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Do we value past experiences?

Posted by Economist Channel on Sunday, January 24, 2016 Label:
Derek Parfit's 1984 work, Reasons and Persons, is one of the most important works on moral philosophy. It put forward an account of ethical decision making rooted in a philosophical conception of rationality, identity, and time. It has had a substantial impact on discussions of morals and ethics across a wide range of domains. It is also highly relevant to behavioural economics, in particular in understanding inter-temporal choice. 

The book is divided into 4 sections: the first "Self-defeating theories" deals with rational choice in the context of interconnected decisions; the second "Rationality and Time" develops an account of inter-temporal choice that questions our received notions of time; the third "Personal Identity" develops an account of identity based not on continuity but rather on mental connectedness; the fourth section discusses the nature of obligation to future generations. The book consists of 20 chapters as well as appendices, totalling 154 subsections each containing important ideas. The four parts of the book also interconnect and build to a startling set of ideas on how we should ethically behave towards others, our future selves, and future generations. The book's concepts have substantial relevance for economists. One example is his well-known "repugnant conclusion" and "non-identity problem", one potential consequence being that future generations should not be factored into policy considerations as different courses of action will simply create different future generations who, providing their existence is preferable to them than non-existence, will be grateful to have been born. Most relevant to the type of work we discuss on this blog, Shane Frederick has developed Parfit's ideas on psychological connectedness to future selves in order to examine inter-temporal choice.

Rather than attempt the task of summarising the relevance of Reasons and Persons for behavioural economics, I provide here one example for the purpose of illustration. Chapter 8 "Different Attitudes to Time" examines whether we are neutral with regard to time. If we are valuing a reward or punishment should it matter to us whether we receive it now, in the future, or in the past? A large part of behavioural economics is based on the idea that people will value present rewards more highly than future rewards, and that this will be accentuated when the time horizon is nearer. However, the idea of valuing past rewards is not something that is often discussed. 

At first glance, it seems like a very odd idea. For example, take the choice below (which is my clumsy construction): 

A: You will receive 100 pounds in a week, which you must spend on something you really enjoy. 

B: You will learn that you received 100 pounds last week, which you spent on something you really enjoyed and subsequently forgot about. 

Assuming that both experiences are equally enjoyable, it seems unlikely that anyone would prefer to have had that experience in the past rather than to have it available as a future option. Arguably, this is because we experience time as moving forward from our present state. An experience that happens to us in the past can only be valuable if it provides us with some element of present or future enjoyment. For example, if B led to us meeting someone that we became friends with, it may be rational to prefer B over the prospect of A. But the key point is that we do not place a value on the experience of B in itself because it is a past event that we no longer remember. 

Can we imagine conditions where we value past experiences without regard for any present or future benefits deriving from them? Parfit gives the example of someone learning that their mother had died. Should it matter to the person how she died? Given any information about this refers to something that is in the past, should the person then be indifferent? Consider the case where the person learns that their mother had endured many months of intense pain prior to death and compare this to the case where the person learns that their mother had died painlessly, surrounded by loved ones, after a brief illness. There are many objections one could raise about the precise set-up and I would certainly encourage people to read the very detailed passage by Parfit to fully appreciate the thought experiment. But it seems clear that the valuation of past experience is not just due to future utility considerations, such as the effect on family members and so on. We feel bad that our mother would have suffered and we want to avoid this, even if the event is in the past. Puzzlingly, this probably does not apply to our own past experiences. For example, Parfit discusses the case where you are conscious during a medical operation but then given a drug to make you sleep and forget the experience. On waking up, would it matter to you whether the operation had been painful or not? Compare this to your preferences immediately before the operation. 

The above examples are contained in one chapter that makes a far more wide-ranging point about the nature of time attitudes. This chapter itself is nested in a section that outlines a theory of temporal decision-making and this, in turn, is nested into a full theory of ethical decision making. But, even in isolation, the idea already makes us think about a number of assumptions we rarely question including how we experience time and whether our valuations are necessarily just related to future and present experiences, as opposed to past experiences. Questioning the assumption that we only value present and future experiences can then lead to us to question how we incorporate time into valuation more generally. Parfit goes on to do this in an ingenious way in the rest of the book. 

David Hume on Present Bias

Posted by Economist Channel on Saturday, January 23, 2016 Label:
The Scottish Enlightenment is a historical antecedent to the development of a wide range of modern thought. Ashraf, Camerer and Loewenstein's "Adam Smith, Behavioral Economist" provides an account of the ideas of one of the era's main figures. David Hume also anticipates many of the key ideas in modern behavioural economics. See below for a particularly illustrative passage (the full chapter here) from his Treatise of Human Nature, in which Hume provides an elegant account of present-bias, one of the key concepts in modern behavioural economics. Hume's work, in general, was dense in economic and psychological intuition, with many insights relevant to the types of literature we discuss on this blog. 
"In reflecting on any action, which I am to perform a twelve-month hence, I always resolve to prefer the greater good, whether at that time it will be more contiguous or remote; nor does any difference in that particular make a difference in my present intentions and resolutions. My distance from the final determination makes all those minute differences vanish, nor am I affected by any thing, but the general and more discernible qualities of good and evil. But on my nearer approach, those circumstances, which I at first over-looked, begin to appear, and have an influence on my conduct and affections. A new inclination to the present good springs up, and makes it difficult for me to adhere inflexibly to my first purpose and resolution. This natural infirmity I may very much regret, and I may endeavour, by all possible means, to free my self from it. I may have recourse to study and reflection within myself; to the advice of friends; to frequent meditation, and repeated resolution: And having experienced how ineffectual all these are, I may embrace with pleasure any other expedient, by which I may impose a restraint upon myself, and guard against this weakness."
There is a great deal of interest  in Scotland in behavioural economics and the related, developing literature on behavioural science, with research ongoing in these areas in most of the Universities here. It would be worth thinking about recognising, through various means, these historical linkages.

Derek Parfit on Giving: Oxford Union

Posted by Economist Channel on Thursday, January 21, 2016 Label:
Derek Parfit's speech at the Oxford Union last year is linked below. Parfit's 1984 "Reasons and Persons" is a magnificent work that I will summarise here at a later stage. It is widely regarded as one of the most important works on moral philosophy, and it has substantial relevance to a number of questions in behavioural economics. His other major work "On What Matters", a 1400 page plus treatise, was published in 2011. In the speech below he outlines ethical arguments for international philanthropy. Several big questions are considered: how much of our income should we donate to charities?; why does it matter?; should we join aid agencies or maximise earnings and donate money? He explores several other related issues and engages in a lengthy Q+A.

Resources for Writing Skills

Posted by Economist Channel on Label:
I compiled this blogpost to aid discussion with colleagues and students about the best resources for improving writing skills and process.  This list is not intended to be exhaustive nor do I recommend each of the works listed. The usefulness of the various resources will differ across disciplines. Many of the resources relate to basic rules of written English. Others describe the particular conventions of dissertation and academic journal writing. Some of them relate to the process of writing. Much of the latter literature could be summarised by telling you to regularly sit somewhere quiet with no distractions writing for defined chunks of time, though it is worth discussing the extent to which writing discipline and routine formation are trainable skills that can be integrated into higher education. Patrick DunLeavy's twitter account (@write4research) is a particularly useful resource on the above themes. Alex Wood, co-director of our research centre, also has a webpage that provides advice for PhD students in psychology. 

Please note that the summaries below are from the publishers themselves.


Web resources



Cochrane (2005). Writing tips for PhD students. Graduate School of Business  University of Chicago. (Written for students of economics). 

