Category Archives: Behavioral Economics
We are all Behavioral (part two)
After our last article on this subject, alert reader Liam pointed out that it might be harder to find an example when buyers are NOT behavioral and behave completely rationally during their purchases. This is quite true, so we thought we’d keep this entry short and show a good example of a company who has [...]
We are all behavioral (part one)
Economists have now discovered (or at least most of them have) that people are not efficiency robots, but they are what economists call “behavioral”, and what non-economists call “human”. What does this mean? Well, it turns out that people have biases, people can be lazy, people sometimes work against themselves and often make detrimental choices. [...]
Bet on who you know
What if I asked you who was the better sprinter, Usain Bolt or LaShawn Merritt, chances are the vast majority of you would give me the same answer: Usain Bolt. And yet, the vast majority of you could probably not name one specific race that Usain won, nor what his specialty is, let alone how [...]
Using Economics for Real Life
Forbes recently had an excellent article on Alvin Roth entitled “Un-Freakonomics“. Alvin Roth has created almost a cult following by doing the opposite of what Dubner and Levitt achieved with Freakonomics. Rather than use ‘the dismal science’ to find out whether Sumo wrestlers are cheating or not, he uses economics to do things like save [...]
The Upside of Irrationality
For those of you who enjoyed Freakonomics, Super Freakonomics, The Economic Naturalist, Nudge, Bringing Sexy Back to Economics, and various other books, and therefore thought you’d seen more or less all there was to see about quirky Economics, I am sorry to disappoint you, but Dan Ariely’s “The Upside of Irrationality” turns out to have [...]
