Richard H. Thaler's Blog, page 2

The landfill nudge shows up at a Whole Foods in Lake Forest, Illinois

Hat tip: Brad Bennett

Charles Barkley believes in the hot hand fallacy – when it comes to poker, anyway

NBA legend and recreational gambler Charles Barkley is presented with the following hypothetical on ESPN radio: You are winning big at the poker table when a beautiful woman sits down next to you. "Do you stay with the hands or do you leave?"

Barkley: "Bro, gambling is so fickle, I love to gamble, when you on roll, you ride it out, bro. First of all, you don't even let people sit down with you that you don't know. I don't play with random strangers."

The interview is here.

Washington has a self-control problem

Richard Thaler's latest Economic View column.

As implausible as it may seem, here is a statement that almost everyone in Washington can agree with: Congress has self-control problems. This may just be a sign of democracy. We elect those who share our frailties. We Americans eat too much, take on too much debt, save too little and put off anything mildly unpleasant as long as possible. Psychologists and behavioral economists have studied these kinds of problems for decades. We know, for...

Advice from the most successful car salesman ever

It ain't complicated, reports Farnam Street.

So how does (Joe Girard), who sells one car at a time to everyday customers, go on to become one of the most successful sales people in history? Girard offers a simple answer: "People want a fair deal from someone they like."

When questioned about what he does to get people to like him, he says "I tell them that I like them."

How the Dutch watch out for cyclists

In the U.K., the public transit agency turned to a marketing campaign built around a famous psychology experiment.

In the Netherlands, reports the NYT,

Dutch drivers are taught that when you are about to get out of the car, you reach for the door handle with your right hand — bringing your arm across your body to the door. This forces a driver to swivel shoulders and head, so that before opening the door you can see if there is a bike coming from behind. Likewise, every Dutch child has to...

We've moved to www.nudges.org. Come with us.

Nudges.wordpress.com has been a great home for the Nudge blog over the past year and a half, but it's time to move on. Where to? www.nudges.org. That's right, we're taking over our first home and revamping it for the future. We've added new social media capabilities that let you share our posts on facebook and twitter more easily. And you guessed it, we've got a facebook page and a twitter handle now. Finally, yes. We hope you'll friend us and follow us as we try to use these platforms for...

Auto-suggest suggests how far behavioral economics has come, and how far it still has to go

In terms of recognition and respect, behavioral economics has certainly come a long way in the last 25 years. But it is still a Hibernian outpost in the great Roman Economics empire. One of the newest metrics for evaluating its impact is the auto-suggest feature in many search engines that has become quite popular since Google aired its ode to the long-distance romance during the Super Bowl.

In order to compare regular economics and behavioral economics, the Nudge blog typed in the first word ...

Millionaire athletes hate handing over $20 cash for being late

UCLA economist Matthew Kahn picks up on a neat little story about Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson's use of psychology in his NBA locker rooms. Ever the behavioralist, Jackson fined his players tiny amounts – $10 and $20 – for being late to games by a few minutes.

Jackson has found that players are more grudging about having to pull cash out of their own pocket on the spot, than having a larger fine deducted from a paycheck, as is the usual practice.

Filed under: Blog posts Tagged: basketb...

Italian RECAP?

Bank of Italy Governor Mario Draghi says "the variety of new (bank) fees makes it difficult for customers to compare the different offers." He then seems to propose a RECAP-style system of simplification and disclosure.

Within days we will submit to the Government a comprehensive regulatory proposal that can lead to clearly stated charges, so that all customers can compare different banks and competition can operate freely, without the impediment of opacity.

A pdf of the full speech is here...

Assorted links

1) The equity premium puzzle refers to the outperformance of stocks versus bonds over the last hundred years. An economist proposes an equivalent in the NFL. The passing premium puzzle, where teams look for a balanced offensive attack when the return to a pass is larger than that of a run. Hat tip: The Frontal Cortex.

2) Daniel Kahneman at TED. "'Happiness levels increase up to the $60K mark, but "above that it's a flat line,' (Kahneman) says. 'Money does not buy you experiential happiness...