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 […]
Dust on Your Lens: Gravitational Waves and Cognitive Biases
Scientists are always looking for the next Big Thing so they all got excited several months ago about what looked like the discovery of the long-predicted gravitational waves. I got pretty excited too. I even blogged about it (“Ripples In Corporate Space-Time: Do Companies Have An Internal Clock?”). Now it looks like it was wrong. […]
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 […]
Dr. Dre Does Leadership, Kind Of
I guess you read about Apple buying Dr. Dre and Beats? Something to add to the fading Apple cool factor? I think I am swimming against the tide on this one, but streaming music doesn’t sound to me like the next frontier. It’s already here, there are lots of players and it’s becoming commoditized. Amazon, […]
Is Irrationality a Key Leadership Trait? Donald Sterling and Vladimir Putin
I can’t get used to all the reporting on Donald Sterling. The media have gone to town on it. He’s a bad guy no doubt; but there’s even worse. How about the unspeakable and truly despicable Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Bok Haram, if you want the lowest villain of them all? Nonetheless this got […]
Genetic Testing to Behavioral Predestination: Can Neuroscience Predict Lifetime Outcomes?
So now genetic testing has become de rigueur amongst the jet set, the biological equivalent of Google Glass. As well it might be since Google has invested in this area also (is there anything that Google hasn’t invested in?). What does this mean for everyone else? Well there was a time there when it looked like once […]
Are You Addicted to Leadership?
Is it possible that many, even most leaders, are addicted to leadership? That leadership is, or can be, a pathology for many of us? No, I am not talking about leadership as in power; that people become addicted to the power of leadership, although that can be a (small) part of the issue. I am […]
Business Acumen and the Bitcoin Bubble
The Guardian newspaper in the UK just published an article “Is Bitcoin about to change the world?”. When I see articles like that, it’s a big red flag; like appearing as Man or Woman of the Year on the cover page of Time magazine, which seems to always come before a fall The price of […]