psychology

The myth that Greeks are lazy and Germans are industrious and that this has some significance in the sovereign debt crisis is everywhere one turns. It is false. The issues for Greece are not about working longer hours but are ones of…

We continue to witness remarkable developments in the intersection of the related fields of economics, finance, ethics, law, and regulation. Each of these five fields ignores a sixth related field – white-collar criminology. The six fields…

William Cohan told Bloomberg Television's Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle that he believes 'psychopaths" at the helm of major financial institutions were responsible for the credit crisis.

In Europe, the discussion of fiscal prudence vs. fiscal profligacy seems to have taken on a normative hue. It’s doesn’t seem to be just about economics, it’s also about who’s a saint and who’s a sinner. In the US, strategic default was…

The ECB President admitted that budgets cuts and tax increases are contractionary -“in the short term” he added - but there are two ways to lessen their negative impact on growth: the confidence-enhancing effect that will follow the new…

Volatility tends to drop when market risk is building up and leverage is rising, luring investors into complacency. Indeed, the lower volatility justifies investors taking on more leverage; if volatility has dropped by a third, why not take…

Here are a few code words that you will often see in economic writing followed by their true meaning. The code word is a dog whistle. It acts like an emotional marker only for those attuned to the underlying 'moral' issues inferred by the…

Opinion polls and surveys are finding an increasing number of people expect one or more countries to leave the euro zone. Investors are anxious. What is to be done? What makes this so difficult is that there are so many moving parts and…

If I told you that the composition of an average UK equity fund changes by 90% a year, would that startle you? How would you feel if I added that the 20 funds with the highest turnover returned just 4.7% to investors in the 3 years to the…

Predicting the future of policy making has been and will continue to be key to understanding where this economy is headed – and by extension what your investment portfolio will do.