Mark D. White

Well that was quite a month, especially the last couple weeks, during which I was rarely at home!

• I made my first trip to Norway, where I gave two talks on April 25, arranged by the indefatigable Anita Leirfall, on my work on Kantian ethics and economics. The first was at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), delivered to an audience largely made up of economists (both faculty and students) with a few philosophers, and focused on how Kantian ethics can enrich economics. The second was at the University of Oslo (co-sponsored by the Norwegian Kant Society) and was a more philosophically-oriented presentation and discussion, focusing more on the elements of Kant's ethics I use in my work (including my upcoming work on judgment). (UPDATE: A podcast of the University of Oslo talk can be found at this site.) The audiences in both cases were very engaged, offering insightful comments and criticism, and I found Oslo to be a gorgeous and multifaceted city, one to which I hope to return soon!
• Next was the Petrie-Flom conference on behavioral economics and health policy held at Harvard Law School on May 2 and 3, where I gave a talk critical of the use of nudges in health care contexts. (Happily, I was not the only one expressing that point of view!) It was wonderful to meet and talk with eminent figures in the field as Cass Sunstein, Russell Korobkin, and Glenn Cohen, and to get valuable feedback on my talk and my book The Manipulation of Choice; I was especially happy to hear that it has been read in the offices of the Behavioral Insights Team in the UK.

Both of these trips were a tremendous honor for me and have helped me look at what I do in a different light. Only the future will tell if there is any lasting effect on my attitude toward writing and academia, but I am very encouraged by all of the generous support and positive comments on my work I received in Norway and Boston.

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It has also been an exciting several weeks for me at Psychology Today, as I had three new posts that received significant promotion from the magazine (both on the front page of the site as well as their popular Facebook page): "The Real Problem With Adultery" (April 8), "Does a Sexless Relationship Justify Adultery? Part 1" (April 15), and "Does Sexless Marriage Justify Adultery? Part 2" (April 16). PT even went so far as to collect the two posts on sexless marriages with a couple other posts of mine on commitment in one of their daily collections (as shown to the right).

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Now that I'm firmly ensconced in lovely New Jersey once again, I'm finalizing my book on law and social economics, continuing work on several edited volumes, and (most urgently) checking copyedits for The Illusion of Well-Being. (I received the cover mock-ups just before I left for Boston, and they're amazing — the Palgrave Design Team really outdid themselves on this one.) It will be a busy month, especially when the semester ending at CSI and commencement at the end of the month just before I leave for Minneapolis for the Law and Society Association meetings… let's just say I'll be very happy to see June!

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Finally, one of my key influences as an economist and as an academic in general, Gary S. Becker, passed away recently — my personal remembrance can be found at Economics and Ethics. Rest in peace, Professor.