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“Our goal is to make sure the fight against poverty is based on scientific evidence,” Esther Duflo said shortly after becoming the second woman (and also the youngest economist, at 46) to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. Duflo, along with her husband, Abhijit Banerjee, and Michael Kremer, received this year’s top economics award “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”. Read more

Imagine, for a moment, the government were about to pass a Zero Carbon bill that takes the most direct path to success on our emissions targets. What would it look like? Read more

If your doctor thinks you may be suffering from a serious illness but the test results suggest you are in the clear, that will seem like good news. But your prognosis will depend on whether your doctor has tested for the right thing. Read more

A common saying about the various stages of social acceptance is: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win." A decade after Bitcoin was born, cryptocurrencies are about to enter the "fight" phase in their quest to become a mainstream means of payment. That is all due to Libra, a new global digital currency that a Facebook-led coalition plans to launch as early as next year. Read more

From cowry shells to metal coins, promissory notes, paper money and plastic, humans have adapted to different currency types over the millennia. Then the first Bitcoin was issued on 3 January 2009. Read more

Rabobank recently reported farmer confidence had plummeted in the September quarter. Some 41% of surveyed farmers expected the rural economy to worsen next year. Read more

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” American psychologist Abraham Maslow proclaimed in 1966. The concept refers to the cognitive bias that involves an over-reliance on a familiar tool. Read more

Douglas Adams' classic The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers salient advice about an awful lot of things. Don't listen to Vogon poetry. Read more

Artificial intelligence will soon steal all our jobs, subjecting humans to the whims of a small and privileged capital-owner elite. At least, that is a recurring conspiracy in apocalyptical sci-fi movies or in the minds of modern luddites. Read more