Measuring Peer Effects
A new study from psychologists Jamil Zaki, Jessica Schirmer, and Jason P. Mitchell relies on brain scans to evaluate the effects of peer influences. “Participants rated the attractiveness of faces and subsequently learned how their peers rated each face. Participants were then scanned using fMRI while they rated each face a second time,” explain the Read More »
The Secret to Japan’s Family Firms
As we’ve written here before, family firms in which a founder hands the business off to the next of kin tend to perform worse than equivalent non-family firms. This isn’t very surprising: what are the chances that the best person to succeed the founder just happens to be his/her son or daughter? Read More »
The Next Alternative Energy Source?
If you’re looking for the next big alternative energy craze, look no further than your toilet. Gerardine Botte, a biomolecular engineer at Ohio University, has developed a “technology to generate hydrogen fuel from urine.” Read More »
Gary Player in His Own Words
I idolized a lot of golfers growing up, but for some reason Gary Player was not one of them. That is kind of strange, because we have some similarities. We are both diminutive. We both fall all over the place on our golf follow-throughs. And the same thing that was said about him and golf has often been said about me and economics: he did more with less talent than just about anyone else. Read More »
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. If you haven’t seen it yet, the movie features Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and was made by a dream team of documentary directors. Paste Magazine named it one of the 