The Persistence of Financial Illiteracy
Annamaria Lusardi, the doyenne of financial (il)literacy reseach (she has appeared on this blog and on Freakonomics Radio), is back with more depressing news. The Wall Street Journal summarizes: In…
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Even with a new rat czar, an arsenal of poisons, and a fleet of new garbage trucks, it won’t be easy — because, at root, the enemy is us. (Part…
Annamaria Lusardi, the doyenne of financial (il)literacy reseach (she has appeared on this blog and on Freakonomics Radio), is back with more depressing news. The Wall Street Journal summarizes: In…
…in a savings account. But we do love to play the lottery. So what if you combine the two, creating a new kind of savings account with a lottery payout?…
Levitt rarely interviews advocates, but the founder of the Good Food Institute is different. Once an outspoken — and sometimes outlandish — animal-rights activist, Bruce has come to believe that…
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The man who wants America to “think harder” has parlayed his quixotic presidential campaign into front-runner status in New York’s mayoral election. And he has some big plans….
The left and the right blame each other for pretty much everything, including slanted media coverage. Can they both be right?
…U.S. economy. The bad news is that the recent deficits, caused by a downturn in tax revenues and stimulus expenditures, make the long-term fiscal imbalance even worse. The good news…
Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, EatWith, and other companies in the “sharing economy” are practically daring government regulators to shut them down. The regulators are happy to comply.
He was handed the keys to the global economy just as it started heading off a cliff. Fortunately, he’d seen this movie before.
…March 5, 2009: Stanford Law School and Stanford Business School in Stanford, California * March 20, 2009: Institute of Internal Auditors at New York University in New York, New York…
G.M. produces more than 20 times as many cars as Tesla, but Tesla is worth nearly 10 times as much. Mary Barra, the C.E.O. of G.M., is trying to fix…
It’s a remarkable ecosystem that allows each of us to exercise control over our lives. But how much control do we truly have? How many of our decisions are really…
…read those articles about the death of the American newspaper, I always wonder about the jobs that have been created by the changes in the news media. Q. Do you…
A conversation with former Major League Baseball player and current E.S.P.N. analyst Mark Teixeira, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Hidden Side of Sports.”…
Behavioral scientists have been exploring if — and when — a psychological reset can lead to lasting change. We survey evidence from the London Underground, Major League Baseball, and New…
Behavioral scientists have been exploring if — and when — a psychological reset can lead to lasting change. We survey evidence from the London Underground, Major League Baseball, and New…
It isn’t just supply and demand. We look at the complicated history and skewed incentives that make “affordable housing” more punch line than reality in cities from New York and…
…mentality of newspaper editors (even ‘alternative’ newspaper editors ‘hated’ his approach to obscure rock criticism). . . .” Surely, Matt must have had editors talk to him this way before…
…increase in quality without backsliding by implementing a new “flagged revisions” feature that will help editors identify revisions of articles that have been checked for facts and quality. German Wikipedia…
Conventional programs tend to be expensive, onerous, and ineffective. Could something as simple (and cheap) as cognitive behavioral therapy do the trick?
Bren Smith, who grew up fishing and fighting, is now part of a movement that seeks to feed the planet while putting less environmental stress on it. He makes his…
While other countries seem to build spectacular bridges, dams and even entire cities with ease, the U.S. is stuck in pothole-fixing mode. We speak with an array of transportation nerds…
James Surowiecki writes about one of this blog’s frequent topics of interest: financial illiteracy. Surowiecki includes insights from Annamaria Lusardi‘s research and Gary Rivlin‘s new book, Broke, USA. He proposes…
It’s a well-documented truth that many Americans are financially and economically illiterate – a handicap that some believe contributed to the recent financial crisis.? A 2008 paper by?Annamaria Lusardi, Olivia…
We think of them as intellectual enclaves and the surest route to a better life. But U.S. colleges also operate like firms, trying to differentiate their products to win market…
…than this, we risk pricing out someone who might benefit from the insights of an academic scribbler. The Brookings Papers on Economic Activity — the journal that David Romer and…
Broadway operates on a winner-take-most business model. A runaway hit like Stereophonic — which just won five Tony Awards — will create a few big winners. But even the stars…
