The Eclectic Professor

Reflections on the psychology-marketing-economics nexus

by John Gaski, Ph.D.

The Miracle of Stock Market Efficiency

OK, you would like to know the most profitable stock market investment strategy. Naturally, a question of such magnitude has already been investigated. Numerous researchers have done scientific studies on that very issue over the last four decades. The results have been consistent, in fact overwhelming. The answer is known as well as anything can be known. Read More

American Public Finally Begins to Appreciate Marketing

After years of negative reactions to the way marketing is practiced, overall consumer sentiment toward marketing turned positive for the first time in 2011. Read More

A Needed Tutorial on Business and Capitalism

Recently the Indiana Policy Review reported some uninformed anti-business comments by university professor Gary Gutting (N.Y. Times, Oct. 12):

Corporations are a particular threat to truth. . .The corporate threat is most apparent in advertising, which explicitly aims at convincing us to prefer a product regardless of its actual merit. Read More

The Real Story on Gasoline Prices

Here is a test question for you: The next time you find yourself irritated by the price of gasoline, you need to remind yourself of how much—or little—of that $3-plus per gallon charge is the oil company's profit. What exactly is that amount of profit, anyway?

The Indiana Time Wars

A forthcoming issue of PT reports on a study Jeff Sagarin and I did on the cognitive effects of living in an area in which daylight-saving time is observed. (Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics, No. 1, 2011; Jeff is the famous sports statistician who does those weekly rankings in USA Today.) Our findings surely qualify as a blockbuster. Read More

The Psychology of Thrift: Why Not Frugal Cool?

Why can't the American people learn how to save money? Why is our national saving rate so abysmally low? Because of the wrong public psychology, that's why. Read More