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Behavioral Economics and Rationality
A Category Archive (355 entries)
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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
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