February 2017

10Feb

Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes: Social Policy, Informality, and Economic Growth in Mexico

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...

February 10, 2017
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10Feb

OECD Pensions Outlook 2016: Edition 2016 (Volume 2016)

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...

February 10, 2017
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10Feb

Pension and Employee Benefit Statutes and Regulations: Selected Sections (Selected Statutes)

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...

February 10, 2017
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10Feb

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness [Expanded Edition]

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...

February 10, 2017
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10Feb

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

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...

February 10, 2017
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10Feb

Surfing The Retirement Tsunami: Your Guide To Staying Afloat and Retiring Comfor

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,...

February 10, 2017
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10Feb

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

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...

February 10, 2017
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09Feb

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

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...

February 9, 2017
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04Feb

Do Financial Advisers Influence Savings Behavior?

By Jeremy Burke & Angela A. Hung There is substantial evidence that Americans tend to have low financial literacy (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2013) and are struggling with building sufficient wealth for a secure retirement (Helman et al., 2014). Financial advisers can play an important role by helping individuals make better financial decisions and improving their financial situations. However, there is limited and mixed evidence about the benefits to using a financial adviser. For example, as summarized in Burke et al....

February 4, 2017
Books, Investing, Labor Market, Savings,
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04Feb

Advancing the Ugandan Economy: A Personal Account

By Ezra Sabiti Suruma In 1973, when I returned from a seven-year tour of study in the United States to take up a teaching job at Makerere University (Kampala, Uganda), General Idi Amin was the president of Uganda and political parties were banned. There was no opportunity for anyone, including a young academic returning from study abroad, to participate in shaping the country’s political economy. The economy was starting to fail, and fear was spreading among the population because of...

February 4, 2017
Books, Corporate Governance, Regulation, System Sustainability, , ,
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