American - Economist | 1972 -
People go shopping, we spend on so many things, and we just don't know. We don't know the prices of things. But gasoline, even when you're not buying, it's staring you in the face. Psychologists call this 'salience.'
Sendhil Mullainathan
PeopleShoppingFaceYouGoKnow
Things that price at $4.99 sell very differently than things that price at $5.
PriceThingsSellThanDifferently
For somebody for whom they're going to buy a certain amount of gas irrespective of the price, should they really spend so much time thinking about the price of gas? It doesn't affect anything they do.
TimeThinkingPriceBuyAnything
It's 2014, and women are still paid less than men. Does this suggest that a gender pay gap is an unfortunately permanent fixture? Will it still be with us in 50 years? I would predict yes. But by that point, it will be men who will be earning less than women.
WomenMenGenderWillPredictPay
Even when a man and a woman perform equally well in a task - say, solving math problems - men are more willing to enter competitions based on that task. Men also show less risk aversion.
MenWomanManProblemsSayTask
If women's choices - such as taking time off to rear children - make them less productive in the economy, does adolescent boys' behavior in school make them even less so, because they are missing the educational potential of their formative years?
WomenChildrenTimeSchoolChoices
People will often take an interesting experimental study which has been done in the world, perhaps at small scale, and then it's touted as some big solution.
PeopleWorldSmallInterestingDone
Serial tasking is hard because switching tasks is hard, even when the tasks are easy and similar. In some experiments, bilingual speakers are asked to read out numbers, first in one language and then midway in another language. They often stumble at the switch, taking many tries before they hit their stride again.
LanguageEasyNumbersFirstHard
Task switching is hard because we do not control what is on our mind. Despite our efforts, the original task continues to occupy our mental bandwidth. Although we can control where our time goes, we cannot fully control how our bandwidth is allocated.
TimeMindControlHardTaskMental
We ought to arrange calendars as we arrange art on our walls and ask: how does this task fit next to the surrounding ones?
ArtWallsAskNextTaskFit
Faced with a time shortage, we squeeze tasks into the nooks and crannies of our calendar, leaving less and less time to switch between them. As a result, we become less and less productive exactly when we need to be most productive.
TimeResultCalendarLeavingBecome
Some struggle with medical issues - like insomnia - that make sleep hard. But for many of us, the quantity and quality of sleep come down to a matter of choice. Still, only a few enterprising economists have looked closely at this, and generally, those have assumed that we choose our hours of sleep optimally.
QualityStruggleMedicalSleepDown
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