The war of the sexes

Paul Seabright interviewed by Viv Davies

Vox
May 18, 2012

Paul Seabright talks to Viv Davies about his recent book titled The War of the Sexes: how conflict and cooperation have shaped men and women from pre-history to the present. Seabright explains how game theory can shed light on the complex dynamics that create both conflict and cooperation between the sexes. They discuss the connection between the rise of modern capitalism and the rise of feminism, monogamy and marriage and whether there will ever be sexual equality.

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Our Gift for Good Stories Blinds Us to the Truth

by Reid Hastie

Bloomberg
May 10, 2012

As commentators, politicians and academics struggle to make sense of the recent financial crisis and its ramifications, many of their accounts seek to identify a root cause or the “beginning of the story.”

Theories abound: Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan’s “easy money” for banks; the blindness of the credit- rating companies; strategies that encouraged low-income Americans to own homes; the invention of high-risk investment instruments; high-leveraged borrowing; short-sighted executives; greedy investment bankers; lying real-estate dealers, and so on.

We know there was no single cause or event that set in motion the crisis and that the truth is complex and multicausal. So why do we keep seeking the easy answers? It may be that we are hard-wired to do so.

The human brain is designed to support two modes of thought: visual and narrative. These forms of thinking are universal across human societies throughout history, develop reliably early in individuals’ lives, and are associated with specialized regions of the brain. What isn’t universal or natural is the kind of highly structured cognitive processes that underlie logical and mathematical thinking -- the kinds of analysis that produce the most remarkable human cultural products, especially scientific achievements such as interplanetary travel, electronic devices and genetic engineering. They also allow the types of analysis needed to design effective economic policies and business strategies.

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Was Edvard Munch a One-Hit Wonder?

by Brian Palmer

Slate
May 3, 2012

An unidentified buyer purchased Edvard Munch’s The Scream for nearly $120 million at auction on Wednesday. Despite the phenomenal popularity of The Scream, it's likely that few people outside of Norway could name another Munch painting. Are there one-hit wonders in the world of fine art?

Yes. Plenty of painters have managed to capture the public’s attention with a single work of genius, while their other work remains relatively unknown. The best known to Americans is Grant Wood, who painted American Gothic, but Théodore Géricault (The Raft of the Medusa) and Antoine-Jean Gros (Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa) are also classic examples. These artists produced plenty of other work before and after creating their masterpieces, but none earned them much public notice or critical acclaim.

University of Chicago economist David Galenson has compiled a list of one-hit-wonder artists in recent history, based on the number of mentions their masterpieces have received in scholarly literature, compared to mentions of their lesser works. According to this approach, the sculptor and landscape artist Maya Lin might be the classic one-hit wonder. When she designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. while still a college student in 1981, her work was absolutely revolutionary. Before Lin, war memorials almost always featured statues of soldiers. (Think of the Iwo Jima Memorial.) Today, they almost never do. And yet, Maya Lin hasn’t produced anything else that's been deemed worthy of much talk in academic circles.

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Michael Shermer: Baloney Detection Kit

Presented by The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science
June 2009

With a sea of information coming at us from all directions, how do we sift out the misinformation and bogus claims, and get to the truth? Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine lays out a "Baloney Detection Kit," ten questions we should ask when encountering a claim.

The 10 Questions:
1. How reliable is the source of the claim?
2.Does the source make similar claims?
3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else?
4. Does this fit with the way the world works?
5. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
6. Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
7. Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
8. Is the claimant providing positive evidence?
9. Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
10. Are personal beliefs driving the claim?

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Produced by The Richard Dawkins Foundation and Michael Shermer
Directed by Josh Timonen
(c) 2009 Upper Branch Productions, Inc.

How To Be Creative

by Jonah Lehrer

Wall Street Journal
March 12, 2012

Creativity can seem like magic. We look at people like Steve Jobs and Bob Dylan, and we conclude that they must possess supernatural powers denied to mere mortals like us, gifts that allow them to imagine what has never existed before. They're "creative types." We're not.