Doctoral Writing SIG: DoctoralWritingSIG is a forum where people who are interested in doctoral writing can come together to share information, resources, ideas, dreams (perhaps even nightmares!) in a spirit of building knowledge and skills around higher degree research writing. You might be supporting research students in doctoral writing or ‘academic literacies’, or be a researcher in this field. You could be a research student supervisor or a person who is responsible for professional development of these people. You might even be a research student yourself. Whatever your official role or title, what matters in this community is a common interest in doctoral writing.

Fogarty (Grammar Girl). Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. 

Inger Mewburn. The Thesis Whisperer blog. 



The Oatmeal. How to Use an Apostrophe. 

University of Manchester Academic Phrasebank: The Academic Phrasebank is a general resource for academic writers. It aims to provide you with examples of some of the phraseological ‘nuts and bolts’ of writing organised according to the main sections of a research paper or dissertation (see the top menu ). Other phrases are listed under the more general communicative functions of academic writing (see the menu on the left). The resource should be particularly useful for writers who need to report their research work.The phrases, and the headings under which they are listed, can be used simply to assist you in thinking about the content and organisation of your own writing, or the phrases can be incorporated into your writing where this is appropriate. In most cases, a certain amount of creativity and adaptation will be necessary when a phrase is used.The items in the Academic Phrasebank are mostly content neutral and generic in nature; in using them, therefore, you are not stealing other people’s ideas and this does not constitute plagiarism. For some of the entries, specific content words have been included for illustrative purposes, and these should be substituted when the phrases are used.The resource was designed primarily for academic and scientific writers who are non-native speakers of English. However, native speaker writers may still find much of the material helpful. In fact, recent data suggest that the majority of users are native speakers of English. More about Academic Phrasebank.


Books on writing a thesis for students



Dissertation writers need strong, practical advice, as well as someone to assure them that their struggles aren't unique. Joan Bolker, midwife to more than one hundred dissertations and co-founder of the Harvard Writing Center, offers invaluable suggestions for the graduate-student writer. Using positive reinforcement, she begins by reminding thesis writers that being able to devote themselves to a project that truly interests them can be a pleasurable adventure. She encourages them to pay close attention to their writing method in order to discover their individual work strategies that promote productivity; to stop feeling fearful that they may disappoint their advisors or family members; and to tailor their theses to their own writing style and personality needs. Using field-tested strategies she assists the student through the entire thesis-writing process, offering advice on choosing a topic and an advisor, on disciplining one's self to work at least fifteen minutes each day; setting short-term deadlines, on revising and defining the thesis, and on life and publication after the dissertation. Bolker makes writing the dissertation an enjoyable challenge.

Booth (2008). The Craft of Research. Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing and Publishing. 

With more than 400,000 copies now in print, The Craft of Research is the unrivalled resource for researchers at every level, from first-year undergraduates to research reporters at corporations and government offices. Seasoned researchers and educators Gregory G. Colomb and Joseph M. Williams present an updated third edition of their classic handbook, whose first and second editions were written in collaboration with the late Wayne C. Booth. The Craft of Research explains how to build an argument that motivates readers to accept a claim; how to anticipate the reservations of readers and to respond to them appropriately; and how to create introductions and conclusions that answer that most demanding question, So what? The third edition includes an expanded discussion of the essential early stages of a research task: planning and drafting a paper. The authors have revised and fully updated their section on electronic research, emphasizing the need to distinguish between trustworthy sources (such as those found in libraries) and less reliable sources found with a quick Web search. A chapter on warrants has also been thoroughly reviewed to make this difficult subject easier for researchers. Throughout, the authors have preserved the amiable tone, the reliable voice, and the sense of directness that have made this book indispensable for anyone undertaking a research project.


Authoring a PhD is a complex process. It involves having creative ideas, working out how to organize them, writing up from plans, upgrading the text, and finishing it speedily and to a good standard. It also includes being examined and getting published. Patrick Dunleavy has written Authoring a PhD based on his supervision experience with over 30 students. It provides solid advice to help your PhD students cope with both the intellectual issues and practical difficulties of organizing their work effectively. It is an indispensable and time saving aid for doctoral students in the humanities, social sciences, education, business studies, law, health, arts and visual arts, and related disciplines, and will also be a great help to supervisors.

Eco (Umberto) (2015). How to Write a Thesis. MIT Press. 

By the time Umberto Eco published his best-selling novel The Name of the Rose, he was one of Italy's most celebrated intellectuals, a distinguished academic and the author of influential works on semiotics. Some years before that, in 1977, Eco published a little book for his students, How to Write a Thesis, in which he offered useful advice on all the steps involved in researching and writing a thesis -- from choosing a topic to organizing a work schedule to writing the final draft. Now in its twenty-third edition in Italy and translated into seventeen languages, How to Write a Thesis has become a classic. Remarkably, this is its first, long overdue publication in English. Eco's approach is anything but dry and academic. He not only offers practical advice but also considers larger questions about the value of the thesis-writing exercise. How to Write a Thesis is unlike any other writing manual. It reads like a novel. It is opinionated. It is frequently irreverent, sometimes polemical, and often hilarious. Eco advises students how to avoid "thesis neurosis" and he answers the important question "Must You Read Books?" He reminds students "You are not Proust" and "Write everything that comes into your head, but only in the first draft." Of course, there was no Internet in 1977, but Eco's index card research system offers important lessons about critical thinking and information curating for students of today who may be burdened by Big Data. How to Write a Thesis belongs on the bookshelves of students, teachers, writers, and Eco fans everywhere. Already a classic, it would fit nicely between two other classics: Strunk and White and The Name of the Rose.

Evans et al (2014). How to Write a Better Thesis. Springer. 

This book offers a step-by-step guide on the mechanics of thesis writing. It helps readers to understand how to conceptualize and approach the problems of producing a thesis and illustrates the complete process with concrete examples.


In this short book Dr. Inger Mewburn, founder and editor of The Thesis Whisperer blog, shares her secrets for becoming a more productive researcher and writer. Inger finished her award-winning PhD in three years - despite having a small child, husband and demanding academic job. This book is a selection of her blog posts on thesis writing, which have been re-edited and expanded. This book introduces you to Inger's most important success strategies for getting your PhD finished and acts a companion to The Thesis Whisperer blog. See also the author's Thesis Whisperer blog. 

Murray (2011). How To Write A Thesis. Open Up Study Skills.

Providing down-to-earth guidance to help students shape their theses, Rowena Murray offers valuable advice and practical tips and techniques. Useful summaries and checklists help students to stay on track or regain their way. Moving beyond the basics of thesis writing, the book introduces practical writing techniques such as freewriting, generative writing and binge writing. Issues such as working out the criteria for your thesis, writer's block, writing a literature review and making notes into a draft are also covered.

New to this edition:

New introduction by students - 'How I used this book'
Update on doctoral skills set and Training Needs Analysis
Extended treatment of plagiarism - and how to avoid it
Expanded section on students' well-being
Learning outcomes for each chapter

Phillips & Pugh (2015). How To Get A Phd: A Handbook For Students And Their Supervisors. Open University Press.  "How to Get a PhD is the market leading, classic book for PhD students and their supervisors."

Wallace (2011). Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates. Sage Study Series. 

In Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates Second Edition, the authors show students how to read critically and how to write using critical techniques. This book is a 'must-have' resource for postgraduate students and early-career academics. It has been expanded and updated to include:
A range of examples encompassing disciplinary areas including linguistics, education, business and management Commentaries on using e-resources and features of e-research. New and additional material available online including access to journal articles. This book is for postgraduate students, methods course tutors and researchers.


