Nobel Laureates

Their insights changed the modern understanding of banks.

Data are indispensable to understanding economic outcomes—but they need theory to be made useful.

I love my work. I have no intention of stopping as long as I'm breathing—and I may even do it after that.

Many investors hold naive notions about diversification and a pronounced lack of sophistication about portfolio asset selection.

“Behavioral economics" is still economics, but it is economics done with strong injections of good psychology and other social sciences.

Merton H. Miller liked to tell a joke about Yogi Berra, the famous baseball catcher. Berra once told his trainer that he was particularly hungry, and he instructed him to cut his pizza into 12 pieces instead of six.

When facing a risk of immediate failure, people often avoid it, even if it improves the odds of success.

We can’t eliminate crises, but we can limit their severity.

Some advice from the father of efficient markets.

Does personal freedom beget market freedom, or vice versa?

What banks demand from corporate borrowers may help explain the length and severity of economic busts.

The Nobel laureate is best known for work on efficient markets. But he also helped develop event studies, which have been used extensively in the field.

Once people are participating in a default option, they can stick with it for years.

In the model, the mismatch between assets (loans) and liabilities (deposits) is simply a liquidity issue, which deposit insurance can help address.

Fundamental economic variables regain importance in explaining risk premiums in stock markets.

A Nobel laureate offers advice on trying new things and creating long-term value.

The nation’s absorption with what the Fed will and will not do has left institutions guessing about what the future holds, which has caused inaction among investors.

Economic reform tends to be undertaken with no economic knowledge.

An abundance of loans can create a debt overhang that causes lenders to pull back—and the ensuing credit crunch can make it harder for businesses to grow, or even to repay their debts.

A look at the ideas that did and did not influence his peers—and posterity.

There are four essential ingredients to any comprehensive plan to facilitate adequate saving for retirement: availability, automatic enrollment, automatic investment, and automatic escalation.

When individual banks engage in risky behavior—such as extending credit too readily or taking on too much collateral that cannot be easily liquidated—they can quickly get into trouble.

Mispriced stocks break the rules of efficient markets.

New evidence on value versus growth.

Nudging is often a cost-effective approach to public policy.

About half the time, a bank monitors a small private company by requesting financial statements, and in other cases it asks for tax returns or proof of creditworthiness.

An argument for reducing government control.

Becker’s analysis would extend the reach of economics, and completely reshape the field—and social-science research in general, but it took decades to do so.

The economics of the war on drugs.

Gene's bottom line is always: Look at the facts. Collect the data. Test the theory.

The protests may have failed to overhaul the financial system, but that does not mean that nothing has changed.

Americans have been taught by persistent experience to expect great and growing wealth from their economic system—even our paupers are richer in goods than most of the elites of history.

Adam Smith was a radical and revolutionary in his time—just as those of us who today preach laissez faire are in our time.

Longevity gains in developing countries.

Gary S. Becker and Richard Posner call for an end to the policy that dates to 1960.

By carefully studying investor behavior, active money managers can identify profitable clues about what stocks to buy and when.