But creativity is not magic, and there's no such thing as a creative type. Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It's a skill. Anyone can learn to be creative and to get better at it. New research is shedding light on what allows people to develop world-changing products and to solve the toughest problems. A surprisingly concrete set of lessons has emerged about what creativity is and how to spark it in ourselves and our work.

The science of creativity is relatively new. Until the Enlightenment, acts of imagination were always equated with higher powers. Being creative meant channeling the muses, giving voice to the gods. ("Inspiration" literally means "breathed upon.") Even in modern times, scientists have paid little attention to the sources of creativity.

But over the past decade, that has begun to change. Imagination was once thought to be a single thing, separate from other kinds of cognition. The latest research suggests that this assumption is false. It turns out that we use "creativity" as a catchall term for a variety of cognitive tools, each of which applies to particular sorts of problems and is coaxed to action in a particular way.

Does the challenge that we're facing require a moment of insight, a sudden leap in consciousness? Or can it be solved gradually, one piece at a time? The answer often determines whether we should drink a beer to relax or hop ourselves up on Red Bull, whether we take a long shower or stay late at the office.

The new research also suggests how best to approach the thorniest problems. We tend to assume that experts are the creative geniuses in their own fields. But big breakthroughs often depend on the naive daring of outsiders. For prompting creativity, few things are as important as time devoted to cross-pollination with fields outside our areas of expertise.

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When Truisms Are True

by Suntae Kim, Evan Polman and Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks

New York Times
February 25, 2012

What ignites the engine of creativity? A popular metaphor in American business urges you to think “outside the box.” Folk wisdom advises that problem-solving is helped by thinking about something “on the one hand” and then “on the other hand.”

Is there any psychological truth to such metaphors for better thinking? Our research suggests that the answer is yes. When people literally — that is, physically — embody these metaphors, they generate more creative ideas for solving problems.

Recent advances in understanding what psychologists call “embodied cognition” indicate a surprisingly direct link between mind and body. It turns out that people draw on their bodily experiences in constructing their social reality. Studies show, for example, that someone holding a warm cup of coffee tends to perceive a stranger as having a “warmer” personality. Likewise when holding something heavy, people see things as more serious and important — more “weighty.”

However, until recently it was not known whether bodily experiences could help in generating new ideas and solutions to problems. Our research, which will be published soon in the journal Psychological Science, discovered that it can.

For example, we asked 102 undergraduates at New York University to complete a task designed to measure innovative thinking. The task required them to generate a word (“tape,” for example) that related to each of three presented clue words (“measure,” “worm” and “video”). Some students were randomly assigned to do this while sitting inside a 125-cubic-foot box that we made of plastic pipe and cardboard. The rest got to sit and think outside (and next to) the box.

During the task we tracked the number of correct responses suggested by the students. We found that those thinking outside the box were significantly more creative: compared with those thinking inside the box, they came up with over 20 percent more creative solutions.

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Shaping risk preferences across time

by Alison Booth, Lina Cardona Sosa and Patrick Nolen

Vox
February 20, 2012

Some blame women’s under-representation in high-level jobs on differences between the sexes in risk aversion and competition. But are these differences in behaviour hardwired or learned? This column describes a study that tackles this thorny question with a controlled experiment in single-sex and mixed classrooms in a British university. Women are found to become far less nervous about uncertainty over time with the men out of the room.

The majority of experimental studies investigating gender differences in risky choices find that women are less willing to take risks than men. This research is summarised in Eckel and Grossman (2008) and Croson and Gneezy (2009). However, these experimental studies investigating gender differences in risky choices typically do so only at a single point in time.

Why might there be gender differences?

Only recently have economists begun to explore why women and men might have different risk preferences. Broadly speaking, those differences may be due to either nurture, nature, or some combination of the two. For instance, boys are pushed to take risks when participating in risky or competitive sports while girls are often encouraged to remain cautious. Thus, the riskier choices made by males could be due to the nurturing received from parents or peers. Likewise, the disinclination of women to take risks could be the result of parental or peer pressure not to do so.

