Like its agriculture, Africa's markets are highly under-capitalized and inefficient. We know from our work around the continent that transaction costs of reaching the market, and the risks of transacting in rural, agriculture markets, are extremely h...
The fundamental flaw in Social Security and Medicare is that they violate the 'welfare principle' in economics. The welfare principle forms the fundamental basis of all charitable work in churches and other private organizations: assist those who nee...
Bob Slydell: Milton Waddams. Dom Portwood: Who's he? Bob Porter: You know, squirrely looking guy, mumbles a lot. Dom Portwood: Oh, yeah. Bob Slydell: Yeah, we can't actually find a record of him being a current employee here. Bob Porter: I looked int...
The landscape of the mind, against which our thoughts and expectations move, when the wind of the imagination is active, changes as quickly as the clouds; and indeed it consists often of several landscapes, semi-transparent and showing through one an...
The economics we need is of the "seminar room" variety, not the "rule-of-thumb" kind. It is an economics that recognizes its limitations and caveats and knows that the right message depends on the context. The fine print is what economists have to co...
If economics were only about profit maximization, it would be just another name for business administration. It is a social discipline, and society has other means of cost accounting besides market prices.
Without an informed electorate, politicians will continue to use the bottom billion merely for photo opportunities, rather than promoting real transformation.
While eliminating smallpox and curtailing cholera added decades of life to vast populations, cures for the chronic diseases of old age cannot have the same effect on life expectancy. A cure for cancer would be miraculous and welcome, but it would lea...
One suggestion my wife and I have used in our personal finance courses we teach at college is simply writing down all expenditures and seeing where the money goes. That alone will cause heads of households to think twice about x, y or z expenditure, ...
I don't think schooling of any sort really prepares you for real life. I don't know if art school would have prepared me to draw comics. Half of the people I know in comics went to art school, half of them didn't. Some of them went and dropped out.
I love and collect contemporary art and go to all the art fairs. I love Damien Hirst and Matthew Barney. I grew up in Italy and had a humanistic education in philosophy and literature - things I love and appreciate. People are richer and more complex...
METAPHOR: A tightly fitting suit of metal, generally tin, which entirely encloses the wearer, both impeding free movement and preventing emotional expression and/or social contact.
... all too often, a successful new business model becomes the business model for companies not creative enough to invent their own. [2002] p.46
…the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else?
The new industries are brainy industries and so-called knowledge workers tend to like to be near other people who are the same. Think of the City of Hollywood. People cluster. This means you have winning regions, such as London and Cambridge, and los...
A currency serves three functions: providing a means of payment, a unit of account and a store of value. Gold may be a store of value for wealth, but it is not a means of payment. You cannot pay for your groceries with it. Nor is it a unit of account...
Serial tasking is hard because switching tasks is hard, even when the tasks are easy and similar. In some experiments, bilingual speakers are asked to read out numbers, first in one language and then midway in another language. They often stumble at ...
A few drugs - such as beta-blockers, statins and glycogen control medications - have proved very effective at managing hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and strokes. Most insurance plans charge something for them. Why not make drugs like these fr...
Web searching and cellphone use both flourish in the wee hours. Before the dawn of the web, I would stay up watching television. But there is something soporific about television: I would often nod off. Not so when I'm online. As technologies expand,...
I didn't wish those tragedies upon the people who played them out. It was certainly tragic for them, but not for me. All of those things brought me to where I am. Without those things, I couldn't be who I am, I wouldn't be here.
Ageing is very rare. We only see it in humans and laboratory animals and in zoo animals and in our pets. Basically, organisms that are protected from the external world. Once you create that protection, you live long enough to see ageing.
