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List of books that use research to help improve your life: link
List of books about morality: link

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Nudge to Prevent Food Wastage

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I found this board in a cafeteria at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.  The sign board mentions the wastage of food in weight (Kilograms) of the previous day and the number of people who could have been fed with that amount of food.  Although breakfast at the cafeteria is a limited serving, a considerable proportion of the people can't finish their meal. To know if the sign board indeed helps reduce wastage, there are several aspects that we need to consider. Firstly, the sign board can, as hoped, make people actively ask for the quantity of food that they think they can finish. This is troublesome for people who are new to the cafeteria. Regular customers, however,  would know exactly how much they would eat and would have no qualms in asking for a smaller quantity of food. Secondly, the sign board could also work as an incentive for people to try harder to finish all the food on their plate. Economists are probably the only ones wh...
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The Return Trip Effect: Why the Return Trip Often Seems Shorter

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This article needs no motivation. The Return Trip Effect, which is the perception that the return trip seems shorter than the initial trip, even though the distance traveled and time spent traveling are identical, is observed by almost everyone I know.  I couldn't explain how this was possible until I recently came across a paper by Van de ven, Van Rijswijk, and Roy (2011), that we shall call VVR henceforth.  The first possible reason for the return trip effect could be that the initial trip deals with an unfamiliar and unpredictable route, whereas the return trip is relatively more familiar and predictable. Research has shown that unfamiliar or unpredictable tasks are often remembered to be longer than familiar or predictable ones. The second reason is motivated by research that suggests that people often underestimate the time required for tasks. If this is the case, then people are likely to underestimate the time of their initial tri...
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Diwali affecting the Indian stock market

Diwali is a festival celebrated in India in the month of November. The date of the festival varies from year to year. It’s a festival marked by happiness. Given its auspiciousness, the NSE opens the stock market for an hour on this day, which is referred to as “Muhurat trading”. The word “Muhurat” means auspicious. It is a symbolic and old ritual which has been going on for several years. It is believed that trading on this day, brings wealth and prosperity .  Diwali also marks the beginning of the fiscal year for several businesses.  Historical information about market behavior at the time of Diwali is useful to make a generalization, if possible, about the effect of Diwali on the stock market and would allow arbitrageurs to make decisions based on this information. The key questions we can ask here is does Diwali lead to higher returns and higher volume of trade in the Indian markets? The seasonal effect of Diwali violates the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). EMH...
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