Between The Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments, which I previously touted, and now Behavioural Economics for Kids, my kid is in for a real treat this holiday season—and probably several (additional) therapy sessions twenty years hence.
The latter book features some of law profs' favorite predictable irrationalities, including the endowment effect, framing, and hyperbolic discounting. Pictured here is anchoring bias (or, in the book's preferred nomenclature, reference dependence). As someone who thinks the law doesn't always leave sufficient space for altruism, and that in general legal academia has tended to overemphasize bounded rationality (and, to a lesser extent, bounded will-power) while overlooking the interesting implications for law and policy of bounded self-interest, I was particularly pleased to see that the book includes a discussion of preferences for fairness and competitor orientation. H/T Cass Sunstein on the Twitters.
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