Washoe County Library System

Whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically, Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling to show how people respond to incentives.

Are you happy in your marriage--except for those weekly spats over who empties the dishwasher more often? Not a single complaint--unless you count the fact that you haven't had sex since the Bush administration? Prepared to be there in sickness and in health--so long as it doesn't mean compromising? Be honest: Ever lay awake thinking how much more fun married life used to be?

If you're a member of the human race, then the

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"Economists have long based their forecasts on financial aggregates such as price-earnings ratios, asset prices, and exchange rate fluctuations, and used them to produce statistically informed speculations about the future--with limited success. Robert Shiller employs such aggregates in his own forecasts, but has famously complemented them with observations about the influence of mass psychology on certain events. This approach has come to be known...

Raghuram Rajan, distinguished University of Chicago professor, former IMF chief economist, head of India's central bank, and author of the 2010 FT-Goldman-Sachs Book of the Year Fault Lines, has an unparalleled vantage point onto the social and economic consequences of globalization and their ultimate effect on our politics. In The Third Pillar he offers up a magnificent big-picture framework for understanding how these three forces--the state, markets,...

The co-author of the best-selling 13 Bankers outlines a bracing deconstruction of the framework for understanding the world of classroom Economics, clarifying the study's assumptions and misleading teachings while sharing historical insights into how economism became a prevalent influence in the U.S.

How important is luck in economic success? No question more reliably divides conservatives from liberals. As conservatives correctly observe, people who amass great fortunes are almost always talented and hardworking. But liberals are also correct to note that countless others have those same qualities yet never earn much. In recent years, social scientists have discovered that chance plays a much larger role in important life outcomes than most people...