The irrepressible Teo Soo Cheng, the patriach of the See Hoy Chan Holdings Group (SHCHG) who passed away on May 15 after living to a ripe old age of 93

Updated: Saturday May 24, 2014 MYT 11:13:28 AM

The irrepressible Teo Soo Cheng

BY THEAN LEE CHENG

The late Tan Sri Teo Soo Cheng

MORE than 20 years ago, as one drives towards Sg Buloh on what is the Lebuhraya Damansara-Puchong (LDP) today, the landscape was mainly oil palm plantation, orang asli settlement and small factories after leaving Taman Tun Dr Ismail (TTDI). Read more of this post

Five brain challenges we can overcome in the next decade

16 May 2014, 3.17pm AEST

Five brain challenges we can overcome in the next decade

Barbara Sahakian

Just prior to him leaving office, I was asked by John Beddington, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, to scope the future of neuroscience over the next ten years. It seemed to me that the best way to consider this was to determine how we could improve brain health for a flourishing society. Clearly, mental health problems such as anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease are becoming overwhelming. Read more of this post

Few collectors buy art with the single-minded focus of Leslie Wexner, a Columbus, Ohio, retailing billionaire who has over the past four decades whittled his once-varied art holdings down to primarily works by a single artist: Pablo Picasso

A Mogul Shrinks His Art Focus

KELLY CROW

May 23, 2014 9:45 p.m. ET

Few collectors buy art with the single-minded focus of Leslie Wexner, a Columbus, Ohio, retailing billionaire who has over the past four decades whittled his once-varied art holdings down to primarily works by a single artist: Pablo Picasso. Read more of this post

Book Review: ‘Stalin’ by Paul Johnson; Lenin was impressed by the young Stalin’s hard work, intelligence and willingness to resort to violence.

Book Review: ‘Stalin’ by Paul Johnson

Lenin was impressed by the young Stalin’s hard work, intelligence and willingness to resort to violence.

ANDREW STUTTAFORD

May 23, 2014 5:11 p.m. ET

In the months leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution, Joseph Stalin was, recalled one fellow revolutionary, no more than a “gray blur.” The quiet inscrutability of this controlled, taciturn figure eventually helped ease his path to some murky place in the West’s understanding of the past, a place where memory of the horror he unleashed was quick to fade. Pete Seeger sang for Stalin? Was that so bad? Read more of this post

Life Lessons From Navy SEAL Training; Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, gave a commencement address last week that graduates, and their parents, won’t soon forget

Life Lessons From Navy SEAL Training

Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, gave a commencement address last week that graduates, and their parents, won’t soon forget.

WILLIAM H. MCRAVEN

May 23, 2014 6:40 p.m. ET

The following is adapted from the commencement address by Adm. William H. McRaven, ninth commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, at the University of Texas at Austin on May 17.

The University of Texas slogan is “What starts here changes the world.” Read more of this post

Genworth CFO: Managing Costs and Risks in a Turnaround

May 23, 2014, 2:51 AM ET

Genworth CFO: Managing Costs and Risks in a Turnaround

EMILY CHASAN

Senior Editor

Marty Klein is the chief financial officer of Richmond, Va.-based insurer Genworth Financial Inc.GNW +0.29% He spoke with CFO Journal about how the company has renewed its focus on metrics like cost of capital and leverage as it works to affect a post-financial crisis turnaround. Read more of this post

Humans Aren’t The Only Animals Stuck on Status

Humans Aren’t The Only Animals Stuck on Status

ROBERT M. SAPOLSKY

May 23, 2014 7:32 p.m. ET

As a species, we crave status, endlessly keeping track of who’s more important. This is challenging, given that we participate in so many realms of comparison simultaneously. Who’s richest, smartest, best-looking? Who’s got the newer car, house or spouse? Who can drink everyone under the table, who’s the most pious at church? Read more of this post

A Hedge Fund Highflier Comes Back to Earth; That Crispin Odey built an elaborate chicken coop on the back of Europe’s economic slump has only added to the vitriol for what some feel is an ostentatious display at a time of economic suffering

A Hedge Fund Highflier Comes Back to Earth

By DANNY HAKIM

MAY 22, 2014 8:49 PM 16 Comments

Crispin Odey plans for an elaborate chicken coop brought attacks in the news media.

ENGLISH BICKNOR, England — The chickens of the one percent could roost comfortably here. Read more of this post

Economic History and Economic Development: New Economic History in Retrospect and Prospect

Economic History and Economic Development: New Economic History in Retrospect and Prospect

Peter Temin 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
May 2014
NBER Working Paper No. w20107

Abstract: 
I argue in this paper for more interaction between economic history and economic development. Both subfields study economic development; the difference is that economic history focuses on high-wage countries while economic development focuses on low-wage economies. My argument is based on recent research by Robert Allen, Joachim Voth and their colleagues. Voth demonstrated that Western Europe became a high-wage economy in the 14th century, using the European Marriage Pattern stimulated by the effects of the Black Death. This created economic conditions that led eventually to the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. Allen found that the Industrial Revolution resulted from high wages and low power costs. He showed that the technology of industrialization was adapted to these factor prices and is not profitable in low-wage economies. The cross-over to economic development suggests that demography affects destiny now as in the past, and that lessons from economic history can inform current policy decisions. This argument is framed by a description of the origins of the New Economic History, also known as Cliometrics, and a non-random survey of recent research emphasizing the emerging methodology of the New Economic History.

The Transformative Power of Transparency

The Transformative Power of Transparency

By DOV SEIDMAN

MAY 23, 2014 10:42 AM Comment

Doctors don’t traditionally apologize for medical errors; in fact, they usually don’t even disclose them. That is why I have long been interested in how the University of Michigan Health Systems has bucked tradition with its Michigan Model, a collaborative and transparent approach to patient safety and medical mistakes. Read more of this post

Fiscal blackmail: Lessons from behavioural economics can boost tax compliance

Fiscal blackmail: Lessons from behavioural economics can boost tax compliance

May 24th 2014 | From the print edition

PEOPLE go to great lengths to avoid paying tax. One popular trick in the Middle Ages was to become a monk; these days, shell companies in the Caribbean are a more common retreat. The gap between what is owed and what is paid is nearly $400 billion a year in America, and about £40 billion ($70 billion) in Britain. To keep the shortfall in check, governments design taxes to be tough to weasel out of. The value-added tax, for instance, allows firms to deduct tax paid on inputs from their sales-tax bill, in effect encouraging them to police their suppliers. Then there are the sticks: audits and penalties. Promising new research in behavioural economics could give governments another tool for boosting payment: the psychological nudge. Read more of this post

Germans concede that in humour they need professional help

Germans concede that in humour they need professional help

May 24th 2014 | BERLIN | From the print edition

EVA ULLMANN took her master’s degree in 2002 on the part that humour has to play in psychotherapy, and became hooked on the subject. In 2005 she founded the German Institute for Humour in Leipzig. It is dedicated to “the combination of seriousness and humour”. She offers lectures, seminars and personal coaching to managers, from small firms to such corporate giants as Deutsche Bank and Telekom. Her latest project is to help train medical students and doctors. Read more of this post