Latest Updates
A Gripe With Behavioral Economics
AP
Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains his problem with people using the term ‘behavioral economics.’
If you’re looking to better understand your own brain and only have time to read one book on the subject, it should be Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, now out in paperback. Kahneman, a psychologist at Princeton University who won the 2002 Nobel Prize for economics for work that he and longtime collaborator Amos Tversky did on the psychology of decision making, gives a detailed, comprehensive account of how our cognitive processes are divided into fast (“System 1”) and slow (“System 2”) thinking.
Debt-Limit Drama?
May be delayed this year.
Well, this ought to make the White House Correspondents’ Dinner more enjoyable. The combination of higher tax revenue, less spending, and the recovery of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may push back the next debt-limit battle from this summer to the fall. During Obama’s tenure, the recurring debt-limit fights have become emblematic of Washington’s inability to make deals.
Soros Shops JCPenney
Buys stake in company.
What can a few billion buy in a JCPenney store? Despite a recent spate of bad news for the retailer, billionaire George Soros is buying a 7.9 percent stake in the company. The investment comes after CEO Ron Johnson, a former Apple executive, was pushed out.
Breaking: News Ain’t Cheap
Mark Lennihan/AP
The New York Times Co.’s recent quarterly earnings report illustrates the power of the pay-for-content model of journalism. The survival of newspapers, says Daniel Gross, now hinges on getting people to pay—and pay a lot—for what they read.
The future of good newspapers is expensive. The products that once were a metaphor for the democratization of information— remember the Penny Press?—are evolving into luxury products for high-end consumers. And whether they come in paper or digital form, they will likely be even more expensive in the future.At least that’s my takeaway from the New York Times Co.’s quarterly earnings report, posted on Thursday. The company eked out a small profit on essentially stagnant revenues.
This Country Needs Inflation
"I am not a Marxist" is an old joke about what Karl Marx would say if he had lived to see the uses to which his ideas were put.This morning Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff argue in the New York Times that they were never "Austerians," despite the uses to which their work has been put.The politically charged discussion, especially sharp in the past week or so, has falsely equated our finding of a negative association between debt and growth with an unambiguous call for austerity.
Sequester KOs Fleet Week
Mario Tama/Getty
In this age of austerity, the Navy has decided to save some money by canceling Fleet Week. The cost to New York City’s bars and restaurants could be up to $20 million.
The effects of the sequestration are being felt far and wide—from the sands of San Diego to the bars of New York City.Each May since 1984, thousands of sailors clad in white uniforms have hit the streets of New York City for Fleet Week. An iconic festivity memorialized in countless black-and-white photos and one Sex and the City episode, the event marks a time of celebration. Locals and tourists get a chance to visit ships. And they flock to bars, offering to buy rounds for sailors on shore leave.
Lessons from Curt Schilling's Failed Business
Stick to what you know
Jonathan Mahler has a very entertaining roundup of Curt Schilling's adventures in corporate life. It seems that Schilling assumed that if he was good at being a pitcher, he'd probably also be good at running a video game company. This was not the case: Schilling had no idea how much time and money it took to build the software required for such a game. And he didn’t exactly help matters by weighing in with suggestions of his own. There was, for example, that instance when he mentioned in an e- mail that it might be cool to have mounted combat on flying pigs.
Why is Google Running Ads for Its Own Product?
Social networks are supposed to sell themselves. Apparently not.
When web publications have more pages than advertisers, they often run "house ads"--ads for the publication itself. It's an increasing problem for the industry, because offering a digital page is cheap. This is one of the reasons that web advertising has so far utterly failed to make up for the print ad revenue that publications have lost as traffic has moved online. This morning, I saw something a little bit surprising on James Lilek's site: a house ad for .
Reps. Obamacare Opt-Out?
Removing aides from exchanges.
We wonder how this will play out. Politico is reporting that congressional leaders in both parties are in discussions about removing lawmakers and aides from the insurance exchanges in the Affordable Care Act. The decision to include lawmakers and aides was made to ensure they had skin in the success of the program. Now, concerned with the potential for staffers to leave if they face higher costs for coverage, leadership in both houses and the administration are engaged in secretive talks to escape the mandate.
IBM CEO Reprimands Staff
Urges them to move quickly.
After disappointing earnings in the first quarter of 2013, IBM CEO Virginia Rometty issued a five-minute video memo to staff telling them to clean up their acts. Rometty said the 102-year-old company is too slow to adapt to new technologies, respond to clients, and deliver on lucrative software and hardware deals.
Stories We Like
-
International Business Times
Nawaz Sharif, The Lion (Or Tiger?) Of Pakistan
-
Rolling Stone
Top 10 Banned Music Videos
-
Huffington Post Tech
New Google Maps is Coming and It Looks Awesome
-
Ask Men
10 Most Common Fashion Mistakes Guys Make
-
International Business Times
HSBC, Europe’s Largest Bank, Will Lay Off 5.5% Of Its Global Workforce
-
Huffington Post Politics
'Nightmare' Rocks Tea Party Groups
-
International Business Times
‘Best Jobs In The World’ Finalists Announced As Interest In Australia Peaks
-
Mental Floss
5 Crazy Examples of Fear in Advertising
Colbert Rips 'Spreadsheet Error' in Austerity Supporting Harvard Study
After a University of Massachusetts student found significant errors in a study beloved by budget cutters world over by Harvard economists Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, Stephen Colbert does what he does best -- leaves them in the dust.
Writers We Like
-
James D. Hamilton and Menzie Chinn
-
Mark Thoma – Economist’s View
-
Barry Ritholtz – The Big Picture
-
Tyler Cowen/Alex Tabarrok – Marginal Revolution
-
Greg Mankiw
-
Peter Boone, Simon Johnson, and James Kwak
-
Brad De Long
-
Nouriel Roubini
-
Calculated Risk
-
Dealbreaker
-
Eddy Elfenbein — Crossing Wall Street
-
Zero Hedge
Business
Daniel Gross
-
Big Fat Green Government
Tree huggers and deficit hawks rejoice: The federal government is buying up to 10,000... More
-
Our Swiftly Melting Deficit
Just when everyone wrote us off as the next Greece, we started shrinking our deficit,... More
-
American Apparel’s Dov Charney on the Bangladesh Tragedy
Paying a living wage comes at a cost, but it can help the bottom line, says Charney, who... More
Asymmetrical Information
Megan McArdle
Those Generic Drugs May Not Have Been What You Thought They Were
Years of abuses at Ranbaxy raise worries about the FDA's oversight of the generics market



