THE DISMAL SCIENCE REMAINS DISMAL

WHEN HRISTOS DOUCOULIAGOS was a young economist in the mid-1990s, he got interested in all the ways economics was wrong about itself—bias, underpowered research, statistical shenanigans. Nobody wanted to hear it. “I’d go to seminars and people would say, ‘You’ll never get this published,’” Doucouliagos, now at Deakin University in Australia, says. “They’d say, ‘this is bordering on libel.’”…

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Stress hormones in financial traders may trigger ‘risk aversion,’ contribute to market crises

High levels of the stress hormone cortisol may contribute to the risk aversion and ‘irrational pessimism’ found among bankers and fund managers during financial crises, according to a new study. Cortisol is a hormone secreted by the adrenal glands in response to moments of high physical stress, such as ‘fight or flight’. Importantly, cortisol also…

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