“The Gold Rush Among the Stars: Trillionaires and Asteroid Mining” by Vinayak Kalra
“Bound by Irrationality: Pride & Prejudice” by Anagha Gopinath
“The $120K Banana: Defining Value in the Art World” by Alizeh Razvi
“When Technology Expires” by Isha Trivedi
Emotions play a huge role in risk perception and decision-making. The article explores vaccine hesitancy, its present and history, along with its economic implications through the lens of behavioural economics. Cognitive biases such as the affect heuristic and the confirmation bias could explain the anti-vaccine sentiment during the initial phases of the pandemic as well as other irrational decisions that one might make at the mercy of the mind.
Read MoreThe cognitive capabilities of our minds constrain us from being the ‘rational economic agents’ that mainstream economic models theorize us as. Exploring decision-making by governments and individuals during the pandemic, through the lens of behavioral economics, can unravel the many cognitive delusions that we fall prey to.
Read MoreIt’s become clear that people were gradually shifting away from the nine-to-five life, but this change was happening at a snail’s pace—that is until COVID-19 sent everyone home. Let’s discuss one of the most far-reaching effects of the pandemic, the abandonment of physical offices and the rapid digitization of our workplaces and lifestyles.
Given the convoluted nature of the politics of pandemics, it is important to understand the elements that enable successful government responses in the early, middle, and late stages of the crisis. By understanding the elements that help in times of pandemic, governments can learn from COVID-19 to better prepare for inevitable future public health crises.
Read MoreWith the advent of smart devices infiltrating the home and our increasing dependency of using technology within our day to day lives, the opportunity for data collection has grown exponentially over the past decade. The nascent exploration into privacy concerns have only started to become at the forefront of discussion where, in recent years, issues have become popularized by news outlets and media. In a 2013 speech by US Federal Trade Commissioner Julie Brill, she points to the potentially insidious intentions of firms “without our knowledge or consent [to] amass large amounts of private information about people to use for purposes we don’t expect or understand.” These concerns, however, have become a lot more alarming amidst the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read MoreWhat we are witnessing with COVID-19 is the loss of some of the emergent properties of human beings interacting and gathering - the breakdown of systems that keep us safe, warm, fed, and, just as importantly, well socialized.
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