In recent research (Booth and Nolen 2012), we present a recent experimental study exploring why girls and boys might have different risk preferences. Using adolescent subjects from two distinct environments or ‘cultures’, we examine the effect on risk preferences of two types of environmental influences – randomly assigned experimental peer-groups and educational environment (single-sex or coeducational). The experimental subjects were UK students in years 10 and 11 who were attending either single-sex or coeducational state-funded high schools. We find that the gender composition of the experimental group, as well as the gender mix of the school the student attended, affected decisions on whether or not to enter a real-stakes lottery. But our experiment was conducted at one point in time, and did not track changes over time.

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When distorted self-image takes its toll: The effects on the health of European females

by Joan Costa-i-Font and Mireia Jofre-Bonet

Vox
January 30, 2012

Striving for the perfect body can take its toll, both physically and mentally. This column shows how excessive preoccupation with self-appearance can give rise to preventable eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia, among European females. It is time for policy action to shift people’s perceptions of their ideal body closer to what is healthiest.

Policy interventions to curb the parallel epidemics of excessive preoccupation with self-image and food disorders, such as bulimia and anorexia, are increasingly being used, including the regulation of the fashion industry and advertisements, as well as support campaigns through social networks (Borzekowski et al. 2010) and the media (Burke 2009). In some European countries, there has been increasing debate over the conditions, especially since the Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston died from anorexia in 2006.

More generally, it is becoming increasingly apparent that standards of physical appearance are important and powerful motivators of human behaviour, especially regarding health and food. Excessive preoccupation with self-image is regarded as a contributing factor to the proliferation of food disorders, especially among young women. Anorexia, together with other food disorders such as bulimia nervosa, can be characterised by a distorted body image accompanied by an eating obsession.

Social sciences regard social image as being continually under construction and essential in determining physical, psychological, and social equilibrium. Hence, one can expect a tension between aesthetic and other reactions to food ingestion. When applied to food disorders, this could explain some of the extreme forms of weight aversion – particularly those that require policy attention.

We argue that a distorted self-image influences health-related behaviours, specifically food disorders. We test our claims empirically using European data and find evidence consistent with Figure 1, namely that those females with a distorted self-image choose a net caloric intake that is under the optimal net caloric intake. The distortion is explained by the influence of ‘peer weight’ (which is likely to influence self-image or social identity) on the likelihood of anorexia, and the influence of self-image on individual weight. We support the hypothesis that social pressure through peer shape is a determinant in explaining anorexia nervosa and a distorted self-perception of one's own body.

Figure 1. The utility of net caloric intake

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Watchdog to protect ‘irrational’ investors

Financial Times
January 24, 2012

Investors cannot be counted on to make rational choices so regulators need to “step into their footprints” and limit or ban the sale of potentially harmful products, the head of the UK’s new consumer protection watchdog said on Tuesday.

In his first big interview since starting work last autumn, Martin Wheatley told the Financial Times that the 2008 financial crisis had fundamentally reshaped regulators’ assumptions about the people they protected.

“You have to assume that you don’t have rational consumers. Faced with complex decisions or too much information, they default ... They hide behind credit rating agencies or behind the promises that are given to them by the salesperson,” said Mr Wheatley, a key figure in the government’s effort to revamp financial regulation.

Under the government’s plan to break up the Financial Services Authority, the FCA, headed by Mr Wheatley, will spin out as an independent agency early next year and be granted enhanced powers to police markets and protect investors. It intends to be far more interventionist in an effort to head off the mis-selling scandals that have dogged the financial sector in recent years.

The new approach rests on research in behavioural economics that shows investors often make decisions contrary to their own interests because of their aversion to losses or unwillingness to ditch a losing strategy. It represents a profound shift in regulatory stance.

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Religion matters, in life and death

by Sascha O. Becker and Ludger Woessmann

Vox
January 15, 2012

Does religion affect suicide? This column presents new evidence from 19th century Prussia showing that suicide rates are much higher in Protestant than in Catholic areas, and that this reflects a causal effect of Protestantism. It also suggests that economic modelling can help understand why this is so.

As early as 1897, French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1897) in his classic Le suicide presented aggregate indicators suggesting that Protestantism was a leading correlate of suicide incidence. The proposition that Protestants have higher suicide rates than Catholics has been “accepted widely enough for nomination as sociology’s one law” (Pope and Danigelis 1981).

