If you’ve known someone who came of age during the 1930s — a grandparent perhaps — you know that the Depression had a lifelong effect on people’s attitudes toward debt, the stock market and government social programs. As a father…

All the behavioral theories about workers’ inertia appear to be true. According to a new Government Accountability Office study, participation in 401k plans is boosted significantly when employers add an  automatic-enrollment feature.  The GAO reviewed six other research efforts, which…

Once upon a time, a twenty-something American’s finances were pretty simple. You graduated from school, started earning a paycheck, opened a checking account and maybe took out a car loan. Today’s young people, though, have to cope with student loans…

Some CEOs are risk takers, willing to leverage their companies to the hilt in an attempt to pump up profits. Others are more conservative, eschewing debt to avoid the risk of failure. If you want to find out which type…

Folks who care about corporate governance have often criticized the way many companies issue earnings guidance. Coca-Cola famously stopped providing it in 2002, and Google has never done it. Warren Buffett has often preached against the practice. Publicly disclosing a…

The late Washington University economist Hyman Minsky was never considered a mainstream economist. These days, though, mainstream economists are giving Minsky’s insights plenty of thought. A long piece in yesterday’s Boston Globe explains the recent fascination with Minsky, who is…

A paper presented yesterday at the Brookings Institution contains some ego-bolstering news for 53-year-old financial bloggers like yours truly: People make better financial decisions at my age than at any other. Authors Sumit Agarwal, John C. Driscoll, Xavier Gabaix and David Laibson write:

In a…

After I wrote a column critical of Illinois’ local-food law, a couple of readers accused me of ignoring the energy used in shipping food. A comment from Oni, for example, said:

Shipping food all over the place has several problems not mentioned…

A lot of companies have frozen their pension plans in the past few years, and presumably they think it’s a sound business move. According to a new study by three Watson Wyatt Worldwide consultants, though, the stock market doesn’t reward companies for…

Obesity is generally blamed on both genetics and behavior. Economists, though, like to look at incentives, and a new National Bureau of Economic Research study suggests a strong link between obesity, which we tend to think of as a bad…