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" Economists discount any factors that would not influence the thinking of a rational person. "

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" When it comes to assessing the chances of some complicated combination of events, gut feelings are pretty much useless. "

" It makes sense for social scientists to become more involved in policy because many of society's most challenging problems are, in essence, behavioral. "

" As every successful parent learns, one way to encourage good behavior, from room-cleaning to tooth-brushing, is to make it fun. Not surprisingly, the same principle applies to adults. Adults like to have fun, too. "

" Doctors and hospitals should be paid for keeping their patients well. Paying them for doing more tests and surgeries creates bad incentives. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The Nobel Prize is going to be 'fun money' - for an occasion, when my wife and I want a $50 bottle of wine. "

" 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. "

" Payroll savings plans are vital because they are essentially the only way that middle-class Americans reliably save for retirement. "

" When employees are first eligible for a retirement savings plan, they should be enrolled unless they choose to opt out. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There can be legal conflicts over whether registering intent is enough to qualify you as an organ donor or whether a doctor must still ask your family's permission. "

" Fortunately, economists open to new ways of thinking are finding novel ways to use supposedly irrelevant factors to make the world a better place. "

" We behavioralists differ from our more traditional brethren in the way we characterize agents in the economy. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" If you're trading individual securities, you're almost certainly making a mistake. Because most professional managers can't outperform their benchmarks, and there's little reason to think that individuals can. "

" In the 1940s, economics started getting highly mathematical. It was basically because economists weren't smart enough to write down models of real behavior that they started writing down models of highly rational behavior - and they kind of forgot about humans. "

" If you're not putting enough away for emergencies or retirement, making commitments in advance, such as signing up for payroll withholding, can help. "

" Demanding that the rich get a tax cut as a condition for tax relief for others is simply elitist. "

" Academia does not provide many opportunities for immediate gratification. You work for two years on a project, it takes two more years to get it published, and then you start hoping someone might read it. "

" 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. "

" As a general rule, the United States government is run by lawyers who occasionally take advice from economists. Others interested in helping the lawyers out need not apply. "

" If we think that high marginal tax rates are bad because they distort incentives, the same is then true for tax subsidies. "

" 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. "

" In a democracy, if a government creates bad policies, it can be voted out of office. Competition in the private sector, however, can easily work to encourage phishing rather than stifle it. "

" 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. "

" The voting public is not very good at attributing credit and blame to presidents. They get too much credit when things go well and too much blame when things go badly. The same applies to coaches, C.E.O.'s, parents, and anyone else in charge. "