And even today, Protestant countries tend to have substantially higher suicide rates, suggesting that the relation of religion and suicide remains a vital topic – not least because about one million people commit suicide worldwide every year, making suicide a leading cause of death in particular among young adults (World Health Organisation 2008). Clearly, the large prevalence of suicide creates far-reaching emotional, social, and economic ramifications and invokes major policy efforts to prevent them.

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A Dieting Conundrum: Why dieters underestimate calorie counts of meals

Based on the research of Alexander Chernev

Kellogg Insight
January 12, 2012

In the effort to combat the burgeoning problem of obesity, authorities such as the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization promote the benefits of healthy eating plans that include plenty of fruits and vegetables. Individuals concerned with their weight often internalize that message. But they frequently do so in an irrational way. According to research by Alexander Chernev, an associate professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, many think that adding a “healthy” option, such as a side dish of celery and carrots, to a high-calorie meal such as a cheesesteak somehow reduces the meal’s overall calorie content.

Chernev’s research also gives the tale an added twist: the more serious that individuals are about dieting, he finds, the more likely they are to fall for this “side salad illusion.” “People often behave in a way that is illogical and ultimately counterproductive to their goals,” Chernev says. “We’ve shown that people on a diet are more likely to underestimate the calorie count of combinations of healthy and unhealthy meals.”

The Dieter’s Paradox

Information about the “dieter’s paradox,” as Chernev calls it, emerged from a nationwide study in which more than 1,000 respondents were asked to estimate the calorie count of a variety of meals. About half the respondents saw a series of unhealthy meals: a hamburger, a bacon and cheese waffle sandwich, chili with beef, and a meatball pepperoni cheesesteak. The rest saw these same unhealthy meals accompanied by a healthy item—a few celery sticks, a small organic apple, a small salad without dressing, and a side dish of celery and carrots, respectively.

Respondents who saw only the unhealthy meals estimated that they contained 691 calories on average. But those who saw those same meals accompanied by the healthy items assessed the average calorie count at just 648. For example, participants shown a bowl of chili rated it as averaging 699 calories; however, participants who viewed the same bowl of chili combined with a green side salad rated it as having only 656 calories. In every case the addition of the healthy food item led to the erroneous perception that the number of calories had decreased.

After the participants evaluated the calories in these meals, they were asked to indicate the extent to which they were concerned with managing their weight. Astonishingly, the data showed that the most weight-conscious individuals believed most strongly in the apparent ability of a healthy option to reduce the calorie content of an unhealthy meal. Those more concerned with their weight rated the unhealthy item paired with a healthy one as having 615 calories—96 calories less than dieters who rated the unhealthy item alone. People less concerned with their weight were not as susceptible to the side salad illusion. They estimated the unhealthy–healthy combination as having only 26 calories less than the unhealthy item alone (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Weight-conscious individuals are more likely to believe that adding a healthy option to an unhealthy meal decreases a meal’s calorie content.

“The fact that those most concerned with their weight are also more likely to underestimate the calorie content of a meal is counterintuitive,” Chernev says. “It also means that they will be more likely to overconsume and consequently more likely to gain weight.”

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Four Economists Come Together to Say ‘We Agree’

by Claudia Goldin, William Nordhaus, Richard Schmalensee and Anil Kashyap

Bloomberg
January 5, 2012

“If you laid all the economists in the world end to end, they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion.” This old joke still works because it reflects a common belief that economists can’t agree on anything important. Yet the four of us are part of a project that we believe will demonstrate that this proposition is wrong.

Each week since late September, along with 37 other economists at top universities, we have been answering questions on major public policy issues. These include the predictability of the stock market, the best design for health insurance and the effect of China’s managed exchange rate. You can find our answers (and sign up to be notified of future poll results) here.

Why are we taking the time to do this? Although we can’t speak for the other distinguished panelists, the four of us are tired of seeing our profession’s views misrepresented in policy discussions.

