I’ve seen a couple of articles on the role of loss aversion and the administration’s plans to reform healthcare. For example, Peter Ubel — a nice guy whom I’ve known for a long time — writes at...
There’s an interesting article in today’s Wall Street Journal underlining the interest of the Obama administration in harnessing the power of behavioral economics for positive behavior change. One key reason for the...
President Obama intends to pay for a healthcare bill in part with cuts in wasteful spending, according to a New York Times article earlier this month: Mr. Obama said he had identified “an additional $313 billion in savings that...
The New York Times reports that loss aversion steers professional golfers to putt for birdie significantly less often than putting for par, according to two professors from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton...
Last month, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed from Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, where he laid out the importance of improving the quality of health care while wringing waste...
Peter Orszag comments on how the Obama administration will rely more heavily on evidence to drive policy and inform decisions. Evidence should trump intuition — and the higher the stakes, the greater reliance we should...
In a recent weekly address, President Obama laid out the three tenets of his healthcare plan: This week, I conveyed to Congress my belief that any healthcare reform must be built around fundamental reforms that lower costs...
A New York Times piece on the rise of smart phones offers an interesting take on how social norms drive use of technologies via expectations: “The social norm is that you should respond [to e-mail] within a couple of hours...
Wired provides a great example of how what seems to be irrational behavior today — our awkward etiquette during elevator rides — was quite rational behavior in our ancestral past. The bends, kinks, and biases in...
An article from last week’s New York Times explores the pressure the economy puts on patients at the pharmacy counter. One recent Wednesday, James S. Crawford, newly discharged from the hospital after his third heart...
