Joe Petviashvili

“it clearly shows that life satisfaction is highest in the richest countries. The residents of these countries seem to understand that they have it pretty good, whether or not they own an iPod Touch.”

“take a look at price swings in a commodity not in today's news: onions.”

“Amid Zimbabwe's mind-boggling hyper inflation, a new 100 billion dollar bank note has more value as a novelty item on eBay than on the streets of the capital.”

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied. Well, what can't be copied? There are a number of qualities that can't be copied. Consider "trust." Trust cannot be copied. You can't purchase it. Trust more...

For decades, conventional wisdom has held that daylight-saving time, which begins March 9, reduces energy use. But a unique situation in Indiana provides evidence challenging that view: Springing forward may actually waste energy.

Getting a job and trading your time for money may seem like a good idea. There’s only one problem with it. It’s stupid! It’s the stupidest way you can possibly generate income! This is truly income for dummies.

The Fed cut interest rates a quarter point, then said they'd do more, then admitted that no one has any idea what's happening, because economics is not a real "science" and that textbooks should come with warning labels. "Economics is more...

"We will not have any more crashes in our time." - John Maynard Keynes in 1927

“Software is like nothing else in the history of human endeavor unlike everything else we have ever built, software costs nothing to manufacture, and it never wears out.”

The financial crisis seems to have entered its third wave. Panic in August, then partial recovery thanks to lots of money thrown at the system by the Fed. Renewed panic late fall, then partial recovery thanks to even more money more...

government had quietly embarked on a novel experiment to manage Chile’s economy using a clunky mainframe computer and a network of telex machines.

reluctantly discarded the notion of my continuing to manage the portfolio after my death abandoning my hope to give new meaning to the term “thinking outside the box.”

Women tend to wear their hair long when Japan's economy is doing well and short when there is a slump, the Nikkei business daily reported, citing a survey conducted by Japanese cosmetics company Kao Corp.

Statistical Mechanics of Money, Income, and Wealth. In a closed economic system, money is conserved. Thus, by analogy with energy, the equilibrium probability distribution of money must follow the exponential Gibbs law characterized by an effective temperature equal to the more...