We think there are two main reasons for the distortions. The first is the conventions of journalism itself: Although there are notable exceptions, most journalists have limited training in economics, and those who edit the articles often have even less. Hence, out of an understandable but misguided sense of fair play, there is a bias toward wanting to show both sides of an issue. When, for example, an economist tells a journalist the equivalent of 1+1=2, the writer, in an effort to provide “balance,” will often include a quote from someone who says that 1+1=3.

Second, editorial boards don’t want wishy-washy, hedged opinions. As a result, op-ed pages are more likely to publish someone advocating an unequivocal position than someone who offers a more nuanced argument. This favors fringe views. A position that sounds new, yet is completely untested, is all the more enticing to editors, so long as it appears to challenge mainstream views.

We don’t claim that there is research-based consensus among economists on all important policy questions. But even when there is broad agreement (say, 1+1=2), the news media rarely makes it clear that such a consensus exists.

To overcome this problem, we rely on a phenomenon that is often called the “wisdom of crowds” effect. It is based on the observation that the collective judgment of a diverse group of people about a question is almost always better than the answer of any single person from the group. (Think of the accuracy of the “Ask the Audience” lifeline in the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”)

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Be It Resolved

by John Tierney

New York Times
January 5, 2012

It's still early in 2012, so let’s be optimistic. Let’s assume you have made a New Year’s resolution and have not yet broken it. Based on studies of past resolutions, here are some uplifting predictions:

1) Whatever you hope for this year — to lose weight, to exercise more, to spend less money — you’re much more likely to make improvements than someone who hasn’t made a formal resolution.

2) If you can make it through the rest of January, you have a good chance of lasting a lot longer.

3) With a few relatively painless strategies and new digital tools, you can significantly boost your odds of success.

Now for a not-so-uplifting prediction: Most people are not going to keep their resolutions all year long. They’ll start out with the best of intentions but the worst of strategies, expecting that they’ll somehow find the willpower to resist temptation after temptation. By the end of January, a third will have broken their resolutions, and by July more than half will have lapsed.

They’ll fail because they’ll eventually run out of willpower, which social scientists no longer regard as simply a metaphor. They’ve recently reported that willpower is a real form of mental energy, powered by glucose in the bloodstream, which is used up as you exert self-control.

The result is “ego depletion,” as this state of mental fatigue was named by Roy F. Baumeister, a social psychologist at Florida State University (and my co-author of a book on willpower). He and many of his colleagues have concluded that the way to keep a New Year’s resolution is to anticipate the limits of your willpower.

One of their newest studies, published last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, tracked people’s reactions to temptations throughout the day. The study, led by Wilhelm Hofmann of the University of Chicago, showed that the people with the best self-control, paradoxically, are the ones who use their willpower less often. Instead of fending off one urge after another, these people set up their lives to minimize temptations. They play offense, not defense, using their willpower in advance so that they avoid crises, conserve their energy and outsource as much self-control as they can.

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Η σιωπή του Θεού και η προπαγάνδα της πίστης

του Νίκου Δήμου

ndimou.gr
Ιούνιος 2008

Ο Θεός σιωπά. Η «σιωπή του Θεού» είναι το βασικό μοτίβο όλης της υπαρξιακής φιλοσοφίας – αλλά και θεολογίας – του περασμένου αιώνα. Ο Θεός σώπασε στο Άουσβιτς και στην Ρουάντα, στην Καμπότζη και την Σερμπρένιτσα. Άφησε να εκτυλιχτούν απύθμενες βαρβαρότητες, χωρίς ποτέ να μας δώσει ούτε «ένα σημείον».

Ο Θεός σωπαίνει όχι μόνο στις μεγάλες δημόσιες τραγωδίες αλλά και στις μικρές ιδιωτικές. Η μάνα που σπαράζει για τον χαμό του παιδιού της δεν παίρνει απάντηση.

Ο Θεός σωπαίνει – είτε λέγεται Θεός, είτε Αλλάχ, είτε Ιεχωβάς, είτε αποκαλείται με άλλο όνομα από τα πολλά που του δίνουν οι άνθρωποι. Βλέπει το κακό να συμβαίνει και όχι μόνο δεν το σταματάει (αυτός ο παντοδύναμος) αλλά ούτε καν αντιδρά είτε για να το δικαιολογήσει είτε για να εκφράζει την συμπαράστασή του.

