How Do Cashless Payment Systems Impact a Developing Economy?

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Cashless payment systems are sweeping the globe. Introducing them in India, which has an underdeveloped banking system:

Led to smartphone addiction and sent productivity plunging.

Didn’t have an impact beyond enriching a few fintech entrepreneurs.

Led to higher household income and business ownership, partially because the systems produce records of work lenders could rely on.

Read on: All households benefited from the digital payments processing. The self-employed gained the most.

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California has low property taxes and high income taxes, leading some homeowners to establish residency for income tax purposes in other states and then spend less than half the year in their low-tax California house. There’s a catch:

If your income is from a California employer, dodging the state income tax is unlikely. It only works with passive income such as from investments.

People claiming Texas residency face the scorn of their California neighbors.

So-called tax migrants lose their season tickets to the Los Angeles Philharmonic and other cultural institutions.

Read on: A second home tax, in effect only levied on out-of-state residents, would eliminate this free riding and make the state’s tax system more equitable.

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Facing a period of industry instability, when choosing a new CEO, a board might best look to:

An outsider.

An executive running a subsidiary, but not overseeing the overall company.

The next-in-line executive at the overall company.

Read on: In a study, CEOs promoted from a subsidiary presided over a 3.5% increase in post-succession return-on-assets compared with companies led by an outsider CEO and a 4% increase in ROA compared with companies led by an insider.

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Clinical trials have long failed to include diverse patient groups. A 2000 order by President Bill Clinton compelled Medicare to cover costs of participating in trials, hoping to raise representation of older patients.

Big Pharma ignored the opportunity, figuring oldsters won’t live long enough to use a new drug much.

Big Pharma tried, but retired people kept forgetting the appointments.

It worked. Pharma increased development of drugs to treat old-people diseases and included more 65-plus people in trials.

Read on: Prior research conservatively estimated that the average per patient cost to recruit and retain trial participants ranges from $43,000 for early-stage trials to more than $330,000 for late-stage trials.

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Looking for a spouse or friend with a high EQ (or at least the ability to read emotions from another person’s eyes), you’d be better off choosing someone whose parents or grandparents were Chinese farmers of:

Wheat.

Rice.

Read on: Rice farming was formerly a communal activity in China and collectivist culture around it encouraged attention to others’ emotions. Wheat farming was more solitary.