Economists might not be an obvious source of advice on parenting, the intricacies of etiquette or the dark arts...them as assets and selling them to the major US banks.A collection of Tim Harford's favourite Dear Economist letters, 'Dear Undercover Economist', will be published by Little, Brown on August 13 (£12.99). To buy the book for £10.39, plus p&p...

...on consumption?In the short run, yes. Economists worry about a sharp fall in consumer...largely relative. A famous survey by the economists Sara Solnick and David Hemenway found...more leisure nowadays. According to economists Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst, leisure...

...whole ritual.Gift cards and vouchers are no use, either. The economist Jennifer Pate Offenberg has been studying them and finds that...spend less, and think more.Tim Harford's latest book is 'Dear Undercover Economist' (Little, Brown)

...Thaler, co-author of Nudge and perhaps the world's leading behavioural economist. In the "dictator" game, Anna divides the $10 as before, but Bernard...academia was an altruistic profession.Tim Harford's latest book is 'Dear Undercover Economist'

...to work out what might be behind it.Economists have been leading this investigation...Stuart Mill and his fellow political economists for their ''dismal'' support for emancipation...Irish, were all equal.More recently, economists have turned their attention to the subtler...

...confirmed.A recent study by financial economists Eitan Goldman, Jongil So and Jorg Rocholl...Democratic party. Seema Jayachandran, an economist at UCLA, studied the market's reaction...scientist, and Hans-Joachim Voth, an economist, have shone a light on a ghoulish example...

...many people get by happily on less.Yet economists have been gamely making the effort; they...simple comparison can be misleading. The economist Erik Hurst has recently calculated that...far short of sensible savings. Another economist, Laurence Kotlikoff, is famous for his...

...the Harford educational experience, it is an example of what economists call ''intergenerational transmission of educational attainment...of a discussion, where should the conversation go now? Many economists believe that we should be looking for effective interventions...

...might insurers (and governments) do to nudge us in a more sensible direction?One indication comes from new research by four economists, Jeffrey Brown, Jeffrey Kling, Sendhil Mullainathan and Marian Wrobel. Using an internet-based survey, they presented respondents...

...it irrational.But voters also matter, which is the second reason early success is important. According to one estimate from economists Brian Knight and Nathan Schiff - who looked at how opinion polls in late-voting states respond to early results - the early...