1. The Rise of Behavioral Economics: Richard Thaler’s ‘Misbehaving’ by Cass R. Sunstein ( Harvard Law School)
Oh gosh, why did this paper get so popular this week? Is it because of the weather? The stock market? The intrinsic quality of the paper? Or could it have something to do with the Nobel Prize for Richard Thaler?
This paper was a joy to write. Thaler makes economics fun, because he is delighted by human foibles. He also deepens the social sciences and law. In the paper, I had an opportunity to give an overview of his work – and in the process, maybe even to misbehave a little. – Cass R. Sunstein
2. Behavioral Economics: Past, Present and Future by Richard H. Thaler (University of Chicago – Booth School of Business)
3. Private Benefits in Public Offerings: Tax Receivable Agreements in IPOs by Gladriel Shobe (Brigham Young University – J. Reuben Clark Law School)
4. Hacking Code/Space: Confounding the Code of Global Capitalism by Matthew Zook (University of Kentucky) and Mark Graham (University of Oxford – Oxford Internet Institute)
This paper focuses on the ways in which the systems and spaces created by corporate information technologies – code/space — are hackable. We use the case study of hacking airline frequent flyer programs – using reward points gained via loopholes to travel for little cost – to demonstrate the rewriting of the code/space of global capitalism. Hacking confounds code’s hegemony over the social, but this agency does not simply equate with political liberation. Rather the complexity and often playful mischief inherent to human-machine interactions, competes with code, and the outcome of this resistance reverberates across global networks in unexpected and sometimes profoundly uneven ways, often with inequitable impacts to peripheral people and places.
The case study is based on over ten years of our participation in hacking’ frequent flyer systems including buying 50 kilos of cheese (see picture below), applying for hundreds of credit cards and buying one dollar coins from the US Mint. – Matthew Zook
5. Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills? by Hendrik Bessembinder (Arizona State University)