|
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
A Category Archive (430 entries)
|
|
November 6, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Both feature Tyler Cowen. Here (or perhaps you should start here), he talks about stories. It is classic Tyler, playing cat and mouse games with your head. Basically, he is saying that stories have an advantage in that they serve... MORE
November 5, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I'm a firm believer that (a) all publicity is good publicity, (b) the more attention my memes get, the better - even if if I get no credit. And in the past, The New Yorker has done me nothing but... MORE
November 2, 2009
Growth: Consequences
Arnold Kling
Edge devotes its latest symposium to how humans will process information in the current era. Tyler Cowen's latest book speaks to that issue, but he is nowhere to be found on the symposium. Still, I believe that Nick Bilton does... MORE
October 30, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
What causes people to change their minds? On this blog, I have argued that people do not change their minds on ideological issues. I have argued that econometric regression results typically do not change people's minds. Why is that?... MORE
October 28, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
He writes, Humans overwhelmed by the social complexities of helping a bum nearby think they know enough about societies far away, so that ethics becomes the main concern there... Beware the easy confidence of advising worlds far from your knowledge... MORE
October 20, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
In chapter 4 of Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, I try to help parents overcome their pessimistic bias. Kids over the age of 1 have long been the safest people in our society, we're all much safer than we... MORE
October 19, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
A comment on my last post on political dispositions: The real reason people with high IQs lack common sense is neurological. You can't be cerebral without sacrificing cunning. It takes real live brain matter to support each. Unless you've got... MORE
October 18, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
As a loss-leader for her new book against positive thinking, Barbara Ehrenreich is lashing out at Stevenson and Wolfers' work on declining female happiness. Wolfers responds here. Some remarkable features of the Ehrenreich-Wolfers exchange:1. Ehrenreich should be happy to learn... MORE
October 12, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Eric Falkenstein watched the Youtube of the Caplan-Boettke debate on Austrian economics. Falkenstein concludes, What is needed is something constructive, something the Austrians, Post-Keynesians, or Taleb, have failed to do. Let me place this in the context of my introduction... MORE
October 10, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Humans clearly attend closely to status, an important part of status is dominance, and a key way we show dominance is to tell others what to do. Whoever gets to tell someone else what to do is dominating, and... MORE
September 29, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
One of the themes in the second of my forthcoming books is that power is becoming concentrated while knowledge is becoming specialized. David Carr muses about how hard it is to know everything nowadays. In terms of what I call... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
FuturePundit on the finite supply of willpower.... MORE
September 16, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
It almost sounds like Posner's jumping on the personality-and-economics bandwagon:Optimism is also a personality trait, and, as it happens, one essential to human progress. As I have argued elsewhere with reference to our current economic situation, what Keynes called "animal... MORE
September 15, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
My best guess is that most insurance is bought not to reduce risk but instead to signal prudence and caring. The first life insurance companies had a terrible time selling "bets on their death," and only succeded when they... MORE
September 13, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
From his rebuttal to Krugman: Krugman is trying to say that a cabal of obvious crackpots bedazzled all of macroeconomics with the beauty of their mathematics, to the point of inducing policy paralysis. Alas, that won't stick. The sad fact... MORE
August 21, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Matt Yglesias wonders why politicians are not more strongly motivated by higher ideals. Selling the public good down the river to bolster your re-election chances isn't like stealing a loaf of bread to feed your starving children. The welfare rolls... MORE
August 19, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Robin Hanson pulls together various threads and concludes, So it seems the US has a finance and policy elite defined by college ties and related social connections, an elite with a strong sense that only people in their circle can... MORE
July 31, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Years ago, I thought about writing a piece called "Totalitarian Political Entrepreneurship." The premise: While guys like Lenin, Hitler, and Mao were hopelessly deluded about many things, their beliefs about how to win and hold power were probably correct. After... MORE
July 28, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Mankiw riddles Krugman this:Over the past eight years, Paul has tried to convince his readers that Republicans are stupid and venal. History suggests that Republicans will run the government about half the time. Does he really want to turn control... MORE
July 24, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
In the thirties, governments had Four Year Plans. Today, they have Four Year from Now Plans - big policies that basically don't kick in until the next election. Waxman-Markey lets emissions grow normally until 2012. When I criticized the House's... MORE
July 12, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
(Go here for the intro to this series on the realist theory of international relations). The behavior of individual voters is far from selfish. The main reason, I've often argued, is that voting against your objective self-interest is practically free,... MORE
July 6, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Is it just me, or does Larry Summers damn his boss with faint praise?"When I've heard him talk about economic issues--with the exception of NAFTA, where I just hope he doesn't believe what he says--he seems intelligent and serious. I... MORE
Economic Methods
Arnold Kling
Bryan writes, Suppose someone had the personality least favorable to economic conservatism: a 0 on Extraversion, 1 on Agreeableness, 0 on Conscientiousness, 0 on Stability, and 1 on Openness. According to the same regression referenced earlier, this person is expected... MORE
June 29, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
A word to the wise: If you have a theory and want it to spread far and wide, call it "realism." Who could be against realism? Case in point: The so-called "realist" theory of international relations. According to this view,... MORE
June 28, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
From Scientific American: One group that does not value perceived losses differently than gains are individuals with autism, a disorder characterized by problems with social interaction. When tested, autistics often demonstrate strict logic when balancing gains and losses, but this... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
The complete videocast of the AEI mini-conference on geoengineering is now up, including Scott Barrett's target speech, Thomas Schelling's comments, and my comments. Like Bart Simpson, I'm my own toughest critic, but I was pleased as punch with my extension... MORE
June 24, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Voters literally know less than zero about economic policy - we would have better policies if they just voted randomly. But people who believe in "retrospective voting models" often retort that voters' policy incompetence doesn't matter. They don't have to... MORE
June 19, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Remember the so-called "fundamental attribution error"? According to some psychologists and the economists who love them, we have a strong tendency to overestimate the importance of individual differences and underestimate the importance of circumstances. I've questioned its fundamentality and erroneousness... MORE
June 18, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
He writes, a boss who has known you for years may not promote you unless you get a better degree, even if that teaches you nothing useful for your job. He might not hire you without that degree, even if... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
When Robin Hanson arrived at GMU ten years ago, he was a hard-line rational choice political economist. (See his job market paper). For every political phenomenon, he insisted on "a story without fools." Not anymore. After a couple years of... MORE
June 17, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
My social intelligence is a lot higher than it used to be. I still wouldn't say that I'm "good with people." But in my youth, I was truly inept. In junior high, I had one real friend, and many overt... MORE
June 15, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Bryan recently put up two interesting posts, one on personality, the other on econometrics. On personality, he points to some analysis saying that the correlation is higher between certain personality traits and life outcomes than it is between socioeconomic status... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
From Time, of all places, comes this column by Joel Stein:It turns out that letting me vote on stuff is a bad idea, for much the same reason that giving me a credit card was a bad idea: I love... MORE
June 14, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I finally found the time to read "The Power of Personality: The Comparative Validity of Personality Traits, Socioeconomic Status, and Cognitive Ability for Predicting Important Life Outcomes." [new working link!] It's a meta-analysis, so you've really got to trust the... MORE
June 12, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Quoth David Neumark:The accumulated evidence undermines the case for minimum wages even in the best of times. I recognize that there is continuing debate about some of the effects of minimum wages, and that strong public support for higher minimums... MORE
June 3, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I've been arguing for years that non-economists suffer from pessimistic bias. They underestimate the recent past, present, and future performance of the economy. A new piece in the Journal of Economic Psychology is consistent with my thesis: When you ask... MORE
June 2, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
From my chairman, Don Boudreaux:This afternoon you interviewed a pundit who claims to be "inspired" by the way that Bill and Hillary Clinton, having been so critical of Barack Obama during the presidential primary campaign, now work so agreeably with... MORE
May 29, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
A commenter recommended Daniel Nettle's book on Personality. It was a good recommendation. Various lines of evidence suggest that our interest in money--and the material goods it buys--is mainly as a marker of comparative social status. Some more notes and... MORE
May 27, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
He writes, many of the new-fangled types of intelligence that have become popular recently...boil down to general intelligence plus some combination of the Big Five personality traits. Social intelligence...seems rather well predicted by a combination of general intelligence and extraversion,... MORE
May 21, 2009
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Geoffrey Miller writes, Many products are signals first and material objects second. I am only a little way past the introduction to Spent. Tyler has already read it. So has Robin. So far, Miller hasn't told me anything that Robin... MORE
May 14, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Politicians break their promises because voters don't rationally punish political promise-breaking. But why do politicians want to break their promises in the first place? What's the point of promising X, then backing out?The simplest answer is just that circumstances change... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Rightly or wrongly, autistics are often seen as staking out their independence from the group and from group norms. They're seen as questioning the psychological power of the leaders and bullies and indicating that they do not, within their... MORE
May 11, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Russell Hardin describes an economic theory of what people "know" (I keep wanting to substitute "believe" for "know"). we can explain bits of knowledge that a given person has as being substantially affected by the costs and benefits of obtaining... MORE
May 4, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Obama's already breaking his campaign promises. But you don't really need to read the news to know that, do you? Virtually all successful politicians break their promises.When you think about it, though, politicians' penchant for promise-breaking is puzzling. If making... MORE
April 26, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
I was on travel, including my health care debate in Vermont (Robert Kuttner was sick, and David Corn filled in). Now, I have galleys of two books to go over. One is something I wrote quite a while ago with... MORE
April 24, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
David Henderson
"I'll be miserable for five years as long as you make me wealthy." I've always been a fan of Richard Epstein's thinking. I hadn't known, however, that he had thoughts on the "happiness" literature. I learned a lot about much... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
When I'm 89, I'll be grateful if I have a quarter of Szasz's insight and writing ability. Here's his latest - the fascinating tragedy of mathematician and AI pioneer Alan Turning:In 1951 Turing... confessed to his homosexual affair and was... MORE
April 23, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen finds research suggesting that the more highly you think of your morals, the less altruistic you are. I could think of so many things to say about this, and how it explains who gives to charity and who... MORE
April 13, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
In chapter one of his economics textbook Hidden Order, David Friedman writes, Economics is that way of understanding behavior that starts from the assumption that individuals have objectives and tend to choose the correct way to achieve them. ...For a... MORE
April 11, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Don Boudreaux writes, progress necessarily involves freeing individuals from their status stations -- freeing persons from stations assigned by circumstances such as skin color, family name, genitalia, sexuality, nationality -- and thereby allowing individuals to determine as best as each... MORE
April 10, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I had a strange feeling reading the latest Cato Unbound. I find Patri Friedman completely convincing when he writes:Our brains have many specific adaptations tuned for the hunter-gatherer environment in which we evolved, which in some ways differs wildly from... MORE
March 20, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
In Be the Solution, Michael Strong writes (p. 66-69), Are altruists occupationally prone to anger? Well,, it turns out that they are, in fact, biologically inclined to be angry and punitive toward those who they perceive to be not being... MORE
March 19, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
From Megan McArdle:Life is rather too short to spend it getting angry at remote strangers.To which I'd add: It's also too short to spend it getting angry at petty slights, not-so-remote strangers, friends, family...You might say, "Unfortunately, it's impossible not... MORE
