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Daniel Altman

Chief Economist, Big Think

Daniel Altman is Big Think's Chief Economist and an adjunct faculty member at New York University's Stern School of Business.  Daniel wrote economic commentary for The Economist, The New York Times, and The International Herald Tribune before founding North Yard Economics, a non-profit consulting firm serving developing countries, in 2008.  In between, he served as an economic advisor in the British government and wrote four books, most recently Outrageous Fortunes: The Twelve Surprising Trends That Will Reshape the Global Economy.


Pervasive computing is all about interaction between the billions - soon to be trillions - of microprocessors that have infiltrated virtually every aspect of our lives.  A new book,"Trillions", argues that we have to design an entire living environment where those devices communicate with each other and with us. 
Plenty of people are happy for their leaders and bosses to make choices for them, as long as they probably would have made similar choices themselves.  Yet when leaders and bosses don't truly represent the interests of their constituents and employees, nudging can be toxic. 
Almost everyone agrees that poverty is not a good thing.  Almost everyone would like to end poverty.  Almost everyone would benefit from ending poverty.  So why don’t we?  To find […]
Credit-rating agencies were among the bogeymen of the global financial crisis, and for good reason. Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, Fitch, and others failed to appraise the real risks of billions […]
An interesting thing happened yesterday in American politics.  Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, beat Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, by just eight votes in the Iowa […]