Here’s some not-so-happy news as the holiday shopping season continues: The price you see online for a given item may not be the same as the price others see. The retailer may ask you for more money, or just show you an array of more-expensive products, depending on what kind of machine you’re using, or […]

Today on The Gist, Stephen E. Flynn, political science professor at Northeastern University, explains that the Ebola story isn’t a story of federal government incompetence. It’s the story of a lack of investment and commitment to public health at a local, county, and state level. For the Spiel, Thomas Friedman delivers a train wreck of […]

When searching for a flight or hotel room online, it’s hard to know if you’re getting the best price. A new study from Northeastern University looked at how much prices change based on the user, and found a greater percentage of inconsistencies on travel sites than other kinds of retailers. The study looked at personalized […]

New jobs data reveal a rising number of Massachusetts residents discouraged with their employment prospects — even as others started looking for work again, in a sign of an uneven recovery across the state. Between October 2013 to September 2014, the average number of so-called “marginally attached” job-seekers grew by more than 3,000 compared to […]

At the Justice Department, senior officials like to congratulate themselves on the headline-making, big bucks settlements they have imposed upon banks and lenders for their part in causing the 2008 mortgage meltdown that sparked the biggest American financial crisis since the Great Depression. But wait a moment. Those settlement figures are not quite what they […]

Three out of four Americans want to seal the nation’s borders against travelers from Ebola-affected countries in West Africa. Republican members of Congress are demanding it. But experts say mandatory quarantine of health workers and travel bans are unnecessary and could cripple the global fight against Ebola. Against this backdrop, I had a long conversation […]

Freshmen in Arts & Sciences at Cornell in the 1960s were required to take a science course. I took chemistry, but should have taken geology. Chemistry was way too challenging for someone who came to Ithaca to study political science. Geology, I was told, was a course designed for athletes. It was known colloquially as […]

For years now, merchants have tracked individual online shopping habits to personalize their websites and attract customers. That also helps them make assumptions about income and spending power. But a new study says some companies are going beyond that by using what they know about each shopper to set different prices for the same product. […]

John Kwoka, an economics professor at Northeastern University and research fellow at the American Antitrust Institute, is skeptical. He says these kinds of agreements — chopping up a company and demanding that it compete against itself — usually fail. Firms find ways around the rules, he says. And the promised savings rarely materialize: “We know […]

The last time patients in New York City were forced into isolation came with the outbreak of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the early 1990s, said Wendy E. Parmet, professor of health policy and law at Northeastern University School of Law. In those cases, officials targeted those recalcitrant patients who refused to take their medications, she said, […]

The widely varying responses between New York and Dallas tell us a lot about the nation’s uneven preparedness for a deadly disease outbreak. So far, with Ebola, we seem to dodging the contagion bullet, but mainly because the virus is not easily transmitted. Yet what if this had been a more infectious kind of virus? […]

The five candidates for governor aired their differences on what role the state should take in crafting immigration policy during a forum on Latino issues Friday night at Northeastern University. Early in the forum, which was presented by El Mundo Boston, a Spanish language media outlet, and Northeastern, the candidates were asked to weigh in […]