Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics book club questions

1. 1.

   Thaler describes the Econ as a useful fiction that became a harmful assumption. In what domains in your life do you think you approximate an Econ, and in what domains are you clearly something different?

2. 2.

   Mental accounting means you treat your tax refund differently from your paycheck even though they are equally real dollars. Can you trace your own mental accounts and how they affect your spending?

3. 3.

   The endowment effect — valuing things more once you own them — has implications for negotiation, selling, and letting go of things. Where do you see it operating in your own decisions?

4. 4.

   Thaler argues that behavioral economics is more descriptively accurate than standard economics but that this does not mean people are stupid or incompetent. How does that framing change how you think about the people making predictable errors?

5. 5.

   Automatic enrollment in 401(k) plans is the nudge success story. What other decisions in your life would benefit from a better default?

6. 6.

   He discusses the ultimatum game: people reject unfair offers at cost to themselves. Does that finding change how you think about economic rationality, or does it just mean fairness preferences are part of utility?

7. 7.

   Misbehaving is partly a memoir of being an outsider within economics. What does it take to get a field to revise its foundational assumptions?

8. 8.

   Present bias makes it hard to commit to future-directed behavior — saving, diet, exercise. What commitments have you made that actually work for you, and what design features make them effective?

9. 9.

   Thaler won the Nobel Prize in 2017 for this work. What does the delay between the research in the 1980s and recognition in 2017 suggest about how paradigm shifts happen in academic fields?

10. 10.

    The nudge framework has been criticized as paternalistic even in its libertarian form. Do you think it is appropriate for governments and employers to design choice architecture to improve outcomes?

11. 11.

    Which behavioral anomaly that Thaler describes seems most exploitable by corporations or governments in ways that harm rather than help consumers?

How to run the discussion

• Pick six to eight, not all of them. An hour of real discussion covers fewer questions than anyone expects, and racing the list is what makes a book club feel like homework.
• Open with what people noticed, not what they concluded. Asking for a verdict first hardens opinions before anyone has heard each other.
• Let the disagreement run. The questions below that split a room are the ones worth the time; the ones everyone answers the same way can be skipped.
• Ask the quiet person a specific question. A direct, narrow question is far easier to answer than an open invitation to contribute.