This week was a busy one with a lot of readings on my list. An interesting development was the award of the Nobel prize in economics to Richard Thaler. Many praised the work of the academic who masterfully translated theories from psychology into economics. Many critics accused economics of imperialism.
- Nudging the economists is a brilliant piece on behaviour economics. A must-read for critics of the discipline as well as for those who are working within the field. Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, a sociologist from UCSD, looks at 3 problems with (behavioural) economics among which is the lack of diversity in the field.
- A while ago I watched this video of Guy Kawasaki (I think?) in dialogue with a sociologist. He was demanding that the world needs more engineers and computer scientists and less sociologists. It is the former that drive the progress, while the latter just complain. This is a pretty big rhetoric supported by the media… by everybody. Start-ups equal meritocracy. Some of my research showed that the start-ups world is very political. This article I am recommending now tells you the same story but in a different way. Totally recommend it!
- Automation and the effect that it has on job security and moreover the society at large is again a hot topic. One article on this comes from David Besanko. He highlights that labor displacement costs are significant and this could be a side effect of automation. A lecture on the same topic from the LSE.
What am I up to this week?
I am reading The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli. It is a cute little book packed with aphorisms and anecdotes about how to avoid logical fallacies. It reminds me of La Rochefoucauld. In case you get your hands on it, I would say go for it!