March 18, 2009
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
On AIG, you might wish to read James Kwak. You should definitely read James Hamilton. But more shocking yet, at least if we measure these things in dollars and cents, is the amount of taxpayer funds that have gone to... MORE
March 11, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Changeling is another counter-example to my rule that true stories make bad movies. (spoilers ahead) It's a long, sad tale: A child gets abducted, the police say they've found him, the mother says "That's not my son!," the police say... MORE
March 10, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Eric Crampton was there with me on opening night for The Fellowship of the Ring. Now this former EconLog guest blogger is a professor in Middle Earth, a.k.a. New Zealand. And he's finally started his own blog, Offsetting Behavior, to... MORE
February 28, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Only because I am too busy. Grant McCracken on whether restrained consumer spending will be temporary or permanent. Virginia Postrel on the same topic, based on discussions at the Kauffman Foundation Forum. It was great to see her looking so... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
David Henderson
In this radio interview, Scott Horton interviews me about various current economic issues including: the Obama budget, the Bush-Paulson-Bernanke bailout, why most of the Republicans in Congress have zero credibility in pushing for small government, the economics of imperialism, Adam... MORE
February 27, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
An article in Prospect: A company chairman is told a new project will increase profits but harm the environment. He says, "I don't care about harming the environment. Let's start the new project. I just want to make as much... MORE
February 24, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Michael Brooks, writing in The New Scientist, says, Bering considers a belief in some form of life apart from that experienced in the body to be the default setting of the human brain. Education and experience teach us to override... MORE
February 19, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I officially nominate Greg Mankiw for an Emperor Has No Clothes Award. The Award (it's real!) normally goes to critics of religion. But politics is the premiere religion of the modern world - and where else can you find impious... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
My co-author Scott Beaulier's now blogging and teaching a course about Atlas Shrugged. He always was lucky... except for that time that he accidentally decapitated himself during his first session of Dungeons and Dragons, but that's another story.Anyway, Scott's class... MORE
February 4, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller do not come to praise mainstream macroeconomics. Keynes' followers rooted out almost all of the animal spirits...that lay at the heart of his explanation for the Great Depression...They...minimized the intellectual distance between The... MORE
January 30, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I while back, I discussed some evidence that blaming people for your problems makes you feel worse about them:If and who you blame for bad events matters too. In one study, "[V]ictims of severe accidents who blamed themselves for the... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I've occasionally said that if unicorns don't exist, we can't have a real argument about what unicorns are like. But if that's right, how is Szaszian therapy possible? How can you practice psychotherapy if you don't believe in the existence... MORE
January 28, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
The standard argument against voting for third parties is that "You're throwing your vote away." There's no point voting for someone who can't win.Now consider how this applies to Singapore, where even second parties have no real prospect of winning. ... MORE
January 21, 2009
Business Economics
Arnold Kling
President Obama comes across to me as the Master of the Mixed Signal. It seems unclear how he will set priorities or where he stands on several key issues. I think this goes beyond a calculated effort to try to... MORE
January 14, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
From Kahneman et al's "Would You Be Happier If You Were Richer?":Strack and colleagues reported an experiment in which students were asked: (i) "How happy are you with your life in general?" and (ii) "How many dates did you have... MORE
January 8, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Not very well, according to Tyler Cowen. The more we feel out of control, the more our brains imagine patterns that don't really exist. ...Studies show that if people contemplate and reaffirm their most important values, such as honesty and... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
David Henderson
Joe Nocera has a nice piece on risk management in last Sunday's New York Times magazine. A great line: "The old adage, 'garbage in, garbage out' certainly applies," Groz said. "When you realize that VaR is using tame historical data... MORE
January 6, 2009
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Here's the latest paper on the puzzle of female protectionism - "Why are Women More Protectionist than Men?" by Eugene Beaulieu and Michael Napier. (For earlier work, see here and here). And here's Beaulieu and Napier's extremely frustrating closing paragraph:Although... MORE
December 26, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Stephen Greenspan, a psychiatrist who lost money in the Bernard Madoff scam, writes, Gullibility is a sub-type of foolish action, which might be termed "induced-social." It is induced because it always occurs in the presence of pressure or deception by... MORE
December 22, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Schools usually try to put twins in different classes. In part, it's for the convenience of the teacher - identical twins can be hard to tell apart. But the main rationale is that if you separate twins, they will make... MORE
December 17, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Since 9/11, you've heard it a thousand times: "If you want peace, prepare for war." My question: What about your enemies? If they want peace, should they prepare for war, too?Yes, it's a trick question. Who's going to say, "If... MORE
November 29, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I don't know Gary Becker's stand on happiness research, but he clearly thinks that his fellow economists overlook the importance of unhappiness:Economists have underplayed the cost to individuals of mild to severe recessions in part because they have neglected the... MORE
November 14, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
And here's a scene about the rationality of charitable donors, inspired in part by Landsburg's "giving your all" theorem: d. Charitable GivingBennett and DiLorenzo (1994) argue that due to donors' rational ignorance, the market for charitable giving works poorly. But... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
The earliest draft of "Rational Ignorance vs. Rational Irrationality," (2001. Kyklos 54, pp. 3-26) was unpublishably long. Here's one of my favorite "deleted scenes": e. JuriesAnglo-American rules of evidence [almost] explicitly assume that jurors are not rational. Judges weigh information's... MORE
November 12, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
When a Nazi announces that he's had a change of heart, I just don't believe him. Take the infamous David Duke. In his youth, he wore a swastika. Now he has a book that's subtitled a "path to racial understanding." ... MORE
November 7, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Paul Krugman says that the American people just ended 14 years of monster rule. If he's right, though, what does that say about the rationality of the American people? I don't see how those who agree with Krugman could draw... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Inspired by Pascal Boyer's latest piece in Nature, Robin Hanson reminds us that he's a preacher's son:We feel a deep pleasure from realizing that we believe something in common with our friends, and different from most people. We feel an... MORE
November 6, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
A few weeks ago, Larry Bartels presented a new paper here arguing that governments around the world spend less than their citizens want. Most of his evidence comes from the international ISSP survey, which asks:Listed below are various areas of... MORE
November 5, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
The financial crisis was a huge hit for practically everyone. Even if you owned no stock - directly or indirectly - you're still on the hook for the bailout. When the price of gas spiked, in contrast, the typical American... MORE
November 4, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Will Wilkinson writes, I'm not voting today, but that's simply because I didn't change my registration when I moved. That's no excuse! Right in front of me in line was a man who was illiterate, spoke no English, and was... MORE
October 30, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
I recommend this lecture from Bill Bishop. By the way, I am finding an incredible amount of interesting videos these days. I think that somebody who is motivated to learn and has some good sources of recommendations could get do... MORE
October 29, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Brad DeLong sounds like he advocates ostracizing Douglas Holtz-Eakin for (a) working for McCain and (b) calling Obama a "redistributionist." At least that's how I read Brad's approving quotation of an unnamed source saying:Someone needs to tell Holtz-Eakin he can't... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
The parody of John Stossel "Should Some People Not Vote?" has five times the Youtube count as the original. Why am I not surprised?P.S. I wish I was as persuasive as the guy who's supposed to be me...... MORE
October 28, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
A standard complaint about libertarians is that they want to commodify the sacred. I've often heard, for example, that selling organs is just plain wrong. Money has no place here (unless "here" is Iran); the only legitimate motive for an... MORE
October 26, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
According to IQ tests, we're getting smarter. But when I was reading Warren Harding's "Return to Normalcy" speech, it seemed way over the heads of a modern audience. The anomaly inspired me to plug Harding's words into an online grade... MORE
October 25, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Unemployment is 6.1%, and we're running around like chickens with our heads cut off. It makes me wonder: What were recessions like during the Cold War? Back in those bad old days, the Worst Case Scenario was truly grim. With... MORE
October 21, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Here's an eyebrow-furrowing 1-star review of an anti-Obama book I haven't read. I guess the reviewer is serious, but you tell me:There will always be skeptics and nonbelievers. In "The Obama Nation," Dr. Corsi makes clear he is no believer... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
What's the best way to scare a kid? You wouldn't just put on an ugly mask and chase him. He might think it was a big joke and start laughing. To be confident of a successful scare, you'd lay some... MORE
October 17, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Why did so many people ignore so many warnings of impending economic crisis? Gary Becker's got a nice story: We're usually right to ignore such warnings:While Roubini and others who warned about weaknesses in the mortgage market and other parts... MORE
October 13, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Robin Hanson tells us that politics isn't about policy. I think he exaggerates, but in the interest of fair disclosure, here's an amusing Howard Stern clip to back Robin up.HT: Mark Steckbeck... MORE
October 12, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Last week was the most plausible example of a psychologically-driven financial panic that I've ever lived through. I have to think that most of the people who sold did so because they were scared by falling prices. Falling prices, in... MORE
October 10, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Here's a great question from Chuck in the comments:Do you have a reply to those who might say that the rationality of voters is largely irrelevant since election outcomes can be predicted by macro factors like income and GDP growth?Yes,... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
My 20/20 segment - or at least part of it - is already up on Youtube. The title: "Should Some People Not Vote." It would have been nice to get more airtime, but it's an honor just meeting Stossel and... MORE
October 2, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Here's another section that didn't make it into the final draft of my book:Mutual cancellation of errors does happen on occasion. Beliefs about inflation are my favorite example. Most economists who tally the costs of inflation conclude that - at... MORE
September 29, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I was on CTV this morning. As usual, the media wanted to talk about a few obscure paragraphs in my book where I suggest that we reconsider franchise restrictions. A year ago, I might have been scared to say this... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
"Gov. Palin is merely less skilled in passing off inanities and claptrap as profundities." Ouch! I'm glad the poison pen who said it likes me.... MORE
September 21, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Googling "bail-out rich" basically kicks back a bunch of libertarians. Where are the left-wing demagogues denouncing the bail-outs as "welfare for the rich"? Where are the right-wing demagogues denouncing the bail-outs as "foreign aid for the rich"? Whatever demagogues are... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Recent events remind me of Cowen and Sutter's 1998's article on "Why Only Nixon Could Go to China." From the abstract: "Right-wing politicians sometimes can implement policies that left-wing politicians cannot, and vice versa. Contemporary wisdom has it that 'only... MORE
September 17, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
From Shenkman, Just How Stupid Are We?:The economist and liberal columnist Paul Krugman is convinced that the dawn of a new liberal era is upon us. If it is, one can be certain that liberals will stop complaining about the... MORE
September 14, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Razib has the story. I do want to note the correlations between Openness and the following metrics on the state level: % Arts and entertainment = 0.23 % Computer and mathematical = 0.24 Patent production per capita = 0.28 Of... MORE
September 13, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
David Brooks is not up to them. Shock me, shock me.... MORE
September 11, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I'm currently writing replies to eight critiques of my book for a forthcoming issue of Critical Review. In Jon Elster and Helene Landemore's critique, they raise the self-referential objection: Doesn't your book's thesis apply to you? This reminded me that... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Yesterday, I was on Canada's CBC Radio's "The Current." Today, I'm at #132 on amazon.ca. In part, I gave my standard spiel about irrational voters. But they also gave me a chance to make an original point. In the podcast,... MORE
September 8, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I think that people are a lot more rational (and better-informed) as consumers than they are as voters. Other people disagree. Pointing to existing surveys isn't a very helpful way to resolve this debate: If people get 70% on a... MORE
September 7, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
A little while back, Greg Mankiw praised Peggy Noonan for "summarizing a key difference between the political parties." As Noonan puts it:Neither party ever gets it quite right, the balance between the taxed and the needy, the suffering of one... MORE
