All Insights Articles

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

In a traditional model, for-profit companies strive to maximize returns for investors, while nonprofit organizations serve the public good. In recent years, a new model of for-profit social enterprise has emerged. Jon Carson '84, CEO of BiddingForGood, and Scott Griffith, CEO of Zipcar, bring their experience in the field to a discussion of the for-profit social enterprise ecosystem.

As the companies that were once the suppliers to multinationals have grown into multinationals themselves, competitors can suddenly come from anywhere, according to Hal Sirkin, senior partner and managing director at the Boston Consulting Group and co-author of the book Globality. He describes how to compete in the new era of globalization.