This text offers a plan to help those who have blanched at the prospect of finishing a long piece of writing. Eviatar Zerubavel describes how to set up a writing schedule and regular work habits that should take most of the anxiety and procrastination out of long-term writing, and even make it enjoyable. Zerubavel argues that the dreaded "writer's block" often terms out to be simply a need for a better grasp of the temporaral organization of work. This book rethinks the writing process in terms of time and organization. It offers writers a simple yet comprehensive framework that considers such cariables as when to write, for how long, and how often, while keeping a sense of momentum throughout the entire project. It shows how to set priorities, balance ideals against constraints, and find the ideal time to write.


General books on academic writing and publishing


Students and researchers all write under pressure, and those pressures - most lamentably, the desire to impress your audience rather than to communicate with them - often lead to pretentious prose, academic posturing, and, not infrequently, writer's block. Sociologist Howard S. Becker has written the classic book on how to conquer these pressures and simply write. First published nearly twenty years ago, "Writing for Social Scientists" has become a lifesaver for writers in all fields, from beginning students to published authors. Becker's message is clear: in order to learn how to write, take a deep breath and then begin writing. Revise. Repeat. It is not always an easy process, as Becker wryly relates. Decades of teaching, researching, and writing have given him plenty of material, and Becker neatly exposes the foibles of academia and its "publish or perish" atmosphere. Wordiness, the passive voice, inserting a "the way in which" when a simple "how" will do - all these mechanisms are a part of the social structure of academic writing. By shrugging off such impediments - or at the very least, putting them aside for a few hours - we can reform our work habits and start writing lucidly without worrying about grades, peer approval, or "the literature." In this new edition, Becker takes account of major changes in the computer tools available today and also substantially expands his analysis of how academic institutions create problems for writers. As competition in higher education grows increasingly heated, "Writing for Social Scientists" will provide solace to a new generation of frazzled, would-be writers.


Wendy Laura Belcher's Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success is a revolutionary approach to enabling academic authors to overcome their anxieties and produce the publications that are essential to succeeding in their fields. Each week, readers learn a particular feature of strong articles and work on revising theirs accordingly. At the end of twelve weeks, they send their article to a journal. This invaluable resource is the only guide that focuses specifically on publishing humanities and social science journal articles.


Becoming an Academic Writer helps you gain control over writing and publishing, master specific aspects of academic writing, and improve your productivity. Patricia Goodson's book offers weekly exercises and tools to achieve these goals. The exercises are grounded in a theoretically-sound and empirically-based mode comprising a set of behavioural principles (e.g., writing regularly, separating generating from editing) and specific practices (weekly exercises) which ensure success.  Based on the work of writing theoretician Peter Elbow, the empirical research done by Robert Boice (and others) on writing productivity of college professors, and the research into the practice patterns of elite performers (such as Olympic athletes), the principles and practices have been developed and tested over time.  Inside you'll find:
Exercises tailored to specific segments of academic papers and reports
Tips for ESL Writers boxes, providing additional support.
This book uniquely combines these successful principles with a set of original exercises applicable to the writing needs of academics as well as students.

Murray (2013). Writing for Academic Journals. Open Up Study Skills. 

Writing for publication is a daunting and time-consuming task for many academics. And yet the pressure for academics to publish has never been greater. This book demystifies the process of writing academic papers, showing readers what good papers look like and how they can be written.
Offering a research-informed understanding of the contemporary challenges of writing for publication, this book gives practical advice for overcoming common obstacles such as finding a topic, targeting journals, and finding the time to write. The author offers a range of helpful writing strategies, making this an invaluable handbook for academics at all stages of their career, from doctoral students to early career researchers and even experienced academics. The third edition has been comprehensively updated to reflect the changing landscape of academic writing, including the most recent research and theory on writing across the disciplines. Drawing on her extensive experience of running writing workshops and working closely with academics on developing writing, Rowena Murray offers practical and tested strategies for good academic writing.

Silvia (2007). How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing. American Psychological Association. 

All students and professors need to write, and many struggle to finish their stalled dissertations, journal articles, book chapters, or grant proposals. Writing is hard work and can be difficult to wedge into a frenetic academic schedule. In this practical, light-hearted, and encouraging book, Paul Silvia explains that writing productively does not require innate skills or special traits but specific tactics and actions. Drawing examples from his own field of psychology, he shows readers how to overcome motivational roadblocks and become prolific without sacrificing evenings, weekends, and vacations. After describing strategies for writing productively, the author gives detailed advice from the trenches on how to write, submit, revise, and resubmit articles, how to improve writing quality, and how to write and publish academic work.

Silvia (2014). Write It Up: Practical Strategies for Writing and Publishing Journal Articles. American Psychological Association. 

How do you write good research articles — articles that are interesting, compelling, and easy to understand? How do you write papers that influence the field instead of falling into obscurity?

Sword (2012). Stylish Academic Writing. Harvard University Press. 

Elegant data and ideas deserve elegant expression, argues Helen Sword in this lively guide to academic writing. For scholars frustrated with disciplinary conventions, and for specialists who want to write for a larger audience but are unsure where to begin, here are imaginative, practical, witty pointers that show how to make articles and books a pleasure to read - and to write. Dispelling the myth that you cannot get published without writing wordy, impersonal prose, Sword shows how much journal editors and readers welcome work that avoids excessive jargon and abstraction. Sword's analysis of more than a thousand peer-reviewed articles across a wide range of fields documents a startling gap between how academics typically describe good writing and the turgid prose they regularly produce. "Stylish Academic Writing" showcases a range of scholars from the sciences, humanities, and social sciences who write with vividness and panache. Individual chapters take up specific elements of style, such as titles and headings, chapter openings, and structure, and close with examples of transferable techniques that any writer can master.


It’s not easy getting published, but everyone has to do it. Writing for Peer Reviewed Journals presents an insider’s perspective on the secret business of academic publishing, making explicit many of the dilemmas and struggles faced by all writers, but rarely discussed. Its unique approach is theorised and practical. It offers a set of moves for writing a journal article that is structured and doable but also attends to the identity issues that manifest on the page and in the politics of academic life. The book comprehensively assists anyone concerned about getting published; whether they are early in their career or moving from a practice base into higher education, or more experienced but still feeling in need of further information. Avoiding a ‘tips and tricks’ approach, which tends to oversimplify what is at stake in getting published, the authors emphasise the production, nurture and sustainability of scholarship through writing – a focus on both the scholar and the text or what they call text work/identity work. The chapters are ordered to develop a systematic approach to the process, including such topics as:

The writer
The reader
What’s the contribution?
Beginning work
Refining the argument
Engaging with reviewers and editors


General writing style guides


Butterfield (2015). Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Oxford University Press. 

Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage is the world-famous guide to English usage, loved and used by writers, editors, and anyone who values correct English since it first appeared in 1926. Fowler's gives comprehensive and practical advice on complex points of grammar, syntax, punctuation, style, and word choice.  Now enlarged and completely revised to reflect English usage in the 21st century, it provides a crystal-clear, authoritative picture of the English we use, while illuminating scores of usage questions old and new. International in scope, it gives in-depth coverage of both British and American English usage issues, with reference also to the English of Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and South Africa. The thousands of authentic examples in the book vividly demonstrate how modern writers tackle debated usage issues. They come on the one hand from established literary figures such as Chinua Achebe, Peter Ackroyd, Raymond Carver, Iris Murdoch, Harold Pinter, and Vikram Seth. On the other, they are drawn from a vast range of newspapers, journals, books, broadcast material, websites, and other digital sources from across the globe, and include references to topical personalities such as Stephen Fry, Prince Harry, Jeremy Paxman, and Wayne Rooney. Based on the evidence and research of the Oxford Dictionaries Programme, this is the most comprehensive and authoritative guide to usage available.


