“You build companies the way other people bake cakes" is a compliment a fellow professor shared with me a few years back. Maybe it’s partly because I’m the daughter of an entrepreneur — the founder of a paint company (even though my dad wanted me to have a "secure job" by becoming a teacher and then a professor, which I’ve done). But I loved, and still love, the adventure of building companies. And I think there’s blue ocean water for...
Facing a make-or-break year to pull Brazil out of its worst recession in over a century, President Michel Temer is betting that reforming the nation’s pension system will restore public and investor confidence. It’s a task that proved too difficult for former presidents as popular as Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and as market-friendly as Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Both Temer and the pension reform are unpopular, but the president has widespread congressional support and argues that he is prioritizing...
Despite various reform efforts, Mexico has experienced economic stability but little growth. Today more than half of all Mexican workers are employed informally, and one out of every four is poor. Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes argues that incoherent social programs significantly contribute to this state of affairs and it suggests reforms to improve the situation. Over the past decade, Mexico has channeled an increasing number of resources into subsidizing the creation of low-productivity, informal jobs. These social programs have...
The Oecd Pensions Outlook 2016 assesses policy issues regarding strengthening pension systems and, in particular, funded pension plans. It covers defined benefits and defined contribution pension plans; fiscal incentives to save for retirement; policy measures to improve the financial advice for retirement; annuity products and their guarantees; pension design and financial education; and the pension arrangements for public-sector workers, including a comparison with those for private sector workers. Read more...
This statutory pamphlet is compatible with all leading casebooks on pension and employee benefits law. It includes sections from the Internal Revenue Code, Employee Retirement Income Security Act, Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, Treasury Regulations, ADEA Regulations and ERISA Regulations. Read more...
By Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain in this important exploration of choice architecture, is that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad...
Get ready to change the way you think about economics. Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans―predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth―and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world. Read more...
Seriously, what is your biggest fear? That depends, of course, where you are in life. When I was a little kid, I would have dreams of falling. I would wake up in the middle of the night, shaking, damp from sweat, and indented in my bed about a foot deep as if I really did fall. Once, I swear I even felt a hand grasping my right forearm, but that’s a story for another book. As I grew older,...
The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already...
In his landmark bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant-in the blink of an eye-that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while...