Κι όμως στην Χριστιανική θρησκεία τα κύρια επίθετα του Θεού είναι πανάγαθος, ελεήμων και φιλάνθρωπος και στην Μουσουλμανική «Αλ Ραχμάν» (ο οικτίρμων) και Αλ Ραχίμ (ο συμπονετικός).

Αντίθετα με τον Θεό που σιωπά, οι προπαγανδιστές και απολογητές του υπήρξαν ανέκαθεν λαλίστατοι. Ιδρυτές θρησκειών, απόστολοι, προφήτες, ιερείς και αρχιερείς, μοναχοί και θεολόγοι, μας έχουν φιλοδωρήσει με χιλιάδες – ίσως και εκατομμύρια σελίδες κειμένων.

Κοινό στοιχείο όλων αυτών των λόγων είναι η προσπάθεια «να δικαιολογήσουν τους τρόπους του Θεού στους ανθρώπους» για να χρησιμοποιήσω τον περίφημο στίχο του Μίλτωνα: «to justify the ways of God to Men».

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12 Μύθοι για την Αγορά

του Αριστείδη Χατζή

Παραπολιτική
24 Δεκεμβρίου 2011

Στο δημόσιο διάλογο ακούει και διαβάζει κανείς πολλές ανοησίες. Μερικές από τις χειρότερες όμως αφορούν τις διαβόητες «Αγορές». Στο συλλογικό φαντασιακό έχουν αναλάβει τον ρόλο του μπαμπούλα που τρομοκρατεί τους πολίτες, τις κυβερνήσεις ακόμα και τους διεθνείς οργανισμούς. Η εικόνα που κυριαρχεί είναι ότι οι Αγορές είναι σαν τα Τρολς, τα μυθικά τέρατα της σκανδιναβικής μυθολογίας: πανίσχυρες, ανορθολογικές, ασύδοτες, κινούνται ανεξέλεγκτα και απρόβλεπτα με ένα μόνο σκοπό, να καταστρέψουν τα πάντα στο πέρασμά τους. Για τους λίγο πιο εύπιστους είναι απαραίτητο και ένα ανθρωπομορφικό στοιχείο - πίσω από τις Αγορές υπάρχουν συγκεκριμένοι άνθρωποι και οργανώσεις που κινούν τα νήματα: η λέσχη Bilderberg, η Τριμερής, οι τραπεζίτες, οι Εβραίοι, οι Αμερικάνοι - τώρα και οι Γερμανοί.

Πάντα οι άνθρωποι προσπαθούσαν να εξηγήσουν φαινόμενα που αδυνατούσαν να κατανοήσουν καταφεύγοντας στη μεταφυσική. Η πολυπλοκότητα ενός κοινωνικού φαινομένου όπως η Αγορά, η άγνοια βασικών οικονομικών εννοιών, η δυσκολία αποδοχής του τυχαίου και η ευκολία αποδοχής απλοϊκών μύθων, η τάση για συνωμοσιολογία και, γιατί να το κρύψουμε άλλωστε, η ευήθεια, οδηγούν αναπόφευκτα σε μεταφυσικού τύπου κατασκευές με κυρίαρχο το ανθρωπομορφικό στοιχείο. Όσο δύσκολο είναι να κατανοήσει ο απλός άνθρωπος το μηχανισμό της Εξέλιξης άλλο τόσο είναι δύσκολο να κατανοήσει τους μηχανισμούς της Αγοράς.

Στο υπόλοιπο αυτού του κειμένου θα προσπαθήσουμε να καταρρίψουμε εν συντομία 12 μύθους για την Αγορά και να απαξιώσουμε τις αντίστοιχες λανθασμένες κυρίαρχες αντιλήψεις.

Μύθος 1: Η Αγορά είναι ένα μυθικό τέρας που μπορεί και να σας φάει ζωντανούς.