Great writing isn't born, it's built sentence by sentence. But too many writers and writing guides overlook this most important unit. The result? Manuscripts that will never be published and writing careers that will never begin. In this wickedly humorous manual, language columnist June Casagrande uses grammar and syntax to show exactly what makes some sentences great and other sentences suck. With chapters on Conjunctions That Kill and Words Gone Wild, this lighthearted guide is perfect for anyone who s dead serious about writing, from aspiring novelists to nonfiction writers, conscientious students to cheeky literati. So roll up your sleeves and prepare to craft one bold, effective sentence after another. Your readers will thank you.

Clark (2008). Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. Little Brown Book Group. 

'Tools Not Rules' says Roy Peter Clark, vice president and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, the esteemed school for journalists and teachers of journalists. Clark believes that everyone can write well with the help of a handful of useful tools that he has developed over decades of writing and teaching. If you google 'Roy Peter Clark, Writing Tools', you'll get an astonishing 1.25 million hits. That's because journalists everywhere rely on his tips to help them write well every day - in fact he fields emails from around the world from grateful writers. 'Writing Tools' covers everything from the basics (Tool 5: Watch those Adverbs) to the more complex (Tool 34: Turn your notebook into a camera) and uses more than 300 examples from literature and journalism to illustrate the concepts. For students, aspiring novelists and writers of memos, emails, PowerPoint presentations and love letters, here are 50 indispensible, memorable and usable tools.

Cutts (2013). Oxford Guide to Plain English. Oxford University Press. 

Plain English is the art of writing clearly, concisely, and in a way that precisely communicates your message to your intended audience. This book offers 25 practical guidelines helping you to improve your vocabulary, style, grammar, and layout to achieve clear writing. It gives expert advice on all aspects of the writing process: from avoiding jargon and legalese, to organizing written information in print and online. It also shows you how it's done with hundreds of real examples, including 'before' and 'after' versions. All this is presented in an authoritative and engaging way.   Completely revised and updated, this essential reference work is now even more useful: the word lists have been expanded; a new list of clichéd and troublesome words to avoid has been added; and examples of real-life stories have been replaced with more recent ones. An improved design gives the book a fresh feel.

Fogarty (2013). Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. Henry Holt & Company Inc. 

Mignon Fogarty, a.k.a. Grammar Girl, is determined to wipe out bad grammar - but she's also determined to make the process as painless as possible. One year ago, she created a weekly pod cast to tackle some of the most common mistakes people make while communicating. The pod casts have now been downloaded more than seven million times, and Mignon has dispensed grammar tips on Oprah and appeared on the pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.Written with the wit, warmth, and accessibility that the pod casts are known for, Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing covers the grammar rules and word-choice guidelines that can confound even the best writers. From between vs. among and although vs. while to comma splices and misplaced modifiers, Mignon offers memory tricks and clear explanations that will help readers recall and apply those troublesome grammar rules. Chock-full of tips on style, business writing, and effective e-mailing, Grammar Girl's print debut deserves a spot on every communicator's desk.

Gowers (1987). The Complete Plain Words. Penguin. 

Whether you are working on paper or on a computer, this invaluable reference work will lead you through the intricacies, problems and pleasures of the English language with wit, common sense and authority.

Deals with the dangers of jargon, cliché and superfluous words
Covers strategies for choosing the right word in any situation
Lays out the ground rules of grammar and punctuation and shows how to avoid the pitfalls
Discusses the influence of science and technology, and other cultures
Gives suggestions for drafting letters
Provides a list of words to use with care

Manser (2002). The Penguin Writer's Manual. Penguin. 

The Penguin Writer's Manual is the essential companion for anyone who wants to master the art of writing good English. Whether you're composing an essay, sending a business letter or an email to a colleague, or firing off an angry letter to a newspaper, this guide will help you to brush up you communication skills and write correct and confident English.


Steven Pinker, the bestselling author of The Language Instinct, deploys his gift for explaining big ideas in The Sense of Style - an entertaining writing guide for the 21st century. What is the secret of good prose? Does writing well even matter in an age of instant communication? Should we care? In this funny, thoughtful book about the modern art of writing, Steven Pinker shows us why we all need a sense of style. More than ever before, the currency of our social and cultural lives is the written word, from Twitter and texting to blogs, e-readers and old-fashioned books. But most style guides fail to prepare people for the challenges of writing in the 21st century, portraying it as a minefield of grievous errors rather than a form of pleasurable mastery. They fail to deal with an inescapable fact about language: it changes over time, adapted by millions of writers and speakers to their needs. Confusing changes in the world with moral decline, every generation believes the kids today are degrading society and taking language with it. A guide for the new millennium, writes Steven Pinker, has to be different. Drawing on the latest research in linguistics and cognitive science, Steven Pinker replaces the recycled dogma of previous style guides with reason and evidence. This thinking person's guide to good writing shows why style still matters: in communicating effectively, in enhancing the spread of ideas, in earning a reader's trust and, not least, in adding beauty to the world. Eye-opening, mind-expanding and cheerful, The Sense of Style shows that good style is part of what it means to be human.

Ritter (2005). New Hart's Rules: The Handbook of Style for Writers and Editors. Oxford University Press. 

Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford was first printed in 1893. This classic reference work for writers, editors, and publishers was in print through 39 editions for nearly one hundred years. New Hart's Rules is a brand-new text that brings the principles of the old text into the 21st century, providing answers to questions of editorial style for a new generation of professionals. Writers and editors of all kinds will find this handy guide an indispensable companion in their work. Twenty chapters give information on all aspects of writing and of preparing copy for publication, whether in print or electronically. New Hart's Rules covers a broad range of topics including publishing terms, layout and headings, how to treat illustrations, hyphenation, punctuation, UK and US usage, bibliographies and notes, and indexing. The chapters have been compiled by a team of experts and consultants, and the book draws on the unrivalled expertise of Oxford's Reference Department. It is also endorsed by the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. The text is designed and organized for maximum accessibility with clearly displayed examples throughout. Authoritative and comprehensive, New Hart's Rules is the essential desk guide for all writers and editors, and together with the New Oxford Spelling Dictionary and the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors forms the complete editorial reference set.

Seely (2013). Oxford A-Z of Grammar and Punctuation. Oxford University Press. 

Readers of all levels will find this excellent guide essential. Including examples of real usage taken from the Oxford Corpus, this handy volume provides clear information about grammar and punctuation that we need on a day-to-day basis in over 300 entries. Arranged alphabetically, it contains entries for standard grammatical terms such as pronoun, synonym, or transitive verb. It also discusses related questions of usage, for example how to distinguish between 'may' or ' might', 'that' or 'which', and 'it's' or 'its'. For ease of use, over 40 feature entries on master headwords like adverb, hyphen, and spelling include diagrams listing related terms. Revised and updated, The Oxford A-Z of Grammar and Punctuation offers accessible and coherent explanations across a broad range of topics, and is the first port of call for any reader seeking clear, authoritative help with grammar and punctuation. Both easy to use and comprehensive, it is an essential tool for writing at home, in the office, at school, and at college.

Strunk & White (1999). The Elements of Style. Longman. 

