Politically speaking, it's always easier to shell out money for a disaster that has already happened, with clearly identifiable victims, than to invest money in protecting against something that may or may not happen in the future.

The profit motive, indecorous though it may seem, may represent the best chance the poor have to reap some of globalization's benefits.

I think there is clearly a connection between free time and procrastination. The more you have of the former, all things being equal, the more likely you are to procrastinate.

Art collecting has traditionally been the domain of wealthy individuals in search of rewards beyond the purely financial.

Downsizing itself is an inevitable part of any creatively destructive economy.

The typical American corporation is a shareholders' republic the same way that China is a peoples' republic.

Intellectual-property rules are clearly necessary to spur innovation: if every invention could be stolen, or every new drug immediately copied, few people would invest in innovation. But too much protection can strangle competition and can limit what economists call 'incremental innovation' - innovations that build, in some way, on others.