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f76b975
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Humans respond to incentives.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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a6ef299
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The key is to learn to climb inside other people's minds to figure out what really matters to them.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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356987d
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the best way to get what you want is to treat other people with decency.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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cdce0e0
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finding a few bad apples out of millions would be difficult. Our odds would improve if we could somehow trick the bad apples into revealing themselves.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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4bfc465
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Being confident you are right is not the same as being right.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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cd9d81b
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Human beings, for all our accomplishments, can be fragile animals. Most of us don't take criticism well at all.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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92a47d5
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if you are hoping to damage opponents' mental health, go ahead and tell them how inferior or dim-witted or nasty they are. But even if you are certifiably right on every point, you should not think for a minute that you will ever be able to persuade them. Name-calling will make you an enemy, not an ally, and if that is your objective, then persuasion is probably not what you were after in the first place.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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bd24099
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Quitting is hard in part because it is equated with failure, and nobody likes to fail, or at least be seen failing. But is failure necessarily so terrible?
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Steven D. Levitt |
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0ddccf1
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The conventional wisdom is often wrong. Crime didn't keep soaring in the 1990s, money alone doesn't win elections, and--surprise--drinking eight glasses of water a day has never actually been shown to do a thing for your health.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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c7af02d
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Whatever the incentive, whatever the situation,dishonest people will try to gain an advantage by whatever means necessary.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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7676289
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But a mountain of recent evidence suggests that teacher skill has less influence on a student's performance than a completely different set of factors: namely, how much kids have learned from their parents, how hard they work at home, and whether the parents have instilled an appetite for education. If these home-based inputs are lacking, there is only so much a school can do. Schools have your kid for only seven hours a day, 180 days a yea..
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Steven D. Levitt |
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56b9890
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las personas son individuos que toman decisiones activamente tratando de obtener lo que desean de una forma razonablemente sofisticada.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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1c4eeaf
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Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work--whereas economics represents how it actually does work.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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654f763
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Anyway, this is just the latest example of why I never trust statistics I get from people in the field of medicine, ever.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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48c6f60
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The next time you run into a question that you can only pretend to answer, go ahead and say "I don't know"--and then follow up, certainly, with "but maybe I can find out." And work as hard as you can to do that. You may be surprised by how receptive people are to your confession, especially when you come through with the real answer a day or a week later."
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Steven D. Levitt |
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6d21e0a
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As the Inuits say, "Gifts make slaves, as whips make dogs."
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Steven D. Levitt |
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78a2048
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But his graduate advisor, the eminent poverty scholar William Julius Wilson, promptly sent Venkatesh into the field. His assignment: to visit Chicago's poorest black neighborhoods with a clipboard and a seventy-question, multiple-choice survey. This was the first question on the survey: How do you feel about being black and poor? a. Very bad b. Bad c. Neither bad nor good d. Somewhat good e. Very good
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Steven D. Levitt |
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33e27c7
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una hamburguesa con queso, como ha calculado el economista Kevin Murphy, cuesta 2,5 dolares mas que una ensalada en repercusiones en la salud a largo plazo.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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6147afe
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Most people, whether because of nature or nurture, generally put their own interests ahead of others'. This doesn't make them bad people; it just makes them human.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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6a23578
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Morning robberies yield far more than afternoon robberies . . .' - When to Rob a Bank: A Rouge Economist's Guide to the World by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
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freakonomics
robberies
stephen-j-dubner
steven-d-levitt
when-to-rob-a-bank
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Steven D. Levitt |
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7782b85
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Lester and others suggests the opposite: suicide is more common among people with a higher quality of life. "If you're unhappy and you have something to blame your unhappiness on--if it's the government, or the economy, or something--then that kind of immunizes you against committing suicide," he says. "It's when you have no external cause to blame for your unhappiness that suicide becomes more likely. I've used this idea to explain why Afr..
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Steven D. Levitt |
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8ba6e93
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A mountain of recent evidence suggests that teacher skill has less influence on a student's performance than a completely different set of factors: namely, how much kids have learned from their parents, how hard they work at home, and whether the parents have instilled an appetite for education.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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5962a85
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Overall, a portfolio of the "good to great" companies looks like it would have underperformed the S&P 500."