September 2, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
My wunderkind colleague (and former student) Pete Leeson kicks off his first day at Freakonomics with reflections on the Bigfoot/UFO correlation:States with more U.F.O. sightings also have more Bigfoot sightings. In fact, six of the top ten U.F.O. and Bigfoot... MORE
August 29, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Economists and the public systematically disagree; but can they at least agree about which problems are bigger than others? To check, I returned to the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy. (Yes, I do talk about this survey... MORE
August 27, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Concerning campaign smears, Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt write, Journalists should avoid presenting both sides of a story when one is false - and take into account how readers' brains process the disagreements. The following four rules can guide their... MORE
August 22, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Happiness researchers often advise us to follow the Epicurean strategy of lowering our expectations. To quote Tsunami Bomb:Be grateful that you have a brain for thinking, And legs to take you places.But suppose your problem is that you're overweight because... MORE
August 21, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I was surprised to hear Arnold say:The way to make yourself really miserable is to compare your salary to that of the most overpaid, incompetent peer or superior. The way to make yourself feel really good is to compare your... MORE
August 11, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Here's an especially wise observation by David Balan:So then I asked him whether by "no evidence" he meant that there have been lots of studies directly on this point which came back with the result that more chemo doesn't help,... MORE
August 4, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
He suggests that there are no limits to growth. In a special issue of the American Economic Review about thirty years ago, some physical chemists wrote that once the energy problem is solved, nothing is scarce. If material X is... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Two of my best book presentations are now online. Here's a serious, scholarly version (video) at the Collège de France. Here's a funny, popular version (audio only) at the Foundation for Economic Education. Or at least the first is what... MORE
July 28, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Here's my favorite paragraph in the first half of the new Global Catastrophic Risks:...I have personally observed what look like harmful modes of thinking specific to existential risks. The Spanish flu of 1918 killed 25-50 million people. World War II... MORE
July 20, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Suppose a random person is living on a desert island without hope of rescue. Call him the Initial Inhabitant, or I.I. Another random person unexpectedly washes up on shore, coughing up water. Call him the New Arrival, or N.A. While... MORE
July 16, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Bruno Frey writes, procedural utility has also been found to play a role in consumers' decisions. The first evidence of this was presented by Kahneman, et al., who investigated customers' reactions to a situation where the price of a good... MORE
July 15, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
In Happiness: A Revolution in Economics, Bruno S. Frey writes (p. 30) Human beings are unable and unwilling to make absolute judgments. Rather, they constantly draw comparisons from their environment, from the past, or from their expectations of the future.... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Andrew Healy, my favorite new empirical political economist, has written a bold new paper. You might have thought that disasters were "acts of God," but Healy argues that the American voter is a co-conspirator. From the abstract:Using comprehensive data on... MORE
July 14, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
When we see people making bad decisions - whether as consumers or voters - we often blame the "complexity" of the issues they face. If Ph.D. economists can't figure out the best mortgage to use, how can we expect the... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Am I misinterpeting the case for humility? Maybe the point of humility isn't better communication, but better understanding. It's hard to learn if you think you already know everything. This sounds good. But if your goal is better understanding, your... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
My week at the IHS seminar in Chicago returned a long-lived libertarian meme to my field of vision. The meme: Humility. If libertarians want to communicate with a broader audience, we've got to stop being so full of ourselves. So... MORE
July 12, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Strange as it sounds, firms often give stuff away. Sometimes the reason is that the good is so cheap that it's not worth charging charging for it. See: water at restaurants. Other times, though, firms give stuff away to appease... MORE
July 7, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Will Wilkinson and Robin Hanson have at it. When Tyler Cowen says "self-recommending," does that mean he recommends it without watching it? Anyway, a few issues. 1. Hanson says that people have a propensity to disagree, just to be contrary.... MORE
July 2, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Peter Orszag recommends a talk by David Brooks at the Aspen Ideas Festival. The web site for the conference says that full video will be available, but for now there are only short clips. Go here and look for the... MORE
June 30, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I was in a bad equilibrium last night. I felt a little agitated when I went to bed, which made it a little hard to fall asleep, which made me more agitated, and which made it even harder to sleep...... MORE
June 28, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Drew Westen's The Political Brain is largely a how-to manual for inspiring political emotions. But to be honest, the main emotion is inspired in me was disgust. Here's the passage to which I had the strongest reaction:[T]he Kerry campaign simply... MORE
June 27, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
"Nothing is more irrational than spending our lives trying to fend off mortality when no one has ever escaped that fate." (Westen, The Political Brain) You could just as easily say, "Nothing is more irrational than going to the movies... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
How often have you heard the old saying, "If you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart; if you're still a liberal at 30, you have no brain"? Right or wrong, Drew Westen's The Political Brain gives me... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Reviewing Bruno Frey's latest book, Alan Wolfe writes, Frey proposes what he calls "positive Constitutional economics." ...Federalism would be strengthened by decentralizing power, not to the states but to an entirely new political element that would have limited and defined... MORE
June 24, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Here's another great book review by Herbert Gintis. The book: Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational. Its biggest flaw:Ariely is a creative experimenter with zero capacity to deal with economic theory. By accepting the behavioral paradigm ("people are not logical, they are... MORE
June 20, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Remember the famous study showing that women hate taking care of their kids? The standard soundbyte is that childcare is barely more enjoyable than housework. Here's Will Wilkinson* favorably quoting Arthur Brooks, who cites the original study in Science by... MORE
June 8, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
It's pretty hard to find an economist who doesn't scoff at the Senate's latest hearings on oil price manipulation. But these hearings raise an awkward question for me: Since I've praised the gas tax cut (in print and on t.v.)... MORE
June 5, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Robin Hanson has written the one piece that everyone on earth should read before they post comments on a blog:Writing is hard in part because words have many associations that vary among readers. Even when we use carefully choose our... MORE
June 3, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Arthur Brooks says that political extremists are happier than moderates. While he tells an interesting story, this seems like a case where overall life evaluations might yield a very different answer than time diaries or beeper studies. Consider this striking... MORE
May 31, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
How would people's preferences change if they knew more? Political scientists usually attack this question using the so-called "Enlightened Preference" method. (See Scott Althaus' Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics for a fantastic survey of this large literature). The gist of... MORE
May 28, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
David Boaz writes, Messrs. Obama and McCain are telling us Americans that our normal lives are not good enough, that pursuing our own happiness is "self-indulgence," that building a business is "chasing after our money culture," that working to provide... MORE
May 26, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
One of the examples that comes up in the Robin Hanson podcast concerns dating. If the point is to signal to the person that you are healthy, wealthy, and intelligent, why not just bring your health records, your bank statement,... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
This podcast is typical Robin Hanson. You don't have time to absorb one of his ideas before he is on to the next. You probably need to listen two or three times.... MORE
May 12, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
He writes, Me, I want to believe whatever is true even if that makes me unhappy. And with that attitude, I doubt attending church would make me happier. More generally, even if happiness researchers found that on average "People who... MORE
May 11, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Arthur Brooks, of Gross National Happiness fame, is now guest blogging for Freakonomics. So this seems like the perfect time to disclose his hidden secrets of happiness - the "a-ha" surprises you'll find on a close reading of his book:... MORE
May 6, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
John Tierney writes, We may not slaughter animals anymore to ward off a plague, but we think buying health insurance will keep us from getting sick. Our brains may understand meteorology, but in our guts we still think that not... MORE
April 28, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Why do countries and groups within countries engage in large-scale violent conflict? Social scientists' knee-jerk impulse is to look for objective conflict of interest: It's about land, oil, or whatever. But if you watch a standard news channel like CNN,... MORE
April 21, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen recently solicited topics, and I peeked. Here was one: More "meta" stuff -- how to read, how to think, how to write, etc. Tyler's tricks on being a prolific, successful academic. My tip is to pay attention to... MORE
April 18, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
A petition at the Economist's View accuses ABC of insulting the intelligence of the American people. I'd like to respond by accusing the petition's signatories of complimenting the intelligence of the American people. And at least ABC seems to have... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Thaler and Sunstein's latest piece provides a perfect illustration of what's wrong with "sophisticated" critiques of laissez-faire. They begin sensibly enough:In the past 20 years, there has been a growing interest in cutting-edge research that has come to be called... MORE
April 17, 2008
Regulation and Subsidies
Arnold Kling
Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein write, government would achieve simplified transparency by requiring all lenders to provide borrowers with an electronic file that contains, in standardized form, information on every feature of the contract. Instead of fine print,... MORE
April 15, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Is support for organ markets in the blood? One of the world's most articulate defenders of organ markets is a second-generation Iranian - and guess what else?Only one country in the world has eliminated the shortage of transplant kidneys. Only... MORE
April 6, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Once again, Arnold is going overboard in his opposition to happiness research. It's one thing to say that (a) "happiness" has more than one meaning, or (b) that there's more to life than happiness, or (c) that a longer time... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Will Wilkinson writes, I just got Arthur Brooks’ new book Gross National Happiness in the mail. Brooks quite rightly points out that happiness research doesn’t really do much to support conventional liberal policies, and he gives it a right-wing spin,... MORE
April 4, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang write, In the short term, you should spend your limited willpower budget wisely. For example, if you do not want to drink too much at a party, then on the way to the festivities, you... MORE
April 2, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
A reader sent me an excerpt from a fascinating interview with Hitler (by one Major Josef Hell) on why he singled out the Jews for extermination:When I now broached the question of what the source of his so strongly felt... MORE
April 1, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
This speech by Robert Higgs has a remarkable discussion of Hermann Göring's analysis of war and public opinion:This account comes to us from Gustave M. Gilbert, the German-speaking prison psychologist who had free access to all of the prisoners during... MORE
March 28, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
More educated people almost always have more sensible beliefs than less educated people. I've said it many times. But this Wednesday at lunch, Erik Snowberg from Stanford pointed out an interesting counter-example: Less educated people have less biased beliefs about... MORE
March 25, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Sunday's Simpsons re-run was new to me, and I laughed so hard my I couldn't get out the words to explain the joke to my sons:Homer [mockingly]: Ooh, the PATRIOT Act is so terrible! The government might find out what... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Yesterday I did a 10-minute interview in my office with self-experimentalist and diet guru Seth Roberts. Today he blogged it:My self-experimentation inspired Bryan Caplan to do his own self-experiment: Could he lose weight by eating less without discomfort? He did... MORE
March 6, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I just finished re-reading The Nurture Assumption by Judith Harris. It holds up like few other books do. But perhaps the weakest part is her discussion of counter-examples - Traits where parenting does seem to make a big difference. The... MORE
February 27, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Nicholas A. Christakis says, We found that weight gain in a variety of kinds of people you might know affected your weight gain — weight gain in your friends, in your spouse, in your siblings and so forth. Moreover, people... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
From the comments:Buzzcut writes: Troy, discipline is hard. People are lazy. My guilty pleasure is "Supernanny". Last week, she had a family with 6 kids to deal with (Supernanny said less than 2% of families have 6 or more kids).... MORE
February 9, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Here's a great passage from Herb Gintis' review of Avner Offer's The Challenge of Affluence:The great American vaudeville singer Sophie Tucker remarked, "I've been rich and I've been poor---and believe me, rich is better." This book... contrasts Sophie Tucker's widely... MORE
