The other day, Jenny and I played a game of Ludo with Luka. Its rules are simple enough to make it quite suitable for a five-year-old, even though some more strategic aspects are a bit beyond him. What I didn’t expect was the way in which it would capture some essential aspects of how we make decisions — and I am not thinking of game theory (which is outside my expertise anyway).

In case you are not familiar with Ludo (the name of which signifies “I play” in Latin), it goes as follows. Two, three or four players each have…

Imagine that you are retiring from a job at a large firm, and a dinner is organized in your honour. On the occasion you are presented with a final cheque, but the amount is rather lower than you expected. When you inquire about it, the explanation you receive is that the cost of the dinner has been deducted. How would you feel about that?

This is exactly what happened to economist Robin Hanson’s mother, according to a recent tweet. It did not provide any details, but let us assume that the cheque did not represent her final monthly wages (in…

Humans are social animals. Our interactions with relatives and friends make this abundantly clear: all day long we do small — and sometimes large — favours to them (and they to us), we give and receive gifts, and we help each other out. We don’t even keep a tally, and yet almost everyone keeps at it. But, oddly, there is one favour that always goes in one direction. How come?

Commercial transactions are a key characteristic of our society: we work for money, and then we spend some of that money to buy the goods and services we need and…

Let me begin by saying that I don’t think there is a problem with football per se. Certainly at a time when the sport has got much of Europe (in particular the country I live in) and South America under its spell, I would be loth to attract the attention of fans by suggesting there is something wrong with the game. And yet, I suspect that many devotees might share my reservations.

Last Wednesday morning, a BBC reporter reflecting on the Italy vs Spain semi-final in the Euro2020 football tournament described Spain as by far the better team throughout the…

It was already past dinner time on this warm late spring day, but my friend and I were still playing on “the mountains”, the steep, wooded patch of land across the street from where I lived. And then we heard a subdued chirping, emerging from underneath a bush: a young blackbird, fallen from the nest we presumed, and clearly unable to fly. We carefully picked it up and took it to my house. Now what?

My grandma’s old canary cage served as a temporary home, and we found out from a friend of my parents’ that worms from the garden…

A few days ago, a prominent economist posted a table on Twitter. In itself this was not a particularly remarkable event, were it not for the fact that it showed the top-10 “autocratizing” countries in the world alongside their per capita economic growth rate for the last 10 years, which — with the exception of one of them (Brazil) — exceeded the world average. And this observation caused some unrest.

The tweet was entirely factual, citing official growth rate figures and a table from Autocratization turns viral, the 2021 Democracy report of the Swedish V-Dem institute, an academic research organization…

You’re happily driving along on the motorway. It is quite busy for a Tuesday afternoon, and there is a slight drizzle. Suddenly, the red engine management warning indicator on your dashboard comes on. You slow down and move towards the edge of the motorway… but there is no hard shoulder! You are on a “smart” motorway! Thankfully, there’s a refuge 200m ahead. But surely, this cannot be safe? A motorway without a hard shoulder, that is almost against nature, isn’t it?

Smart motorways were first introduced in 2006 in the UK. They don’t have much in the way of intelligence…

Imagine you have just spent £70 (€80, $95) on something, only to realize that what you have bought is going to be of no use, and that there is no way you can return it for a refund. It’s the kind of experience that would leave even a seasoned stoic a little upset. But why is this? Is that because of the magnitude of the amount, or is there more to it?

Money has the same value for everyone — a pound is a pound — and you can buy exactly the same thing with any pound. That characteristic essentially…