It's 2014, and women are still paid less than men. Does this suggest that a gender pay gap is an unfortunately permanent fixture? Will it still be with us in 50 years? I would predict yes. But by that point, it will be men who will be earning less than women.

As a researcher, every once in a while you encounter something a little disconcerting. And this is something that changes your understanding of the world around you, and teaches you that you're very wrong about something that you really believed firmly in.

January is always a good month for behavioral economics: Few things illustrate self-control as vividly as New Year's resolutions. February is even better, though, because it lets us study why so many of those resolutions are broken.

Even when a man and a woman perform equally well in a task - say, solving math problems - men are more willing to enter competitions based on that task. Men also show less risk aversion.

If I'm lucky enough to be involved in the Academy Awards in the future, I'll just let people make up their decision without being involved in any politics. Because it shouldn't involve that.

Those at the top would do better with a smaller share of a booming economy that elicits a positive politics than they will do with an ever-larger share of an anemic economy that fuels the politics of anger.

Political life is like this - elections go back and forth. Representative democracy can only be successful if one sits down and says, 'That's it. I will connect myself,' - as I did - 'connect my existence to a political project.' Then you automatically have in your party a lot of people who say, 'If that fails, so do I'.

Imagine a progressive president fighting to fix the insane economic inequality in the country or to end the senseless drug war or, best of all, battling to get money out of politics. Wouldn't that be wonderful?