Survivorship bias: dead men don’t tall tales
Diogenes was asked concerning paintings of those who had escaped shipwreck: “Look, you who think the gods have no care of human things, what do you say to so many persons preserved from death...
Econowmics Blog
The False Consensus Effect
The false consensus effect demonstrates an inability of individuals to process information rationally, it suggests that conventional economic analysis of strategic behavior, which assumes unbiased expectation formation, is deficient. A Simple Theory of the...
Amartya Sen
Even when altruism is allowed (as, for example, in Gary Becker‘s model of rational allocation), it is assumed that the altruistic actions are undertaken because they promote each person’s own interests; there are personal...
The Ostrich Effect
“We know – intellectually – that confronting an issue is the only way to resolve it. But any resolution will disrupt the status quo. Given the choice between conflict and change on the...
Jean Tirole: Taming powerful firms
“Wealth acquired by creating value for society is not equivalent to wealth that comes from economic rents. For example, a very important factor in the increasing inequality of wealth in many countries has been...
