Articles 2026
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The Gift-Card Economy
For some people, spending just doesn't come naturally--especially in a recession. Behavioral economists have a solution.
The Atlantic, May 2009
MOTHER’S DAY IS coming up. Which do you think Mom would enjoy more—a day-spa gift certificate that expires at the end of June, or an otherwise identical gift certificate that expires a year from now?
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Macroegonomics
Economic policy makers thought they had tamed the business cycle. Not quite. Let's hope their hubris doesn't get in the way of our economic recovery.
The Atlantic, April 2009
CHRISTINA ROMER, the head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, is a liberal economist. The LBJ Presidential Library in Austin is a Democratic shrine. But on a September evening in 2007, Romer used that venue to deliver a bluntly negative assessment of the economic policies that began in the Kennedy and Johnson years. What macroeconomists had believed and done in the heady liberal hour of the 1960s, she declared, was simply wrong—a “mistaken revolution” that hurt the country. “Far from being the high point of economic policymaking in the postwar era, the 1960s represented the beginning of a long dark period for macroeconomic policy,” she said.
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My Drug Problem
The Atlantic, March 2009
The cancer drug Herceptin saved the author's life. It also cost $60,000. Would health-care reform put it, and other expensive new drugs, out of reach?
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Defending "My Drug Problem"
The Atlantic, March 2009
Virginia Postrel's March article on the availability of cancer drugs sparked enormous reader response, much more than the print magazine's Letters to the Editor section could accommodate. Here she responds to some common criticisms from those letters.
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Pop Psychology
Why asset bubbles are a part of the human condition that regulation can't cure.
The Atlantic, December 2008
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The Case for Debt
Public anxiety over "excessive" consumer debt has a long, and misguided, history.
The Atlantic, November 2008
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The Politics of the Retouched Headshot
In an image-savvy culture, we're increasingly forced to consider just what constitutes a valid portrait.
The Atlantic, October 15, 2008
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Inconspicuous Consumption
A new theory of the leisure class
The Atlantic, July/August 2008
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The Art of Healing
How better aesthetics in hospitals can make for happier--and healthier--patients
The Atlantic, April 2008
How better aesthetics in hospitals can make for happier--and healthier--patients
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The Peril of Obama
The glamour of Obama may be hard to resist, but could it get the country into trouble if he wins the presidency?
The Atlantic, March 31, 2008