Great quotes from Daniel Kahneman. Very worthwhile clicking through and skimming over. Many people now say they knew a financial crisis was coming, but they didn’t really. After a crisis we tell ourselves we understand why it happened and maintain the illusion that the world is understandable. In fact, we should accept the world is […]
In the ongoing patent battle between the Android suppliers and Apple: Apple has been granted a preliminary injunction banning sales of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone in the United States… just two days after a similar injunction banning sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet. A large contribution to the academic literature on technology patents […]
Frances Woolley at Worthwhile Canadian initiative: An average dog might prefer, say, chocolate over dry kibble. Yet an average dog owner has no qualms about ignoring the dog’s preferences and feeding the dog kibble over chocolate. Chocolate can kill a dog. In the same way, an average human might prefer, say, soft drinks over water. […]
We’ve posted over the past couple of days about habit persistence and you might be wondering why anyone would care. It turns out that habit persistence is extremely powerful in explaining some important macroeconomic dynamics: When habits are formed at the level of individual goods, firms take into account the fact that the demand they […]
Matt stormed back on to the blog yesterday with a post on the importance of habits in explaining human behaviour. Here I want to explore the way in which economists describe habits in a bit more depth. In particular, Matt asked why economists talk about habit persistence in such an ad hoc way. I don’t […]
Rebirth of the Eastern cities from the McKinsey Global Institute: HT: Bill Easterly’s excellent NYUDRI blog.