Kaushik Basu's new book uses game theory to explore why some laws are obeyed while others are flouted.
Nidhi Gupta
Susan Landau's Listening In is an encyclopaedia of cyber security, but misses out on the opportunity to set the stage for policy dialogue.
To break the nexus of crime and politics in India, we should not wait until the conviction of accused candidates. Other solutions exist.
How do economists tackle real-world markets? Alvin Roth reveals all in his wonderful book on matching markets.
Our data, taken without our consent, can be used for informational warfare that harms our democracy.
The government had promised to use the insights of behavioural economics to shape public policy. This budget revealed no signs of it.
Our weekly explainer on economics using lessons from popular culture. In Installment 25, Madhuri Dixit commits the Gambler's Fallacy.
Our weekly explainer on economics using lessons from popular culture. In Installment 23, Amol Palekar falls for the Present Bias.
Zeynep Tufecki’s book, Twitter and Tear Gas, is an insightful analysis of the impact of social media on protests and social movements in today’s radically networked societies.
In his new book, Cass Sunstein argues that the perfect filtering that platforms like Facebook and Twitter provide is a serious challenge to democratic deliberation and free expression.
For those who have been flummoxed with the question of what truly constitutes populism, how it originated, and the dangers it presents to democracy, there is help. A slim book titled What is Populism? by Jan-Werner Müller provides the answers.
The union government should divert budgetary support from established IITs & NITs to ailing state universities. IITs and NITs, in turn, must raise funding from alternate sources - alumni, foreign university collaboration, industry partnerships, increase in fees, etc.
In Payoff, Ariely sets about studying this complex nature of motivation. As is the case with all his other books, he does this through a series of interesting experiments where the participants are asked to perform simple tasks under different control conditions.