Games are for kids! …. Are they? Games are often undervalued: seen as childish, a waste of time, a way to run away from responsibilities, sometimes. But what if I told you games are powerful tools to improve motivation, learning, engagement, financial choices and even one’s own health? Let me introduce you to gamification, the application of gaming elements, designs and principles in non-game contexts. The applications […]
The idea for this article was born scrolling through my Facebook home page during the last months. Without doing it on purpose, my attention was captured every time by the posts of one of my Facebook contacts, who will be called Mr. X for privacy reasons. Mr. X is an avid Facebook user, publisher of […]
Throughout the history of humankind, stories have always played an essential role: they shaped people’s traditions, defined their religious beliefs, gave birth to their common wisdom and their profound values. Perhaps most importantly, storytelling allowed cultural heritage to be transmitted across generations through a series of alterations or exaggerations. Our daily lives are pervaded by […]
As behavioral economics becomes the hottest economic theory for firms and policymakers promising easy and cheap fixes, it becomes crucial to remember that it also has its dark side. Over the past decade, behavioral economics has become the whiz kid of economic research. Suddenly, traditional models which relied on unrealistic assumptions were criticized and modernized. […]
Are we really in control of our voting behaviour? A behavioral insight on voting preferences and media influence by Valentina Saponara and Enrico Grassi The upcoming US election has the world holding its breath: soon American citizens will cast their vote and shape the future of one of the most relevant actors on the international […]
Why cant people just follow the rules? A look at the biases behind irrational behaviour in the midst of a pandemic Over the past few decades, behavioural economics has exploded as a field of study, not only enriching basic economic models, but also yielding novel insights into the cognitive predispositions of humans. In fact, these […]
Financial bubbles is one of the topics in economics that are intuitive to most people, except for economists. A financial, or speculative bubble, is characterized by a rapid increase in prices of an asset, without much consideration for its intrinsic value, followed by a burst, that is, a sudden reduction in prices. Seems simple enough, […]
Think back to any movie you’ve seen involving a disaster, whether it was a tsunami or a plane crash. More than likely, the footage of the actual disaster was accompanied by hordes of people screaming and running for their lives. As with many Hollywood depictions of various events, however, the reality of things is quite […]
We all have that one prideful friend that just can’t admit they were wrong. But is it truly just pride? Research suggests that our ability to recall past predictions we’ve done may not be as good as we would like to believe [1][2]. So maybe your friend is not simply unable to admit they have […]
For more than three decades now, “microloans” have been all the rage in international development. The idea is simple: by giving a small loan to someone living in a poor country, you could help them expand a small business, which would lift their family out of poverty. When they pay back the loan, the money […]
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