I see much value in opinionated books, they are great at starting conversations. Bearing that in mind I will say that I enjoyed Duff McDonald’s The Golden Passport. He describes the history of Harvard Business School (HBS) and he isn’t afraid to give his thoughts. What then can we learn from a case study of…
Category: Public Policy
Buying And Selling Attention
Tim Wu’s The Attention Merchants is an interesting book about buying and selling attention. History Of The Market For Attention I must confess I enjoyed the first half more than the end. The end of the book is a pretty conventional view of where we are now. I don’t think anyone will be surprised to…
Tackling Big Problems With Behavioral Science
Jason Furman (former chair of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers) discusses tackling big problems with behavioral science. He says behavioral studies can help address four major issues in the economy. Tackling Big Problems With Behavioral Science He isn’t joking when he says they are major. They really are. The four he choose are: 1)…
The Failure Of Markets
I very much enjoyed John Cassidy’s How Markets Fail. It is an ambitious piece in which he tries to describe how economic thought has impacted real-world markets. He has a special focus on the collapse of the financial markets in 2007/8 and the economic thought behind the failure to regulate the markets properly. What does he say about the failure…
The Trump Fallacy
Dixit and Nalebuff have great skill in popularizing game theory. Today I will detail a problem that I will call The Trump Fallacy. Theory And Understanding The World Their work is full of interesting examples and useful ways of looking at sometimes tricky concepts. They are strong believers in having theory to back up ideas…
Behaviourally Informed Government Policy
In a companion piece to the article published on the BEAR (Behavioural Economics In Action at Rotman) website Dilip Soman, Katie Chen, and myself have an article in the Spring issue of the Rotman Management magazine. This is an issue completely dedicated to behavioral insights. It has some major academic names in the field — Richard Thaler, George…
Improving Public Policy With Better Assumptions
Katie Chen (then at Western), Dilip Soman (of Rotman), and myself published a whitepaper. (I wrote this in 2017 and have edited since). This was through BEAR at the University of Toronto. We discussed moves towards improving public policy with better assumptions. Specifically the ideas about human behavior used in models. (More empiricially valid models in academic terms). By…
Behavioural Insights, Policy Policy, and the OECD
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have a fascinating new initiative. (I wrote this in in 2017 and just edited since). “Behavioral Insights and Public Policy: Lessons from Round the World.” The book which accompanies the initiative has extensive case studies. The case studies outline how behavioral insights have been deployed. This has advanced…
Improving Public Policy Through Testing
David Halpern is an interesting character. Originally an advisor to Tony Blair’s Labour government he went on to establish the U.K.’s Behavioural Insights for David Cameron’s Conservative government. His CV makes sense to me given what he specializes in. His aim is to make government policy better. The politicians decide what should be done and Halpern tries to ensure it…
The Red Queen And Implications For Best Practice
It is hard to spend any time at a business school without hearing the phrase best practice. We teach students best practice. Junior professors seek hints from senior folk on best practice. Even schools regularly go through bouts of benchmarking to see if they are adopting best practice. Best practice essentially is something that gets the most…
