Blog

Singapore: “Who will pay for it?” “Where will we find the money?” – The fallacy of the household budget analogy applied to national budgets

Singapore: “Who will pay for it?” “Where will we find the money?” – The fallacy of the household budget analogy applied to national budgets

Why what you’ve been told about government debt is wrong, why governments do not actually need to tax before they spend and why deficit spending does not need to be financed via public debt issuance. As our understanding of the mechanics of public finance has 

Behavioral Econs 101: The endowment effect and loss aversion Part 2 – Experimental economics in action

Behavioral Econs 101: The endowment effect and loss aversion Part 2 – Experimental economics in action

In this fourth installment of our Behavioral Econs 101 series(for parts 1, 2 and 3, see here, here and here) we continue our discussion of the endowment effect. In Part 3, we explained how Prospect Theory helps us understand why losses feel so much more 

Behavioral Econs 101: The endowment effect and loss aversion Part 1 – Prospect Theory

Behavioral Econs 101: The endowment effect and loss aversion Part 1 – Prospect Theory

In this third installment of our Behavioral Econs 101 series(for parts 1 and 2, see here, and here) we finally turn to a discussion of the endowment effect. Why do losses feel so much more painful than an equivalent gain feels good? Why are we 

Four challenges that need to be addressed on the path to an AI future

Four challenges that need to be addressed on the path to an AI future

Artificial intelligence and machine learning might be all the rage today, but depending on who (and where) you ask, you’ll likely receive quite different answers to the question, “how do you feel about AI and automation?” Your respondent will either pontificate about the hopes for 

Behavioral Econs 101: Bargains and rip-offs, Richard Thaler and mental accounting Part 2

Behavioral Econs 101: Bargains and rip-offs, Richard Thaler and mental accounting Part 2

As part of our second installment in our Behavioral Econs 101 series(see part 1 here), we turn now to tie up some loose ends with mental accounting by discussing how behavioral economics helps us understand when we think of a deal as a bargain or 

Behavioral Econs 101: Richard Thaler and mental accounting Part 1

Behavioral Econs 101: Richard Thaler and mental accounting Part 1

Richard Thaler, the 2017 Nobel Laureate for Economics, has spent a career trying to understand individuals as they really are, idiosyncrasies, irrationalities and all and in the process founded the field of behavioral economics. In this series of short essays, we will introduce the basic 

Heuristics and Biases Part II: Brexit from a Behavioural Economics Perspective – Risk Aversion, Overconfidence Bias, Present-Bias and David Cameron

Heuristics and Biases Part II: Brexit from a Behavioural Economics Perspective – Risk Aversion, Overconfidence Bias, Present-Bias and David Cameron

Following on from Part I of this series on Brexit from a behavioural economics perspective(where we discussed the role of attribute substitution in framing the Brexit question), we now shift our focus to the most important person in this entire episode, David Cameron, the former 

Heuristics and Biases Part I: Understanding Brexit from a Behavioural Economics Perspective – The Attribute Substitution Heuristic

Heuristics and Biases Part I: Understanding Brexit from a Behavioural Economics Perspective – The Attribute Substitution Heuristic

This is the first article in a series that examines how the Brexit referendum outcome can be understood through the lens of behavioural economics. We begin by first examining how limitations introduced by traditional economic thinking’s reliance on the foundation of rational choice theory as