Even a mother - Jewish or not - can't worry about everything. So it is important that we limit our worries to real as opposed to imaginary risks.
Everyone knows it's dangerous to ingest gasoline or to inhale its fumes. But I am starting to believe that merely thinking about the price of gasoline can damage cognitive processing.
Fortunately, economists open to new ways of thinking are finding novel ways to use supposedly irrelevant factors to make the world a better place.
I don't think it says anywhere in the Bible that tithing should be calculated on a before-tax basis.
Real people have trouble balancing their checkbooks, much less calculating how much they need to save for retirement; they sometimes binge on food, drink, or high-definition televisions. They are more like Homer Simpson than Mr. Spock.
Lotteries are just one way to provide positive reinforcement. Their power comes from the fact that the chance of winning the prize is overvalued.
For amateur golfers, I think one of the biggest mistakes is to model their play on professionals.
I have an agent, John Brockman, who is an agent to many academic authors like Dan Gilbert and Steven Pinker, and he's very good at conning academics into writing books. He pulled this trick on me.
Behavioral economics offers a plausible explanation for overreactions by the market. For example, a long period of bad performance can lead to stereotyping.
When employees are first eligible for a retirement savings plan, they should be enrolled unless they choose to opt out.
For many people, being asked to solve their own retirement savings problems is like being asked to build their own cars.
If governments want to encourage good citizenship, they should try making the desired behavior more fun.
People make just as many mistakes when the stakes go up, maybe more.
There's a reason why start-ups, especially disruptive start-ups - like Google or Amazon or Uber - are full of young people. That's because young people are not as wedded to the old fashioned ways of doing things.
High school seniors should receive help in how to think about a student loan and how to make sure that the education bought with the loan offers good prospects for repayment.
It's essential that we understand things like the free-rider problem, but we also need to understand that, fortunately, humans are a little nicer than economists give them credit for. Some people actually leave money at roadside fruit stands; some people give money to NPR so we can listen to it.
Traditional economics is based on imaginary creatures sometimes referred to as 'Homo economicus.' I call them Econs for short. Econs are amazingly smart and are free of emotion, distraction or self-control problems. Think Mr. Spock from 'Star Trek.'
It's not that we can predict bubbles - if we could, we would be rich. But we can certainly have a bubble warning system.
Countries all around the world, starting with the U.K., have started behavioural insight teams, often referred to as nudge units. And they seem to be doing lots of good.
One reason for high health care costs is that patients fail to follow their treatment regimen.
The supply price and the demand price should be roughly the same. You're not supposed to have two different prices. According to economists.
You can't make evidence-based policy decisions without evidence.
The government employs scientists of many varieties in technical capacities, from estimating the environmental toxicity of a chemical to the structural soundness of a bridge. But when it comes to forming policies, these scientists and, especially, behavioral scientists are rarely at the table with the lawyers and the economists.
We humans actually need help controlling our impulses - nudges.
Here is a guiding principle: If a business collects data on consumers electronically, it should provide them with a version of that data that is easy to download and export to another Web site.
Shopping for an annuity with hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake can be daunting, even for an economist.
Sunk costs? We pay too much attention to them.
The tradition of Chicago price theory is a good one, and it is a low-tech methodology that tries to apply simple economic theory to the world.
One of society's thorniest problems is that children from poor families start school lagging badly behind their more affluent classmates in readiness.
If there is one thing that most economists agree about in the realm of tax policy, it is that it's best to broaden the base of any tax, all else being equal. That means minimizing the number of deductions and exclusions from taxable income in order to lower marginal rates and reduce distortions.
In the world of traditional economics, it shouldn't matter whether you use an opt-in or opt-out system. So long as the costs of registering as a donor or a nondonor are low, the results should be similar. But many findings of behavioral economics show that tiny disparities in such rules can make a big difference.
I think behavioral economists don't have any more of an explanation about the rise of Trump than anyone else.
The main thing that you learn in grad school, or should learn, is how to think like an economist. The rest is just math.
I practice what has come to be called behavioral economics.
My thesis topic was 'The value of a human life.' I asked people a question: 'Suppose you had some risk, a one in a thousand risk of dying - how much would you pay to eliminate it?'
Don't get trapped by looking at what the price was that you paid for some stock originally.
Demanding that the rich get a tax cut as a condition for tax relief for others is simply elitist.
I try to teach people to make fewer mistakes. But in designing economic policies, we need to take full account of the fact that people are busy, they're absent minded, they're lazy, and that we should try to make things as easy for them as possible.
The lesson of my field, behavioral economics, is that we need to understand the ways in which we differ from the rational human assumed in standard economic theory.
Many Americans say they want to be organ donors, but they just don't get around to acting on their intentions. Helping these potential good Samaritans overcome their inertia could prolong thousands of lives a year.
Although the United States cannot unilaterally lower the price of oil, it can reduce its consumption by using oil more efficiently and by developing alternative sources of fuel.
Social Security may be the most beloved of all the government's programs, partly because it requires so little thinking. You pay taxes while you work, then you and your spouse collect until you die.
I am all for trying to teach household finance in schools, starting as early as possible. And when it comes to high school, I think learning about compound interest is at least as important as trigonometry or memorizing the names of all 50 state capitals.
When it comes to assessing the chances of some complicated combination of events, gut feelings are pretty much useless.
If you're not putting enough away for emergencies or retirement, making commitments in advance, such as signing up for payroll withholding, can help.
Parents want their children to excel, callers to a victims' hot line want help, and sick people want to get well. Offering aids is like providing an alarm clock: it may help people get to an appointment on time, but no one is forcing them to use it.
Claiming that Social Security benefits are safe may sound naive, but my view is actually quite cynical. I believe that as long as the elderly continue to vote in large numbers, no Congress will renege on promised payouts for those already eligible to receive benefits.
Most of us think that we are 'better than average' in most things. We are also 'miscalibrated,' meaning that our sense of the probability of events doesn't line up with reality. When we say we are sure about a certain fact, for example, we may well be right only half the time.
Even if we grade on a very generous curve, many Americans flunk when it comes to financial literacy.
