Freakonomics picks up a witty cartoon of “a wake-up app that economists would love”. It presents a solution to our tendency to hit the snooze button – a .99c penalty for the extra sleep. The idea taps into incentives and penalties, the sort of commitment devices that can be applied to many goals in life.
In a blog post for Farnam Steet, investment strategist Michael Mauboussin shares his behavioural economics reading list. It includes Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, Richard Thaler’s The Winner’s Curse and more.
Real life is “undoubtedly messier than standard economics” according to an article in The Economist that argues for an overhaul of the theory of consumer choice. It explains that choice overload goes against the standard idea that more choice is good. It says that choice overload highlights how too many options can make it difficult to make (important) decisions and sometimes lead to a failure to choose at all.
