On reading novels (and economics)

We all know that reading a novel can transport you, delight you and intrigue you while you’re reading it. Now, thanks research by scientists at Emory University, we know that immersing yourself in a novel causes measurable physical changes in the brain that can be detected up to five days after the reader closes the book. 

The Emory researchers, in a paper for the journal Brain Connectivity, compared the effect to “muscle memory.” 

"The neural changes that we found associated with physical sensation and movement systems suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist," neuroscientist Gregory Berns said, according to a report in the journal Science Codex. "We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else's shoes in a figurative sense. Now we're seeing that something may also be happening biologically."

Read more here.

And by the way, the essay "Property and markets in Elmer Kelton novels" (Public Choice, 2014), is great. 

Markets and Morality

While seeing both costs and benefits of markets, Adam Smith promotes free markets not only on efficiency but also on moral grounds. Commerce is intertwined with morals, it supports moral development and at the same time it is supported by it. For Smith, commercial societies generate wealth which supports life for an increasing number of people, institutions which support liberty, and social conditions which facilitate moral impartiality. Recent findings from experimental economics seem to support Smith’s ideas that markets and some aspects of morality are dependent on each other, and in particular that the causal effects of the relationship seem to go from markets to morality.

That is from an article by Maria Pia Paganelli, it is titled "Commercial Relations: From Adam Smith to Field Experiments."