage gap, but there does seem to be one subset of women who make more money than their male peers.
New research helps explain anomalies like the gambler’s fallacy and other irrational human behavior patterns. Researchers found that many “irrational” decisions are made because of erroneous beliefs.
A reporter for the Canadian newspaper The Star handed out five pre-paid credit cards to panhandlers, asked the panhandlers to return the card when finished, and tracked their purchases.
New research indicates that older people are “more likely to choose to read negative articles about those younger than themselves. They also tended to show less interest in articles about older people, whether negative or positive.”
A new literature review, summarized in the BPS Research Digest, concludes that “the vast majority of studies find that lay people, police officers and bartenders are in fact hopeless at distinguishing a drunk person from a sober one, at least at moderate levels of intoxication.”
It’s not quite Minority Report, but the L.A. Times reports that the LAPD is working with UCLA mathematicians to pursue a sophisticated form of predictive policing.
New research finds that the cleaner you feel, the more judgmental you’re apt to be.
In a nifty piece of forensic analysis, two researchers claim to have figured out how to tell when executives are lying. David Larcker and Anastasia Zakolyukina analyzed 30,000 conference calls between 2003 and 2007 to see if certain “tells” during the call were associated with earnings that were later “materially restated.”
Here’s yet more evidence that a good economy is good news all around.
hildren in Nigeria will soon have a new TV option. Sesame Square, a local version of Sesame Street voiced and produced by Nigerians (and funded by a grant from USAID), will “focus on the same challenges faced by children in a country where many have to work instead of going to school: AIDS, malaria nets, gender equality – and yams, a staple of Nigerian meals.”
The academic psychologist Joseph Henrich brought the Ultimatum game to the Amazon jungle, and found that the Maschiguenga people of southeastern Peru make decisions like economists.
Kal Raustiala, a professor at UCLA Law School and the UCLA International Institute, and Chris Sprigman, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School, are experts in counterfeiting and intellectual property. They have been guest-blogging for us about copyright issues. Today, they write about new efforts to extend copyright law to the fashion industry.
The Japan Sumo Association is handing out free iPads to training stables to encourage the use of email. The hope is that the devices will speed up communication between wrestlers, coaches and the association and create a “paper trail” for future scandal investigations.
Google is developing a service that will tell you what you’re reading.
Slate takes a look at India’s half-billion-dollar-a-year reproductive-tourism industry. “The primary appeal of India is that it is cheap, hardly regulated, and relatively safe,” writes Amana Fontanella-Khan. “Surrogacy can cost up to $100,000 in the United States, while many Indian clinics charge $22,000 or less. Very few questions are asked. Same-sex couples, single parents and even busy women who just don’t have time to give birth are welcomed by doctors.”
Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with Trader Joe’s unexpected owners: a German discount-grocery chain. A new article in Fortune aims to reveal a few more Trader Joe’s secrets.
A new study argues that the moisture levels and landscapes of cities influence hurricane movements. Professor Johnny Chan’s research team claims that “cities impose greater friction on the swirling flow because of the tall buildings . . . tropical cyclones tend to be ‘attracted’ towards areas of higher friction.”
Southern Sudan recently unveiled plans to remake its ten state capitals, with an interesting twist: “The $10.1 billion plan proposes remaking cities in Sudan’s south into shapes found on regional flags. Blueprints and maps illustrate Juba in the shape of a rhinoceros, Yambio fashioned after a pineapple and Wau as a giraffe.”
If you think your commute is bad, take heart: a nine-day, 100-kilometer traffic jam recently befouled the Beijing-Tibet Expressway. It was reportedly caused by “maintenance construction,” although the road is often troubled by traffic.
A Chicago company called Remote Sensing Metrics LLC has been using satellite images to track the number of cars in Wal-Mart parking lots, as a means of helping forecast earnings at the retail chain.
Raghuram Rajan, a University of Chicago economics professor and former chief economist of the IMF, has been popping up on the blog a lot lately – answering our questions about his new book Fault Lines and weighing in on the financial reform bill. Now he’s back with a guest post, clarifying and expanding his views on the Federal Reserve’s ultra-low interest rate policy.
Celebrity endorsements have been popular for a long time, but fashion experts are repotedly now practicing a new marketing strategy loosely known as “unbranding”: “Allegedly, the anxious folks at these various luxury houses are all aggressively gifting our gal Snookums with free bags. No surprise, right? But here’s the shocker: They are not sending her their own bags. They are sending her each other’s bags! Competitors’ bags!”
Lego has been christened the most popular toy ever made, despite — or maybe because of — its bias toward males over females in its Minifigures. But Lego has at least one other bias: the company produces a full line of Star Wars sets, but not a single set for Star Trek fans.
A group of 40 American billionaires, led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, has publicly vowed to donate at least half of their wealth to philanthropic causes. Gates and Buffett, through their project The Giving Pledge, hope to persuade the 400 richest Americans to join them. If successful, the duo could generate an unprecedented $600 billion for charity (Americans as a whole donate about $300 billion a year). A laudable example of pure altruism, right? German shipping tycoon Peter Krämer thinks not
Gary Becker and Richard Posner debate a timeless question: Will the next generation be better off than their parents’ generation? Becker’s take: “America has always been optimistic about its future. The decline in such optimism during the past couple of decades is understandable, but highly regrettable. The best way to restore this optimism is to promote faster economic growth. That is feasible with the right policies, but will not happen automatically. Even America has no destiny to be optimistic about the future without important redirection of various public priorities.”
Is thinking green a luxury?
People are significantly fatter in countries, states, and cities where car use is more common. Mass transit use, on the other hand, is correlated with lower obesity. But there has been scant evidence that public transportation actually causes widespread weight loss — until now.
All things — including wealth — being equal, earthquakes kill more people in dictatorships than in democracies, write NYU political scientists Alastair Smith and Alejandro Quiroz Flores. They reason that democratically elected leaders prepare their countries for disaster better because they fear they’ll be voted out of office if their governments are caught unprepared.
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