You know the authors' names. You recognize the title. You've probably used this book yourself. This is The Elements of Style, the classic style manual, now in a fourth edition. A new Foreword by Roger Angell reminds readers that the advice of Strunk & White is as valuable today as when it was first offered.This book's unique tone, wit and charm have conveyed the principles of English style to millions of readers. Use the fourth edition of "the little book" to make a big impact with writing.


A runaway hit and Sunday Times bestseller in 2008, My Grammar and I has continued to grow in popularity, becoming the go-to guide for grammar. Repackaged with a fresh jacket design, this much-loved gift title is now available in paperback, for new readers and fans of the series alike. My Grammar and I offers amusing examples of awful grammar, while steering you in the direction of grammatical greatness. Taking you on a tour of the English language through the minefield of rules and conditions that can catch you out, from dangling modifiers to split infinitives, it highlights the common pitfalls that every English language user faces on a day to day basis. Refreshing everything you should have learnt at school and more, My Grammar and I is informative yet entertaining - an ideal buy for any English language enthusiast.

Trask (1997). The Penguin Guide to Punctuation. Penguin.

The Penguin Guide to Punctuation is indispensable for anyone who needs to get to grips with using punctuation in their written work. Whether you are puzzled by colons and semicolons, unsure of where commas should go or baffled by apostrophes, this jargon-free, succinct guide is for you.

Truss (2009). Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Fourth Estate. 

Anxious about the apostrophe? Confused by the comma? Stumped by the semicolon? Join Lynne Truss on a hilarious tour through the rules of punctuation that is sure to sort the dashes from the hyphens.We all had the basic rules of punctuation drilled into us at school, but punctuation pedants have good reason to suspect they never sank in. ‘Its Summer!’ screams a sign that sets our teeth on edge. ‘Pansy’s ready’, we learn to our considerable interest (‘Is she?’) as we browse among the bedding plants. It is not only the rules of punctuation that have come under attack but also a sense of why they matter. In this runaway bestseller, Lynne Truss takes the fight to emoticons and greengrocers’ apostrophes with a war cry of ‘Sticklers unite!’


Books aimed at supervisors


Aitchison et al (2010). Publishing Pedagogies for the Doctorate and Beyond. Routledge. 

Within a context of rapid growth and diversification in higher degree research programs, there is increasing pressure for the results of doctoral research to be made public. Doctoral students are now being encouraged to publish not only after completion of the doctorate, but also during, and even as part of their research program. For many this is a new and challenging feature of their experience of doctoral education. Publishing Pedagogies for the Doctorate and Beyond is a timely and informative collection of practical and theorised examples of innovative pedagogies that encourage doctoral student publishing. The authors give detailed accounts of their own pedagogical practices so that others may build on their experiences, including: a program of doctoral degree by publication; mentoring strategies to support student publishing; innovations within existing programs, including embedded publication pedagogies; co-editing a special issue of a scholarly journal with students; ‘publication brokering’, and writing groups and writing retreats.

With contributions from global leading experts, this vital new book:

explores broader issues pertaining to journal publication and the impacts on scholarly research and writing practices for students, supervisors and the academic publishing community
takes up particular pedagogical problems and strategies, including curriculum and supervisory responses arising from the ‘push to publish’
documents explicit experiences and practical strategies that foster writing-for-publication during doctoral candidature.
Publishing Pedagogies for the Doctorate and Beyond explores the challenges and rewards of supporting doctoral publishing and provides new ways to increase research publication outputs in a pedagogically sound way. It will be a valued resource for supervisors and their doctoral students, as well as for program coordinators and managers, academic developers, learning advisors, and others involved in doctoral education.


Helping Doctoral Students Write offers a proven approach to effective doctoral writing. By treating research as writing and writing as research, the authors offer pedagogical strategies for doctoral supervisors that will assist the production of well-argued and lively dissertations. It is clear that many doctoral candidates find research writing complicated and difficult, but the advice they receive often glosses over the complexities of writing and/or locates the problem in the writer. Kamler and Thomson provide a highly effective framework for scholarly work that is located in personal, institutional and cultural contexts. The pedagogical approach developed in the book is based on the notion of writing as a social practice. This approach allows supervisors to think of doctoral writers as novices who need to learn new ways with words as they enter the discursive practices of scholarly communities. This involves learning sophisticated writing practices with specific sets of conventions and textual characteristics. The authors offer supervisors practical advice on helping with commonly encountered writing tasks such as the proposal, the journal abstract, the literature review and constructing the dissertation argument. The first edition of this book has helped many academics and thousands of research students produce better written material. Now fully updated the second edition includes:

Examples from a broader range of academic disciplines
A new chapter on writing from the thesis for peer reviewed journals
More advice on reading and note taking, performance and conferences,
Further information on developing a personal academic writing style, and
Advice on the use of social media (blogs, tweets and wikis) to create trans-disciplinary and trans-national networks and conversations.
Their discussion of the complexities of forming a scholarly identity is illustrated throughout by stories and writings of actual doctoral students.

In conclusion, they present a persuasive and proven argument that universities must move away from simply auditing supervision to supporting the development of scholarly research communities. Any supervisor keen to help their students develop as academics will find the ideas and practical solutions presented in this book fascinating and insightful reading.


The relationship of supervisor to student has traditionally been seen as one of apprenticeship, in which much learning is tacit, with the expectation that the student will become much like the tutor. The changing demographics of higher education in conjunction with imperatives of greater accountability and support for research students have rendered this scenario both less likely and less desirable and unfortunately many supervisors are challenged by the task of guiding non-native speaker students to completion. This handbook is the ideal guide for all supervisors working with undergraduate and postgraduate non-native speaker students writing a thesis or dissertation in English as it explicitly unpacks thesis writing, using language that is accessible to research supervisors from any discipline.

Phillips & Pugh (2015). How To Get A Phd: A Handbook For Students And Their Supervisors. Open University Press. 

"How to Get a PhD is the market leading, classic book for PhD students and their supervisors."

Wagenmakers (2009). Teaching Graduate Students How to Write Clearly. Observer Vol.22, No.4 April, 2009.

17th January 2016 Blog Links

Posted by Economist Channel on Sunday, January 17, 2016 Label:
Hope 2016 is starting well! Those who are considering applying for our MSc programme please see details here. Our events for the first half of 2016 are available to view on the tab above. Those thinking of conducting a PhD with us from September 2016 should get in touch as soon as possible.

1. Adair Turner's "Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit and Fixing Global Finance" is a very stimulating read. It examines the problems associated with the financial industry and financial regulation in the UK and more generally. I will summarise on the blog when time permits.  The main thesis is that the nature of the system creates far too much lending into sectors such as real estate, which creates instability. I think it is a very useful book to read for those interested in consumer behaviour as it examines both the consumer side and the firm/regulatory side and gives a sense of how the two are interconnected.

2. New paper by James Smith and I - “Acquiring Human Capital through the Generations by Migration”. This project is still on-going and we are currently examining the migration experience in 20th century Australia.

This paper focuses on the role of migration to the United States from a set of important European sending countries as a device for improving the human capital of the children and grandchildren of migrants as measured by their education. We derive a new and conceptually more appropriate measure of the generational gains in schooling attributable to migration by taking into account the correct counterfactual: the generational education gains that would have taken place if these migrants had remained in their sending countries. We find that the two European sending countries that gained the most in terms of their descendants’ human capital were Italy and Poland.
3.  Article on the conversation website by centre PhD researcher Phil Newall on financial behaviour, biases and nudging.

