Category: Behavioral Economics

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Jayson Goes To An Art Auction

Note: this is the follow-on to Tuesday’s Jayson Decides To Buy Some Art. Freshly high on the anticipated thrill of owning a Diane Victor smoke portrait, as well as (by now) multiple Dali etchings, I spent Saturday morning panicking about details. Some of them important, like: “So, where is this auction taking place then?” Many […]

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Jayson Decides To Buy Some Art

Last week Wednesday, I went to a pre-viewing for a Fine Art Auction. Mainly because I was promised free wine and free cheese. But also because I wanted to see this Diane Victor piece in person: The cheese was delicious. And the Diane Victor was impressive, but in a really artsy sort of way. I […]

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Office Politics: How To Busily Manage Your Time Badly

Earlier this morning, I took a Psychology Today test on time management. Mainly because I was asked yesterday to write a post on the subject. And on enquiry, Google rendered up a self-test that seemed both more useful and more boring than Buzzfeed’s “Which City Should You Live In?”*. *Paris Let’s just ignore the irony of […]

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The Problem With Prepaid Tickets

Yesterday, I went to the Discovery Leadership Summit in order to see Joseph Stiglitz and Ben Bernanke speak in person. I paid an inordinate amount of money for the ticket (inordinate!) – but I thought to myself “a heck lot cheaper than flying to America”. And then there was the added bonus of Trevor Manual […]

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It’s once you go FREE that you never go back

For a while now, I’ve been wanting to write a post on the economics of free stuff. Because empirically speaking, the gap between “FREE” and “$0.99” is exponentially larger than the same ±$1 gap between the $7.99 and $8.99 that I’d pay for an album off iTunes. I’ll give you an example: I’m a big […]

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Love and Economics

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Which means that my facebook news feed will be filled with this: And this: Which will be better then all the “I ♥ my boo” statuses, but it’s a thin margin. I suppose it’s not really intimate unless it’s in public. So I thought that I would be cynically helpful and give […]

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We Would ALL Commit Fraud

Last night, in my boot camp class, I got accused of cheating. I was meant to be jogging on the spot with my knees up. It’s not that I didn’t want to, exactly. My knees just kind of forgot to do what they were meant to be doing. Also, I was tired. I mean, I knew that […]

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On The Topic of Gift-Giving: An Infographic

A follow-on from yesterday’s post…. by NowSourcing.

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The Irrationality of Gifts

Christmas is an awesome time of year. True, it’s not my favourite time (that particular award goes to Easter Sunday and the week that precedes it), but it is filled with carols and mince pies and baked ham. And Christmas morning is all about gifts. Something that you should know about economists: gifts drive them […]

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Are Sales Really Sales?

Last week Friday was a black one. 7 people died. 90 were injured*. *check out blackfridaydeathcount.com  Americans take holiday sales seriously. So here’s my question: what is a sale, exactly? The Convention This is the nebulous explanation (which feels a bit inherited – like the answer to a question that I asked as a toddler): […]

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