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Steven D. Levitt |
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e8649e2
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So the conventional wisdom in Galbraith's view must be simple, convenient, comfortable, and comforting--though not necessarily true. It would be silly to argue that the conventional wisdom is never true.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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a316d92
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Internet, a pesar de su poder, no ha conseguido dar muerte a la bestia de la asimetria informativa.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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a528cec
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As the behavioral sage Daniel Kahneman has written: "[W]e can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness."
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Steven D. Levitt |
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7a27ef5
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A pair of researchers named Kristen Schilt and Matthew Wiswall wanted to systematically examine what happens to the salaries of people who switched gender as adults. It is not quite the experiment we proposed above--after all, the set of folks who switch gender aren't exactly a random sample, nor are they the typical woman or man before or after--but still, the results are intriguing. Schilt and Wiswall found that women who become men earn ..
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Steven D. Levitt |
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5c84e1d
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Why I Write for Children," he explained the appeal. "Children read books, not reviews," he wrote. "They don't give a hoot about the critics." And: "When a book is boring, they yawn openly, without any shame or fear of authority." Best of all--and to the relief of authors everywhere--children "don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity."
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Steven D. Levitt |
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845ffc7
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As Albert Einstein liked to say, everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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fb0f5bc
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Households that got the once-and-done letter were twice as likely to become first-time donors as people who got a regular solicitation letter. By fund-raising standards, this was a colossal gain. These donors also gave slightly more money, an average of $56 versus $50.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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19ff4e1
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But as history clearly shows, most people, whether because of nature or nurture, generally put their own interests ahead of others'.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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7267f1f
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But if there is one thing we've learned from a lifetime of designing and analyzing incentives, the best way to get what you want is to treat other people with decency. Decency can push almost any interaction into the cooperative frame. It is most powerful when least expected, like when things have gone wrong. Some of the most loyal customers any company has are the ones who had a big problem but got treated incredibly well as it was being r..
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Steven D. Levitt |
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f3c1cb5
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Each of us develops a moral compass (some stronger than others, to be sure) as we make our way through the world. This is for the most part a wonderful thing. Who wants to live in a world where people run around with no regard for the difference between right and wrong?
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Steven D. Levitt |
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d90dcaa
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When you are consumed with the rightness or wrongness of a given issue--whether it's fracking or gun control or genetically engineered food--it's easy to lose track of what the issue actually is.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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68824ae
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When you're that engaged, you'll run circles around other people even if they are more naturally talented.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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0cc74d6
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So when it comes to solving problems, channeling your inner child can really pay off. It all starts with thinking small.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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699802b
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it is often possible to elicit the behavior you want through nonfinancial means.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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5e91290
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HOW IS A STREET PROSTITUTE LIKE A DEPARTMENT-STORE SANTA?
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Steven D. Levitt |
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d3012bb
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Yes, it may be money they're after--but just as often they are motivated by wanting to be liked, or not be hated; by wanting to stand out in a crowd, or perhaps not stand out.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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2581f65
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Anecdotes often represent the lowest form of persuasion. A story, meanwhile, fills out the picture. It uses data, statistical or otherwise, to portray a sense of magnitude; without data, we have no idea how a story fits into the larger scheme of things. A good story also includes the passage of time, to show the degree of constancy or change; without a time frame, we can't judge whether we're looking at something truly noteworthy or just an..
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Steven D. Levitt |
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b50ab35
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It's easy to envision how you'd change the behavior of people who think just like you do, but the people whose behavior you're trying to change often don't think like you--and, therefore, don't respond as you might expect.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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0df6cde
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The best way to get what you want is to treat other people with decency.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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b659a21
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Incentivize them on the dimensions that are valuable to them but cheap for you to provide.
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Steven D. Levitt |
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a750b80
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To Borody and a small band of like-minded brethren who believe in the power of poop, we are standing at the threshold of a new era in medicine. Borody sees the benefits of fecal therapy as "equivalent to the discovery of antibiotics." But first, there is much skepticism to overcome." --
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Steven D. Levitt |