4. "Behavioural Insights in Public Policy". Call for papers for the IAREP/SABE conference in Wageningen July 2016

5. New NORFACE call on Dynamics of Inequality Across the Lifecourse now open - submit by 30 March. Our research group is looking closely at this call. Open to suggestions for collaboration from research groups in the relevant countries.

6. Three behavioural science/behavioural economics related PhD studentships at Queen's University Belfast. CLOSING 22nd January. 

7. Self-control app for Mac stops you accessing e.g. facebook/twitter or other common sites for self-designated time.

8. Sunstein on Thaler's "Misbehaving"

9. The Future of Behavioural Change: Balancing Public Nudging vs Private Nudging - Alberto Alemanno
Public authorities, including the European Union and its Member States, are increasingly interested in exploiting behavioral insights through public action. They increasingly do so through choice architecture, i.e. the alteration of the environment of choice surrounding a particular decision making context in areas as diverse as energy consumption, tax collection and public health. In this regard, it is useful to distinguish between two situations. The first is that of a public authority which seeks to steer behaviour in the public interest, taking into account one or more mental shortcuts. Thus, a default enrollment for organ donation leverages on the power of inertia to enhance the overall prevalence organ donors. Placing an emoticon (sad face) or a set of information about average consumption on a prohibitive energy bill has the potential to nudge consumers towards less energy consumption. I call this pure public nudging. The second perspective is when public authorities react to exploitative uses of mental shortcuts by market forces by regulating private nudging. I call this 'counter-nudging'. Pure public nudging helps people correct mental shortcuts so as to achieve legitimate objectives (e.g. increased availability of organs, environmental protection, etc.), regardless of their exploitative use by market forces.  It is against this proposed taxonomy that the 2nd AIM Lecture examines whether also private companies may nudge for good. Are corporations well-placed to nudge their customers towards societal objectives, such as the protection of the environment or the promotion of public health? This is what I call benign corporate nudging. Their record is far from being the most credible. Companies have used behavioural inspired interventions to maximize profits, what led them to sell more and in turn to induce citizens into more consumption. Yet corporate marketing need not always be self-interested. An incipient number of companies are using their brand, generally through their packaging and marketing efforts, to 'nudge for good'. By illustrating some actual examples, this lecture defines the conditions under which companies may genuinely and credibly nudge for good. It argues that benign corporate nudging may have – unlike dominant CSR efforts – a positive long-term, habit-forming effect that influences consumers' future behaviour 'for good'.

Dilip Soman: The Last Mile

Posted by Economist Channel on Saturday, January 16, 2016 Label:
Dilip Soman's "The Last Mile: Creating Social and Economic Value from Behavioral Insights" is a welcome addition to the emerging volume of books on behavioural science aimed at a general audience. The book builds on the Nudge and Choice Architecture ideas of Sunstein and Thaler by providing a detailed account of the concepts, experimental methods and evidence in behavioural science and the manner in which they can be applied in business and policy settings. The "Last Mile" is essentially the stage at the roll-out of a product, technology or policy where the main development work has been completed and now the basic nitty-gritty of human interaction takes precedence. For example think of Obamacare as a long-run legislative development compared to Obamacare as a set of insurance exchange websites being used by millions of people trying to process complex information. Soman uses the concept of Last Mile a device to explore the many ways in which human psychology interacts with the choice environment and the implications of this for practice.

The book is divided into three main sections: (i) The Theory of the Last Mile: Principles and Ideas from the Behavioral Sciences contains six chapters outlining key ideas including the main concept of the book (last mile issues), choice architecture and nudging, and the main concepts in the behavioural literature including the axioms of rational choice, inter-temporal choice, heuristics and biases and several others. This section functions well as a primer on behavioural science. (ii) The Methods of the Behavioural Scientist  provides a detailed account of lab and field experimental designs followed by a chapter specifically on how to conduct studies on intuition, judgement and choices. (iii) At the Last Mile: Engineering Behavioural Change describes the various methods utilised in the literature to change behaviour and in particular to de-bias judgement and choices. Chapter 9 uses the concept of Choice Repair to examine how choices might be improved in different contexts and this is developed in Chapter 10 through the idea of changing choice architecture. There is a lot of useful material throughout the section on practical applications of nudging in different contexts.

This is a very useful book that I would happily recommend to students or anyone in business or policy thinking about the applications of behavioural insights in their domain. The final section of the book discusses ethical issues and this is one area that I would have liked to see more on. It would also be good to get more treatment on the potential for poorly executed nudges to backfire. Having said that, the book does what it sets out to do very well. In terms of readers, it functions well as an airport read with an accessible style but the level of detail and conceptual depth makes it arguably more suited as a primer for people with serious intentions in this area.  It would certainly function very well as a companion to an executive education or MBA programme in this area and is probably the best book on this general area to recommend to business and policy readers looking to apply this work and will certainly be added to our programme in various ways. For example,. Chapter 13 deals specifically with retail and makes the book as a whole a very nice bridge between behavioural science, nudging and retail/marketing. A real strength of the book is the elucidation of a wide body of experimental literature across behavioural economics and psychology along with providing its relevance to application and even expert readers will likely be introduced to new material. In summary, I think this book will do a lot to bring the emerging literature to a wide business and policy audience and will facilitate a lot of useful discussions between different disciplines and sectors.

A Note on the Ethics of Nudge - Guest Post from Dr. Christian Schubert

Posted by Economist Channel on Friday, January 15, 2016 Label:
This is a guest post from Dr. Christian Schubert.

Let’s assume that in country X ‘nudges’ are being implemented. As you may recall, these are the innovative policy tools suggested, most prominently, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their book Nudge (Thaler and Sunstein 2008). Nudges have been shown to impact people’s behaviour without changing their material incentive structure or in any way coercing them. They manage to do so by either harnessing people’s cognitive biases or by responding to them (Hansen 2015), which implies that they affect human beings, but not homo oeconomicus (Thaler and Sunstein 2008: 8).1 Default settings and cafeteria arrangements are examples of the former, while cooling-off periods and warning signs belong to the latter category. It’s always about (re-)designing parts of people’s choice architecture (CA). Think of the CA as the set of all elements of an agent’s decision context that affect her choices. Crucially, it includes much more than just the monetary incentive structure and the nominal choice set. The focus on people’s CA, rather than only their incentives and choice sets, allows behavioural economists to devise regulatory tools (and institutions more generally) that are robust, as it were, against variations in people’s rationality (Angner 2016: ch. 12).

Nudges have been widely associated with the overarching normative programme of ‘Libertarian Paternalism’ (Thaler and Sunstein 2003), which restricts the set of legitimate CA modifications. They can however be applied in order to pursue non-paternalistic goals as well, such as protecting the environment (e.g. Sunstein and Reisch 2013, Schubert 2016). Nudges are supposed to be transparent, perhaps in the sense that an alert agent should be able to identify them and the channels through which they operate. That condition excludes, for instance, ‘subliminal advertising’ (Bovens 2009).2 Importantly, there’s evidence that even perfectly transparent nudges can be highly effective (Loewenstein et al. 2014).

As Sunstein (2014a: 13) puts it, the general idea is to develop "sensible, low-cost policies with close reference to how human beings actually think and behave". Nudges have become very popular among practical policy-makers, particularly in the U.S. and the UK. In this post, I will neither discuss the desirability or otherwise of nudges, nor the surprisingly under-researched issue of the political economy of nudging by policy makers who may be assumed to be as cognitively biased as the citizens themselves. (which speaks against some kinds of nudges).3 Rather, I am interested in some aspects of the ethical assessment of nudging that have been somewhat neglected to date.4There’s still a long way to go until we’re able to draw sound conclusions in terms of policy advice from all this – which, again, is a point widely neglected both by proponents and critics of nudging.