February 8, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Greater Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life features a truly funny joint review of my The Myth of the Rational Voter and Drew Westen's The Political Brain. This is probably the only published review that I consider unfair. But... MORE
February 5, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
At the end of every semester, GMU students evaluate their courses on a scale of 1-5. As I've discussed before, 5 ("excellent") is the standard response. So I was shocked this morning to see that students at GMU have suddenly... MORE
January 18, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Tim Besley's Principled Agents? is supposed to get a full issue's worth of attention from The Review of Austrian Economics in the near future. Here's my review essay, and here's my favorite part (endnotes and references omitted):[P]olitical agency problems are... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
David Brooks writes, In reality, we voters — all of us — make emotional, intuitive decisions about who we prefer, and then come up with post-hoc rationalizations to explain the choices that were already made beneath conscious awareness. “People often... MORE
January 17, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Remember the scene in the first Austin Powers movie where Dr. Evil tries to hold the country hostage for one million dollars? That's how silly the presidential candidates' "economic stimulus packages" sound to me. And that's what I got to... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Is lack of self-control a problem in your life? Or just a convenient excuse? If it's the former, stickK.com is now happy to take your money to solve your problem - whether its losing weight, stopping smoking, exercising regularly, or... MORE
January 13, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Helen Johns and Paul Ormerod write, One could conclude from the lack of correlation over time between aggregate happiness and almost any other socioeconomic variable of interest one of two things. Either that attempting to improve the human lot through... MORE
January 9, 2008
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
I started to write this as a blog post this morning, but I turned it into an essay, and TCS quickly ran it. So, I still have not defined "cult." For now, let's say that you are in a cult... MORE
January 8, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Punishing politicians for bad weather seems like the height of illogic. But punishing politicians for responding poorly to bad weather makes perfect sense. The governor of Louisiana doesn't create hurricanes, but he can deal with a hurricane well or poorly.... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Edward Castronova talks about World of Warcraft, Second Life, and such with Russ Roberts on the latest econtalk. I used to play bridge quite a bit, but I stopped when I went to grad school. At that point, the last... MORE
January 5, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Of course I'm going to like an animated movie based on an autobiographical graphic novel about the Iranian Revolution. But virtually every critic who's seen this movie agrees: Persepolis is excellent. Don't miss it. My favorite part is when the... MORE
January 1, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Robin Hanson will like this one.... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
This year's "Edge" question is What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?. Fifteen years ago, Brockman wrote, the traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly... MORE
December 31, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
The LA Times recently ran a front-page story on Tiffany Sitton, a 23-year-old schizophrenic girl. Its official position, of course, is that Sitton is a victim of a disease. But the details of the story paint a different - and... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Cass Sunstein and Ed Glaeser: we suggest that social learning is often best characterized by what we call Credulous Bayesianism. Unlike perfect Bayesians, Credulous Bayesians treat offered opinions as unbiased and independent and fail to adjust for the information sources... MORE
December 19, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Scott Althaus is the leading scholar of "enlightened preferences." In his book, he provides a massive body of evidence showing that people who know more about politics have systematically different policy preferences - even controlling for a long list of... MORE
December 12, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Kwame Anthony Appiah writes, Edouard Machery, a philosopher of science at the University of Pittsburgh by way of the Sorbonne, told subjects about a man named Joe who visits the local smoothie shop and asks for the largest drink available.... MORE
December 11, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Forget "the Best of 2007"; Philip Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment may well be the best book ever written on political psychology. (See here for an earlier discussion). I say this even though I'm a big defender of experts, and Tetlock's... MORE
December 8, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Sometimes I think I could spend the rest of my life reading War and Peace, then Anna Karenina, then starting over with War and Peace. Here's another thought-provoking passage from AK:'What do they want to argue for? No one ever... MORE
December 4, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Eliezer at Overcoming Bias has a thoughtful post that manages to work in my very favorite passage from the Bible. P.S. The Legos say it better than I ever could.... MORE
December 3, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I'm setting up a panel on my book for the 2008 Public Choice meetings. If you're going and want to publicly criticize The Myth of the Rational Voter, please let me know. In fact, I'd consider it a personal favor.... MORE
November 27, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Earlier this month, I received the most amazing feedback yet on my book. A successful politician wrote me the following letter. I reprint it, redacted, with his explicit permission. (If you find the inline version too hard to read, here's... MORE
November 23, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Here's the childless-by-choice Lionel Shriver, in Maybe Baby:[A] recent New York Times Magazine article cited research documenting that while marriage makes people on average happier, parenthood makes them less so. And you'd think that someone like me would seize on... MORE
November 19, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
The modern world's most prominent proponent of torture has to be 24's Jack Bauer. How many fictional lives has he saved by bringing on the pain? But let's not give Bauer too much credit. He's building on the shoulders of... MORE
November 17, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Yesterday I spoke at the University of Virginia's Miller Center (video coming to local PBS in about two weeks) as well as its Department of Economics. The cost: I had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 7 AM.... MORE
November 12, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I've previously argued that much - perhaps most - talk about "self-control" problems reflects social desirability bias rather than genuine inner conflict:Part of the reason why people who spend a lot of time and money on socially disapproved behaviors say... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
If you want to publish obvious results, it really helps to scan some brains first. Case in point: "This is Your Brain on Politics," an op-ed in Sunday's NYT:In anticipation of the 2008 presidential election, we used functional magnetic resonance... MORE
November 10, 2007
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Is called The Logic of Life. I hated the introduction. At one point, Harford writes, Might there not be such a thing as a rational blowjob? I don't think of myself as a prude, but I wound up muttering to... MORE
November 5, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
After Nobel prize-winner James Watson publicized his views on African IQ, there was an angry backlash. Before long, he took most of it back and begged forgiveness. If this sounds familiar, it should; the same thing happened when Larry Summers... MORE
October 31, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen will be one of the protagonists at the Economist debate in New York on November 10th. The proposition is "America is failing at the pursuit of happiness." For the affirmative will be Jeff Sachs and Betsey Stevenson. For... MORE
October 23, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
My basic model of children is that they are extremely honest adults. They say what they think, not what they are supposed to think. So what am I to make of the following incident? The scene: Sunday night at 8:10... MORE
October 20, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Has Gary Becker re-discovered what the Chicago School is all about? Here's Becker turning his back on Milton Friedman back in 1976:I find it difficult to believe that most voters are systematically fooled about the effects of policies like quotas... MORE
October 19, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Daniel Kahneman, the psychologist who won an economics Nobel, talked at Edge.org. Transcript. it turns out that experience utility can be defined in at least two very different ways. One way is when a dentist asks you, does it hurt?... MORE
October 18, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
A reader calls this the "most bizarre form of make-work bias I have ever seen," and I have to agree: NAJAF, Iraq — At what's believed to be the world's largest cemetery, where Shiite Muslims aspire to be buried and... MORE
October 17, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
What do the following beliefs have in common? A. Belief that Kerry won in 2004, and that a vote-counting conspiracy took place. B. Belief that men have more sex partners than women. C. Belief that epidemiology is equivalent to a... MORE
October 13, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Rationalization #787 why trade with China is bad: "They're infringing our copyrights! Their government is doing nothing to stop it. We've got to impose sanctions until they get tough." When Americans infringe American copyrights, we throw up our hands. "What... MORE
October 11, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Tim Kane has launched a new blog, and it looks promising. Kane's the primary author of the 2007 Index of Economic Freedom (which finds its way into Greenspan's new book), a Garett Jones co-author, and a comic book fan to... MORE
October 4, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Garett Jones writes, Are more intelligent groups of people better at cooperating? Repeated prisoner’s dilemma (RPD) experiments run at numerous universities since 1959 may hold the answer. Overall, the tendency is clear: Students at schools with higher average SAT and... MORE
October 2, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Harold James:Nor, following the fastest five-year period of economic growth in human history, are collapsing prices endangering the financial system, as they did during the Great Depression. (emphasis mine)I just lived through the fatest-growing five years in economic history, and... MORE
September 23, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
This cracked me up:SAT scores have been interpreted in a number of different ways, both by the test's designers themselves (Educational Testing Service) and by college administrators, high school counselors, the popular press, and researchers in fields such as education... MORE
September 21, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I've never been to a reunion, and don't plan to start. Compared to my present, my past is very depressing. But perhaps I'm just not as resourceful as Michael Blowhard, who has a long post of pithy observations on the... MORE
September 19, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Jonathan Haidt writes The normal person (once animated by emotion) engages in moral reasoning to find ammunition, not truth; the normal person attacks the motives and character of her opponents when it will be advantageous to do so. The scientist,... MORE
September 16, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
One of Donald Wittman's most intriguing claims during last week's debate is that the public suffers not just from an anti-market bias (as I claim), but from an anti-government bias as well. His main argument, if I recall correctly, is... MORE
September 15, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
In The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker writes, Morality and causative verbs tap the same mental model of human action... That makes the passive a convenient way to hide the agent of a transitive verb and thus the identity of... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Kerwin Kofi Charles, Erik Hurst, and Nikolai Roussanov write, we show that although, unconditionally, racial minorities and Whites spend approximately the same fraction of their resources on visible consumption, Blacks and Hispanics spend about thirty percent more on visible goods,... MORE
September 12, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Jonathan Haidt writes Virtues are socially constructed and socially learned, but these processes are highly prepared and constrained by the evolved mind. We call these three additional foundations the binding foundations, because the virtues, practices, and institutions they generate function... MORE
September 10, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
The inner economist talks with Russ Roberts. He points out that you are unlikely to say "no" to your dentist in person. You have given up control--deep in a chair (he says "strapped"), mouth open, and so on. But after... MORE
September 8, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
One of the main reasons Steven White wrote me up as a "right-wing ideologue" is that my work highlights the irrationality of the electorate. But now he's doing it too - and singling out Democrats in the process. Here's White... MORE
September 5, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I've long enjoyed negative-but-fair reviews of my work, but this negative-but-fair review of me personally is even better:This George Mason economist favors free market biases over legitimate democracy, and has more ears in Washington than you might think.Given the number... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I wrote the cover story for the latest issue of Reason. And once again, I've been blessed with a fantastic cover artist. Here it is: Pay close attention to the t-shirts. Left-to-right: anti-market bias, anti-foreign bias, make-work bias, and pessimistic... MORE
September 4, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
A fun survey, with funny results:[R]espondents were asked in a 1998 Newsweek poll: “In the next century, which one of the following current scientific beliefs do you think is most likely to be proved wrong, the theory of evolution, that... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
The Washington Post reports, The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the... MORE
August 30, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Charles Lambdin writes, Groopman’s position, when his various arguments are gathered and assembled, becomes untenable. He admits doctors suffer from innumerable biases that diminish the accuracy of diagnosis, reducing many diagnoses to idiosyncratic responses fueled by mood, whether the patient... MORE
August 23, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Kip Viscusi was kind enough to email me his estimates of the risks of terrorism, and gave me permission to share them. To be more precise, Viscusi told me that, in his judgment, the median number of deaths from domestic... MORE