Ναι, μη σας φαίνεται υπερβολικό. Για πολλούς ανθρώπους η Αγορά είναι ένα από τα πολλά τέρατα που δεν τους αφήνουν να κοιμηθούν. Φαντάζομαι ότι αν ποτέ κατανοήσουν τι πραγματικά είναι η Αγορά, θα σοκαριστούν: η Αγορά είμαστε εμείς. Εσείς, εγώ, οι φίλοι σας, οι γονείς σας, τα αδέλφια σας, οι συνάδελφοί σας, το αφεντικό σας, ακόμα και οι εχθροί σας. Άτομα, νοικοκυριά, επιχειρήσεις μικρές, μεσαίες και μεγάλες. Οι τράπεζες, οι πολυεθνικές επιχειρήσεις, ο Bill Gates, ο George Soros, ο Νίκος Αλέφαντος, ο Αρχιεπίσκοπος Ιερώνυμος, η Έλενα Παπαρίζου, η κομμώτριά σας, ο μανάβης σας αλλά και ο μπατζανάκης σας. Oι αγορές και οι πωλήσεις, η παραγωγή προϊόντων, η παροχή υπηρεσιών, η κατανάλωση, η ζήτηση και η προσφορά, οι επιθυμίες και οι προτιμήσεις, οι προσδοκίες μας, το ρίσκο, η αβεβαιότητα, οι ζημιές, τα κέρδη, οι ευκαιρίες, οι ιδέες, τα λάθη. Όλες οι αποφάσεις μας, όλες μας οι συνήθειες, το σύνολο σχεδόν της δραστηριότητάς μας αποτελεί μέρος αυτής της Αγοράς.

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The Darwin economy

Robert H. Frank interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam

Vox
December 23, 2011

Robert Frank of Cornell University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his book, "The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition and the Common Good." He argues that Charles Darwin's understanding of competition – in which individual and group interests often diverge sharply – describes economic reality far more accurately than Adam Smith's. They discuss the implications of this view for current debates about inequality, taxation, and policies to get out of economic stagnation. The interview was recorded in London in November 2011.

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Artistic labour and occupational choice in Baroque painting

by Federico Etro

Vox
December 23, 2011

To some, the world of art and world of economics are diametrically opposed. To others, such as the author of this column, they are part of the same. This column looks at the wages of painters during the 17th century Baroque art movement and asks what insights it can provide for art lovers, economists, and those who consider themselves both.

Exhibit 1. Caravaggio, The Fortune Teller, Paris, Louvre Museum ©

Economists are always on the lookout for new data to test their theories. But rather than sit around itching for the latest surveys or commissioning new randomised trials, researchers might want to dig up what we already have. With a bit of luck, the pages of history can be a rewarding friend. Take for instance the well-documented details of painters in 17th century Italy, at the height of the Baroque age. This is an example of a high-skilled labour market and can provide a fruitful area for study.

One of the most impressive and rapid features of the Baroque art movement was the innovation that led mass productions of new genres of painting – to the economists among us, this is a form of horizontal product differentiation.

Beyond old genres such as figurative paintings (including religious, mythological, and historical subjects) and portraits, the new genres of the Baroque art market included still lifes (reproducing animals, fruits, flowers, and lifeless objects), landscapes (reproducing the countryside or the urban environment), so-called genre paintings (reproducing daily life scenes, as in Exhibit 1 by Caravaggio) and battles (reproducing fights without necessarily a specific historical content). Each genre represented a specific sector of production, and painters either specialised in one or few genres or they could switch between them according to the market opportunities driven by price differentials (think of Caravaggio, who introduced still lifes and genre paintings and yet was often engaged in figurative paintings and portraits).

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United States Ranks 20th in Holiday Spending

National Science Foundation
Press Release 11-269
December 22, 2011

Americans typically spend $70 billion more in December than in the average of November and January (the months around December). In a recent National Science Foundation-sponsored interview, Joel Waldfogel, the Carlson School's Frederick R. Kappel Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota uses that increase to measure the amount of holiday gift-giving. This level of spending is lower than in other countries. "We're about the 20th largest in terms of countries in the world," said Waldfogel, referencing how much U.S. December spending increases.

