Recently read: Priceless
Priceless, by William Poundstone
This feels very much like Poundstone's other books. He picks an interesting topic, and discusses the topic, its history, and the (usually colorful) characters associated with it. This time, his topic is behavioral economics and related psychological quirks.
There's a pretty standard rational-actor model in economics. The problem is, of course, that people don't match the model, in sometimes striking ways. One of the examples from the book involves an auction for some MBA students. The quirk was that the bidders were asked to write down the last two digits of their social security numbers before the auction. That really shouldn't matter -- but somehow the highest bids came from the 80-99 group, and the lowest bids from the 00-19 group.
There are a lot of similar effects, discussed in some detail. Also discussed are how people take advantage of these quirks: There's a reason that lots of things are priced at $xx.99, and it's not innocent.
Highly Recommended
This feels very much like Poundstone's other books. He picks an interesting topic, and discusses the topic, its history, and the (usually colorful) characters associated with it. This time, his topic is behavioral economics and related psychological quirks.
There's a pretty standard rational-actor model in economics. The problem is, of course, that people don't match the model, in sometimes striking ways. One of the examples from the book involves an auction for some MBA students. The quirk was that the bidders were asked to write down the last two digits of their social security numbers before the auction. That really shouldn't matter -- but somehow the highest bids came from the 80-99 group, and the lowest bids from the 00-19 group.
There are a lot of similar effects, discussed in some detail. Also discussed are how people take advantage of these quirks: There's a reason that lots of things are priced at $xx.99, and it's not innocent.
Highly Recommended