Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics

by Richard H. Thaler

Observe. Behavioral economics started with simple observations. People eat too many nuts if the bowl is left out. People have mental accounts—they don’t treat all cash the same. People make mistakes—lots of them.

Collect data. Stories are powerful and memorable. That is why I have told so many in this book. But an individual anecdote can only serve as an illustration. To really convince yourself, much less others, we need to change the way we do things: we need data, and lots of it.

Speak up. Many organizational errors could have been easily prevented if someone had been willing to tell the boss that something was going wrong.