“It’s not rocket science”, is a phrase commonly invoked to indicate a topic’s simplicity. As Duncan Watts laments in his book, Everything is Obvious, this refrain is often unfairly applied to social science: “Well, I’m no rocket scientist, and I have immense respect for the people who can land a machine the size of a…
Behavioral Finance
Well, Technically
Do you remember learning about fungibility in Econ 101? It’s the idea that a good or asset can be interchanged with another similar good or asset. The part we didn’t learn about is when this is technically true, but pragmatically irrelevant. Enter behavioral economics. One of the first behavioral economics ideas I understood was the…
The Investor’s High
To borrow the framework of a famous Dorothy Parker quote: I hate running, but I love having run. This mentality embodies a phenomenon many refer to as a “runner’s high”. A runner’s high is the euphoric feeling experienced after a long run. As a runner, that feeling of general contentment and well being is a…
The Unsatisfying Certitude of Uncertainty
On a recent episode of the Shea Anything podcast, reporter Andy Martino addressed a popular narrative about Mets pitcher Zack Wheeler. The story is that Wheeler threw more splitters in 2018, and that this new pitch explained his markedly improved performance. Neat and tidy – because of this, that occurred. However, Martino shared that MLBs…
Closing the Loop
If you’ve ever let Netflix auto-play several episodes of a show before, you’ve seen a variation of the image above. It’s the unofficial signal that you’ve entered “binge mode”. Streaming content platforms, like Netflix, popularized binge-watching by giving us access to entire seasons or series instantaneously. To say that we’ve taken this access and run…
Worse Than Perfect, Better Than the Alternative
It’s no secret that football is a dangerous game. Despite firsthand knowledge of this fact, former NFL wide receiver Ed McCaffrey had no qualms about letting his sons play the sport. In the book Everybody Lies, author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz shares McCaffrey’s reasoning: “These guys have energy. And, so, if they’re not playing football, they’re skateboarding,…