So, country X is about to implement nudges – what’s the framework to find out whether they are ethical? What are the potential normative costs of nudging? I suggest approaching this problem in four steps. First, let’s see whether the nudges in question increase people’s well-being. Unfortunately, we are already in deep water, for it’s unclear how to think about well-being in the ‘behavioural world’ (aka the real world) in which nudges are supposed to work. Remember, that’s a world where people not only have limited mental resources – meaning computational capacities, willpower and attention –, but also context-dependent, inconsistent and incomplete preferences. In such a world, the standard neoclassical notion that defines well-being as the technical degree of satisfaction of given and consistent preferences cannot be applied. What’s the alternative? We don’t know. Ideas have been floated – from measurable happiness to “only perfectly informed preferences should count” all the way to Bob Sugden’s ‘opportunity’ criterion (probably the most elaborate alternative concept at the moment)5– but the jury is basically still out on how to think about well-being in a behavioural world.6 Let’s bracket this first question, then. As Chetty (2015) puts it, nudges may still be ‘pragmatically’ useful (in concert with more traditional regulation) in achieving specific policy goals that citizens have somehow agreed upon beforehand.

Second, we have to ask how nudges affect people’s autonomy. Most critics agree that nudges compromise this key value by interfering with and manipulating people’s preference formation, and by addressing people’s lower instincts instead of reason. It is then argued that individuals lose ‘control’ over their own preferences (e.g. Hausman and Welch 2010). Upon closer inspection, though, this argument looks a bit strange: Does autonomy really depend on the kind of hyper-rationality presupposed here? Aren’t we all subject to a myriad of influences on a daily basis, most of which we are not even aware of?7Do we really lose our autonomy – and potentially our moral accountability with it – when acting thoughtlessly or akratically (Buss 2012)? Suffice to say that whoever takes issue with nudges along these lines faces difficult conceptual and ethical questions (what’s ‘manipulation’ anyway?).

Thirdly, let's consider whether perhaps it's people's integrity rather than their autonomy that is at stake in nudging. After all, nudges are supposed to work in a setting where people haven’t yet made up their mind (consider the notorious cafeteria case), i.e., they lack complete preferences. It may be a good idea, then, to have a closer look at the problem of preference formation, which, for economists, is akin to the problem of identity or character formation. The late James Buchanan suggested that we take seriously the notion that human beings face the task of creating their preferences and assume responsibility for them (e.g. Buchanan 1999). As Korsgaard (2009) shows, a necessary condition for succeeding in this ongoing process of ‘self-constitution’ is active choosing. While some kinds of nudges clearly support informed active choosing,8 others rather seem to discourage people from engaging in active choice. Put differently, some nudges may produce ‘excessive convenience’. Consider a world with widespread adoption of public nudging: There, I, the consumer, don’t need to worry about my retirement savings, or about mustering the little self-control that I have to avoid the chocolate bars in the cafeteria, nor about being wary about the tricks of door-to-door salespersons. In all these cases, some choice architect, somewhere behind the scenes, subtly steers me into the ‘right’ direction – by changing defaults and frames, and by implementing cooling-off periods. In other words, I’m outsourcing my choices to some external body.

In parts of the critical literature, this specific variant of Moral Hazard makes an appearance as the ‘infantilisation effect’ of nudging (Bovens 2009, White 2013). Note what’s at stake here: When preferences depend on people’s context, and policies can (partly) change that context, we face the problem that policies can impact preferences, which would present us with the awkward task to ponder over which kinds of preferences we want to promote (Hargreaves Heap 2013). The Buchanan-Korsgaard focus on identity formation may help us bypass this question (which is impossible to answer), without losing the ability to identify normative costs associated with nudging.9

Fourth and finally, we should think about what all this means in terms of practical policy implications. Ideally, citizens should be informed about the normative costs involved in public nudging before voting on its implementation (Schubert 2014). Consider integrity: People seem to face a trade-off between ‘excessive convenience’ on the one hand (which discourages active choosing, to the detriment of character formation), and ‘too little’ convenience on the other hand (leaving them overwhelmed with complex choices). This trade-off looks different for different kinds of goods: With primary goods that satisfy basic needs, we may conjecture that most people will favor delegating choices, at least partly, to trusted external bodies. Consider basic retirement savings. The demand to form idiosyncratic preferences on issues related to basic retirement savings seems rather limited. In contrast, preferences on morally charged issues such as whether to donate organs post mortem – a popular example of effective nudging (Smith et al. 2013) – don’t easily generalise. In that latter case, integrity arguments speak against the use of nudges as a regulatory policy tool.10

In most cases, nudges are likely to be implemented as complements to more traditional incentive-based tools. Research on the interplay between modifications of different parts of people’s choice architecture is still in its early stages. What’s striking, though, is that economists interested in deriving behavioural policy implications apparently require much more ethical input than what their neoclassical predecessors were accustomed to. The behavioural economist may turn out to be the moral philosopher’s best friend.

References
Akerlof, G.A. and R.J. Shiller. 2015. Phishing for phools: The economics of manipulation and deception. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Angner, E. 2016. A course in behavioral economics, 2nd ed. London:Palgrave.
Berg, N. 2014. The consistency and ecological rationality approaches to normative bounded rationality. Journal of Economic Methodology 21: 375-395.
Bovens, L. 2009. The ethics of nudge. In Preference change: Approaches from philosophy, economics and psychology, ed. T. Grüne-Yanoff, S.O. Hansson, pp. 207-220. Berlin: Springer.
Buchanan, J.M. 1999. Natural and artifactual man. In his The logical foundations of constitutional liberty, Vol. I, pp. 246-259. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Buss, S. 2012. Autonomous action: Self-determination in the passive mode. Ethics 122: 647-691.
Glaeser, E. 2006. Paternalism and psychology. University of Chicago Law Review 73: 133-156.
Hansen, P.G. 2015. The definition of nudge and libertarian paternalism – does the hand fit the glove? European Journal of Risk Regulation, forthcoming.
Hargreaves Heap, S. 2013. What is the meaning of behavioural economics? Cambridge Journal of Economics 37: 985-1000.
Hausman, D.M. and B. Welsh. 2010. Debate: to nudge or not to nudge? Journal of Political Philosophy 18: 123-136.
Korsgaard, C.M. 2009. Self-Constitution – Agency, Identity, and Integrity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lepenies, R., Malecka, M. 2015. The institutional consequences of nudging – nudges, politics, and the law. Review of Philosophy & Psychology 6: 427-437.
Loewenstein, G., C. Bryce, D. Hagmann, and S. Rajpal. 2014. You are about to be nudged. Working Paper, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2417383
Reiss, J. 2013. Philosophy of Economics: A contemporary introduction. London: Routledge.
Schnellenbach, J. 2012. Nudges and norms: The political economy of libertarian paternalism. European Journal of Political Economy 28: 266-277.
Rothenberg, J. (1962), Consumers' sovereignty revisited and the hospitability of freedom of choice. American Economic Review 52: 269-283.
Schnellenbach, J., and C. Schubert. 2015. Behavioral Political Economy: A Survey. European Journal of Political Economy 40: 395-417.
Schubert, C. 2014. Evolutionary economics and the case for a constitutional libertarian paternalism. Journal of Evolutionary Economics 24: 1107-1113.
Schubert, C. 2015a. Opportunity and preference learning. Economics and Philosophy, 31: 275-295.
Schubert, C. 2015b. On the ethics of public nudging: Autonomy and agency. Working paper, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2672970
Schubert, C. 2016. Green nudges: Do they work? Are they ethical? Working Paper.
Smith, N.C., Goldstein, D.G., Johnson, E.J. 2013. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing 32: 159-172.
Sugden, R. 2004. The opportunity criterion: consumer sovereignty without the assumption of coherent preferences. American Economic Review 94: 1014-1033.
Sugden, R. 2008. Why incoherent preferences do not justify paternalism. Constitutional Political Economy 19: 226-248.
Sunstein, C.R. 2014a. Why Nudge? The politics of libertarian paternalism. New Haven Yale University Press.
Sunstein, C.R. 2014b. Choosing not to choose. Duke Law Journal 64: 1-52.
Sunstein, C.R. 2015. Nudging and Choice Architecture: Ethical Considerations. Working Paper (version 17 jan. 15), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2551264m. (forthcoming, Yale Journal of Regulation)
Sunstein, C.R., Reisch, L.A. 2013. Green by default. Kyklos 66: 398-402.
Thaler, R.H., Sunstein, C.R. 2003. Liberterian paternalism. American Economic Review, Papers & Proceedings 93: 175-179.
Thaler, R.H. and C.R. Sunstein. 2008. Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness. New Haven: Yale University Press.
White, M.D. 2013. The manipulation of choice: ethics and libertarian paternalism. New York: Palgrave.