August 21, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
You've heard about him from Tyler, Bryan, and me. Perhaps you've seen his posts at overcoming bias. Now you can see Robin Hanson give a brief talk as a keynote speaker. In the talk, he says that before you attach... MORE
August 10, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
"What would you do if Santa Claus turned out to be a Martian?" It's a hypothetical question. It's also a stupid question to ask in a presidential debate. What makes it stupid? First, it's very unlikely to happen. Second, knowing... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
If I had to evaluate the quality of argument in the presidential debates with one word, it's "simplistic." But the level of simple-mindedness varies by topic. For foreign policy, at least, candidates often propose a policy, consider how other nations... MORE
August 7, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Another debate gem: Hillary on energy policy.CLINTON: ...But this issue of energy and global warming has the promise of creating millions of new jobs in America... So it can be a win-win, if we do it right.It's hard to interpret... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I've been reading presidential debate transcripts to get some op-ed ideas. Here's my nomination for the most bizarre discussion. It starts off with Mike Gravel saying the obvious:QUESTION: ... My question is for Mike Gravel. In one of the previous... MORE
August 6, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
The Economist reports, Geoffrey Miller is a man with a theory that, if true, will change the way people think about themselves. His idea is that the human brain is the anthropoid equivalent of the peacock's tail. In other words,... MORE
August 5, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Lots of bloggers identify with the "reality-based community." At first glance, it's a rather cultish self-description; after all, even the "faith-based community" thinks it's "reality-based." (Ever seen the bumper sticker where the Jesus fish marked "Truth" swallows the Darwinian land-fish?)... MORE
July 25, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
An omen? Hours before I head down to Comic-Con, I stumbled across a brilliant exchange in Fables: March of the Wooden Soldiers. Background: In this Eisner Award-winning series, legendary figures ("Fables") have been exiled from their native lands to the... MORE
July 16, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
From the NYT:Representative George Miller, the California Democrat who is chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor, said, “Trade may not be the reason, or the number one reason, they’re losing their jobs, but they [the American people] think... MORE
July 14, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I've known Mormons all my life. I was in a Mormon Cub Scout troop because my best friend was Mormon. One of my best friends in grad school was a Mormon, too. But in 35 years, I'd never (knowingly) met... MORE
July 11, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I had a stimulating, well-reasoned interview with noted liberal activist and ordained minister Barry Lynn, host of "Culture Shocks." I continue to be surprised by the bipartisan reaction to my book - has Bush inadvertently opened liberal eyes to the... MORE
July 10, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Daniel Casse's review of my book in today's Wall Street Journal raises an important objection:As an analysis of how far voters are out of step with settled economic thinking, Mr. Caplan's argument seems irrefutable. Yet as a work of political... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
If gas prices go up because of business conspiracies, why do they ever come down? In his Daily Kos review of my book, Dean Nut proposes a staggeringly original explanation - and as far as I can tell, he's serious:If... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
In yesterday's Daily Kos, Dean Nut criticizes my book as filtered through the Economist's review. It turns out that alleged economic illiteracy is just selfish voting:The Americans who most believe that "the economy is seriously damaged by sending jobs overseas"... MORE
July 4, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
For three out of the four biases I discuss in my book, it's easy to see the connection between economic biases and inefficient policies. Anti-market bias leads to under-use of markets. Anti-foreign bias leads to excessive protection, immigration restrictions, etc.... MORE
June 28, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
At the conference where I gave my talk that mentioned recipes and ingredients, I met Edgar Capen, co-author of a classic paper that coined the term "winner's curse" for auctions. His main theme is that people under-estimate uncertainty. If someone... MORE
June 22, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Almost everyone takes this for granted, but it still freaks me out: Audiences in presidential debates applaud just because a candidate says something they agree with. See for example the crowd's reaction when Giuliani scoffs at Ron Paul. You can... MORE
June 20, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
If I were to write an intellectual biography of Tyler Cowen, one topic I would cover would be free variables vs. set points. Something is a free variable if we can set it at whatever level we choose. Something has... MORE
June 15, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
These days, psychiatrists favorite fig leaf for counter-intuitive claims is to hide behind neuroscience. "You think that serial killers are just evil people? Well, obviously you haven't seen these MRIs showing the serial killers have more/less of some brain chemical."... MORE
June 11, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
From Sheldon Richman's review of my book: Caplan's solution is to "rely more on private choice and the free market." Good idea, though you'd have to get people to vote for that, so I'm not sure how effective that will... MORE
June 10, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
One of the topics Landsburg tackles in More Sex is Safer Sex is the puzzle of self-control. Why do people on diets "lock their refrigerator doors"? Landsburg's answer: "a taste for self-control confers a reproductive advantange"; or to put it... MORE
June 9, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
While I was away, I missed a provocative post by Brad DeLong. Leftists need to study economics, but rightists all-too-often have an adverse reaction: By contrast, the neoclassical toolkit can be absolute poison for people right on center. It functions... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
If voters are as irrational as I say, isn't political reform a hopeless cause? Will Wilkinson and I discuss this (and many other issues) over at Bloggingheads. Think about it this way: To mitigate the damage of irrational majority rule,... MORE
June 1, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
One common objection to my theory of rational irrationality is that it is psychologically implausible. Am I really saying that people first figure out the truth, then decide whether the material consequences of disregarding the truth outweigh the psychic costs... MORE
May 30, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Tyler misstates one of the conclusions of Burgoon and Hiscox's work on female protectionism. Contrary to Tyler, B&H don't find that educated women are more anti-foreign than other women. Instead, they find that educated women are more anti-foreign than educated... MORE
May 25, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
The latest celebrity death match on the Wall Street Journal site features Richard Thaler and Mario Rizzo. Mario Rizzo writes: I repeat: "Is New Paternalism primarily about advising private individuals and firms? If so, why use a political term --... MORE
May 24, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Kevin Grier, guest blogging on Marginal Revolution, makes an argument calculated to offend: In 1957, Venezuela's GDP per capita was 51% of the US, in 2003 it stood at 18.5% of the US. Existing institutions had no credibility with a... MORE
May 10, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
One of the most common questions I get about my research on systematically biased beliefs about economics is: Yes, but why do people have these biases? Why do people underestimate the social benefits of the market? Why are they particularly... MORE
May 8, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I'm guest blogging for the Britannica website. Topic: Economists Agree?!... MORE
May 5, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I've never denied it: Some surveys are really stupid: If women ruled the world, stay-at-home moms would earn an annual salary equal to or more than $100,000. That’s according to a new poll from Woman’s Day magazine and AOL.com, which... MORE
May 2, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Bryan writes, Sincere question: Have you personally reviewed the evidence on smoking, Arnold? I haven't. I believe that smoking causes cancer based on scientific consensus. ...Still, Arnold seems to be saying that you should base all your beliefs on direct... MORE
May 1, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Arnold writes: It is not the scientific consensus that makes me believe that there is a link between smoking and cancer. It is the evidence for such a link that is compelling. It is the weakness of the evidence of... MORE
April 27, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Here's the best survey I've ever seen on farm policy. Big findings: Farm subsidies are extremely popular. Respondents had to choose between the following positions: A. It is not consistent with the American way to have a whole sector of... MORE
April 19, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
For every winner, there are ten people saying (perhaps under their breath) that "I'm as good as him. It could have been me." Now Robin links to a clever study showing that this is more than just self-deception: In our... MORE
April 13, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
He writes, the complex biochemistry of good and bad feelings suggests that there are many more than two dimensions even to hedonic well-being, and so trade-offs among them are inevitable. The noise, bustle, and danger of a big city are... MORE
April 12, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I just turned 36. But it seems like I was celebrating my 35th birthday three months ago - and asking everyone I knew how old they felt inside. Two universal patterns: 1. Every male I asked feels a lot younger... MORE
April 11, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Yes! The correct answer to the ice cream demand question is that sales went up by 200%. Here's the histogram of reader's responses: When people gave a range, I took the midpoint. When they gave a lower or upper bound,... MORE
April 10, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
People say a lot of silly things about how belief in the importance of intelligence, true or false, is "dangerous." Today I read one of the few pieces that actually presents some thought-provoking evidence on this point: Carol Dweck's chapter... MORE
April 5, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Once a teacher admits that his lessons have little or no practical use, he usually retreats to the view that it doesn't matter what his students learn. The important thing is that students are "learning how to learn." One thing... MORE
April 4, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Eliezer at Overcoming Bias has an interesting anti-majoritarian piece that is very similar to my "Intellectual Gladiators" argument: You can survive by being popular, or by being superior, but alternatives that are neither popular nor superior quickly go extinct. P.S.... MORE
April 1, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.--George Bernard Shaw "The advocates of X are jerks; therefore, X is false" is the classic ad hominem argument. But most of... MORE
March 28, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
From Eliezer at Overcoming Bias: There is an old Jewish joke: During Yom Kippur, the rabbi is seized by a sudden wave of guilt, and prostrates himself and cries, "God, I am nothing before you!" The cantor is likewise seized... MORE
March 27, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Robin Hanson advised me to read Banerjee and Duflo's "The Economic Lives of the Poor" in the latest issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and I wasn't disappointed. Long story short: People who live on $1 a day spend... MORE
March 26, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I just had the pleasure of reading Tolstoy's "God's Way and Man's." It's one of the most compelling portraits of revolutionary psychology I've ever read. "God's Way and Man's" is a complex tale, but the last half focuses on imprisoned... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
As a rule, I don't like movies "based on true stories," but I'll make an exception for Joyeux Noël. It's a trilingual tale of fraternization on World War I's Western front, and nicely shows the contrast between individual decency and... MORE
March 22, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
In the New York Times, Benedict Carey writes, Those with ventromedial injuries were about twice as likely as the other participants to say they would...poison someone with AIDS who was bent on infecting others, or suffocate a baby whose crying... MORE
March 20, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Tyler has a podcast about what he calls "the intellectual crisis in libertarianism." Again, I'm baffled. To say we're in a crisis strongly suggests that things used to be better for us. But as far as I can tell, as... MORE
March 11, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Hanson and Balan aren't the only sharp tacks at Overcoming Bias: Politicians want voters to have a positively-biased view of themselves. Consequently, voters learn more about politicians from their failings than from their good deeds. Barack Obama, for example, smokes.... MORE
March 8, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Brad DeLong is deeply puzzled by a sensible observation over at Free Exchange: The Economist's Free Exchange: Trailing the truth | Free exchange | Economist.com: [P]undits are almost never punished for being wildly wrong about something. Nor are they rewarded... MORE
March 7, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
A fun time was had by most at the Balan-Hanson debate on paternalism. In the post-debate discussion, someone raised the question of whether men or women are more "paternalistic." Given my earlier work (not to mention casual comparison of lenient... MORE
March 5, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
David Balan and Robin Hanson, two of the smartest voices on Overcoming Bias, are having a debate on Paternalism this Wednesday evening at GMU. The title: "Paternalistic Policy: Altruism or Arrogance?" Given that this debate will resolve this important question... MORE
February 27, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Arnold writes: Every once in a while, I am asked by somebody what I would do to eliminate poverty in America. The first thing that pops into my head is the topic of mental health. A while back I blogged... MORE
February 25, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
After skewering Obama's views on economic policy, Thomas Sowell (like another guy who bolstered my love of econ when I was a discouraged undergrad) concludes with a ringing denial of voters' rational expectations:But politics is not about facts. It is... MORE
February 22, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Tyler relays a Kling-esque critique of happiness research from John Quiggan: Suppose you wanted to establish whether children’s height increased with age, but you couldn’t measure height directly. One way to respond to this problem would be to interview groups... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
