The stock market has an insidious effect on C.E.O.s' moods, because of its impact not just on their companies but on their own bank accounts.

Moviegoers love the intricacies of a crime all the more when it's for a good cause.

Critics of consumer capitalism like to think that consumers are manipulated and controlled by those who seek to sell them things, but for the most part it's the other way around: companies must make what consumers want and deliver it at the lowest possible price.

Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably smart - smarter even sometimes than the smartest people in them.

Political risk is hard to manage because so much comes down to the personal choices of policymakers, whether prime ministers or heads of central banks.

The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other.

The oil market is especially sensitive even to a hint of expansion or contraction in supply.