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" Signing up to be an organ donor should be at least as easy as downloading a song to your iPhone. "

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" 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?' "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" Don't get trapped by looking at what the price was that you paid for some stock originally. "

" 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. "

" Tort reform is a complicated subject and not a panacea. "

" Arthur Laffer's idea, that lowering taxes could increase revenues, was logically correct. If tax rates are high enough, then people will go to such lengths to avoid them that cutting taxes can increase revenues. What he was wrong about was in thinking that income tax rates were already so high in the 1970s that cutting them would raise revenues. "

" We all need a lot of humility, and especially about the economy. "

" People are less likely to think it's immoral to walk away from their home if they know others who have done so. And if enough people do it, the stigma begins to erode. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We could all use more coaching. "

" Pundits are no better at forecasting election outcomes than they would be at predicting the final path of a hurricane. Smart pundits should consider either abandoning this activity or consulting with the geeks before rendering their guesses. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" If you want to encourage some activity, make it easy. "

" I don't think it says anywhere in the Bible that tithing should be calculated on a before-tax basis. "

" Morality aside, there are other factors deterring 'strategic defaults,' whether in recourse or nonrecourse states. These include the economic and emotional costs of giving up one's home and moving, the perceived social stigma of defaulting, and a serious hit to a borrower's credit rating. "

" 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. "

" Sunk costs? We pay too much attention to them. "

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

" 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. "

" Even if we grade on a very generous curve, many Americans flunk when it comes to financial literacy. "

" 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. "

" It's hard to have any idea of how much money is enough to finance an appropriate lifestyle in retirement. But if a lump sum is translated into a monthly income, it's much easier to determine whether you have enough put away to afford to stop working. "

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

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

" Anybody who's ever been in a large organization realizes that 'optimizing' is not a word that would often be used to describe any large organization. The reason is that it's full of people, who are complicated. "

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