Footnotes:

1 The definition typically given by Sunstein (e.g. Sunstein 2015: 7) is more encompassing and would also include GPS, say; it seems however to neglect the asymmetry condition stressed by Thaler and Sunstein (2008: 8) themselves that “a nudge is any factor that significantly alters the behavior of Humans, even though it would be ignored by Econs” (italics added), where ‘Econs’ refers, basically, to homo oeconomicus.↩
2 Strictly speaking, subliminal advertising should not qualify as a nudge anyway, for the simple reason that even rational agents would be susceptible to it.↩
3 See Glaeser (2006) and Schnellenbach (2012). Schnellenbach and Schubert (2015) offer a survey on behavioral contributions to Public Choice reasoning.↩
4 See Schubert (2015b) for an elaboration.↩
5 See Sugden (2004, 2008) and Schubert (2015a) for a critical discussion↩
6 This problem is closely related to the issue of conflicting understandings of rationality: While Thaler and Sunstein stick to the neoclassical variant (even elevating homo oeconomicus to a normative role model!), others suggest the alternative notion of ‘ecological rationality’ (e.g. Berg 2014).↩
7 See, e.g., Reiss (2013: 299). It’s an open question whether competitive markets foster deceptive private commercial nudging; see, e.g., Akerlof and Shiller (2015). ↩
8See, e.g., Reiss (2013: 299). Reminders and simplifications are obvious examples. To be sure, the whole nudge agenda raises awareness of the behavioural power of the choice architecture, which may promote informed choice overall. Note also that mandatory choice is a (non-nudge) element in the behavioural policymakers’ toolset (Sunstein 2014b). ↩
9Here’s a heretical thought I dare only express in a footnote: Maybe it’s not people’s actual preferences that should be centre stage in normative economics, but rather their ongoing ability to cultivate them? Rothenberg (1962: 282-83) floated that idea long ago.↩
10 Welfare arguments may be weighted against integrity concerns here, but as we have seen, no one really knows what ’welfare‘ stands for in our behavioural world, at least as far as the level of the individual is concerned.↩

Richard Thaler: Misbehaving: The making of behavioral economics

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Richard Thaler's "Misbehaving: the Making of Behavioural Economics" is partly an autobiography and partly a history of the development of behavioural economics. It is split into 8 parts: (i) Beginnings 1970-78 details his early interest in the psychology of decision making discussing his work on the statistical value of life and how this led to an interest in the endowment effect and his more general interest in how people deviate from rational economic assumptions. Chapter 4 contains a very useful outline of the development of Prospect Theory by Kahneman and Tversky (ii) Mental Accounting 1979-85 outlines the development of the literature on mental accounting. There is a lot of very useful material on the key ideas in the mental accounting literature and explanations of the main experiments. (iii) Self-control 1975-88 describes the development of his work on self-control, will-power and how this literature subsequently developed. The section provides very useful linkages from the will-power and intertemporal inconsistency work to the historical development of Economics and 20th century debates about consumption and income in Economics. (iv) Working with Danny: 1984-85 tells the story of the development of his collaboration with Daniel Kahneman including the development of the famous endowment effect work (v) Engaging with the Economics Profession charts the development of his "anomalies" column in the Journal of Economic Perspectives and the wider reception of the behavioural work in Economics. It also describes the development of a cohort of academics in this area through the US graduate school system and dedicated summer school sessions. (vi) Finance 1983-2003 describes the development of behavioral finance giving detailed accounts of debates around CAPM and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis and the ideas behind Thaler and colleagues' critiques. This section would be a very useful addition to a course on principles of Finance particularly at MBA or similar levels.  (vii) Welcome to Chicago: 1995 to Present describes his transition to the University of Chicago and the development of his interest in law and collaboration with Cass Sunstein. It also describes his work on the NFL and on game-shows. The famous Goldenballs episode, familiar to most readers of this blog, makes a prominent appearance! (viii) Helping out: 2004 - Present: charts the development of his applied work including the well-known Save More Tomorrow work and the development of Nudge and his role in the development of the Behavioural Insights Team. He then concludes with ideas of how behavioural economics might progress including the potential development of behavioural macroeconomics, wider use of field experiments and wider and more innovative data collection.

This is a really good book and works on a number of levels. Thaler has spent a lot of time out and about among people working in different sectors and has developed (perhaps aided by the discipline of publishers) a strong ability for story-telling and he captures the importance of the key debates he has been involved in across economics, finance and law very well. The descriptions of some of the key concepts in behavioural economics are well suited to a broad audience and provide a lot of background information that will be of interest also to those who are already very familiar with the concepts. There are echoes of Arjo Klamer's famous book "Conversations with Economists" throughout the book, with Thaler aiming to give a sense of the institutional context and personalities that framed the key debates in these areas. It is fair to say that this is from the view point of one side of the debate and it would be interesting to hear more from the other side. Some of the key protagonists on the rational choice side of economics often emerge as fairly one-dimensional characters in the narrative and you feel you never really get a strong sense of what motivates some of the key figures who dominated rational-choice Economics throughout the 20th century. Having said that, Thaler does tell his side of the story extremely well and gives the context for how some of his key contributions - including his role in the development of behavioural economics, the development of behavioural finance and the development of Nudge - came to happen. 

One particularly useful aspect of the book for me was Thaler's description of the role of Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" in framing his ideas on the role of behavioural economics. Thaler talks explicitly about how he had always viewed the development of behavioural economics as being a paradigm-shifting movement that would initially come about by pointing out several anomalies that cannot be explained by the neo-classical paradigm. It is interesting to see a self-aware paradigm shift in a discipline and the book operates nicely as a description of how this happened. Chapter 17 "The Debate Begins" has some remarkable passages on a 1985 conference bringing rationalists and behaviourists together to debate the behavioural literature and gives a real sense, at least from the behavioural side, of what was at stake in these debates and the passions they aroused. We see similar moments in later chapters on finance and law with academic debates being mixed with high degrees of emotion and rancour. 

Overall the book works as an academic autobiography, first-hand account of the development of a paradigm and gentle primer of the core concepts in the areas of behavioural law, economics and finance. It is also more than the sum of these parts as the interconnection between these three functions is highly instructive in places. It is well worth reading for anyone interested in this area. 

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