By Daniel Bennett, University of Melbourne

What makes us decide? At one level, this seems like an easy question: we think our options through, pick the one we like best and act on it.

If we dig a little deeper, though, the question becomes more difficult to answer. How do we settle on what our options are? What makes us prefer one option to another?

By Richard Tol, University of Sussex

By Natalie Starkey, The Open University

By Mark Israel, University of Western Australia

By Tamara Friedrich, University of Warwick

Victoria Beckham has been named Entrepreneur of the Year by Management Today. She topped their list of 100 successful entrepreneurs thanks to her fashion company’s turnover, which has grown from £1m to £30m in the past five years, and its employment growth, which has grown from three members of staff to 100 in the same time.

By Arnaud Chevalier, Royal Holloway and Olivier Marie, Maastricht University

Germany and the rest of Europe are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the associated communist regimes in Eastern Europe.