Economics

Is the recession driving viewers away from reality programming? There has been so much chatter about politics and the economic meltdown on TV this fall that it's obscured another reality: Some of the networks' biggest unscripted series have been sinking in the ratings. New York-based ad firm Horizon Media this week delivered an analysis of Nielsen Media Research data for broadcast series during the first two months of the TV season, compared with the same period last year. The verdict?

Paul Zak scanned the UCLA computer lab where 18 young men were tapping away at keyboards. Some of the students had been administered a dose of testosterone the evening before. Now, Zak was monitoring their behavior as they played an experimental game designed to measure trust. He was curious about how these hormonally fueled "alpha" males would behave. Would they be more selfish or generous? Helpful or aggressive?

Gretchen Daily, an ecologist at Stanford University, wears butterfly-patterned socks. She's a careful recycler and bikes to work. She composts. So what's she doing hanging out with guys from Goldman Sachs? As a tried-and-true "green," she believes she doesn't have a choice. "Time is running short," she says. "Appealing to moral sense isn't enough anymore. We have to make conservation fit mainstream business calculations."

In the latest and most dramatic move to elevate a small Orange liberal arts campus to a world-class institution, Chapman University announced Thursday that it had hired a cutting-edge Nobel laureate in economics and his entire research team. "This is a defining moment," university President James L. Doti said in announcing the appointment of Vernon L. Smith, who won the Nobel Prize in 2002 and is known internationally as the father of experimental economics.

Three American scholars who study how markets work when buyers and sellers have incomplete information were awarded the Nobel prize in economics Monday. Among the winners was a 90-year-old retired professor from the University of Minnesota who is the oldest person in the history of the prize to become a laureate. "I really didn't expect it," Leonid Hurwicz told reporters who gathered at his Minneapolis home after the announcement.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez promised visiting Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales fuel, economic cooperation and backing for coca leaf farmers. Chavez and Morales, a former coca leaf farmer, have antagonized the U.S. government with their alliance with Cuba and promotion of leftist cooperation to counter U.S. market policies in Latin America.

UC Irvine is creating a new major for undergraduate students interested in business, officials announced Friday. The school's economics department, with about 1,100 students, already the largest on campus, will begin offering degrees in business economics and quantitative economics this fall, said David Brownstone, department chairman. Right now UCI students can only minor in business through a program in the university's school of business, which is geared primarily toward MBAs.

American diplomats made a big splash early this year when they opened an embassy near Wat Phnom, the sacred hill of temples where Phnom Penh was founded. U.S. Ambassador Joseph A. Mussomeli trumpeted the three-story marble-and-granite outpost as a "powerful symbol" of American interests in the impoverished country. On the other side of the capital, the Chinese also are giving their embassy a makeover. But they're doing a lot more in Cambodia.

A Columbia University economist was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics Monday for his paradigm-shifting work showing that reducing inflation wouldn't necessarily lead to higher unemployment -- a key tenet of Federal Reserve policy since the 1980s. Edmund S. Phelps, 73, who started his career at Santa Monica-based Rand Corp., was honored for his challenge to a post-World War II notion that low inflation and low unemployment couldn't exist simultaneously.

With his wide-eyed scholarly enthusiasm, youthful good looks and penchant for world travel, is doing his best to become the Indiana Jones of economics. Certainly the Harvard professor, economist, historian and bestselling author has become something of a poster pundit for the continuing global economic crisis. The publication of "The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World" seems a miracle of perfect timing and comes complete with a four-hour documentary that will air on PBS this year.