Featured Press

The Dow has been on a hair-raising ride in the past week, with swings of a couple hundred points up or down. While the blue chips are up 50% from their lows in March, the volatility has made reporter Rico Gagliano anxious. He tells us why.

Hip-hop artist Kanye West, Rep. Joe Wilson, and tennis star Serena Williams did not meet to plan strategy before each staged his or her dustup on the national stage, sources insist.

Metal detectors, X-ray machines, and dogs are used at security checkpoints to look for bombs. Now a next-generation technology under development in Cambridge will look for the bomber.

For decades researchers ranging from economists to psychologists to neuroscientists have tried to understand how people make decisions, both mundane and major. NPR's Talk of the Nation guest host Paul Raeburn and guests look at what happens in the mind of "the decider" when there's a choice to be made.

From O, The Oprah Magazine

By Aimee Lee Ball

Jennifer Lerner's favorite emotion - intellectually speaking - is anger.

From the Wall Street Journal, 5/9/2009

By Jason Zweig

Fess up, fellows: The masters of the universe have turned out to be masters of disaster. No matter which aspect of the financial crisis you consider, there is a man behind it.

So, it is worth pointing out, this Mother's Day weekend, how different things might be if the financial world were female.

From The Associated Press, 4/19/2009

By DAVID KOENIG

DALLAS (AP) — At TXU Energy, the biggest electric company in Texas, the fastest-growing billing plan is one that lets customers lock in the price of power for one or two years.

"It's easier to plan that way, and I think you're saving money," says Brian Bell, an advertising salesman who signed a 2-year, fixed-price contract for electricity at the 1,500-square-foot Dallas town house he bought last year.

Jennifer Lerner, director of the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory and CPL faculty member, is joined by doctoral student Viral Gandhi as they present and discuss the efforts of their lab to better understand the decision making process of leaders.

By Doug Gavel, Harvard Kennedy School Communications Office, December 5, 2008

The emerging field of decision science now has a permanent anchor at Harvard Kennedy School. The Harvard Decision Science Laboratory – a cutting edge research facility dedicated to examining the factors affecting judgment and decision making – opened its doors with a gala ribbon-cutting ceremony and series of lab tours on Friday, Dec. 5.