Don’t Touch, Don’t Buy

A recent Time magazine article summarized the latest findings from the increasingly sophisticated science of retailing. Researchers have found that touching a product in a store increases a shopper’s sense of ownership (the “endowment effect”), and...

Of Calories and Cash

There are a number of parallels between the worlds of nutrition and finance. On the negative side, people tend to describe a budget in the same terms they use to describe a diet – it’s something one goes on, as in, “Poor Brian, he’s on a...