Bankers, Greens and the Barking Mad: When Prophesy Fails
Forecasts of the end of the world have an even worse track record than predictions in economics. Some followers of the Mayan calendar believe the world will end next week. But we have been here before. In 1956, an American group, led by a suburban housewife, believed that a catastrophic flood would destroy the world […]
International Airlines Group: a ‘fantastic object’? The psychology of mergers and acquisitions
International Airlines Group (IAG), formed in January 2011 by a merger of British Airways and Iberia, is in the news. Operating losses at Iberia in the first nine months of the financial year are believed to be in excess of £200 million. Since the start of last year, IAG’s shares are down by nearly 40 […]
If it can happen to Google, who can feel safe?
The dramatic crash in Google’s share price and the temporary suspension of trading in the company’s shares made headline news. The event was triggered by the 20 per cent year-on-year fall in profits in the third quarter of this year. As usual, there was no shortage of explanations of why this happened – after the […]
Why do films flop?
The Disney sci-fi flick John Carter has become one of the biggest flops in movie history. The studio has announced that the film’s theatrical run will lose $200million. There has been a huge amount of comment in the media about why this happened. On Yahoo!, for example, several reasons were put forward. For example:the advertising […]
