Lisa Chow

The Affordable Care Act is transforming more than health insurance. In hospitals around the country, the legislation could transform the way doctors and nurses actually care for patients.

Part of the law is designed to rein in the nation's exploding health care costs by creating hundreds of little experiments that ...

Summa Akron City Hospital in Ohio is doing something unusual: sharing data with doctors on how much their patients and procedures cost the hospital.

The hospital is participating in one of the many experiments that the Affordable Care Act set into motion to help figure out how to reduce the ...

Our story about Amazon's Vine program, which sends free stuff to some of the site's top reviewers, prompted some interesting online discussion among Vine members.

"It did feel a little ironic testing yet another set of speakers listening to the broadcast," one Vine member ...

You're on Amazon.com. You're buying, say, a toaster, and you're checking out the customer reviews. You assume the people writing these reviews are people like you — people who wanted a toaster, went online and bought one. As it turns out, a lot of reviews on Amazon are written by ...

The other day, I was interviewing an economist who studies the effect college majors have on peoples' income. He was telling me that women often make decisions that lead them to earn less than they otherwise might.

Women are overrepresented among majors that don't pay very well (psychology, art, comparative ...

Erin Ford graduated from the University of Texas two years ago with a bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering. Recruiters came to campus to woo her. She got a paid summer internship, which turned into a full-time job after she graduated. Now, at age 24, she makes $110,000 a year.

Michael ...

"I wasn't even looking for a new car," Katrece Poole told me. But two years ago, a local car dealership running a direct-mail ad campaign sent her a letter saying they were making loans to lots of buyers. So she went down to the dealership, filled out the paperwork, and ...

Beth Glover was a juror on the trial of former Goldman Sachs trader Fabrice Tourre. When the lawyers were discussing the mortgages tied to the securities at the center of the case, Glover realized that, for all intents and purposes, they were talking about her mortgage.

"When they ...

The unemployment rate only includes people who don't have jobs and are looking for work. A much larger swath of people — about 36 percent of U.S. adults — don't have jobs and aren't looking for work at all. That figure is higher than it's been in decades (and, conversely, ...

William Roman wants to borrow money, but his bank won't lend him any more. So he's turning to his local pawn shop.

For Roman, a loan from the pawn shop is a lot easier to get. He doesn't have to fill out an application. The people at the pawn shop ...

More than half of all Japanese women quit their jobs after giving birth to their first child. That's more than double the rate in the U.S., and it's a problem for Japan's economy.

If more women returned to the workforce, it could give a huge boost to household income in ...

Boston tops New York — when it comes to venture capital funding that its start-up companies received during the first half of this year.

As part of our coverage on the importance of choosing a name for startup companies, we've been asking for suggestions for company names based on the descriptions of three actual bus...

One of the first things any new company has to do when it's starting is to come up with a name. WNYC's Lisa Chow and Jim Colgan interviewed company founders about how they chose their names, including Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Here's an extended transcript of their interview.

Branding experts say a good company name should have something to do with what the company does. Although it's not always the case with successful companies (e.g. Apple), when there's little or no budget, the name often has to do the marketing. Here are some company names taken from The New York Tech Meetup, a monthly gathering in New York City where new start-ups demo their products or services. 

Would Google be as successful a company had it been named Backrub? That was the name the search engine started with in 1996, and it's a question that weighs on the founders of hundreds of companies that are created in New York City every week.

New York City hotels are capitalizing on the growing number of business and leisure travelers coming to the city by raising their prices. The average daily room rate in May was $252, up nearly 9 percent from the same time a year ago, according to the hotel research firm Smith Travel Research.

Rates on mortgages, car loans and certain types of student loans could rise if the White House and Congress don't come to an agreement on raising the government's debt limit.

Some analysts expect second quarter earnings for big banks will be disappointing because trading revenue has fallen and consumers and businesses have resisted taking out new loans, hurting bank profitability. 

Housing advocates say foreclosure actions have fallen dramatically in New York City, primarily because state courts now require loan servicers and banks to verify the accuracy of their documents in foreclosure cases.