In this April 18, 2007 New York Times article about the impact of economic advisers, Barack Obama and his chief economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee are described as both seeming to "favor achieving Democratic goals through market-oriented policies." Goolsbee is quoted as having written that “Moral exhortation doesn’t change people’s behavior. Prices do.”

Barack Obama's chief economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, is the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Conservative columnist George Will wrote a relatively favorable article about Goolsbee in the Washington Post.

Here's a brief but excellent article in the NY Times examining the main differences in economic philosophy between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

The article's brevity means that it helps to have a working familiarity with basic economic theory, and also to have a preexisting familiarity with behavioral law and economics. I think the article could have included a couple extra sentences fleshing out some of these ideas for readers without much of a background in this area.

In a nutshell, traditional economics relies on the assumption that individual actors will behave rationally. In this case rational behavior is loosely defined as behavior that will lead to the best outcome for the actor, given the information available. Behavioral economics challenges this assumption, studying why people may not act in a so-called 'rational' way in certain circumstances, often by employing psychology.

Happy New Year!

The year 2008 could be a very important year for me. I will hopefully be embarking on the next stage in my career path, whatever it may be. And perhaps more significantly, that may have ramifications on which city I reside in as well.

I pray that I will have wisdom, maturity, and discernment, that my way will be blessed, and that in turn I will be a blessing to others.