Slate Magazine - Undercover Economist, The

Why not start the weekend on Wednesday?

Tim Harford — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 07:37:00 EST

Were an alien to pick up our news channels, it would conclude that human civilization depended on the production and purchase of cheap plastic rubbish. First came the concern that we might talk ourselves into not spending enough, then the fear that the banks wouldn't lend us the money to spend even if we wanted to. In November, our governments borrowed money and gave it to us in the hope that we'd catch on. Are we really so dependent on consumption?

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Unemployment benefits do encourage joblessness. But that may not be a bad thing.

Tim Harford — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 07:22:43 EST

To most thoughtful people, unemployment benefits embody a painful trade-off. They are the mark of a civilized society, clubbing together to provide assistance to those in need. They are also, regrettably, an incentive to remain unemployed. At their worst, unemployment benefits pay people to watch daytime television. They are particularly pernicious if the skills of the jobless decay and unemployment becomes unemployability. Yet, at their best, they are a life-saver.

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Why it's so hard to predict how bad the recession will be.

Tim Harford — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 07:03:36 EST

Right about now, most businesses are trying to work out how their customers are likely to respond to the recession. Looking back to the last really nasty recession—the early 1980s—isn't much help for low-cost airlines, cell-phone companies, Internet retailers, producers of organic and fair-trade food, and many other businesses barely imagined at the dawn of the Reagan era. The economy has simply changed too much since then for experience to be a reliable guide.

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Why 20-year-olds should invest way more in the stock market, and 50-year-olds, way less.

Tim Harford — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:41:24 EST

Here are the chief investment lessons of the financial crisis for today's young people: They should be buying more stocks and running up debts to do so. I'm not saying that the market is undervalued—how would I know? I am merely suggesting a way of reducing risks.

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What can "neuroeconomics" teach us about how we think about money?

Tim Harford — Sat, 1 Nov 2008 07:55:11 EST

This morning, I had a remarkable experience: I strolled into a delicatessen and bought some delicious Stilton. What made the shopping trip unusual was that I was wearing a brain scanner while I did it. My costume consisted of an electroencephalograph cap, which looks like a polka-dot shower cap with wires plugged into it; a pair of wraparound glasses with a tiny video camera attached; a clothes peg on one finger to measure my heart rate; two other finger monitors that function like a lie detector; a thermometer patch on a fourth finger; and a satchel to hold a computer gathering the data.

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