Tag Archives: Behavioral Economics

For one, I find it difficult for behavior economics to explain why people are reacting in irrational ways. For example, University of Chicago poses some statements or questions on the issues. “Why do people often avoid or delay investing in 401ks or exercising, even if they know that doing those things would benefit them?” And, “Why do gamblers often risk more after both winning and losing, even though the odds remain the same, regardless of...

 At the ASSA in San Diego, before the pandemic It is hard to believe that Barkley has passed away. I met Barkley long ago, when I was still a PhD student in the 1990s, at the Eastern Economic Association Meeting, which still is one of the organizations that congregates both mainstream and heterodox economists with some degree of interaction. Perhaps the only such conference that still exists in the US. Barkley moved in between the mainstream and the heterodoxy. He should be seen, to a great...

One last example of a recent technology that scaled exceptionally well comes not from business but from social activism. In the days following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the spring of 2020, before anyone had been charged with a crime, the Grassroots Law Project organized a call drive to flood the phone lines and answering machines of public officials in Minnesota to demand justice. All volunteers had to do was call the number the Grassroots Law...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Habtic Standard: I wrote another article! This one is about why organizational change is hard and how it can be made less bad for workers…and it’s totally 100 percent not based off of personal experience I swear :)

Gerd Gigerenzer takes aim at Daniel Kahneman, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein for being uncritical and going too far. While not endorsing rational choice theory, he stresses that the truth lies between the extremes of rationality and irrationality and claims behavioral economics tends to over emphasize irrationality consequent on cognitive-effective bias. It's neither reason or all bias, either all or mostly, but a combination of rationality and irrationality.Statistical Modeling, Causal...

(From the video at the end of the post)Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Oxfam releases a report around the same time as Davos every year on who owns what portion of global wealth. Their spin on it is designed to make headlines, but Dylan Matthews explains why it’s really hard to measure.Also in Vox, Stephanie Wykstra provides a nice plain-language summary of what the research says about microloans. A very cool very cross randomized experiment (more than 50...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]On the Revival of the “Quarterly Capitalism” Discussion: I’m definitely not screaming “YES YOU HAVE A POINT THAT’S WHY HILLARY BROUGHT IT UP YEARS AGO” into a pillow…

[unable to retrieve full-text content]On the Revival of the “Quarterly Capitalism” Discussion: I’m definitely not screaming “YES YOU HAVE A POINT THAT’S WHY HILLARY BROUGHT IT UP YEARS AGO” into a pillow…

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Economist Beverages Just Got A Major Upgrade…: Happy Friday! You will probably not find it surprising that I am into basically anything that combines economics, bad puns, and booze.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Economist Beverages Just Got A Major Upgrade…: Happy Friday! You will probably not find it surprising that I am into basically anything that combines economics, bad puns, and booze.