All Insights Articles
Is risk rational?
Misunderstanding of risk was a major factor in the subprime crisis and ensuing recession. Andrew Lo argues that one has to look at both logical and emotional parts of the brain to grasp how people respond to financial risk.
Do you need a nudge?
Richard Thaler outlines how principles from behavioral economics can help policymakers and managers achieve better outcomes.
Are we good at making choices?
Do the choices we make as consumers serve our economic interests? Do they even reflect our real preferences? Three Yale scholars discuss research — their own and others' — that sheds light on these questions.
Does money change your thinking?
You encounter it every day. You might count it or spend it or wish you had more of it. But can just thinking about money affect your behavior?
Can behavioral economics improve law?
Economics has long been used to evaluate the law. But what happens when economics gets things wrong? Law professor Christine Jolls describes the role behavioral economics can play.
What are your customers thinking?
The question has always been critical to marketers. However, with rapid innovations in technology—social networks, mobile technology, new ways of delivering content—and the following shifts in behavior, it might be harder to answer than ever. Rishad Tobaccowala, the CEO of Denuo, a company that helps clients grapple with these trends, gives his take on the pulse of marketing today.
What are you thinking?
Decades of economic research have assumed people pursue their goals in a rational manner, discounting the effects of emotion, bias, error, and other irrational forces. Robert Shiller argues that economists need to take a closer look at how people make decisions.
What is behavioral?
A host of studies and academic theories that apply psychological insights to economic behavior have been grouped under the label "behavioral." Is this growing field changing how the economy is studied — and how it functions?
How important is the illicit economy?
Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy, has spent more than a decade studying the illicit economy that moves everything from drugs and guns to pirated movies and human body parts around the world. In the book, Illicit, he outlines what amount to a shadow system of global business and trade.
Can the business of food impact climate change?
It is hard to image that a healthy, home-cooked meal is contributing to climate change, but the food consumed annually by a family of four in the U.S. requires 970 gallons of gasoline to fertilize, produce, and transport. That's only slightly less than the 1070 gallons the average family uses in their cars. Helene York '88 talks about one food service company's goal of reducing its carbon footprint while still maintaining a successful bottom line.