Waldfogel is the author of Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays. He notes that even though the U.S. economy has grown since the turn of the last century, the amount of U.S. spending in December (relative to November and January) has not kept pace with that growth. The extra spending in December is less as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product than it has been at any time over the last 75 years.

He makes an additional point that the impact of this spending is even smaller if measured by the satisfaction it produces. The reason, he said, is simple: "The problem with gift giving is that somebody is going out and spending $100 on someone else and if the giver does not know exactly what the recipient wants, it is possible for the giver to spend $100 and buy something the recipient would only be willing to pay $50 or perhaps nothing for."

This type of gift giving, said Waldfogel, undermines economically efficient choices. "Whatever amount of spending occurs, it results in less satisfaction than could have occurred if people bought stuff for themselves," which, he claims, results in the loss of billions of dollars in economic value to the overall economy.

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Reframing the Debate Over Using Phones Behind the Wheel

New York Times
December 17, 2011

For years, policy makers trying to curb distracted driving have compared the problem to drunken driving. The analogy seemed fitting, with drivers weaving down roads and rationalizing behavior that they knew could be deadly.

But on Tuesday, in an emotional call for states to ban all phone use by drivers, the head of a federal agency introduced a new comparison: distracted driving is like smoking.

The shift in language, in comments by Deborah Hersman, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, opened a new front in a continuing national conversation about a deadly habit that safety advocates are trying desperately, and with a growing sense of futility, to stop.

Her new tack also echoes a growing consensus among scientists that using phones and computers can be compulsive, both emotionally and physically, which helps explain why drivers may have trouble turning off their devices even if they want to. In effect, they are saying that the running joke about BlackBerrys as “CrackBerrys” is more serious than people think.

“Addiction to these devices is a very good way to think about it,” Ms. Hersman said in an interview. “It’s not unlike smoking. We have to get to a place where it’s not in vogue anymore, where people recognize it’s harmful and there’s a risk and it’s not worth it.”

She added: “If you can’t control your impulses, you need to lock your phone in the trunk.”

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Jailbreak Rat: Selfless Rodents Spring Their Pals and Share Their Sweets

Scientific American
December 8, 2011

The English language is not especially kind to rats. We say we "smell a rat" when something doesn't feel right, refer to stressful competition as the "rat race," and scorn traitors who "rat on" friends. But rats don't deserve their bad rap. According to a new study in the December 9 issue of Science, rats are surprisingly selfless, consistently breaking friends out of cages—even if freeing their buddies means having to share coveted chocolate. It seems that empathy and self-sacrifice have a greater evolutionary legacy than anyone expected.

In 2007 neuroscientist Peggy Mason of the University of Chicago wrote about the neurobiology of empathy for Scientific American. Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal, a new PhD student in integrative neuroscience who worked across the street from Mason in a different lab, saw the article and proposed a collaboration. "Scientific American really brought us together," Mason says.

In the new study, Mason, Bartal and University of Chicago colleague Jean Decety placed pairs of rats in Plexiglass pens. One rat was trapped in a cage in the middle of the pen, whereas the other rat was free to run around. Most free rats circled their imprisoned peer, gnawing at the cage and sticking their paws, noses and whiskers through any openings. After a week of trial and error, 23 of the 30 rats in the experiment learned to open the cage and free their peers by head-butting the cage door or leaning their full weight against the door until it tipped over. (The door could only be opened from the outside.) At first the rats were startled by the noise of the toppling door. Eventually, however, they stopped showing surprise, which suggests that they fully intended to push the door aside. Further, the rodents showed no interest in opening empty cages or in those containing toy rats, indicating that a break out was their genuine goal.

In this first set of experiments, most rats seemed quite willing to help their peers, but Mason wanted to give them a tougher test. She placed rats in a Plexiglass pen with two cages: in one was another rat, in the other was a pile of five milk chocolate chips—a favorite snack of these particular rodents. The unrestricted rats could easily have eaten the chocolate themselves before freeing their peers or been so distracted by the sweets that they would neglect their imprisoned friends. Instead, most of the rats opened both cages and shared in the chocolate chip feast.

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