When I was a junior at UC Berkeley, I wasn't sure if I should stick with economics after graduation. Then I started reading a lot of Richard Posner, and my love of econ was reborn. Fifteen years later, he's still... MORE
February 18, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
It's time to officially declare Ben Casnocha a Wunderkind. Here is his brilliant post on the simplicity of losing weight, becoming a better writing, becoming a better entrepreneur, and being a good parent. The punchline: Note that just because something's... MORE
February 12, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Brian Doherty's history of libertarianism reminded me of a pattern that's struck me before : When wars break out, there are far more doves who "sell out" and support the war than hawks who "sell out" and oppose the war.... MORE
February 8, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
No offense, Econlog contributors, but it's a reaction to Robin's post on deprogramming at Overcoming Bias: The difference between the exit counselors and [famous deprogrammer] Ted Patrick seems to be one of commitment, much like what Pavlov worked on for... MORE
January 26, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Robin Hanson begins his health econ class with a heavy dose of disillusion: I teach Health Economics starting today, and every year I start with data assuring students that learning data will not change their health policy opinions. He cites... MORE
January 23, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
"I'm sure that a Democrat will win in 2008." "Sure? OK, let's bet at 100:1." "Umm, no thanks. But I'll do it for even odds." I've had a bunch of conversations like this. Someone proclaims to know the future with... MORE
January 17, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Referred by John Tierney (yet another new blog!), I took the survey put up by George Loewenstein and others on whether you are a tightwad or a spendthrift. People who think of themselves as either tightwads or spendthrifts supposedly are... MORE
January 6, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I just got back from another vacation in Los Angeles. As they say, it's a "city of contrasts," but the most interesting contrast is rarely mentioned. On the one hand, even pretty ordinary Angelenos - especially the elderly - reside... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I was surprised to learn that the Economist thought this little post deserved a broader audience: But as with any argument involving economists, there is more than one side to it. For one thing, many experiences demand a substantial outlay... MORE
December 23, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
David Balan has joined the august bloggers at Overcoming Bias. Let me tell you about this guy. A couple months ago, he came to GMU to deliver a paper. A crew of GMU profs took him out to lunch beforehand,... MORE
December 20, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Well, it shouldn't, explains Robin. Consider the foolish way that the world reacts to new fossils: Fossil hunters have found a winning formula for getting media attention: pretend to believe behavior X appeared around the time of the earliest known... MORE
December 17, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
The clever Arthur Lupia is launching a multi-pronged contrarian defense of the competence of the average voter. He's got a whole series of new papers (some co-authored) trying to debunk the broad consensus in political science that voters don't know... MORE
December 2, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Gary Becker has some interesting thoughts about the economics profession's beliefs about the minimum wage: A recent petition by over 600 economists, including 5 Nobel Laureates in Economics, advocated a phased-in rise in the federal minimum wage to a much... MORE
November 30, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Columnist Andrew Cassel writes The rules of supply and demand aren't inherently more difficult to fathom than those that apply to, say, politics, or cooking, or sports. Yet while most people have no trouble wrapping their brains around these subjects... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Over at Overcoming Bias, the smartest man I know argues that we underestimate the quality of women's lives - and overestimate the quality of men's lives - because the genders have different propensities to complain. Women who complain get a... MORE
November 27, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
There's a mini-literature on whether the study of economics causes people to become more selfish. Has anything been written on whether the study of happiness causes people to become more happy? My guess is that studying happiness doesn't cause happiness.... MORE
November 22, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I usually think that experts are more likely to be right than laymen. But Tyler's blog on "expert advice" on how to make kids eat vegetables gives experts a bad name: 1. Try many times -- fifteen or more --... MORE
November 17, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
My reply to my critics is up at Cato Unbound, and the followup conversation is now underway. My favorite part: To turn Friedman's argument around, I think that he's the one with an unrealistic, stilted psychology that's "vulnerable to caricature... MORE
November 5, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
One of Bryan Caplan's faves, Michael Huemer, writes, Normally, intelligence and education are aides to acquiring true beliefs. But when an individual has non-epistemic belief preferences, this need not be the case; high intelligence and extensive knowledge of a subject... MORE
November 1, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Robert Samuelson launches a pointed attack against the good sense of the American people: The Catch-22 of American democracy is this: A government that mirrors public opinion offends public opinion by failing to do what it promises. People then conclude... MORE
October 19, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Here's some well-aged Rothbard: I'm sure I would find neither Hitler, Wilson, Nixon, nor the Ayatollah charming dinner or cocktail party companions. But surely I am not to be permitted to transform these aesthetic judgments into a "value-free science" that... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Ten years ago, ultra-mathematical theorists were the kings of the economics profession. Now they seem to be nigh irrelevant. Clever and relatively open-minded empiricists rule the roost. Cementing the trend, few of the students coming out of top programs are... MORE
October 17, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
He writes It is no coincidence that humans are special in their ability to outsmart other animals and plants by cause-and-effect reasoning, and that language is a way of converting information about cause-and-effect and action into perceptible signals. A distinctive... MORE
October 16, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Last week, Tyler Cowen blogged on a story about a special ed program that uses electric shocks to make students to behave. His post included the somewhat cryptic remark that "I view this as a reductio ad absurdum on Bryan... MORE
October 10, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
I think that an academic web site should consist of links to papers, not self-promotion. Putnam's page does the reverse. About his latest PR success, it says, Robert D. Putnam gave a talk on this issue as the Skytte Prize... MORE
October 3, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
This article interested me, on many levels. the new vaccines employ the body's natural immune system in an innovative way. Instead of building antibodies to destroy germs as traditional vaccines do, they construct antibodies that lock onto nicotine and cocaine... MORE
September 27, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Niclas Berggren of Sweden's Ratio Institute emailed me a quote that would have been fantastic for my book: When there are rational grounds for an opinion, people are content to set them forth and wait for them to operate. In... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Will Wilkinson writes, At best, neuroeconomics shows that peoples' representation of their best interest shifts from one decision context to the next as the brain shifts its resources from one brain region to another. Neither neuroscience nor economics speaks to... MORE
September 25, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Donald Wittman says that it doesn't matter if people have systematically biased beliefs about policy. Why not? Because even if you fixed their misconceptions, their policy preferences would remain unchanged. In an earlier post, I showed that he's wrong for... MORE
September 24, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Here's another neat passage from Miller, White, and Heywood's Values and Political Change in Postcommunist Europe: We might expect that public opinion would celebrate the end of dictatorship and the transfer of power to the people. But the normal trajectory... MORE
September 18, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
People thought I was crazy to to write - let alone try to publish - "The Economics of Szasz." This analysis of the economics of mental illness has got to be the least-publishable article I ever wrote. And now it's... MORE
September 4, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Depressed people - what is their problem? Edward Hagen of Humboldt University has a fascinating answer: Getting depressed is a good way to get the people around you to give you more for less. Feel underappreciated? Then mope around non-stop,... MORE
September 2, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Brad DeLong serves, I'm enough of a touchy-feey sociology-lover to believe that a good chunk of the utility the rich derive from their conspicuous consumption is transferred to them from the poor: the happiness America's working poor and middle class... MORE
September 1, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
The most intriguing part of Steve Slivinski's Buck Wild is his section on the "Hinckley Effect." I've known about failed assassin John Hinckley since 4th grade. But it's only now that I've learned about the policy effects of his gambit... MORE
August 27, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Arnold comes down on the side of paternalistic regulations on investment: To me, an entrepreneur who looks for investors is like somebody who can't swim who finds himself in the middle of a lake. It's dangerous to go near the... MORE
August 20, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Walking the halls of Comic-Con and GenCon, I repeatedly heard voices gush: "Snakes on a Plane is going to make a TON of money. Everyone I know is going to see it!!!" The numbers are in: SoaP's domestic gross for... MORE
August 18, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I forgot to mention the greatest experience-producing durable good of all: the Digital Video Recorder. You could argue (mistakenly, I think) that you'll soon take a nice t.v. for granted. But the whole point of a DVR is to expand... MORE
August 17, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
From the WSJ, via Mankiw: "Money itself doesn't make you happy," [Harvard psychology professor Daniel] Gilbert says. "What can make you happy is what you do with it. There's a lot of data that suggests experiences are better than durable... MORE
August 16, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Tyler Cowen has been preaching against various intellectual vices. My chairman Don Boudreaux thoughtfully adds the Contrarian Vice to the list: Being contrarian is admirable because it keeps the mind open and exploring; it's of a piece with one of... MORE
August 14, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Ubiquitous news reports of airport chaos had even me wondering if I was going to miss my plane. I could have driven back from Indy with friends, but I decided to take my chances at the airport. Total time to... MORE
August 8, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I'm skeptical about all predictions of disaster. I'm predictably skeptical about doom-and-gloom predictions used to rationalize big expansions of government power: global warming, overpopulation, avian flu, resource depletion, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, "Mexifornia," etc. But I've also long raised my eyebrow... MORE
August 3, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I know less about Los Angeles, the city I grew up in, than any other place I've ever lived. Throughout my childhood, my dad's mantra was, "Goddammit, we're not going to downtown L.A.!" I always assumed drive time was the... MORE
July 31, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Will Wilkinson has a great demolition of the New Economics Foundations' Happy Planet Index. The magic formula: "Multiply life expectancy by life satisfaction and divide it by environmental impact." Here's Will: I worry that much of the happiness work is... MORE
July 24, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Emre Ozdenoren, Stephen Salant, and Dan Silverman write, an agent in our model would strictly prefer to have his “cake” or paycheck doled out to him by a savings club. For if the entire amount were available, resisting spending it... MORE
July 13, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
One of the clearest facts about economic beliefs is that more educated people think more like economists. A lot of economists say their experience in academia completely contradicts this, but (a) the highly-educated folks who hang around universities are heavily... MORE
July 6, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I'm not surprised that Brad DeLong shares my love of the great computer game Civilization: I'm tempted to jump in and head-butt the libertarian: If you were to ask a compulsive gambler if he really wanted to waste his life,... MORE
July 5, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I just submitted my latest paper, "The Gender Gap of Economics: Why Do Men Think More Like Economists?" to Social Science Quarterly. Unfortunately, in order to get under SSQ's 30-page limit, I had to cut my favorite figure. Here it... MORE
July 4, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I think that brain research is overrated. A lot of it does little more than confirm the obvious points that (a) unusual people have unusual brains; (b) people doing unusual things have unusual brain states. If nuns had unusual brains,... MORE
July 3, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Michael Shermer writes, During the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, while undergoing an fMRI bran scan, 30 men--half self-described as "strong" Republicans and half as "strong" Democrats--were tasked with assessing statements by both George W. Bush and John Kerry... MORE
June 30, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Here's a pretty funny interview (free registration required) with Lord Richard Layard on happiness research. Highlights: Layard's big thing is taxation. He is convinced that paying taxes makes us really happy and that if we paid more we would be... MORE
June 25, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
I have been lucky that my last two book purchases both proved interesting--I think I saw both mentioned on Arts and Letters Daily, so it's not all luck. I have mentioned Frederick Crews' Follies of the Wise. I just finished... MORE
June 22, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
A couple years ago, someone asked me to write a list of ten interesting ideas. I just stumbled across it again today, and I still like what I wrote. If you like it too, you'll probably enjoy my book. 1.... MORE
June 21, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
I hereby challenge Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gilbert to debate whether happiness research constitutes an empirical science. Tyler pointed to this essay by Gilbert. if the Red Sox and the Yankees were scoreless until Manny Ramirez hit a grand slam... MORE
