What Economists Do

Debt Maturity : What Do Economists Say ? What Do CFOs Say ?

Any homeowner who has shopped around for a mortgage would recognize many of the concerns facing the chief financial officer (CFo) puzzling over her firm’s optimal debt maturity. A CFo may ask, “Should my firm sell a long-term bond and lock in the current 30-year rate, or should my firm sell a five-year note and refinance in five years?” one of the CFo’s concerns is that the five-year loan may s...

Who are the Behavioral Economists and what do they say?

The most important financial source for behavioral economics is the Russell Sage Foundation (RSF). The most prominent behavioral economists among the RSF’s twentysix member Behavioral Economics Roundtable (BER) are Kahneman, Tversky, Thaler, Camerer, Loewenstein, Rabin, and Laibson. The theoretical core of behavioral economics made up of the work of these seven researchers is positioned in oppo...

Do Economists Lie More?

Recent experimental evidence suggests that some people dislike telling lies, and tell the truth even at a cost. We use experiments as well to study the socio-demographic covariates of such lie aversion, and find gender and religiosity to be without predictive value. However, subjects’ major is predictive: Business and Economics (B&E) subjects are significantly less lie averse than other majors....

Enter the neuro-economists: why do investors do what they do?

Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries: What Economists (Don’t) Know and What Policymakers Should (Not) Do!