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

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

" Social Security may be the most beloved of all the government's programs, partly because it requires so little thinking. You pay taxes while you work, then you and your spouse collect until you die. "

" Traditional economics is based on imaginary creatures sometimes referred to as 'Homo economicus.' I call them Econs for short. Econs are amazingly smart and are free of emotion, distraction or self-control problems. Think Mr. Spock from 'Star Trek.' "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" God did not say that you should be able to borrow one hundred percent of the price of a house. "

" When it comes to my health, I would rather my doctor base her decisions on science rather than what she, or some lawyer, thinks will stand up in court. "

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

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

" 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. "

" For many people, being asked to solve their own retirement savings problems is like being asked to build their own cars. "

" 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. "

" You can't make evidence-based policy decisions without evidence. "

" 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. "

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

" If governments want to encourage good citizenship, they should try making the desired behavior more fun. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" The lesson for businesses is you are dealing with real people. Those are your customers, those are your employees, those are your bosses, and the better you understand how real people tick, the more successfully you will be able to accomplish your goals. "

" The main thing that you learn in grad school, or should learn, is how to think like an economist. The rest is just math. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" There's a reason why start-ups, especially disruptive start-ups - like Google or Amazon or Uber - are full of young people. That's because young people are not as wedded to the old fashioned ways of doing things. "