Incentives and human behavior

Readings due before class on Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Required

Important: The PDFs of the individual chapters are posted on Learning Suite.

• Chapter 2 in Naked EconomicsCharles Wheelan, Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010).
  
  
• Introduction, chapter 1, and chapter 5 in Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and HappinessRichard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).
  
  
• Anuschka de Rohan, “Why dolphins are deep thinkers”, The Guardian, July 2, 2003 (first 3 paragraphs only)
• At least two of these episodes:
  • Freakonomics Radio, “The Men Who Started a Thinking Revolution,” January 4, 2017
  • Freakonomics Radio, “Should We Really Behave like Economists Say We Do?,” June 4, 2015
  • Freakonomics Radio, “Big Returns from Thinking Small,” March 29, 2017
  • Freakonomics Radio, “The White House Gets Into the Nudge Business,” November 2, 2016
  • Planet Money, “Nudge, Nudge, Nobel,” episode 803
  • Hidden Brain, “Predictably Unpredictable: Why We Don’t Act Like We Should,” October 23, 2017