June 19, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Russ Roberts gets Szaszian on the latest EconTalk. The topic: Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Russ speaks better than I could after a lifetime of Toastmasters (no ahs, no umms), but if you'd rather read than listen, go here.... MORE
June 15, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen reports on some disturbing research. For example, Donors to charities, it seems, do not behave rationally. Increasing evidence shows that donors often tolerate high administrative costs, fail to monitor charities and do not insist on measurable results Tyler... MORE
June 12, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
I really like this Jaron Lanier essay. The collective is more likely to be smart when it isn't defining its own questions, when the goodness of an answer can be evaluated by a simple result (such as a single numeric... MORE
June 9, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Randall Parker points to this article. [Erik] Angner, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), published a paper, “Economists as Experts: Overconfidence in Theory and Practice,” in a recent edition of the Journal of... MORE
May 31, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
The famed Naked Guy of Berkeley committed suicide in his jail cell. I was an eyewitness to his protest against clothes when we were both students at UC Berkeley. At the time, I often pointed out that the Naked Guy... MORE
May 22, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
John Ford writes, Seth Roberts, a psychologist at UC Berkeley has written a book called The Shangri-La Diet. In it, Roberts described some old obesity rat data and via "self-experimentation" developed a technique for weight loss that he hopes will... MORE
May 18, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Tom Cruise got parodied on the season finale of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. Why is he the only celebrity who is supposed to have a Ph.D. in a subject to have an opinion about it? I'd like to... MORE
May 15, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Mitchell Zuckoff describes how the Nigerian email scam works. Patiently and persistently, the Nigerians turned Worley’s skepticism into suspension of disbelief, to the point where he seemed to worry that they might not trust him. They made Worley the perfect... MORE
May 12, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
It's all official. My book, entitled The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, will be published by Princeton University Press in early 2007. I put the final version in the mail today. The winner of the... MORE
May 5, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen seems quite smitten with psychologist Daniel Gilbert. Tyler justifiably recommends this article about Gilbert, which is from the New York Times three years ago. While walking in Pittsburgh one afternoon, [economist George] Loewenstein tells me that he doesn't... MORE
May 3, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Greg Mankiw's learning psych from Steven Pinker, and I'm green with envy. If I could trade places with Mankiw, I'm sure I'd learn a lot - but at the same time, I could get a lot of objections off my... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Of course Arnold's right that outrage over rising gas prices reflects anti-market bias. But in my defense, I was trying to explain why people are especially freaked out by rising gas prices. Why do people seem angrier about losing .8%... MORE
April 28, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
As I've said before, the data show that men think more like economists than women do. But today I came across some new data (or data I once saw and then forgot about?) showing a gender gap that is quite... MORE
April 24, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Concerning the choice of where to attend collegeTyler Cowen asks, If parents (and their children) are loaded with biases, is behavioral economics useful? I suspect the core bias is parents wanting to feel they have done everything possible to help... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
New Economist points to a lot of articles on the political economy of happiness, including Mark Easton's article in The New Statesman. Easton writes, North of the border, the Scottish Executive supports an organisation called the Centre for Confidence and... MORE
April 23, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
There's a striking passage in Freakonomics that echoes an argument I've occasionally made myself: Namely, that the death penalty as it is now practiced couldn't have much effect because it is so unlikely to actually be imposed. [G]iven the rarity... MORE
April 19, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
I continue to have philosophical disagreements with "happiness research." My latest essay takes on a recent paper by Alan Krueger and Daniel Kahneman. I write, With research into subjective well-being, economists are making statements about what constitutes the good life.... MORE
April 11, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
One of the most frustrating things about non-economists is their reluctance to guess. Latest example: Today at the repair shop. Mechanic: The freon's going to leak out unless we replace the compressor. Me: How fast? Mechanic: Don't know. Me: Could... MORE
April 9, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Men think more like economists than women do. According to my calculations in "What Makes People Think Like Economists?," (Journal of Law and Economics 44(2), October 2001, pp.395-426) being male has roughly 16% of the effect of a Ph.D. in... MORE
April 7, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Ed Glaeser writes I present three simple models that show how endogenous cognitive errors increase the advantage of private decisionmaking over public decisionmaking, which suggests that recognizing the limits of human cognition pushes us away, not towards, paternalism. In these... MORE
April 5, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Inspired by Marginal Revolution's Axel and Tyrone, my evil twin Arlo has a post on happiness research: It's obvious why we need happiness research. Think of the problem of getting from resources to happiness as taking two steps. First, you... MORE
April 3, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Will Wilkinson writes, The neuroscience shows that satisfaction of the highest ranked preference does not imply the greatest hedonic satisfaction. It does not imply any hedonic satisfaction. Take a look at this paper, “Parsing Reward,” [pdf] by Kent Berridge and... MORE
March 21, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Craig A. Lambert writes, the Russell Sage Foundation, which devotes itself to research in the social sciences, consistently supported behavioral economics, even when it was in the intellectual wilderness. Current Sage president Eric Wanner, Ph.D. ’69, whose doctorate is in... MORE
March 10, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
When psychologists introduce economists to happiness research, they usually emphasize the finding that, once people enjoy a modest First World standard of living, additional income doesn't make them much happier. What surprises me is that more economists haven't responded "As... MORE
March 1, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Arnold has curtly dismissed happiness research: Books that are based on research designed to predict behavior belong in the Social Science section. Books that tell you how to be happy belong in the New Age/Self-Help section. If we followed this... MORE
February 28, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Tyler Cowen discusses an interview with Harvard's Mullainathan, in which he talks about a bank's randomized marketing experiment: “What we found stunned me,” he says. “We found that any one of these things had an effect equal to one to... MORE
February 17, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Arnold isn't happy about measuring happiness. His objections, and my replies: Happiness research cannot make behavioral predictions at all. It consists of taking meaningless surveys, and the most it can do is make predictions about the "findings" of other meaningless... MORE
February 15, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
My co-blogger continues to be unhappy with happiness research. Since no First World happiness researcher would willingly trade places with Third World tribesmen, and Third World tribesmen would willingly trade places with First World happiness researchers, happiness research is "fundamentally... MORE
February 14, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
In an issue that's repetitive, pompous, and boring, Forbes touts happiness research. The best tidbit is in this article. Researchers from the University of Illinois and the University of Pennsylvania proclaim with totemic authority that, in a 1985 survey, respondents... MORE
February 7, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
So this is why I always hated working in groups!... MORE
February 2, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
In this post, Mark Thoma passes along some research findings from brain scans. The pleasure of orgasm, the high from cocaine, the rush of buying Google Inc. at $450 a share --- the same neural network governs all three I... MORE
February 1, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Amy Perfors at the Social Science Statistics Blog asks a great question: Why does repeated lying work? It's a common truism, familiar to most people by now thanks to advertising and politics, that repeating things makes them more believable --... MORE
January 25, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
The New York Times reports Using M.R.I. scanners, neuroscientists have now tracked what happens in the politically partisan brain when it tries to digest damning facts about favored candidates or criticisms of them. The process is almost entirely emotional and... MORE
January 19, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Robert H. Frank writes. Mr. Landsburg's argument finesses the important distinction between a "statistical life" and an "identified life." The concepts were introduced by the economist Thomas C. Schelling, who observed the apparent paradox that communities often spend millions of... MORE
January 15, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
The main finding in Philip Tetlock's awe-inspiring Expert Political Knowledge is that open-minded "foxes" are better predictors than theory-driven "hedgehogs." But toward the end of the book, he has a fascinating chapter about a fascinating exception. Background: There's a whole... MORE
January 11, 2006
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
During my four years at Princeton I can't recall anyone other than myself having the slightest interest in methodology. How the times have changed! Princeton's Faruk Gul and Wolfgang Pesendorfer have put out a lengthy methodological tract, "The Case for... MORE
December 7, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Will Willkinson reports that it is. But this conclusion doesn't check out in the General Social Survey. In this data set, the average married person is indeed happier than the average never married person. But people who are only "pretty... MORE
December 2, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
My impression is that most people suffer from "environmental bias." At least when they are talking about human beings, they overrate the importance of environmental factors, and underrate the importance of genetic factors. Why would they do this? Joseph Buckhalt... MORE
November 26, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
If you believe the movies, Captain Bligh caused the "mutiny on the Bounty" by being so harsh that his men decided that they had nothing to lose by kicking him off the ship. In other words, Captain Bligh was to... MORE
November 17, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
The turnout for the Iannaccone-Caplan Debate on Economics of Religion was excellent - about 300 people by my count. That's a striking illustration of interaction effects: as solo speakers either of us would have been lucky to draw 50 listeners!... MORE
November 15, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
One of the main reasons to study psychological biases is to help us stop making them, but even many specialists don't bother to try to reform their thought processes. But don't give up hope. Jane Galt is a role model... MORE
November 10, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I am tooling up for my debate on the economics of religion with Lawrence Iannaccone. Studying data from the General Social Survey, it's clear that people who attend church more are a bit happier. On a three-step scale (very happy/pretty... MORE
November 3, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
I would like to join the chorus of praise for Will Wilkinson's new blog on happiness and public policy. For example, this post: Nesse goes on to point out that a few (of the far too few) longitudinal studies have... MORE
November 2, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Will Wilkinson is pointing his rapier wit at happiness research with his new Happiness and Public Policy blog. It's a fascinating subject. Who would have guessed, for example, that quadriplegics are, on average, happy? Incidentally, if you want to see... MORE
October 30, 2005
Public Choice Theory
Arnold Kling
Roger Lowenstein writes The drawback to 401(k)'s, remember, is that people are imperfect savers. They don't save enough, they don't invest wisely what they do save and they don't know what to do with their money once they are free... MORE
October 27, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I'm a fan of behavioral economics, but I've got to admit that behavior economists can be painfully condescending. "You only disagree with it because you haven't bothered to read it," is the subtext, and sometimes it's out in the open.... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Robert H. Frank writes, [Nobel Laureate Thomas] Schelling observed that by skating without a helmet, a player increases his team's odds of winning, perhaps because he can see and hear a little better, or more effectively intimidate opponents. The down... MORE
October 5, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Or, rather, some amateur sociology about status seeking, in my latest essay. I suspect that the most likely alternative to economic motivation is a worse motive: status-seeking. I believe that is more important to curb our lust for status than... MORE
September 25, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Co-blogger Bryan Caplan wonders why people make the insurance choices that they do. I think that insurance is one of those topics on which economists and non-economists are out of synch. People buy extended warranties for appliances, but as commenter... MORE
September 23, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Johan Norberg writes, A classic mystery in the happiness studies is that lottery winners are not much happier than the rest of the population. It’s not just the money that makes high-earners happier than low-earners—more important is their way of... MORE
September 16, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I was just notified that the Szasz Prize ceremony has been moved from the Cato Institute in D.C. to the Harper Library at the GMU Law School in Arlington. The day and time remain the same: September 21, 6 PM.... MORE
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
People occasionally ask me what Thomas Szasz's best works are. The optimal introduction is The Untamed Tongue. It's a book of aphorisms that cuts to the heart of his philosophy of mind. If it doesn't make you worry that there's... MORE
September 9, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Economists are growing more and more interested in the emotions. My colleague Dan Houser, for example, tells me that interesting experiments on guilt and cooperation are underway, and it wasn't hard for me to track down some examples: see here... MORE
September 1, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
