Economist Robert H. Frank chose a prescient epigraph for his latest book, Success and Luck. It’s from a dandy 1940s essay by E.B. White that opens a social club door on the American…

Cornell professor of economics Robert Frank says he’s alive today because of “pure dumb luck.” In 2007, he collapsed on a tennis court, struck down by what was later diagnosed…

Depending on which economist you ask, big inequalities in wealth are either an essential engine for growth—the reward that motivates people to work hard, innovate, and prosper—or…

Could Kevin Bacon have saved us from the 2008 financial crisis? Probably not. But the network science behind six degrees of Kevin Bacon just well may have. According to the famous…

I’d lost almost $200 million in October. November wasn’t looking any better. It was 2008, after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. Markets were in turmoil. Banks were failing left…

At about 2:30pm on May 6, 2010, an asset management firm began executing a series of orders on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Located in Overland Park, Kansas, Waddell & Reed…

Imagine that (for some reason involving cultural tradition, family pressure, or a shotgun) you suddenly have to get married. Fortunately, there are two candidates. One is charming…

Gross Domestic Product is the market value of all goods and services produced within a country in a year. It is, today, the standard snapshot of a country’s economy. But does it…

In 1996, Yale economist William D. Nordhaus calculated that the average citizen of Babylon would have had to work a total of 41 hours to buy enough lamp oil to equal a 75-watt light…

The category of “specialist” seems to be ingrained deeply both in the history of evolution, and the development of modern society. Homo sapiens is, in its own ways, a specialist:…