Sendhil Mullainathan
Sendhil Mullainathan
Sendhil Mullainathan)is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University, and the author of Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. He was hired with tenure by Harvard in 2004 after having spent six years at MIT. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" and conducts research on development economics, behavioral economics, and corporate finance. He is co-founder of Ideas42, a non-profit organization that uses behavioral science to help solve social problems, and J-PAL, the MIT Poverty...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEconomist
CountryUnited States of America
Maybe poverty is a special case of something else. That something else is 'scarcity,' and anyone who has the experience of 'having very little' experiences the same psychology.
Time can be dissected easily: an hour can be cut up in many ways. Fifteen minutes on this memo, a five-minute walk to another meeting, 30 minutes at that meeting and then 10 minutes debriefing. Oh, and maybe a quick phone call on the walk to that meeting. The busy are expert at dissection: that's how they make it all fit.
We should try to ensure that everyone has a fair opportunity to find a great life. It's a quest that will require political will and ingenious policies. President Obama's proposed expansion of the earned-income tax credit goes in this direction, but we need more.
The ability to save automatically is among the most powerful tools available to us.
January is always a good month for behavioral economics: Few things illustrate self-control as vividly as New Years resolutions. February is even better, though, because it lets us study why so many of those resolutions are broken.
Faced with a time shortage, we squeeze tasks into the nooks and crannies of our calendar, leaving less and less time to switch between them. As a result, we become less and less productive exactly when we need to be most productive.
Eat better or work out more, and youll see the benefits weeks, months or years down the road. Sleep more, and youll see the benefits tomorrow.