In the latest blogger celebrity deathmatch, Andrew Samwick writes I will start with a theory advanced most eloquently by a former mentor of mine, Christopher Carroll, who is now a professor at Johns Hopkins. According to his Buffer-Stock Theory, the... MORE
August 24, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
I must gleefully report that I am one of the winners of the 2005 Thomas S. Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties, largely for my article "The Economics of Szasz: Preferences, Constraints, and Mental Illness."... MORE
August 10, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
My musical discovery of the last two years is the punk rock band Bad Religion. Thirteen CDs, all full of great songs - try Supersonic, Suffer, and the music videos for Los Angeles is Burning and Atomic Garden. More amazing... MORE
August 9, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Arnold and I have a running debate on the connection between material wealth and happiness. He's skeptical of the whole subject; I'm not. He thinks that people's behavior shows that money brings happiness; I've claimed that the standard conclusion that... MORE
August 3, 2005
Politics and Economics
Bryan Caplan
The latest issue of Econ Journal Watch features the second round of my debate with Donald Wittman. Here's me; here's Wittman.... MORE
August 2, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
The Washington Post reports that some airlines, which do not control airport screening but do control the lines that you wait in, are giving first-class passengers shorter waits. Across the country, "elite" lines are making a comeback at U.S. airports.... MORE
July 29, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Bayes' Rules is central to modern economics and modern psychology. According to Bayes' Rule, a rational person starts with some beliefs about probabilities (his "priors") and changes them in a particular way as new information arrives, in order to reach... MORE
July 22, 2005
Income Distribution
Arnold Kling
Catching up on a week's worth of blog reading, the best thing I missed appears to be this post by Will Wilkinson. Richard Layard points out that one's perceived position in the income distribution is a better predictor of self-reported... MORE
July 21, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
The Wall Street Journal reports on a neuroeconomics experiment that compared emotionally-impaired investors with normal investors. The 15 brain-damaged participants that were the focus of the study had normal IQs, and the areas of their brains responsible for logic and... MORE
July 15, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Well, they're very good, anyway. The first is a 1999 gem by Philip Tetlock: "Theory-Driven Reasoning About Plausible Pasts and Probable Futures in World Politics: Are We Prisoners of Our Preconceptions?" (American Journal of Political Science 43(2): 335-66). The second... MORE
July 8, 2005
Income Distribution
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I offer some advice for people who care about African poverty. 1. The world is a complex place. The farther you are removed from a situation, the less likely that your intervention there will do good and... MORE
June 4, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
The last issue of Econ Journal Watch featured my critique of Donald Wittman, followed by his reply to my critique. (For more, see here). I think the most bizarre part of Wittman's reply is his claim that it doesn't matter... MORE
June 2, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
While the press is back to wallowing in Watergate, the big news in economics was a small experiment. In the game, investors were allotted 12 monetary credits, each worth 40 Swiss centimes (32 US cents), and asked to decide how... MORE
May 29, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
What do you do if someone you don't like tries to give you an expensive present? Homo economicus would happily take it: "It's not like I signed a contract!" But most people would at least think twice before accepting the... MORE
May 21, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Economists have heard a fair amount from psychologists about "framing effects." Redescribing your options sometimes changes your choice. Firms would rather advertise the sale of "half-full glasses," than "half-empty glasses," though of course they're the same thing. Aldert Vrij's book... MORE
May 16, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
One of the most interesting survey articles I've seen in a long time came out in the recent Journal of Economic Literature, although apparently it's been kicking around for a couple of years. It is by Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein,... MORE
May 2, 2005
Andrew Chamberlain writes thanks to arbitrage, rational people stand to profit when irrational people let prices and wages stray from efficient levels. That’s what justifies the economist’s assumption of rationality—a small number of rational profit-seekers keep markets rational as a... MORE
April 29, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
More educated people think more like economists. It's one of the big findings in my piece in the 2001 Journal of Law and Economics. And that's controlling for income, income growth, job security, gender, ideology, and party. It's a big... MORE
April 18, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Philip Tetlock may well be my favorite political psychologist. He has a fantastic article surveying his research on political taboos in Elements of Reason, edited by Lupia, McCubbins, and Popkin. Tetlock asks: Are taboo trade-offs "taboo" in the primal Polynesian... MORE
March 30, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
You may have heard the odd factoid that faith in government drastically increased immediately after 9/11. Impossible, you say? Surely when a great tragedy happens, the organization charged to prevent it will lose credibility, not gain it? The factoid checks... MORE
March 13, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
Unhappy? My advice is to focus on your work. It helps you forget your woes, and once your life has improved, you've got something to show for your time of troubles. A fascinating passage from Robert Lane's The Loss of... MORE
February 27, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Richard Layard, the king of "happiness research" is back, and I am not happy. He writes, Divorce and broken homes are ever more common. Research shows that the children of broken homes are more prone to depression in adulthood. To... MORE
January 25, 2005
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
A very interesting paper by Moses Shayo begins by surveying the literature on identity. "People tend to identify more with high status groups than with low status groups," which seems pretty obvious. But I'm not so sure. A major counter-example:... MORE
December 13, 2004
Politics and Economics
Arnold Kling
The issue of why academics lean left has received considerable notice. I am not sure of the answer, but one thing I do not buy is the notion that people become professors out of an unusually strong desire for public... MORE
October 20, 2004
Efficient Markets Hypothesis
Arnold Kling
Stephen Bainbridge judges the contest. As for regulators, because the ECMH [Efficient Capital Markets Hypothesis] is often brought to bear as a justification for deregulation in politically charged policy disputes, such as mandatory corporate disclosure and insider trading, those who... MORE
August 24, 2004
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Steven Johnson reports on some brain scans to detect political differences, ...early data suggested that the most salient predictor of a ''Democrat brain'' was amygdala activity responding to certain images of violence... a recent study by Paul Goren at Arizona... MORE
August 19, 2004
Labor Market
Arnold Kling
Two pieces in the New York Times discuss the labor market. Alan Krueger talks about the issue of defining a "good job." Neoclassical economics hardly recognizes a distinction between good jobs and bad ones. All workers are supposed to be... MORE
August 17, 2004
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Newsweek has a survey of what I think it should have called neuroeconomics. They use the term "behavioral economics," which I think of as looking at cognitive biases in decision making. Neuroeconomics links cognitive biases to brain science. Observing that... MORE
August 5, 2004
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
I have an essay on Robert Frank's use of "happiness research" to justify paternalism. Frank is fond of using thought experiments. I have one. Imagine that you could go back a few hundred years and ask people if they are... MORE
July 27, 2004
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Robert H. Frank writes, Considerable evidence suggests that if we use an increase in our incomes, as many of us do, simply to buy bigger houses and more expensive cars, then we do not end up any happier than before.... MORE
June 15, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Today's Washington Post contains another op-ed piece by a physician, and of course he is in favor of price controls on prescription drugs. The pharmaceutical industry will intone its familiar mantra: The cost of drugs is a relatively small percentage... MORE
April 25, 2004
Income Distribution
Arnold Kling
Alex Tabarrok points to a paper by Uri Gneezy, Muriel Niederle, and Aldo Rustichini showing that although women solve a particular class of problems about as well as men on average, men improve their scores more than women when there... MORE
April 2, 2004
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Psychologist Daniel Gilbert finds that people tend to erroneously forecast how events will affect their happiness. He argues that people choose to act on the wrong information when they predict, for example, whether they will enjoy a particular vacation spot.... MORE
March 9, 2004
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
David Weinberger has some thoughts about eBay. I've lost bids to auction snipers. As a customer, I feel cheated, even though, of course, I could take a sniper's eye-view of the transaction. Even if letting robots game the auction doesn't... MORE
March 8, 2004
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Robert Shiller thinks that people ought to be saving more. According to a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), household saving rates declined between 1984 and 2001 in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Italy, Japan,... MORE
February 4, 2004
Social Security
Arnold Kling
I have a new essay that argues that we over-estimate the value of collective benefits. Contrary to my training as an economist, I believe that at least some of the preference that workers have for in-kind benefits reflects flat-out irrationality.... MORE
January 17, 2004
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
David Friedman uses evolutionary psychology to solve some puzzles in economics. Human beings have a functional module in their minds that deals with exchanges with other human beings. One feature of that module, hard-wired in by evolution, is that human... MORE
January 13, 2004
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
I have already given so-called "happiness research" a pretty hard bashing. But Tyler Cowen thinks that there is something to it. He links to a paper that says that people who work for nonprofits are happier than people who work... MORE
January 8, 2004
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Psychologist Barry Schwartz says that we may be worse off with more choice. "As a culture, we are enamored of freedom, self-determination, and variety, and we are reluctant to give up any of our options," he writes with characteristic directness.... MORE
January 4, 2004
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Because it appears in the latest American Economic Review, I got around to reading carefully Daniel Kahneman's Nobel lecture, Maps of Bounded Rationality. He contrasts an intuitive way of processing information with a calculating, rational method. The central characteristic of... MORE
November 4, 2003
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Will Baude brings up the St. Petersburg Paradox, in which a bet with an infinite expected payoff is rejected by the typical individual. Baude points out the problem with trying to resolve the paradox by invoking diminishing marginal utility. here's... MORE
October 9, 2003
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Kevin McCabe says that experimental economics offers three implications for policymakers trying to foster economic growth through the adoption of markets. First, safeguards must be put into place to protect impersonal exchange from our innate desire for personal exchange. Second,... MORE
October 1, 2003
Regulation and Subsidies
Arnold Kling
Posting here will be infrequent until later in October. Meanwhile, here are some links that may be of interest. Is the insecurity of Microsoft software an externality that should be regulated or taxed? An example of professional licensing as rent-seeking... MORE
August 17, 2003
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Paul Zak reports on measuring the level of the hormone oxytocin in experimental subjects after they have played a game involving trust and co-operation. People were recruited and paid $10 for showing up. Then they took seats in a large... MORE
July 3, 2003
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Hal Varian's column cites research on the irrationality of small investors during the dotcom bubble. First, there were significant differences of opinion about the value of Internet stocks, with retail investors tending to be much more optimistic than insiders or... MORE
June 15, 2003
Efficient Markets Hypothesis
Arnold Kling
Columnist James Glassman discusses the Efficient Markets Hypothesis with John Allen Paolos, author of A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market. If you believe in the EMH, you understand that highly successful stock selections are really just lucky guesses... But, to... MORE
May 16, 2003
Revealed Preference
Arnold Kling
On the topic of revealed preference, David Thomson writes, Human beings are neither existentially [n]or psychologically able to endure lives of everyday indolence and unrelenting pleasure seeking. That sounds like the introductory sentence for a thesis in behavioral economics. For... MORE
May 14, 2003
Revealed Preference
Arnold Kling
I take a skeptical view of surveys in this essay. From the standpoint of revealed preference, the [survey evidence] that income over $20,000 does not raise happiness simply falls apart. Observing the fact that even people with very high incomes... MORE
April 4, 2003
Revealed Preference
Arnold Kling
In a previous post, I mentioned Richard Layard's critique of economics, based on survey research. Now, I have written an extended response to Layard. An excerpt: [Layard] is saying that you cannot trust people's behavior as an indicator of their... MORE
March 25, 2003
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Irwin M. Stelzer argues that the shortage of organ donors is due to price controls--in particular, the fact that organ donors do not get paid. if we can begin to think about this issue in a clear-headed way, we might... MORE
March 20, 2003
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Clay Shirky used (coined?) the term mental transaction costs to describe the problem with using micropayments (small payments to download articles or music). I believe that economists tend to over-rate the value of peak-load pricing systems, because they fail to... MORE
March 18, 2003
Revealed Preference
Arnold Kling
Richard Layard uses survey research and some fancy philosophical footwork to argue against conventional wisdom in economics and in favor of a nanny state. Some quotes from the series of three lectures: People in the West have got no happier... MORE
March 13, 2003
Microeconomics
Arnold Kling
Hal Varian compares the potency of two types of incentives to save. One incentive is a tax break for savings. The other is a non-economic incentive, in which it becomes easier for an employee to sign up (or harder not... MORE
Return to top
|
