by Dan Ariely
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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Great Behavioral Econ Book, 2008-09-02
Excellent use of science and economics to explain some of the irrational decisions we make every day. Other reviews have captured the good parts adequately.
I agree with the review below me. His science is seemingly unassailable, but many of his "solutions" to problems seem to come from a left perspective. However, this was rare and the book generally refrains from normative analysis.
Overall excellent read, but not as captivating as Freakonomics was when it first came out.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Love The Studies so-so on the Social Commentary, 2008-09-01
The behavioral economics and studies behind this book are genuinely fascinating. It will challenge the way that you make decisions and reveal irrationality behind your most recent purchases. I had a great time reading it but I did move past some of the social recommendations that he makes in the book.
It's not that I think they are not good ideas, its just that I see them as irrelevant to the overall theme of the book. That is just the way that I read the book, but if you are interested in social commentary and possible solutions to irrationality in society, it can give you some interesting topics to think about.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Great reading, entertaining, and very rational, 2008-08-30
This book is a combination of a very entertaining reading with great content. Ariel presents the results of several social experiments he has conducted during years of research. Most of them are unexpected, or should I say irrational? But most of those behaviors are really predictable regardles of how ilogical they seem.
You can apply the lessons learned in this book to your daily life, if you are going to business school this would be a great complement to any of your courses (marketing, ethics, finance, etc.)
Best of all, it is very, very entertaining.
I hope you enjoy this reading.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
No economist can afford to miss this, 2008-08-24
Today's mainstream economics is largely based on assumptions of rationality. Ariely shows that such assumptions are completely wrong. This has large implications for running an economic system that achieves a good life for people. People are constantly trying to improve their lives by buying more "stuff," but within very short time periods they find themselves dissatisfied again. The most common measure of economic prosperity used by mainstream economists is the GDP--which essentially counts up what people spend on stuff. Is it any wonder that GDP statistics do not correlate well with quality of life? No economist can afford to miss reading this book. For more on this, see The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies and Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development.
One of Ariely's fascinating findings is that most people would not steal money directly from someone else, but that if the fact that one is stealing is disguised even slightly, most people will do it. This principle is in my opinion why pollution, deforestation, and exhaustion of resources are so difficult to control. We wouldn't steal a fisherman's wallet, but dumping a half-gallon of chemicals in a stream seems different to us, even if the effect on the fisherman's income is the same.
I was especially intrigued by Ariely's analysis of the power of "free". Ariely doesn't mention this, but free parking is a fantastic example. One form of destructive government subsidy that many people don't know about is local regulation requiring the provision of certain numbers of parking spaces around businesses and residences. Most American localities have such regulations, which are known as parking requirements. The idea behind parking requirements is to make sure that free parking is always available. Unfortunately, the effect is to favor automobile travel over other forms of transportation, like walking, that don't require all that vehicle storage space. It's a form of enforced inefficiency. U.S. building codes also favor the automobile in other ways, such as by requiring very wide streets. Parking requirements are one of the main reasons why housing is so expensive in the U.S. The cost of parking requirements in the United States is in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year. For more on this, see Donald Shoup's book The High Cost of Free Parking.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Insightful quick read, 2008-08-18
In this book, Dan Ariely describes some of the ways people act and react to various real life economic situations. He provides great insight into context of why we do some of the things we do and supports his conclusions with examples of some of the research he has performed with other researchers.
Incredibly well written and a quick read.
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