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October 17, 2017

How close are we to ending extreme poverty?

Today is the 25th anniversary of the declaration by the UN General Assembly designating October 17 as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than $1.90 per person per day. Continue Reading...
October 16, 2017

Christian education is not safe

“Each generation needs to re-own the rationale for Christian education,” says philosopher James K.A. Smith, “to ask ourselves ‘Why did we do this?’ and ‘Should we keep doing this?’” In answering such questions, Smith notes, “it might be helpful to point out what Christian education is not”: First, Christian education is not meant to be merely “safe” education. Continue Reading...
October 13, 2017

Sin taxes: The ‘nudge’ that benefits terrorism

Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize for describe how even small economic incentives can affect behavior. One of those nudges, high “sin taxes,” has helped finance terrorism and organized crime. Sin taxes played some role in his winning the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences this week. Continue Reading...
October 13, 2017

Economic man is a myth, but ‘nudging’ is a distraction

The University of Chicago’s Richard Thaler recently won the Nobel Prize for his contributions in behavioral economics, much of which centers on challenging rational choice theory. “Renowned for his use of data to observe and predict how people behave in the real world,” writes Derek Thompson, “Thaler’s career has been a lifelong war on Homo economicus, that mythical species of purely rational hominids who dwell exclusively in the models of classical economic theory.” Continue Reading...
October 11, 2017

The ‘nudge’ that separated families

Richard Thaler, the co-author of Nudge, has won the Nobel Prize for his contributions to behavioral economics. While he decides how best to spend his $1.1 million in prize money, less prosperous families are paying the price for government policies advancing economic paternalism. Continue Reading...