I'm delighted to announce that on March 15, I'll be joining The Atlantic as a contributing editor, writing a monthly column on "Commerce & Culture" and the occasional feature. My first piece will appear this summer.
In other writing news, if you're traveling Southwest Airlines this month, check out my article on pens in Spirit, the Southwest magazine. I hope to post the piece on this site eventually, but it's currently unavailable online.
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(Via Dan Drezner.)
With its insights into the ways people act inconsistently or against what they say they want, behavioral economics can provide useful ideas for incrementally improving management, and self-management. Richard Thaler, for instance, has turned his research into the successful and practical Save More Tomorrow program to encourage employees to put their future raises (or portions of them) toward retirement savings.
Some economists, however, have rushed to apply behavioral economics not to private dilemmas but to public policy, arguing that inconsistent preferences need to be corrected with paternalist government policy. In a smart, careful new Cato Institute study economist Glen Whitman argues that the paternalist notion of "internalities" has serious flaws--flaws analogous to those identified in traditional "externality" theory by Ronald Coase in his breakthrough 1960 paper, "The Problem of Social Cost" (PDF file here). Unlike many people who throw around Coase's name, Whitman gets that paper right and applies it well.
UPDATE: More on behavioral economics at Marginal Revolution. It's a mistake to view the field as primarily about public policy. It isn't. But people who are primarily interested in government policy (pro or con) naturally apply any new social science discoveries to that interest.
Elaborating on an earlier blog posting, my latest Forbes column is on the tough-minded messages of Project Runway. And a couple of pages earlier, Amanda Ernst profiles PR finalist Chloe Dao.
Both my email and some of Dan Drezner's comments suggest that it's better to go with your gut on the ports issue, never mind the facts. Dan and I are supposedly "overly rational." One reader email recommends Malcolm Gladwell's Blink
All I can say is my gut reaction was, "This is stupid." And, now that the research is in, I'd say that gut reaction was right--as Glenn Reynolds, among others, has come to agree (the blogosphere at its best). When you've seen enough ill-founded hysteria over foreign ownership, you develop an instinct.
That's how much Americans' leisure time has increased since 1965, according to research I discuss in my latest NYT column. No matter how you measure it, we have way more leisure today than 40 years ago. We also have more ways to use it. If you haven't noticed the improvement, you probably weren't a working woman in 1965. Or you're just like most people and spend most of the extra time--about five of six additional hours a week--watching TV.
Jim Glassman has a great piece on what's at stake in the ports flap. I usually quote articles for the benefit of those who won't click through, but in this case I want everyone to read the whole thing.
Proof that InstaPundit is all about the links.
They'll turn your word cloud into a T-shirt for $18.
Daniel Weintraub considers the extreme weirdness of employer-provided health insurance.
In the world of cubicles, iPods have become invisible office doors.