Tuesday, May 21

Tag: value

If They See It Being Virtually Touched – Consumers Value A Product Viewed Online More
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BUSINESS

If They See It Being Virtually Touched – Consumers Value A Product Viewed Online More

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Consumers who see a product on sale being virtually touched are more engaged and willing to pay more than if the item is displayed on its own, according to a recent research paper I co-authored. Behavioral economists have previously shown that people value objects more highly if they own them, a concept known as “the endowment effect.” Marketers have found that this feeling of ownership can occur even when a consumer merely touches something in a store. With Americans buying a record amount of stuff online, I wondered whether virtual touch also influences how consumers perceive and value products. To find out, I teamed up with marketing researchers Joann Peck, William Hedgcock and Yixiang Xu and performed a ...
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Reparations Should Cover Past Harms And Current Value Of Slavery-Built Infrastructure That Still Creates Wealth In US
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POLITICS

Reparations Should Cover Past Harms And Current Value Of Slavery-Built Infrastructure That Still Creates Wealth In US

American cities from Atlanta to New York City still use buildings, roads, ports and rail lines built by enslaved people. The fact that centuries-old relics of slavery still support the economy of the United States suggests that reparations for slavery would need to go beyond government payments to the ancestors of enslaved people to account for profit-generating, slave-built infrastructure. Debates about compensating Black Americans for slavery began soon after the Civil War, in the 1860s, with promises of “40 acres and a mule.” A national conversation about reparations has reignited in recent decades. The definition of reparations varies, but most advocates envision it as a two-part reckoning that acknowledges the role slavery played in building the country and directs resources to the ...
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Why Does The US Benefit From A Dollar That Isn’t Tied To The Value Of A Glittery Hunk Of Metal?
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BUSINESS

Why Does The US Benefit From A Dollar That Isn’t Tied To The Value Of A Glittery Hunk Of Metal?

The phrase “the gold standard” means, in common parlance, the best available benchmark – as in double-blind randomized trials are the gold standard for determining the efficacy of a vaccine. Its meaning likely comes from my world of economics and refers to what was once the centerpiece of the international monetary system, when the value of most major currencies, including the U.S. dollar, was based on the price of gold. Some economists and others, including President Donald Trump and his Federal Reserve Board of Governors nominee Judy Shelton, favor a return to the gold standard because it would impose new rules and “discipline” on a central bank they view as too powerful and whose actions they consider flawed. This is among several reasons Shelton’s nomination is controversial in the ...
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Turning Low-Value Plastic Materials Into High-Value Molecules
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ENVIRONMENT

Turning Low-Value Plastic Materials Into High-Value Molecules

If you thought those flimsy disposable plastic grocery bags represented most of our plastic waste problem, think again. The volume of plastic the world throws away every year could rebuild the Ming Dynasty’s Great Wall of China – about 3,700 miles long. In the six decades that plastic has been manufactured for commercial uses, more than 8.3 billion metric tons have been produced. Plastics are light, versatile, cheap and nearly indestructible (as long as they don’t get too hot). These properties make them incredibly useful in an enormous range of applications that includes sterile food packaging, energy-efficient transportation, textiles and medical protective gear. But their indestructible nature comes at a cost. Most of them decompose extremely slowly in the environment – on the order of...
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A restart of nuclear testing offers little scientific value to the US and would benefit other countries
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SCIENCE

A restart of nuclear testing offers little scientific value to the US and would benefit other countries

July 15, 2020 marks 75 years since the detonation of the first nuclear bomb. The Trinity Test, in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto desert, proved that the design for the Nagasaki Bomb worked and started the nuclear era. The U.S. tested nuclear bombs for decades. But at the end of the Cold War in 1992, the U.S. government imposed a moratorium on U.S. testing. This was strengthened by the Clinton administration’s decision to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Although the Senate never ratified the treaty and it never entered into force, all 184 countries that signed the test ban, including the U.S., have followed its rules. But in recent weeks, the Trump administration and Congress have begun debating whether to restart active testing of nuclear weapons on U.S. soil. Some cons...
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