Should behavioral economics include animals?
Behavioral economics is gradually winning over more converts. It’s now – justifiably – being applied to the most unlikely facets of human existence. So the natural (to me) question arises: should it be applied to animals too. I interpret animals broadly. Not just the warm-blooded ones we know and love like dogs, kittens, dolphins, elephants […]
Insects have economies too: Is there a connection between climate change and global deflation?
So we’ve got two megatrends going on in spaceship Earth. One is climate change. The other is global deflation. Are the two connected? The conventional view of deflation is that it is due to short term factors that lead to lower demand, absolutely or relatively. But there’s a growing suspicion that this may be a […]
Are cognitive biases contagious?
So cognitive biases are the beating heart of behavioral economics and finance. But where do they come from? Are they innate or learned? Or are they epigenetic, some complex combination of the two where environmental factors trigger a gene for one or more of them? But there’s another possibility, namely that you catch them. Yep […]
Behavioral Accounting Transforms Green Eye-Shades into Empathic Intuitors?
So you haven’t heard of behavioral accounting? Wow you haven’t lived! It does exist and it has generally been defined as accounting for the differential impact of behaviors on the value of an organization. But I have a different perspective on behavioral accounting. As in, how does the behavior of the preparer of an accounting document […]
Make Behavioral Finance Useful – Alternative Investment Application is the Next Big Thing
So behavioral finance is hot these days. Authors such as Nouriel Roubini and Malcolm Gladwell have popularized it with the Great Unwashed. And academics are starting to catch on too, so that’s progress. The problem is that for all its intellectual fecundity, behavioral finance suffers from a major problem. That is, that it hasn’t been […]
Is Deflation A Result of Exploding Global IQ?
Have just been reading more stuff about deflation in Europe, Russia and just about everywhere else, developed that is. The intelligentsia believes that it’s due to a number of factors especially the aging of the population and lack of policies to stimulate demand. Who knows, they might be right. But I have another wild idea. […]
Are Animals the Next Mass Consumer Market?
Did you notice that Skype/Microsoft has just launched its simultaneous translation service for Spanish to English? Believe it or not, in a real-life man-bites dog story, Microsoft beat Google to the punch. Pretty soon we can expect simultaneous translation between most major and even many minor languages. Who could have predicted that just a few years […]
Fix the Deficit – Sell Alaska and Puerto Rico
Everyone is making such a big deal about the Federal deficit. I don’t know why because I think it’s such an easy problem to fix. In the old days, when the US was flush with cash, we used to buy territory, such as the Louisiana Purchase. I say we just gotta put the system into […]
The Calpers’ Hedge Fund Fiasco: The Solution They Missed
I guess you noticed that Calpers has just ditched investing in hedge funds. The official line was that it was too complicated. The truth of the matter was that it didn’t work. . That tells us a lot about hedge funds and investing generally and you know I am going to draw my own conclusions from […]
Are the Financial Guys in Private Equity Failing Due To Over-Reliance On Financials?
I guess you’ve noticed all the comment and analysis about private equity doing worse than the S&P or at least not doing better? Seems that while PE has done much better than the S&P over a 10 year period, over the past 5 years they have been way behind. But alternative investments are supposed to beat the […]