behavioral-economics

There is a fundamental tension between extreme wealth and the very possibility of democracy. That’s because extreme wealth is always an extreme power The stock market listing of SpaceX has led to an outpouring of celebration, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Yet those who rejoice in Elon Musk ’s fortune surpassing the $1tn mark need to be reminded of a simple and vital truth: the mere existenc…

A Consumer Reports study found that the prices for Uber and Lyft trips can vary drastically even when booked for the same route at roughly the same time.

Dr Rajiv Prabhakar assesses the best age at which grants should be provided to young people, while Jeremy Galtress argues against redistribution Polly Toynbee discusses capital grants for the young to counter wealth inequality ( Young people need money because our system is rigged. Here’s a way to give it to them, 9 June ). The age at which grants are accessed is critical for both policy and poli…

Nature, Published online: 15 June 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01889-8 An economist sets out how communities can direct economic decisions and not just endure their consequences.

The SpaceX IPO, valuing a motley collection of dubious business at over a trillion dollars, marks the abandonment of the Efficient (financial) Markets Hypothesis, one of the zombie ideas I criticised in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. Not only do financial markets fail in the task of valuing assets accurately, but the institutional structures that […]

The public platform includes dashboards on AI exposure in the labor market, macroeconomic signals, and generative AI use by workers and firms. Stanford Digital Economy Lab has launched AI Economic Indicators, a public platform tracking how AI is affecting jobs, productivity, adoption, and the wider economy The Stanford Digital Economy Lab has launched AI Economic Indicators, a public platform tra…

Your Telegram bot is live. Users are sending Stars. You check your creator dashboard and see 847 Stars sitting there. The question that follows is always the same: what does that actually mean in real money? The answer is more complicated than Telegram's UI suggests — and if you're building a bot or mini app that monetizes with Stars, you need to understand the gap before you publish your pricing…

How it Works Quadratic funding democratizes allocation by rewarding projects that have broad community support. Collective Intelligence drives match funds For example, four projects raise $400 each. QF allocates funding based on the quantity of donors, not the total amount of money. Cooperative transparency Cooperative transparency Every donation is verified. Public chains (Bitcoin, Ethereum) con…

Token economics is not only about token price. It is about designing the rules, incentives, and long-term logic of a Web3 ecosystem. When people start building a Web3 project, they usually focus on the visible parts first. They think about the smart contract, the frontend, the wallet connection, the token launch, the whitepaper, and maybe the community. All of those are important. But there is on…

Your favorite restaurant just closed. Not because the food was bad, not because foot traffic dried up — because the platform took 25% of every order and the math stopped working. You've seen the V2EX thread circulating: "能不能有一个不以盈利为目的的外卖平台" (Can we have a non-profit food delivery platform?). You nodded along. I did too. But then I ran the numbers, and the fantasy collapsed. This isn't just a Chin…

(NPR) – Pope Leo XIV’s recent warning that artificial intelligence risks becoming a new form of colonialism reflects a critique long raised by technology writers and journalists, including Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam … Read More

In his deeply thoughtful and important book, economist Nicolas Treich considers direct (animal-centered) and indirect (human-centered) aspects of animal welfare.

They’re about to get more AI rammed down their throats, stuck into their pension plans and investment portfolios Americans are growing worried about what artificial intelligence portends for their futures. Eight in 10 Americans report concern over AI, compared with a third who report being excited, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. More than half think it will do more harm than good in their…

Round, just-below (e.g., 9.99), and precise (e.g., 9.87) prices are widespread in consumer markets, yet evidence on their psychological effects remains inconclusive, at times even contradictory, and heavily concentrated on the contrast between just-below and round prices. Recent work further shows that these price endings differ systematically in their prevalence across countries, underscoring th…

Product-market fit is not a binary milestone — it is a measurable state where your product solves a problem so well that users return organically and tell others. This guide presents a quantifiable framework for measuring PMF, including the Supergraphic metric, cohort retention analysis, the Sean Ellis test, and specific action plans for when you have not yet found fit. The techniques described h…

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately, you may Download the file to your hard drive. NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.

Event-driven markets are becoming core to how sophisticated investors express macro views.

Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket have surged to billions in trading volume, prompting US investigations into insider trading and manipulation. As Congress weighs new rules, Europe’s crackdown on retail binary options offers a possible—if imperfect—regulatory template. The post What the US can learn from Europe on prediction markets—and vice versa appeared first on Atlantic Council .

Employees at artificial intelligence companies are coming into gargantuan sums of money amid boom in IPOs Home prices in the San Francisco Bay Area’s already expensive market are skyrocketing as employees at leading artificial intelligence companies come into gargantuan sums of money thanks to a boom in initial public offerings . With San Francisco’s OpenAI and Anthropic , as well as SpaceX, whic…

After analyzing the top 100 wallets by PnL on Polymarket in 2026, one pattern stands out clearly: superior forecasting skill is not the main differentiator . Many mid-tier wallets have comparable or even better directional win rates. What separates the consistent top performers is a set of repeatable, systems-level behaviors that compound over time. The Real Common Traits 1. Obsessive Position Si…