Being out of a job can erode people's confidence and their sense of possibility; and employers, often unfairly, tend to take long-term unemployment as a signal that something is wrong.

From a social point of view, it's beneficial that homeownership encourages commitment to a given town or city. But, from an economic point of view, it's good for people to be able to leave places where there's less work and move to places where there's more.

The desire for reinvention seems to arise most often when companies hear the siren call of synergy and start to expand beyond their core businesses.

Patrimonial capitalism's legacy is that many people see reform as a euphemism for corruption and self-dealing.

If someone really wants my company's business, why shouldn't he be able to do everything he can - including paying me off - to get that business? Because bribery encourages people to make decisions based on the wrong criteria, which means in the business world that it distorts the efficient allocation of resources.

The important thing about groupthink is that it works not so much by censoring dissent as by making dissent seem somehow improbable.

In the auto industry, there's one thing you can always count on: if a new environmental or safety rule is proposed, executives will prophesy disaster.